Everything about Louis The German totally explained
Louis (or
Ludwig, or
Lewis)
the German (also known as
Louis II or
Louis the Bavarian) (
806 –
August 28,
876), was a grandson of
Charlemagne and the third son of the succeeding
Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Pious and his first wife,
Ermengarde of Hesbaye.
Louis II was made the King of
Bavaria from
817 following the Emperor Charlemange's practice of bestowing a local kingdom on a family member who then served as one of his lieutenants and the local governor. When his father, Louis I (called the pious), partitioned the empire towards the end of his reign in 843, he was made King of
East Francia, a region which spanned the
Elbe drainage basin from
Jutland southeasterly through the
Thuringerwald into modern Bavaria) from the
Treaty of Verdun in
843 until his death.
Divisio imperii and filial rebellion
His early years were partly spent at the court of his grandfather,
Charlemagne, whose special affection he's said to have won. When the emperor Louis divided his dominions between his sons in 817, Louis received
Bavaria and the neighbouring lands, but didn't undertake the governing of such until
825, when he became involved in wars with the
Wends and
Sorbs on his eastern frontier. In
827, he married
Emma of Altdorf, sister of his stepmother
Judith of Bavaria, and daughter of
Welf, whose possessions ranged from
Alsace to Bavaria. Louis soon began to interfere in the quarrels arising from Judith's efforts to secure a kingdom for her own son
Charles (later known as Charles the Bald) and the consequent struggles of his brothers with their father.
His involvement in the first civil war of his father's reign was limited, but in the second, his elder brothers, Lothair, then
King of Italy, and
Pepin,
King of Aquitaine, induced him to invade
Alamannia — which their father had given to their half-brother Charles — by promising to give him the land in the new partition they'd make. In
832, he led an army of
Slavs into Alamannia and completely subjugated it. Louis the Pious disinherited him, but to no effect; the emperor was captured by his own rebellious sons and deposed. Upon his swift reinstatement, however, the Emperor Louis made peace with his son Louis and restored Bavaria (never actually lost) to him (
836).
In the third civil war (began
839) of his father's ruinous final decade, Louis was the instigator. A strip of his land having been given to the young Charles, Louis invaded Alamannia again. His father wasn't so sluggish in responding to him this time and soon the younger Louis was forced into the far southeastern corner of his realm, the
March of Pannonia. Peace had been made by force of arms.
Bruderkrieg, 840–843
When the elder Louis died in
840 and Lothair claimed the whole Empire, Louis allied with the half-brother, Charles the Bald, and defeated Lothair and their nephew
Pepin II of Aquitaine, son of Pepin, at the
Battle of Fontenay in June
841. In June
842, the three brothers met on an island in the
Saône to negotiate a peace, and each appointed forty representatives to arrange the boundaries of their respective kingdoms. This developed into the
Treaty of Verdun, concluded in August
843, by which Louis received the bulk of the lands lying east of the
Rhine (
Eastern Francia), together with a district around
Speyer,
Worms, and
Mainz, on the left bank of the river. His territories included Bavaria (where he made
Regensburg the centre of his government),
Thuringia,
Franconia, and
Saxony. He may truly be called the founder of the German kingdom, though his attempts to maintain the unity of the Empire proved futile. Having in 842 crushed the
Stellinga rising in Saxony, he compelled the
Obotrites to own his authority, and undertook campaigns against the
Bohemians,
Moravians, and other tribes, but wasn't very successful in freeing his shores from the ravages of the
Vikings.
Conflict with Charles the Bald
In
852, he'd sent his son
Louis the Younger to Aquitaine, where the nobles had grown resentful of Charles the Bald's rule. The younger Louis didn't set out until
854, but he returned the following year. In
853 and the following years, Louis made more than one attempt to secure the throne of
Western Francia, which, according to the
Annals of Fulda (
Annales Fuldenses), the people of that country offered him in their disgust with the cruel misrule of Charles the Bald. Encouraged by his nephews Pepin II and
Charles,
King of Provence, Louis invaded in
858; Charles the Bald couldn't even raise an army to resist the invasion and fled to
Burgundy; in that year, Louis issued a charter dated "the first year of the reign in West Francia." Treachery and desertion in his army, and the loyalty to Charles of the Aquitanian bishops brought about the failure of the enterprise, which Louis renounced by a treaty signed at
Coblenz on
June 7,
860.
In
855, the emperor Lothair died, and Louis and Charles for a time seem to have cooperated in plans to divide Lothair's possessions among themselves — the only impediments to this being Lothair's sons:
Lothair II (who received
Lotharingia),
Louis II (who held the imperial title and the
Iron Crown), and the aforementioned Charles. In
868, at
Metz they agreed definitely to a partition of
Lotharingia; but when Lothair II died in
869, Louis the German was lying seriously ill, and his armies were engaged with the Moravians. Charles the Bald accordingly seized the whole kingdom; but Louis the German, having recovered, compelled him by a threat of war to agree to the
Treaty of Meerssen, which divided it between the claimants.
Divisio regni and his sons
The later years of Louis the German were troubled by risings on the part of his sons, the eldest of whom,
Carloman, revolted in
861 and again two years later; an example that was followed by the second son Louis, who in a further rising was joined by his brother
Charles. In
864, Louis was forced to grant Carloman the kingdom of Bavaria, which he himself had once held under his father. The next year (
865), he divided the remainder of his lands:
Saxony he gave to Louis the Younger (with
Franconia and
Thuringia) and
Swabia (with
Raetia) to Charles, called the Fat. A report that the emperor Louis II was dead led to peace between father and sons and attempts by Louis the German to gain the imperial crown for Carloman. These efforts were thwarted by Louis II, who wasn't in fact dead, and Louis' old adversary, Charles the Bald.
Louis was preparing for war when he died on
August 28,
876 at
Frankfurt. He was buried at the
abbey of
Lorsch, leaving three sons and three daughters. His sons, unusually for the times, respected the division made a decade earlier and each contented himself with his own kingdom. Louis is considered by many to be the most competent of the grandsons of Charlemagne. He obtained for his kingdom a certain degree of security in face of the attacks of
Norsemen,
Magyars, Slavs, and others. He lived in close alliance with the Church, to which he was very generous, and entered eagerly into schemes for the conversion of his
heathen neighbours.
Marriage and children
He was married to
Hemma (died
31 January,
876). They had seven children:
Further Information
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