Charles the Bald
Charles the Bald was the son for whom Louis the Pious broke his own succession law, and the western third of the empire that his brothers conceded him at Verdun in 843 is the France that the Capetians inherited; he spent thirty-four years defending it against Vikings, brothers and nephews, and died an emperor crossing the Alps. He was born in 823 to Judith of Bavaria, the old emperor's second wife, and the attempts to find him a kingdom drove the rebellions of 830 and 833. In 841 he and Louis the German beat their eldest brother Lothair at Fontenoy, and in February 842 at Strasbourg they swore alliance in front of their armies, Charles in Old High German so that Louis's men would understand him and Louis in the Romance of Charles's men, which is the first written French. Verdun gave him everything west of the Scheldt, Meuse, Saône and Rhône. The Vikings had the rivers. He paid them off in 845 when they were at Paris, and paid again. In 864 issued the Edict of Pîtres ordering fortified bridges across the Seine and Loire and forbidding the sale of horses to the Northmen, which worked slowly; the counts he ordered to build the bridges became the lords of the tenth century. He fought Aquitaine's separatism for twenty years, took the western half of Lotharingia from his nephew's estate at Meerssen in 870, and when the emperor Louis II died in 875 rode to Rome and was crowned by Pope John VIII on Christmas Day, seventy-five years after his grandfather. The edict of Quierzy in 877, which let a count's son hold his father's county while the king was away in Italy, is read as the moment offices became hereditary. He went to Italy to help the pope against the Saracens, fell ill on the way back, and died in a hut at Avrieux in the Alps in October 877; the story that his Jewish physician poisoned him is the chronicler's. His court had John Scotus Eriugena and the illuminators of the Bible that bears his name.
- Lived: 823 CE – 877 CE
- Nationality: Frankish
- Roles: king, emperor, monarch
