Middle Francia

The middle strip of Charlemagne's empire, which had no reason to exist and left a thousand years of war behind it. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the Carolingian empire between three grandsons, and because the eldest, Lothair, held the imperial title he received the two capitals - Aachen and Rome - which meant a territory running from the North Sea down through the Rhineland, Burgundy and Provence into northern Italy. It was a corridor rather than a country: no common language, no natural frontier, no administrative centre, and mountains through the middle. It broke up within thirty years. The northern part became Lotharingia and gave its name to Lorraine, and the whole belt from Flanders to Switzerland became the ground France and Germany fought over from the tenth century to 1945 - Burgundy, Alsace, the Low Countries and the Rhineland are all fragments of it. The Italian portion fragmented into the communes and duchies that stayed separate until 1861. Historians have called it the most consequential partition in European history. The European Coal and Steel Community was founded in 1951 precisely to make that corridor's resources unfightable over. Its institutions still meet at Strasbourg and Luxembourg. The kingdom existed from 843 to 855, when it was divided again among Lothair's own sons. Its territory covered parts of seven modern countries. Aachen and Rome were both within it. Lotharingia survived as a duchy for centuries. The name Lorraine is a direct descendant of Lothair's. Charles the Bald and Louis the German swore the Strasbourg Oaths in 842, in early French and early German, a year before the partition.

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