BEYOND 2.VIII: The Partition of the Regnum Lotharii (?)
Excerpt: The Carolingian World and how it functioned – Godwin Albertsson, Whitewell Publishing (AD 1899)
A leading motive for the coming war between Francia and Neustria was the Treaty of Metz which has, intentionally or not, left out a clear plan of division of Lotharingia, an economically, culturally, and politically important region between the two kingdoms which both lay claim on the former Kingdom whose thrown was left vacated after the sudden death of Lothair III. It is consequently no surprise that the tensions were high in the two duchies of Upper and Lower Lorraine as both the two Dukes and the many Counts and the clergy of Lotharingia frequently changed alignment to reap the benefits of submitting to the Carolingian Frankish or the Widonid Neustrians. The nature of this interregnum is reflected by the coinage of that time in that area: Recent coin findings in Utrecht probably stem from areas in the British Isles outside of Anglian or Wessexian political control; others may have been made within the borders of the growing tenth-century British kingdoms, most likely in peripheral or newly conquered territory by counterfeiters. These Anglo-Carolingian hybrid coins, nonetheless, suggest that Henry I of Francia, named in the inscription of the obverse XHEINRICVS·DEI·GRA·REX·FRAN·ET·LOT on the coins, was at least nominally recognized to be the king of all Lotharingia, a blundered version of the common Carolingian royal style “gratia Dei rex” around a large cross on the other side of the coins further emphasize the claim. [1] That established, this directly contradicts silver coins found in the river Moselle with either HERBERTVS·DUX or ADELHARDVS as the inscription on the obverse following traditional Neustrian minting techniques found in the medieval mint of the Corbie Abbey.
In 954, the death of the aforementioned HERBERTVS, Duke Herbert I of Upper Lorraine, who nominally bequeathed the Duchy of the Moselle to Adalhard I, had decisively weakened the position of the Carolingians in Lotharingia, and in the winter months of the same year, large parts of the Lothringian nobility had turned away from Henry I and the Franconian Babenbergs. In January 955, King Adalhard I of Neustria appeared in the Duchy of Moselle to emphasize his claim on the entirety of Lotharingia and penetrated the vacated kingdom as far as Alsace to assert the Neustrian claim. He had documents issued, which also concerned Babenberg and Ezzonid property in Lotharingia, partially confiscating minor counties to redistribute to the Norman landlords who increasingly grew restless in his kingdom. His visit was cut short though when Louis III of Aquitania ask for negotiations regarding the situation of Berry and Gascony.
This act of power sparked outrage on the other side of the Rhine was interpreted as an open act of aggression against the Treaty of Metz. The loudest criticism came from the clergy, in particular, Archbishop Günther II of Cologne; One of the primary goals for the archbishopric under Günther II situated in Lotharingia was the restoration of power of the descendants of the emperor Lothair III to the rule of Lotharingia against what is perceived to be the unlawful usurpation of the young Carolingian Odo and his mother Johanna. To defend the Frankish Carolingian claim to rule over both duchies of Lorraine and the possessions and rights of his allies’ families there, Henry I led three campaigns in 956 and 957 with limited success. At first, he succeeded in pushing back the Neustrians from Toxandria and Alsace, but in the same year, some of the Lothringian potentates allied to Paris invaded Alsace again and burned the town of Verdun, held by Frankish loyalists. This affected the trade in the region to a considerable degree, and further sparking outrage in the East. The second campaign was marked by the death of the Duke of Lower Lothringia, Adolf I, whose successor Adolf II turned against Henry I, after having been approached by the new Neustrian king Wipert I. Although the regional balance of power was hardly determined by the presence of Adalhard I and later Wipert I, Lotharingia remained outside of Henry I’s influence. This meant a huge loss of prestige and destabilized Henry I’s position within Francia: the region was considered the traditional cultural and economic center of the former Greater Frankish Empire, as the imperial city of Aachen was located here. However, the means of power of royalty and important family possessions in the West were also lost.
Inside of what remained of the Frankish Empire in the East, the royal central power had already lost its reputation through disputes over the throne within the ruling dynasty of the Carolingians as well as through underage and weak kings such as Henry I; in fact, no king after Louis the German maintained an effective royal power which was able to set and enforce rules. Their royal orders no longer penetrated all parts of Francia, not to mention Lotharingia, and the Hungarian invasions only intensified the disintegration. Under Louis III of Bavaria's successor, Eberhard I, who was primarily concerned with consolidating his place in Bavaria, relations with the royal court had almost come to a standstill, for instance. This alienation process at the royal court was intensified by the promotion of Franconian Babenberg dominance and the lack of cooperation and integration of the regional rulers. In the individual stem duchies, powerful aristocratic families such as the Brunonids of Saxony fought for supremacy within their domains to secure their position. Especially in Saxony, Henry I, however, began to have doubts about transferring the entire power of the deceased Duke Liudolf II to his son Bruno III. As a result, he had the displeasure of most of the potentates of Saxony, seeing this as an attempt to further curb the power of the stem duchy. Nonetheless, Henry I tried to continue the Carolingian rule and to place his rule in the tradition of Carolingian kingship. This was particularly evident in the royal documents and the organization of the court and the state at large, including the chancellery belonging to this institution. The notaries were taken over from Lothair III's chancellery. In his documents, Henry I also maintained the memory (memoria) of the Carolingians. In his notarization practice, the monasteries and dioceses that his predecessors had already privileged were often granted even more rights, much to the dismay of the Saxon and Swabian clergy which was oftentimes overlooked. As a founder, he approached almost exclusively groups of people who had already been designated as trustees and beneficiaries by his predecessors in the Frankish royal office. In Basel and St. Gallen, for example, Henry I continued the foundations of monasteries and churches by Carloman, Arnulf, and Lothair III. Numerous foundation documents in Henry I’s name from other areas such as Franconia and the Nordgau of Bavaria have also survived the ages. The foundations primarily served “the salvation of soul and memory”. In addition, to further emphasize his bloodline, Henry I allied himself, in the Carolingian tradition, with the church to combat the rising power of the princely stem duchies. Thus, while his reign initially was widely supported by the potentates, especially so after his victory against the Magyars in the Battle of Schlehdorf, his focus on the clergy unsurprisingly eventually led to a more autonomous secular nobility turning against the central power of the royal office. This development forced Henry I to act decisively against Neustrian aggression from the West and the domestic issues regarding the fleeting royal authority, and all paths apparently led to Lotharingia, to campaigns for the reclamation of his perceived birthright.
This campaign formally started in 959 when a dispute over the counties of Yvois and Ename, which belonged to the Duchy of Lower Lorraine, which was then under the sovereignty of the Neustrian Kingdom after the election of Wipert I in the preceding year. Duke Adolf II had Count Ulfried III “Blackbeard”, part of a minor branch of the Ezzonids of which the House of Yvois would develop, exiled to St. Maximin Abbey in Trier, to which he was supposed to be its advocatus; his son Manfred II lost his right of inheritance and all offices and fled to Franconia. He tried from 959 onwards to forcibly regain his hereditary property. But he also found broad and energetic support for his cause at the Babenberg court and among the Franconian nobility which also held considerable properties in Lotharingia. The first attack on Suidbertswerth was initially successful but was then repulsed personally by Duke Adolf II of Lower Lorraine. The second attempt began in 960, which had the full support of the Frankish court, notably Duke Henry the Red of Franconia whose epithet may have originated from this campaign (although this claim is also disputed) and Duke Bruno III who also took part so that the campaign appeared like a joint undertaking of the Frankish ruling class. This invasion force met a coalition of anti-Carolingian nobles near Bockfels [2] whose outcome is unknown; it seems, however, that the battle was inconclusive and forced both parties to the negotiation table. The Treaty of Neuss, widely regarded as the first treaty regarding the status of Lotharingia, forced Duke Adolf II to reconcile with Henry I which is regarded by contemporary chronicles as a humiliation of Adolf II who was further pushed to give back Yvois to Ulfried III in addition to the vacated county of Lützelburg [3] whose rights were bought from the St. Maximin Abbey of Trier in exchange of Ename. Other vacated counties were systematically redistributed to loyal subjects from Francia to secure its newfound power North of the Moselle and another “legitimate” election crowned Henry I as the king of all Lotharingia, with the anointment carried out by archbishop Günther II of Cologne.
This victory did not go unnoticed, however. Wipert I of Neustria believed this to be a hostile act. And in 962, supported by his brother Lambert of Maine, he undertook a surprise attack on Neuss to capture Henry I, who was there on a brief stop. The ambush worked in favor of Wipert I; Part of the court had to flee hastily to Cologne while the Frankish king was imprisoned and moved to Aachen. Now in Neustrian captivity, the negotiations were an embarrassing stain on Frankish history. Although regally treated as equal to Wipert I, it marked the end of true Carolingian supremacy over other emerging dynasties of Europe. Wipert I succeeded in temporarily defusing the conflict by giving up some minor claims; in May 962, Wipert I ceded the Frisian lands and Alsace, which was to be integrated into the stem duchies of Saxony and Swabia respectively, to Francia, while being forced to recognize that Wipert I is the true suzerain of all (remaining) Lotharingia, leaving the bulk of the important sites to the Neustrian Crown, a gargantuan hit on the Frankish self-perception as heirs of the Frankish Empire. That said, the content of the Treaty of Aachen itself is commonly overlooked and overshadowed by the imprisonment of Henry I which was condemned by the Frankish clergy as unjust. This arrangement did not last for more than a decade as upon the death of Wipert I, whose successor Guy I was embroiled in a domestic succession struggle with his uncle Lambert of Maine, Adalhelm III of Campania, and Louis III of Laon, who descended from Charles the Bald, the king of West Francia. Henry I did consequently campaign in Lotharingia to “undo the shame of [the] division”. At the imperial assembly in Dortmund in June 969, Henry I decided to launch a campaign against Lotharingia, and this endeavor was started in autumn of the same year. Henry I, with the support of Saxon and Franconian potentates, gathered an army and now invaded the western kingdom. Through the internal feuds within Lotharingia and Neustria, and with the support of Rudolph III of Upper Lorraine, the last male legitimate Rudolphing, who almost simultaneously started a revolt to reverse the bequeathment of the duchy to the kings of Neustria by the hands of his grandfather, Henry’s forces were able to reach as far as Rheims, although they had to return to the Rhineland because of the onset of winter. The Carolingian contented himself with letting the army line up for a victory celebration in Aachen: With the campaign to Rheims, the now experienced Henry I had restored his honor after his failures. In 970, Guy I was able to decisively beat the Carolingians in Toxandria and in Thise near Besançon and Langres, however, and the war quickly boiled down to a stalemate, favoring Francia, by the onset of the second winter. Both parties, knowing of the futility of the struggle and the issues arising at home, started to negotiate and reconcile. Guy and Henry I met in Attigny and restored peace through an alliance of friendship (amicitia). A formal division was carried out: In return for the formal recognition of the two duchies under Neustrian control, large swaths of territories east of the Meuse and the Moselle, in particular the culturally important towns of Aachen, Cologne, Metz, and Trier, the latter being particularly important for the Babenbergs which held large estates surrounding the St. Maximin Abbey, were ceded to Francia which used this opportunity to reinstate several local and foreign supporters in the region. Rudolph III, a compromise candidate as he descended from an illegitimate branch of the Carolingians, was reinstated as the Duke of Upper Lorraine, which now only covered the areas surrounding Langres and Besançon. The Treaty of Attigny [4] unsurprisingly favored the Carolingians as Guy I was not in a position to demand what the Treaty of Aachen had established beforehand and it would be challenged multiple times for the next decades by both the Neustrians and Frankish, although successful changes to the agreement were rare. The loss of the title of King of Lotharingia, nevertheless, also meant a loss in prestige for the Carolingian Frankish who descended from the namesake of the now Neustrian kingdom where the title would be continued to be used until well beyond this century.
This period of war and peace between Francia and Neustria caused unity in the Frankish Court which had the, for the Carolingians unfortunate, side-effect of further promoting the Babenbergs and Liudolfings within Francia, as both would be attested to have served the king faithfully before his eventual death in early 973 while attempting to cross the Alps to invade Italy. When Lothair the Child eventually died in 975 without leaving a son, Duke Henry the Red and Bruno III had another chance to ascend the throne, as he had now become the most powerful nobleman in the empire, causing the end of a second Carolingian kingdom and the de-facto end of the “Frankish” Carolingian dynasty.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Admittedly, I would like to add some pictures to make this description less dry, but there is no coin of a Henry I from a Lotharingian or Frankish mint with said inscription. But here is something somewhat close to what I have described, a coin from OTL Henry the Fowler which was minted for the County of Bar in (Upper) Lorraine.
[2] In OTL Luxembourg, nowadays just known as the Bock inside the historical district of the modern capital city.
[3] OTL Luxembourg, although slightly shifted northwards.
[4] A map for that important treaty will come soon, although it should be no surprise that it is modeled after the OTL Treaty of Meerssen of the previous century with some appropriate minor changes to reflect the different power dynamic.
OOC: We have reached the word count of 100.000 with this update, hurray!
A leading motive for the coming war between Francia and Neustria was the Treaty of Metz which has, intentionally or not, left out a clear plan of division of Lotharingia, an economically, culturally, and politically important region between the two kingdoms which both lay claim on the former Kingdom whose thrown was left vacated after the sudden death of Lothair III. It is consequently no surprise that the tensions were high in the two duchies of Upper and Lower Lorraine as both the two Dukes and the many Counts and the clergy of Lotharingia frequently changed alignment to reap the benefits of submitting to the Carolingian Frankish or the Widonid Neustrians. The nature of this interregnum is reflected by the coinage of that time in that area: Recent coin findings in Utrecht probably stem from areas in the British Isles outside of Anglian or Wessexian political control; others may have been made within the borders of the growing tenth-century British kingdoms, most likely in peripheral or newly conquered territory by counterfeiters. These Anglo-Carolingian hybrid coins, nonetheless, suggest that Henry I of Francia, named in the inscription of the obverse XHEINRICVS·DEI·GRA·REX·FRAN·ET·LOT on the coins, was at least nominally recognized to be the king of all Lotharingia, a blundered version of the common Carolingian royal style “gratia Dei rex” around a large cross on the other side of the coins further emphasize the claim. [1] That established, this directly contradicts silver coins found in the river Moselle with either HERBERTVS·DUX or ADELHARDVS as the inscription on the obverse following traditional Neustrian minting techniques found in the medieval mint of the Corbie Abbey.
In 954, the death of the aforementioned HERBERTVS, Duke Herbert I of Upper Lorraine, who nominally bequeathed the Duchy of the Moselle to Adalhard I, had decisively weakened the position of the Carolingians in Lotharingia, and in the winter months of the same year, large parts of the Lothringian nobility had turned away from Henry I and the Franconian Babenbergs. In January 955, King Adalhard I of Neustria appeared in the Duchy of Moselle to emphasize his claim on the entirety of Lotharingia and penetrated the vacated kingdom as far as Alsace to assert the Neustrian claim. He had documents issued, which also concerned Babenberg and Ezzonid property in Lotharingia, partially confiscating minor counties to redistribute to the Norman landlords who increasingly grew restless in his kingdom. His visit was cut short though when Louis III of Aquitania ask for negotiations regarding the situation of Berry and Gascony.
This act of power sparked outrage on the other side of the Rhine was interpreted as an open act of aggression against the Treaty of Metz. The loudest criticism came from the clergy, in particular, Archbishop Günther II of Cologne; One of the primary goals for the archbishopric under Günther II situated in Lotharingia was the restoration of power of the descendants of the emperor Lothair III to the rule of Lotharingia against what is perceived to be the unlawful usurpation of the young Carolingian Odo and his mother Johanna. To defend the Frankish Carolingian claim to rule over both duchies of Lorraine and the possessions and rights of his allies’ families there, Henry I led three campaigns in 956 and 957 with limited success. At first, he succeeded in pushing back the Neustrians from Toxandria and Alsace, but in the same year, some of the Lothringian potentates allied to Paris invaded Alsace again and burned the town of Verdun, held by Frankish loyalists. This affected the trade in the region to a considerable degree, and further sparking outrage in the East. The second campaign was marked by the death of the Duke of Lower Lothringia, Adolf I, whose successor Adolf II turned against Henry I, after having been approached by the new Neustrian king Wipert I. Although the regional balance of power was hardly determined by the presence of Adalhard I and later Wipert I, Lotharingia remained outside of Henry I’s influence. This meant a huge loss of prestige and destabilized Henry I’s position within Francia: the region was considered the traditional cultural and economic center of the former Greater Frankish Empire, as the imperial city of Aachen was located here. However, the means of power of royalty and important family possessions in the West were also lost.
Inside of what remained of the Frankish Empire in the East, the royal central power had already lost its reputation through disputes over the throne within the ruling dynasty of the Carolingians as well as through underage and weak kings such as Henry I; in fact, no king after Louis the German maintained an effective royal power which was able to set and enforce rules. Their royal orders no longer penetrated all parts of Francia, not to mention Lotharingia, and the Hungarian invasions only intensified the disintegration. Under Louis III of Bavaria's successor, Eberhard I, who was primarily concerned with consolidating his place in Bavaria, relations with the royal court had almost come to a standstill, for instance. This alienation process at the royal court was intensified by the promotion of Franconian Babenberg dominance and the lack of cooperation and integration of the regional rulers. In the individual stem duchies, powerful aristocratic families such as the Brunonids of Saxony fought for supremacy within their domains to secure their position. Especially in Saxony, Henry I, however, began to have doubts about transferring the entire power of the deceased Duke Liudolf II to his son Bruno III. As a result, he had the displeasure of most of the potentates of Saxony, seeing this as an attempt to further curb the power of the stem duchy. Nonetheless, Henry I tried to continue the Carolingian rule and to place his rule in the tradition of Carolingian kingship. This was particularly evident in the royal documents and the organization of the court and the state at large, including the chancellery belonging to this institution. The notaries were taken over from Lothair III's chancellery. In his documents, Henry I also maintained the memory (memoria) of the Carolingians. In his notarization practice, the monasteries and dioceses that his predecessors had already privileged were often granted even more rights, much to the dismay of the Saxon and Swabian clergy which was oftentimes overlooked. As a founder, he approached almost exclusively groups of people who had already been designated as trustees and beneficiaries by his predecessors in the Frankish royal office. In Basel and St. Gallen, for example, Henry I continued the foundations of monasteries and churches by Carloman, Arnulf, and Lothair III. Numerous foundation documents in Henry I’s name from other areas such as Franconia and the Nordgau of Bavaria have also survived the ages. The foundations primarily served “the salvation of soul and memory”. In addition, to further emphasize his bloodline, Henry I allied himself, in the Carolingian tradition, with the church to combat the rising power of the princely stem duchies. Thus, while his reign initially was widely supported by the potentates, especially so after his victory against the Magyars in the Battle of Schlehdorf, his focus on the clergy unsurprisingly eventually led to a more autonomous secular nobility turning against the central power of the royal office. This development forced Henry I to act decisively against Neustrian aggression from the West and the domestic issues regarding the fleeting royal authority, and all paths apparently led to Lotharingia, to campaigns for the reclamation of his perceived birthright.
This campaign formally started in 959 when a dispute over the counties of Yvois and Ename, which belonged to the Duchy of Lower Lorraine, which was then under the sovereignty of the Neustrian Kingdom after the election of Wipert I in the preceding year. Duke Adolf II had Count Ulfried III “Blackbeard”, part of a minor branch of the Ezzonids of which the House of Yvois would develop, exiled to St. Maximin Abbey in Trier, to which he was supposed to be its advocatus; his son Manfred II lost his right of inheritance and all offices and fled to Franconia. He tried from 959 onwards to forcibly regain his hereditary property. But he also found broad and energetic support for his cause at the Babenberg court and among the Franconian nobility which also held considerable properties in Lotharingia. The first attack on Suidbertswerth was initially successful but was then repulsed personally by Duke Adolf II of Lower Lorraine. The second attempt began in 960, which had the full support of the Frankish court, notably Duke Henry the Red of Franconia whose epithet may have originated from this campaign (although this claim is also disputed) and Duke Bruno III who also took part so that the campaign appeared like a joint undertaking of the Frankish ruling class. This invasion force met a coalition of anti-Carolingian nobles near Bockfels [2] whose outcome is unknown; it seems, however, that the battle was inconclusive and forced both parties to the negotiation table. The Treaty of Neuss, widely regarded as the first treaty regarding the status of Lotharingia, forced Duke Adolf II to reconcile with Henry I which is regarded by contemporary chronicles as a humiliation of Adolf II who was further pushed to give back Yvois to Ulfried III in addition to the vacated county of Lützelburg [3] whose rights were bought from the St. Maximin Abbey of Trier in exchange of Ename. Other vacated counties were systematically redistributed to loyal subjects from Francia to secure its newfound power North of the Moselle and another “legitimate” election crowned Henry I as the king of all Lotharingia, with the anointment carried out by archbishop Günther II of Cologne.
This victory did not go unnoticed, however. Wipert I of Neustria believed this to be a hostile act. And in 962, supported by his brother Lambert of Maine, he undertook a surprise attack on Neuss to capture Henry I, who was there on a brief stop. The ambush worked in favor of Wipert I; Part of the court had to flee hastily to Cologne while the Frankish king was imprisoned and moved to Aachen. Now in Neustrian captivity, the negotiations were an embarrassing stain on Frankish history. Although regally treated as equal to Wipert I, it marked the end of true Carolingian supremacy over other emerging dynasties of Europe. Wipert I succeeded in temporarily defusing the conflict by giving up some minor claims; in May 962, Wipert I ceded the Frisian lands and Alsace, which was to be integrated into the stem duchies of Saxony and Swabia respectively, to Francia, while being forced to recognize that Wipert I is the true suzerain of all (remaining) Lotharingia, leaving the bulk of the important sites to the Neustrian Crown, a gargantuan hit on the Frankish self-perception as heirs of the Frankish Empire. That said, the content of the Treaty of Aachen itself is commonly overlooked and overshadowed by the imprisonment of Henry I which was condemned by the Frankish clergy as unjust. This arrangement did not last for more than a decade as upon the death of Wipert I, whose successor Guy I was embroiled in a domestic succession struggle with his uncle Lambert of Maine, Adalhelm III of Campania, and Louis III of Laon, who descended from Charles the Bald, the king of West Francia. Henry I did consequently campaign in Lotharingia to “undo the shame of [the] division”. At the imperial assembly in Dortmund in June 969, Henry I decided to launch a campaign against Lotharingia, and this endeavor was started in autumn of the same year. Henry I, with the support of Saxon and Franconian potentates, gathered an army and now invaded the western kingdom. Through the internal feuds within Lotharingia and Neustria, and with the support of Rudolph III of Upper Lorraine, the last male legitimate Rudolphing, who almost simultaneously started a revolt to reverse the bequeathment of the duchy to the kings of Neustria by the hands of his grandfather, Henry’s forces were able to reach as far as Rheims, although they had to return to the Rhineland because of the onset of winter. The Carolingian contented himself with letting the army line up for a victory celebration in Aachen: With the campaign to Rheims, the now experienced Henry I had restored his honor after his failures. In 970, Guy I was able to decisively beat the Carolingians in Toxandria and in Thise near Besançon and Langres, however, and the war quickly boiled down to a stalemate, favoring Francia, by the onset of the second winter. Both parties, knowing of the futility of the struggle and the issues arising at home, started to negotiate and reconcile. Guy and Henry I met in Attigny and restored peace through an alliance of friendship (amicitia). A formal division was carried out: In return for the formal recognition of the two duchies under Neustrian control, large swaths of territories east of the Meuse and the Moselle, in particular the culturally important towns of Aachen, Cologne, Metz, and Trier, the latter being particularly important for the Babenbergs which held large estates surrounding the St. Maximin Abbey, were ceded to Francia which used this opportunity to reinstate several local and foreign supporters in the region. Rudolph III, a compromise candidate as he descended from an illegitimate branch of the Carolingians, was reinstated as the Duke of Upper Lorraine, which now only covered the areas surrounding Langres and Besançon. The Treaty of Attigny [4] unsurprisingly favored the Carolingians as Guy I was not in a position to demand what the Treaty of Aachen had established beforehand and it would be challenged multiple times for the next decades by both the Neustrians and Frankish, although successful changes to the agreement were rare. The loss of the title of King of Lotharingia, nevertheless, also meant a loss in prestige for the Carolingian Frankish who descended from the namesake of the now Neustrian kingdom where the title would be continued to be used until well beyond this century.
This period of war and peace between Francia and Neustria caused unity in the Frankish Court which had the, for the Carolingians unfortunate, side-effect of further promoting the Babenbergs and Liudolfings within Francia, as both would be attested to have served the king faithfully before his eventual death in early 973 while attempting to cross the Alps to invade Italy. When Lothair the Child eventually died in 975 without leaving a son, Duke Henry the Red and Bruno III had another chance to ascend the throne, as he had now become the most powerful nobleman in the empire, causing the end of a second Carolingian kingdom and the de-facto end of the “Frankish” Carolingian dynasty.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Admittedly, I would like to add some pictures to make this description less dry, but there is no coin of a Henry I from a Lotharingian or Frankish mint with said inscription. But here is something somewhat close to what I have described, a coin from OTL Henry the Fowler which was minted for the County of Bar in (Upper) Lorraine.
[3] OTL Luxembourg, although slightly shifted northwards.
[4] A map for that important treaty will come soon, although it should be no surprise that it is modeled after the OTL Treaty of Meerssen of the previous century with some appropriate minor changes to reflect the different power dynamic.
OOC: We have reached the word count of 100.000 with this update, hurray!
Last edited:
