Lotharingia

Lotharingia was a region in northwest Europe, comprising the Low Countries, the western Rhineland, the lands today on the border between France and Germany, and what is now western Switzerland. It was born of the tripartite division in 855, of the kingdom of Middle Francia, itself formed of the threefold division of the Carolingian Empire by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. Neither Lotharingia nor Middle Francia had any natural coherence, but each was conceived as a territorial division of a larger realm. In 870 Lotharingia, after a brief interregnum, was divided by the Treaty of Meerssen between its neighbours, East Francia and West Francia. After brief wars in 876 and 879 West Francia ceded its half of Lotharingia to East Francia by the Treaty of Ribemont (880). The Lotharingian aristocracy, in attempting to assert its right to elect a sovereign, joined the other East Frankish lands in deposing their king, Charles the Fat, in 887. Under a series of dukes that began under the child king Louis IV in 903, the Lotharingians frequently swapped allegiance between the East and West Frankish kings. In 939 the East Frankish king Otto I brought the reigning duke Gilbert to heel and incorporated Lotharingia into his realm as one of the "younger" stem duchies, whose dukes had a vote in royal elections. While the other stem duchies were tribal or national identities, Lotharingia's identity was solely political.