Lorraine

Lorraine (German: Lothringen; Latin: Lotharingia) is today part of north-east France. Anciently it was part of the dominions of the Franks, a Rhineland German nation whose most famous leader was Karl der Große, or Charlemagne.

History

Lorraine's original name has its origins in the medieval kingdom of Lotharingia, which in turn was named after either Emperor Lothair I or King Lothair II, both of the family of Charlemagne. It later was ruled as the Duchy of Lorraine before the Kingdom of France annexed it in 1766. The German Empire recovered Lotharingia following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War 1870-71. Germany's collapse at the end of The Great War saw the province Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen awarded to France under the infamous Treaty of Versailles.

By the Treaty of Verdun (843 ce), the three sons of the Carolingian emperor Louis I (the Pious) divided the Frankish territory into three parts: Francia Occidentalis went to Charles II (the Bald), Francia Orientalis to Louis the German, and Francia Media, the zone extending from the Low Countries to Italy, to the emperor Lothar I. This Francia Media was partitioned by Lothar I in 855 between his sons: the elder of the two, Louis II, received Italy and the imperial title; his brother, Lothar, received the northern area, thenceforward known as Lothar’s kingdom, or Lotharingia. This kingdom was bounded on the north by the North Sea; on the east by a line from the mouth of the Ems River to Wesel and then by the Rhine southward to the confluence of the Aare River (but with a westward recession of the frontier that left Mainz, Worms, and Speyer to the Germans); on the south by the Aare and by the Jura Mountains; and on the west by the Saône River (from a point just south of the Doubs confluence) and the Ornain, Meuse, and Schelde rivers. After King Lothar (II) died without heirs in 869, sovereignty over the area was repeatedly contested until 925, when it was finally conquered by the German king Henry I, who created the duchy of Lotharingia. His successor, Otto I, eventually entrusted the duchy to his brother, Bruno, archbishop of Cologne. In 959 Bruno divided Lotharingia into two parts, the southern Upper Lorraine and the northern Lower Lorraine, with their boundary running from a point on the Rhine north of Andernach westward and southwestward to a point on the Meuse north of Mézières. Lower Lorraine thus included most of the historic Netherlands belonging to the German kingdom between the Rhine, middle Meuse, and Schelde rivers, while Upper Lorraine included the Ardennes, the Moselle valley, and the upper Meuse valley. From the time of Bruno’s death (965), the two duchies remained separate, except for the years 1033–44. By the early 12th century, the duchy of Lower Lorraine was being rivaled by the growing countships of Limburg, Hainaut, Leuven, and Namur; and in 1190 the reigning duke dropped the title duke of Lothier (i.e., Lower Lorraine) and took that of duke of Brabant, as Henry I (died 1235). With the dissolution of the lower duchy, the upper duchy came to be called simply Lorraine. It remained with Gerard of Châtenois and his male descendants from 1048 to 1431. The authority of these dukes was offset not only by the temporal power of the three bishoprics within their frontiers, namely Metz, Toul, and Verdun, but also by the rise of great feudal dynasties: the counts of Luxembourg challenged the dukes in the north; the counts of Bar were dangerous vassals in the west; and from 1070 a junior branch of the ducal house held the countship of Vaudémont in the southwest. The dukes, who had their capital at Nancy, therefore sought the protection of their suzerains, the German kings or emperors, but, from 1250 on, these sovereigns were too weak to protect Lorraine from French and Burgundian encroachments. Lorraine, united with Bar and Vaudémont in 1480, nevertheless survived and even rose to the zenith of its prosperity in the late 16th century. French domination of the area dates from the 17th century, when control of the duchy became vital in the struggles between the French kings and the Habsburgs, who ruled the Holy Roman Empire. The French had already established a foothold by taking Metz, Toul, and Verdun in 1552, and they occupied the duchy a number of times in the devastating wars of the 17th century. Lorraine was given to Stanisław I, the former king of Poland and father-in-law of the French king Louis XV, by the treaties (1738) ending the War of the Polish Succession. On Stanisław’s death in 1766, Lorraine was incorporated into France as an administrative généralité under an intendant (royal governor), with Nancy as its capital. It was broken up into départements during the French Revolution (1790). Part of Lorraine, along with Alsace, was joined to the German Reich after the French defeat in the Franco-German War of 1870–71 but was returned to France at the end of World War I. In 2016 Lorraine was merged with the neighbouring régions of Alsace and Champagne-Ardenne as part of a national plan to increase bureaucratic efficiency.

Further reading

• Winder, Simon, Lotharingia, London, 2019, ISBN: 978-1-5098-0323-5