Treaty of Verdun

In the Treaty of Verdun of 843 the three surviving sons of Louis the Pious divided his territories into three kingdoms.

Lothar? receieved the central portion of the empire - what later became the Low Countries, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence, and much of Italy - and the imperial title. [Louis the German]? receieved the eastern portion, much of what later became Germany. [Charles the Bald]? received the western portion, much of what later became France.

Though often presented as the beginning of a devolution or dissolution of Charlemagne's unitary empire, it in fact reflected the continued adherence to the Frankish idea of a partible or divisible inheritence rather than primogeniture.