Louis the German
Louis the German got the eastern third of his grandfather's empire at Verdun in 843 and ruled it for thirty-three years, which is why there is a Germany and why its kings for the next thousand years thought they had a claim on the rest. He was born about 806, the third son of Louis the Pious, was given Bavaria as a boy under the settlement of 817 and governed it from Regensburg from 826, and joined his brothers' rebellions against their father when the father tried to cut a kingdom for a fourth son out of theirs. The fourth son, Charles the Bald, became his ally the moment the father was dead and the eldest brother Lothair claimed everything. They beat Lothair at Fontenoy in 841, and at Strasbourg in February 842 Louis swore his oath to Charles in Romance and Charles swore his in German, each in the language of the other's army, which a chronicler wrote down and which is the first text in either tongue. Verdun gave him the lands east of the Rhine with Mainz, Worms and Speyer on the west bank for the wine. He spent the reign on three frontiers. He fought the Slavs, whose Moravian prince Rastislav he besieged and whose nephew he installed and then fought, and the Danes on the Elbe. He fought his own family too, invading Charles's kingdom in 858 at the invitation of its nobles and going home when the bishops would not crown him, and in 870 at Meerssen taking the eastern half of Lotharingia, which brought Aachen and the Rhineland into his kingdom. His sons rebelled against him as he had against his father. They were pardoned as he had not been. He died at Frankfurt in August 876 and was buried at Lorsch, and East Francia went in three parts to Carloman, Louis the Younger and Charles the Fat, who briefly held it all again.
- Lived: 806 CE – 876 CE
- Nationality: Frankish
- Roles: king, monarch
