Louis II (The German) (King of the East Franks)

• General Notes
  • Louis II (also known as Louis the German or Louis the Bavarian or German Ludwig der Deutsche) (804 – August 28, 876), the third son of the emperor Louis the Pious and his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye, was the king of Bavaria from 817, when his father partitioned the empire, and king of East Francia from the Treaty of Verdun in 843 until his death.
    
    His early years were partly spent at the court of his grandfather, Charlemagne, whose special affection he is said to have won. When the emperor Louis divided his dominions between his sons in 817, Louis received Bavaria (formerly his brother Lothair's) and the neighbouring lands, but did not 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, sister of his stepmother Judith, 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 Alemannia — which their father had given to their half-brother Charles — by promising to give him the land in the new partition they would make. In 832, he led an army of Slavs into Alemannia 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 insitgator. A strip of his land having been given to the young Charles, Louis invaded Alemannia again. His father was not so sluggish in responding to him this time and soon the younger Louis was forced into the far southeastern corner of his realm, the Ostmark. Peace had been made by force of arms.
    
    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-en-Puisaye 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 (East 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 a rising in Saxony, he compelled the Obotrites to own his authority, and undertook campaigns against the Bohemians, Moravians, and other tribes, but was not very successful in freeing his shores from the ravages of the Vikings.
    
    At his instance, synods and assemblies were held where laws were decreed for the better government of church and state. In 852, he had sent his son Louis the Younger to Aquitaine, where the barons had grown resentful of Pepin's lifestyle. The younger Louis did not 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 West 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 could not 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 863, on the death of Charles, they divided Provence and Burgundy between them. 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 Mersen, which divided it between the claimants.
    
    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 Rhaetia) 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 was not 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.
    
    He was married to Emma of Altdorf (died 31 January 876). They had seven children:
    
    Hildegard (828-856)
    Carloman (829-880)
    Ermengard (died 866)
    Gisela
    Louis the Younger (830-882)
    Bertha (died 877)
    Charles the Fat (839-888)

Click here for details of The German's family with Emma of Bavaria

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