Louis the Younger
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For the King of France known as Louis the Younger, see Louis VII of France.
Louis the Younger (835-882) was the second eldest of three sons of Louis the German and Emma and the king of Saxony from 876 and Bavaria from 880 until his death in 882. He received the former land in the partition of his father's kingdom of East Francia (later Germany) in 865. Upon his father's death in 876, he fully inherited them as his own independent of his brother's portions. In 879, his brother Carloman was incapacitated by a stroke and partitioned his own kingdom, giving Bavaria to Louis, who received it a year later when Carloman expired. In that year (879) also, he received all of the old kingdom of Lotharingia by consent of the kings of West Francia in the Treaty of Ribemont after a brief war.
He was a third generation descendant of Charlemagne.
As a youth, he was deployed in military operations on the Slavonic borders and in the west. In 854 he, invited by the Aquitainian nobles opposed to Charles the Bald and abandoning Pepin II and coaxed by his father, invaded Aquitaine and marched as far as Limoges before turning back.
Louis forged close ties with the nobles of the eastern kingdom and became increasingly independent from his father. He engaged himself to the daughter of count Adalhard and in 865 he rebelled against his father with his brother Charles the Fat. This relationship however ended in 865, when Louis was reconciled to his father. In 869, he married Liutgard, the daughter of the Saxon count Liudolf, at Aschaffenburg. Luitgard was a strong-willed and politically ambitious woman and later on spurred her husband to pursue ambitious goals. This match increased dissension between father and son and in 871 and in 873, Louis rebelled against his father, but again he was reconciled.
Louis the Younger considered himself the true heir of Louis the German and as his father died in 876, Louis buried him in his own abbey at Lorsch in order to emphasize his primacy to his brothers. Louis also retained his father's chief advisor, Luitbert, archbishop of Mainz.
Louis' rule was immediately threatened by Charles the Bald, who tried to annex the eastern parts of Lotharingia and maybe even to achieve supremacy over his nephew. Louis the Younger however opposed Charles and on 8 October 876 at Andernach, he defeated the much larger host of West Francia with a much smaller army. Louis' army was not only superior in unity and tactics, but the young king had also dressed his soldiers in white garments, so that they appeared as an army of dead spirits.
After this victory, the three brothers met in November at Nördlingen to discuss the division of their father's kingdom and to have their hosts swear allegiance. According to a plan drawn up in 865, which he, despite all his sons' rebellions, had confirmed in 872, Carloman received Bavaria and Charles Swabia (with Rhaetia), while Louis inherited the rule of Saxony, Franconia, and Thuringia. Though he is usually called king of Saxony, this title, like his brothers', is inaccurate, as he was in fact king of the Franks or rex Francorum in Latin and ruling over land including much more than Saxony, a territory he never actually visited. However, Saxony formed the bulk of his territory and all the kings of the Franks of had realms known by legally informal names, such as Provence and Lotharingia.
At the end of 877, the brothers assembled again to discuss the administration of their part of Lotharingia. After Carloman relinquished his claim, the realm was divided between Louis and Charles, who again met in September 878 in Alsatia.
After the death of Charles the Bald, Louis the Younger contracted a treaty of friendship with Charles' heir Louis the Stammerer in November 878 at Fouron, near Liège. The two cousins promised each other to respect the succession of their respective sons and to issue no claims contrary to that. This treaty was put to the test shortly after, when Louis the Stammerer died in April 879. A party of western nobles led by Abbot Joscelin inivited Louis the Younger to succeed to the rule of the western kingdom. Since his wife Luitgard also advocated heeding this call, Louis invaded West Francia. He marched as far as Verdun, but after the new kings Louis III and Carloman ceded their part of Lotharingia to the invader, Louis the Younger retreated. In February 880 this gain was confirmed in the treaty of Ribemont near St Quentin. This treaty determined the border of the two kingdoms that remained unchanged until the fourteenth century.
In contrast to his father, Louis the Younger preferred reconciling royal interests with those of the nobility and avoided confrontation. He managed to bind powerful families to the king, including the Luidovingian relatives of his wife, that later themselves became kings and emperors. King Louis mostly stayed in the region of the Rhine and never visited Saxony or his eastern borders.
In 879, his brother Carloman was paralysed and ceded Bavarian government to Louis. King Louis visited the country twice, but mostly left it to Duke Arnulf of Carinthia and other nobles to increase their power. In 880, Carloman died and Louis received Bavaria as his own.
Louis the Younger fathered three children. His wife Luitgard gave birth to a son called Louis (877-879), who died very young, and a daughter called Hildegard (878-895). Louis also had fathered an illegitimate son called Hugh, either with the daughter of Adalhard or with an earlier concubine.
Since the summer of 879, the Norsemen increased their attacks on the Frankish kingdom and occasionally penetrated deeply into the interior of the land. In February 880, Louis confronted them and defeated a Norman host at Thimeon (near modern Charleroi). His son Hugh, however, was killed in this battle. Louis also drove the Normans out of the royal palace of Nijmegen. In the same month, a Saxon host commanded by Duke Bruno, the king's brother-in-law, suffered a heavy defeat near Hamburg and Bruno and many other Saxon nobles fell. However, as the example of the victory at Thimeon illustrates, no single military victory could stop the tide of Norman incursions.
Louis fell sick in 881 and died in Frankfurt probably on 20 January 882. As his father, he was buried in the abbey of Lorsch.
Since he left no heir, all his territories fell to his brother Charles the Fat, who thus could reunite the entire East Frankish kingdom.
[edit] See also
| Preceded by Louis the German |
King of East Francia (Germany) King of Saxony 876–882 |
Succeeded by Charles the Fat |
| Preceded by Louis the Stammerer |
King of Lotharingia 879–882 |
|
| Preceded by Carloman |
King of Bavaria 880–882 |
