General Notes

Louis II, byname LOUIS THE GERMAN, German LUDWIG DER DEUTSCHE (b. c. 804, Aquitaine?, Fr.--d. Aug. 28, 876, Frankfurt), king of the East Franks, who ruled lands from which the German state later evolved, was the third son of the emperor Louis I. When the emperor divided his dominions between his sons in 817, Louis received Bavaria and the neighbouring lands, but did not undertake the government until 825, when he began to fight the Slavs on his eastern frontier. In 827 he married Emma, daughter of Welf I., count of Bavaria, and sister of his stepmother Judith. He interfered in the quarrels arising from Judith's efforts to secure a kingdom for her own son Charles, and the consequent struggles of Louis and his brothers with the emperor Louis I. When the elder Louis died in 840 and his eldest son Lothair claimed the whole Empire, Louis in alliance with his half-brother, king Charles the Bald, defeated Lothair at Fontenoy on June 25, 841. By the Treaty of Verdun (August 843), Charles, Lothair I, and Louis divided the western, middle, and eastern parts of the empire, respectively, between them. Louis received the bulk of the lands of the Carolingian empire lying east of the Rhine, including a district around Speyer, Worms and Mainz, Bavaria, where he made Regensburg the centre of his government, Thuringia, Franconia and Saxony.
Louis may truly be called the founder of the German kingdom, though his attempts to maintain the unity of the Empire proved futile. In 842 he crushed a rising in Saxony, compelled the Abotrites to own his authority, and undertook campaigns against the Bohemians, the Moravians, and other tribes. He did not succeed in freeing his shores from the ravages of Danish pirates. At his instance synods and assemblies were held where laws were decreed for the better government of church and state.
In 853 a group of nobles opposing Charles the Bald, then king of the West Franks, appealed to Louis for help; in 854 Louis sent his son Louis the Younger to Aquitaine, and in 858 went west himself to try to depose Charles. Treachery and desertion in his army, and the loyalty of the Aquitanian bishops to Charles, prevented success and Louis renounced his claim by a treaty signed at Coblenz on June 7, 860.
In 855 the emperor Lothair died, and was succeeded in Italy by his eldest son Louis II, and in the northern part of his kingdom [Lotharingia] by his second son, Lothair. The weakness of these kingdoms afforded opportunities for intrigue by Louis and Charles the Bald, whose interest was increased by the fact that both their nephews were without male issue. Louis support Lothair in his efforts to divorce his wife Teutberga, for which he received a promise of Alsace, but in 865 Louis and Charles renewed the peace of Coblenz, and doubtless discussed the possibility of dividing Lothair's kingdom. In 868 at Metz, they agreed definitely to a partition; but in 869, Louis was ill, and his armies were engaged with the Moravians. Although Louis the German supported Frankish Catholic missions in Moravia, he could not maintain control in that area and lost a war that led to the founding of Greater Moravia, and when Lothair died in 869, Charles the Bald accordingly seized the whole kingdom. Louis invaded Lotharingia (870), and the country was divided between Louis and Charles by the Treaty of Mersen (Meerssen), under which Louis received Friesland and an extremely large expansion of this territory west of the Rhine.
Louis in 865 and 872 divided his territories between his sons Carloman, Louis the Younger, and Charles III the Fat. Quarrels and discontent at the partitions led to revolts by Carloman in 861 and in 863; an example followed by the second son Louis, who in a further rising was joined by his brother Charles. A report that the emperor Louis II was dead lead to peace between father and sons. The emperor was not dead, however, but a prisoner; and as he was the nephew and son-in-law of Louis, that monarch hoped to secure both the imperial dignity and the Italian kingdom for his son Carloman. Meeting his daughter Engelberga, the wife of Louis II, at Trent in 872, Louis made an alliance with her against Charles the Bald, and in 874 visited Italy on the same errand. Though Louis II, who died in August 875, declared (874) in favour of Carloman, eldest son of Louis the German, as the next emperor, Chalres the Bald reached Italy before his rival and, by persuading Carloman to return, had himself crowned by Pope John VIII. Meanwhile, Louis the German unsuccessfully attempted to invade Charles's possessions in Lotharingia. Louis was again preparing for war against Charles when he died on Sept. 28, 876 at Frankfort.
He was in war and peace alike, the most competent of the descendants of Charlemagne. He obtained for his kingdom a certain degree of security against the Normans, Hungarians, Moravians and others. He lived in close alliance with the Church, to which he was very generous, and supported its missionary schemes. [Encyclopaedia Britannica CD '97, LOUIS THE GERMAN; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1961 ed., Vol. 14, pp. 413-414, LOUIS II]