Middle Francia
The ground for the formation of Middle Francia was laid in 817, with the plans drawn up for a division of the Carolingian Empire on the death of the emperor Louis the Pious. Unforeseen in 817 was a further claimant besides Louis's three grown sons. A fourth son, Charles the Bald, was born to Louis's second wife, Judith of Bavaria, in 823. When Louis tried in 833 to re-divide the empire for the benefit of Charles he met with the opposition of his adult sons, Lothair, Pepin, and Louis. A decade of civil war and fluctuating alliances, punctuated by brief periods of peace, followed. Pepin died in 838, and the elder Louis in 840. The remaining brothers made peace in 843 and mapped out a final division of the Empire. Lothair, as the eldest, was allowed the imperial title and received as his share of the land a long strip of territories between his brother's kingdoms, stretching from the North Sea to the Duchy of Benevento. The logic of the division was that Lothair had the allegiance of Italy, which had been his sub-kingdom under Louis the Pious, and that, as emperor, he should rule in Aachen, the capital of the first Carolingian emperor, Charlemagne, and in Rome, the ancient capital of emperors. Middle Francia (Latin Francia media) thus included all the land between Aachen and Rome and it has sometimes been called by historians the "Lotharingian axis".
Read more about this topic: Lotharingia
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