Lothair I
Lothair I was promised the whole empire at twenty-two, rebelled twice against the father who had promised it, fought his brothers for it and lost, and kept the title of emperor and a strip of land from the North Sea to Rome that had no reason to exist except that it was his. He was born in 795, the eldest son of Louis the Pious, and the Ordinatio Imperii of 817 made him co-emperor with the reversion of everything. He governed Italy from 822 and issued at Rome in 824 the constitution that made the pope's election subject to imperial confirmation. When his father tried to carve a kingdom for a fourth son out of his inheritance he led the rebellions of 830 and 833, deposed Louis at the Field of Lies and had him do penance, and was himself confined to Italy when the family turned. Louis died in June 840 and Lothair claimed the lot. His brothers Charles the Bald and Louis the German beat him at Fontenoy in June 841, in a battle the chroniclers thought had killed the Frankish nobility, and swore their oaths against him at Strasbourg in February 842; the Treaty of Verdun in August 843 gave him the middle. He had Frisia, the lands between the Rhine and the Scheldt and Meuse, Burgundy, Provence and Italy, with both imperial capitals, Aachen and Rome, and the imperial name. It was a corridor and not a country. He spent his twelve years as its king fighting Vikings in Frisia and Saracens in Italy, and gave Italy to his son Louis II with the imperial title in 850. In September 855, dying, he divided the rest between Lothair II and Charles and entered the monastery of Prüm in the Ardennes, where he died six days later. Lotharingia is the name his son's kingdom took and Lorraine is what remains of it, and the argument between France and Germany over the middle strip lasted until 1945.
- Lived: 795 CE – 855 CE
- Nationality: Frankish
- Roles: emperor, monarch
