Decline
Arnulf's son Louis the Child (893–911) followed his father as King of East Francia at the age of seven. While Louis the Blind, the King of Provence became King of Italy and even Emperor in 901, Louis the Child had to deal with the fierce feud between the Babenberg dynasty and Duke Conrad the Elder over the stem duchy of Franconia. The king, influenced by his councillors, had the Babenberg duke executed and appointed Conrad's son Conrad the Younger Duke of Franconia in 906. Meanwhile East Francia was devastated several times by the troops of Grand Prince Árpád of Hungary.
Upon the early death of Louis, the male line of the East Frankish Carolingians became extinct. The election of Conrad the Younger of Franconia as King by the Dukes of Saxony, Bavaria and Swabia at the diet of Forchheim on November 10, 911 was a decisive step away from Francia and toward a German kingdom, as instead of a member of the Carolingian dynasty, the East Frankish dukes chose one of their kind. King Conrad however did not prevail as primus inter pares and even lost Lotharingia to the Western Frankish kingdom. It was his successor Henry the Fowler, who was able to enforce his royal overlordship against the dukes, whose duchies decomposed over the next centuries, recently Swabia after the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in 1268.
Read more about this topic: East Francia
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