The greatest king in all of Europe was Charlemagne, also known as Karl and Charles the Great. He was a medieval emperor who ruled much of Western Europe from 768 to 814. In 771, Charlemagne became king of the Franks, a Germanic kingdom in present-day Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and western Germany. He would later go on a journey to unite all the Germanic tribes into what would eventually become the Carolingian Empire. 

 What little is known about his youth suggests that he received practical training for leadership by participating in the political, social, and military activities associated with his father’s court. His years were marked by a succession of events that had immense implications for the Frankish population in the contemporary world. In 751, with papal approval, Pippin hush father seized the Frankish throne from the last Merovingian king, Childeric III. After meeting with Pope Stephen the II at the royal palace of Ponthion In 753-754, Pippin forged an alliance with the pope by committing himself to protect Rome in return for papal sanction of the right of Pippin’s dynasty to the Frankish Throne. 

 Charlemagne assumed rulership at a moment in 768 to 814 when powerful forces of change were affecting his kingdom. By Frankish tradition, he was a warrior king, expected to lead his followers in wars that would expand Frankish hegemony and produce rewards for his companions. His Merovingian predecessors had succeeded remarkably well as conquerors, but their victories resulted in a kingdom made up of diverse peoples over which unified rule grew increasingly difficult. Complication matters where the Mervingian Kings who were insatiable appetite of the Frankish Aristocracy for wealth and Power and the constant partitioning of the Frankish realm that resulted from the custom of treating the kingdom as a patrimony to be divided by all the male heirs surviving each king. Basically the Mervin Kings were trying to acquire as much power as possible and by doing so made ruling the Kingdom that much harder.  However by the eighth century, these forces had reduced the Mervo rulers to pretty much nothing in terms of pure political power. 

 Years later, Charlemange would die and leave his three grandsons to divide the kingdom into three parts, naming each of them the legitimate ruler to each other. Their names were  Charles, Lothair, and Louis. The Treaty of Verdun, signed on August 10th, 843, was the first of the treaties that divided the Carolingian Empire into three kingdoms among the three surviving sons of Louis the Pious, who was the son of Charlemagne, which also ended the three-year Carolingian Civil War. Each grandson would take a chunk of the empire and name it their own: Lothair got the Kingdom of Italy, Louis got the Kingdom of Bavaria, and Carols got Aquitaine. In the settlement, Lothair (who had been named co-emperor in 817) retained his title as emperor, but it conferred only nominal overlordship of his brothers’ lands. His domain later became the Low Countries, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence, and the Kingdom of Italy (which covered the northern half of the Italian Peninsula). He also received the two imperial cities, Aachen and Rome. Louis the German received the East Francia portion of the empire. He was guaranteed the kingship of all lands to the east of the Rhine (although not the Netherlands to the north of the Rhine) and to the north and east of Italy, plus the Rhineland west of the Rhine, altogether called East Francia. It eventually became the High Medieval Kingdom of Germany, the largest component of the Holy Roman Empire. received the West Francia portion of the empire, later known as the Kingdom of France. Pepin II was granted the Kingdom of Aquitaine, but only under the authority of Charles. Charles received all lands west of the Rhône, called West Francia. After Lothair died in 855, his eldest son, Louis II, inherited Italy and his father’s claim to the Imperial throne. Upper Burgundy and Lower Burgundy (Arles and Provence) passed to Lothair’s third son, Charles of Provence. The remaining territory north of the Alps, which did not previously have a name, was inherited by Lothair’s second son, Lothair II, and was named Lotharingia after him. It would then become modern Lorraine.