French King, Louis V

LOUIS V
The eldest son of King Lothair and his wife Emma of Italy, daughter of Lothair II of Italy, Louis was born c.?966–67. His father associated him to the government in 978 and had him officially crowned as co-king on 8 June 979 at the Abbey of Saint-Corneille in Compiègne by Archbishop Adalbero of Reims; and he assumed full power after Lothair's death in 986. Louis V was the last Carolingian King of West Francia and reigned in Laon from 2 March, 986 until his death, at the age of 20, in 21 May, 987.

In 982 at Vieille-Brioude, Haute-Loire, the fifteen year old Louis was married to the forty year old Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou, sister of Count Geoffrey I and twice a widow from her previous marriage with Count Stephen of Gévaudan and Count Raymond of Toulouse, Prince of Gothia. This union was purely political and arranged by the king – following the advices of Queen Emma and Count Geoffrey I – with the double purpose of restoring the Carolingian royal power in the south of the kingdom, and (according to Richerus) to obtain the support of the local southern lords in his fight against the Robertians: being now related by marriage with two of the most powerful southern comital families of the Kingdom, Lothair believed that he could confront the power of Hugh Capet.

Immediately after their wedding, Louis and Adelaide-Blanche were crowned King and Queen of Aquitaine by Adelaide's brother Bishop Guy of le Puy. However, since the very beginning the mismatched couple was unable to peacefully live together, not only due to the notorious age difference between them but (according to Richerus) also because of Louis' debauched lifestyle:
Reign and death. On his father's death on 2 March 986, the already crowned Louis V became the undisputed King of the Franks.

King Louis V

However, at that time in the Frankish court existed two parties: one led by Archbishop Adalberon of Reims and Queen Emma, who, being strongly influenced by her mother Empress Adelaide, wanted the renewal of friendly relationships with the Ottonian dynasty; the other party, on the other hand, wanted to continue Lothair's policy, and, taking advantage of the minority of Emperor Otto III, wanted a policy of expansion to the east and the recovery of Lotharingia. In addition, the young monarch inherited a battle between his father's line of elected kings (which had been interrupted twice by the Robertian kings and once by the Bosonid family), and the Ottonian house of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I.

As defender of Rome, Otto I had the power to name the clergy in Carolingian territory, and the clergy he had named were not supporting the Carolingians. Initially Queen Emma dominated the situation, but in the summer of 986, there was a reversal: The Anti-Ottonian party prevailed, and she was forced to leave court and seek refuge with Hugh Capet. This event also put Adalberon in a predicament: being elevated by Otto I to the powerful archbishopric of Reims, he was forced to leave his episcopal seat and took refuge in one of his fortresses on the Meuse river, who belonged to the Ottonian sphere.

The escape of he Archbishop was perceived by Louis V as treason; he turned violently against Adalberon and threatened him to besiege Reims, with the matter being finally settled in a trial court at Compiègne. However, before this meeting Louis V changed his mind and sought a reconciliation with Adalberon; in the spring of 987 he also planned a peace meeting with Empress Theophanu, who could act on behalf of her son Otto III. Before all these tangled events were resolved, Louis V died on 21 May 987 from a fall while hunting in the Forest of Halatte near the town of Senlis, Oise. He was buried in the Abbey of Saint-Corneille in Compiègne.

He left no legitimate heirs, so his uncle Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine, was nominated as the hereditary successor to the throne. But the clergy, including both Adalberon and Gerbert (who later became Pope Sylvester II), argued eloquently for election Hugh Capet, who was not only of royal blood but had proven himself through his actions and his military might. Capet was elected to the Frankish throne and Adalberon crowned him, all within two months of Louis V's death. Thus the rule of the Carolingian dynasty ended and the Capetian era began.

French Kings, Louis III, Louis IV

LOUIS III
Louis III (863/65 – 5 August 882) was the king of West Francia from 879 until his death in 882. The eldest son of king Louis the Stammerer and his first wife Ansgarde of Burgundy, he succeeded his father and ruled jointly with his younger brother Carloman II, who became sole ruler after Louis's death. Louis's short reign was marked by military success.

Louis III

Louis was born while his father was King of Aquitaine and his grandfather Charles the Bald was ruling West Francia. Some doubts were raised about his legitimacy, since his parents had married secretly and Ansgarde was later repudiated at Charles' insistence.

When Charles died in 877 and then Louis the Stammerer died two years later, some Frankish nobles advocated electing Louis as the sole king, but another party favoured each brother ruling a separate part of the kingdom. In September 879 Louis was crowned at Ferrières Abbey.

In March 880 at Amiens the brothers divided their father's kingdom, Louis receiving the northern part, called Neustria or sometimes simply Francia. Duke Boso, one of Charles the Bald's most trusted lieutenants renounced his allegiance to both brothers and was elected King of Provence.

Louis III

In the summer of 880 Carloman II and Louis III marched against him and captured Mâcon and the northern part of Boso's kingdom. They united their forces with those of their cousin Charles the Fat, then ruling East Francia and Kingdom of Italy, and unsuccessfully besieged Vienne from August to November.

In 881 Louis III achieved a momentous victory against Viking riders, whose invasions had been ongoing since his grandfather's reign, at the Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu. Within a year of the battle an anonymous poet celebrated it and the king, for both his prowess and piety in a short poem Ludwigslied composed in the Old High German.

Louis III died on 5 August 882 at Saint-Denis in the centre of his realm, having hit his head and fallen from his horse while chasing a girl with amorous intent. He hit the lintel of a door with his head while mounting his horse and fractured his cranium on impact, which led to his death. Since he had no children, his brother Carloman II became the sole king of West Francia and the victor of Saucourt was buried in the royal mausoleum of the Basilica of St Denis.

LOUIS IV
Louis IV (September 920 / September 921 – 10 September 954), called d'Outremer or Transmarinus (both meaning "from overseas"), reigned as king of West Francia from 936 to 954.

Louis IV

 A member of the Carolingian dynasty, he was the only son of king Charles the Simple and Eadgifu of Wessex, daughter of King Edward the Elder of Wessex.

His reign is mostly known thanks to the Annals of Flodoard and the later Historiae of Richerus. The only child of king Charles the Simple and his second wife Eadgifu of Wessex, Louis was born in the heartlands of West Francia's Carolingian lands between Laon and Reims in 920 or 921. From his father's first marriage with Frederuna (d. 917) he had six half-sisters and was the only male heir to the throne.After the dethronement and capture of Charles the Simple in 923, queen Eadgifu and her infant son took refuge in Wessex (for this he received the nickname of d'Outremer) at the court of her father King Edward, and after Edward's death, of her brother King Æthelstan. Young Louis was raised in the Anglo-Saxon court until his teens. During this time he enjoyed legendary stories about Edmund the Martyr, King of East Anglia, an ancestor of his maternal family who had heroically fought against the Vikings.

Louis IV

Louis became the heir to the western branch of the Carolingian dynasty after the death of his captive father in 929, and in 936 was recalled from Wessex by the powerful Hugh the Great, Margrave of Neustria, to succeed the Robertian king Rudolph who had died. Once he took the throne, Louis wanted to free himself from the tutelage of Hugh the Great, who, with his title of Duke of the Franks was the second most powerful man after the King.

In 939 the young monarch attempted to conquer Lotharingia; however, the expedition was a failure and his brother-in-law, king Otto I of East Francia counterattacked and besieged the city of Reims in 940. In 945, following the death of William I Longsword, Duke of Normandy, Louis tried to conquer his lands, but was kidnapped by the men of Hugh the Great. The Synod of Ingelheim in 948 allowed the excommunication of Hugh the Great and released Louis from his long tutelage. From 950 Louis gradually imposed his rule in the northeast of the kingdom, building many alliances (especially with the Counts of Vermandois) and under the protection of the Ottonian kingdom of East Francia.

Louis I, the Pious, Louis II

LOUIS I
Louis the Pious (778 – 20 June 840), also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was the King of Aquitaine from 781. He was also King of the Franks and co-Emperor (as Louis I) with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. As the only surviving adult son of Charlemagne and Hildegard, he became the sole ruler of the Franks after his father's death in 814, a position which he held until his death, save for the period 833–34, during which he was deposed.

During his reign in Aquitaine, Louis was charged with the defence of the empire's southwestern frontier. He conquered Barcelona from the Muslims in 801 and asserted Frankish authority over Pamplona and the Basques south of the Pyrenees in 812. As emperor he included his adult sons, Lothair, Pepin, and Louis, in the government and sought to establish a suitable division of the realm among them. The first decade of his reign was characterised by several tragedies and embarrassments, notably the brutal treatment of his nephew Bernard of Italy, for which Louis atoned in a public act of self-debasement.

Boy King Louis I

In the 830s his empire was torn by civil war between his sons, only exacerbated by Louis's attempts to include his son Charles by his second wife in the succession plans. Though his reign ended on a high note, with order largely restored to his empire, it was followed by three years of civil war. Louis is generally compared unfavourably to his father, though the problems he faced were of a distinctly different sort. While at his villa of Doué-la-Fontaine, Anjou, Louis received news of his father's death. He rushed to Aachen and crowned himself emperor to shouts of Vivat Imperator Ludovicus by the attending nobles.

From start of his reign, his coinage imitated his father Charlemagne's portrait, which gave it an image of imperial authority and prestige. He quickly sent all of his unmarried sisters to nunneries, to avoid any possible entanglements from overly powerful brothers-in-laws. Sparing his illegitimate half-brothers, he forced his father's cousins, Adalard and Wala to be tonsured, placing them in Noirmoutier and Corbie, respectively, despite the latter's initial loyalty.

His chief counsellors were Bernard, margrave of Septimania, and Ebbo, Archbishop of Reims. The latter, born a serf, was raised by Louis to that office, but betrayed him later. He retained some of his father's ministers, such as Elisachar, abbot of St. Maximin near Trier, and Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne. Later he replaced Elisachar with Hildwin, abbot of many monasteries. He also employed Benedict of Aniane (the Second Benedict), a Septimanian Visigoth and monastic founder, to help him reform the Frankish church. One of Benedict's primary reforms was to ensure that all religious houses in Louis' realm adhered to the Rule of Saint Benedict, named for its creator, Benedict of Nursia (480–550), the First Benedict.

King Louis I

In 816, Pope Stephen IV, who had succeeded Leo III, visited Reims and again crowned Louis (Sunday 5 October). The Emperor thereby strengthened the papacy by recognising the importance of the pope in imperial coronations.

Louis fell ill soon after his final victorious campaigns and went to his summer hunting lodge on an island in the Rhine, by his palace at Ingelheim. On 20 June 840, he died, at the old age of 62, in the presence of many bishops and clerics and in the arms of his half-brother Drogo, though Charles and Judith were absent in Poitiers.

Soon dispute plunged the surviving brothers into a civil war that was only settled in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun, which split the Frankish realm into three parts, to become the kernels of France and Germany, with Burgundy and the Low Countries between them. The dispute over the kingship of Aquitaine was not fully settled until 860. Louis was buried in the Abbey of Saint-Arnould in Metz.

LOUIS II
Louis the Stammerer (French: Louis le Bègue) (1 November 846 – 10 April 879) was the King of Aquitaine and later the King of West Francia. He was the eldest son of emperor Charles the Bald and Ermentrude of Orléans. Louis the Stammerer was physically weak and outlived his father by only two years. He succeeded his younger brother Charles the Child as the ruler of Aquitaine in 866 and his father in West Francia in 877, but he was never crowned Emperor. In the French monarchial system, he is considered Louis II.

King Louis II

Louis was crowned king on 8 October 877 by Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, at Compiegne and was crowned a second time in August 878 by Pope John VIII at Troyes while the pope was attending a council there. The pope may have even offered him the imperial crown, but it was declined.

Louis had relatively little impact on politics. He was described "a simple and sweet man, a lover of peace, justice, and religion". In 878, he gave the counties of Barcelona, Girona, and Besalú to Wilfred the Hairy.

His final act was to march against the invading Vikings, but he fell ill and died on 9 April or 10 April 879, not long after beginning this final campaign. On his death, his realms were divided between his two sons, Carloman II and Louis III of France.

During the peace negotiations between his father and Erispoe, duke of Brittany, Louis was betrothed to an unnamed daughter of Erispoe in 856. It is not known if this was the same daughter who later married Gurivant. The contract was broken in 857 after Erispoe's murder.

Louis was married twice. His first wife Ansgarde of Burgundy had two sons: Louis (born in 863) and Carloman (born in 866), both of whom became kings of West Francia, and two daughters: Hildegarde (born in 864) and Gisela (865–884).

His second wife Adelaide of Paris had one daughter, Ermentrude (875–914) and a posthumous son, Charles the Simple, who would become, long after his elder brothers' deaths, king of West Francia.

House of Habsburg

The House of Habsburg: The House of Habsburg, also known as House of Austria, is one of the most important royal houses of Europe.

 It is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and Spanish Empire and several other countries.

The House takes its name from Habsburg Castle, a fortress built around 1020–1030 in present day Switzerland by Count Radbot of Klettgau, who chose to name his fortress Habsburg. His grandson, Otto II, was the first to take the fortress name as his own, adding "von Habsburg" to his title. The House of Habsburg gathered dynastic momentum through the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries.

By 1276, Count Radbot's seventh generation descendant, Rudolph of Habsburg, had moved the family's power base from Habsburg Castle to the Archduchy of Austria. Rudolph had become King of Germany/Holy Roman Emperor in 1273, but the dynasty of the House of Habsburg was truly entrenched in 1276 when Rudolph became sovereign ruler of Austria, which the Habsburgs ruled for the next six centuries.

A series of dynastic marriages enabled the family to vastly expand its domains, to include Burgundy, Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, and other territories into the inheritance. In the 16th century, the family separated into the senior Habsburg Spain and the junior Habsburg Monarchy branches, who settled their mutual claims in the Onate treaty.

Eisenberg Family Crest

 As a result of generations of Habsburg inbreeding, the House of Habsburg became extinct in the male line in the 18th century: The Spanish branch ended upon the death of Charles II in 1700 and was replaced by the Anjou branch of the House of Bourbon in the person of his great-nephew Philip V.

The Austrian branch went extinct in the male person in 1740 with the death of Charles VI and in the female person in 1780 with the death of his daughter Maria Theresa and was succeeded by the Vaudemont branch of the House of Lorraine in the person of her son Joseph II. The new successor house styled itself formally as House of Habsburg-Lorraine (German: Habsburg-Lothringen), although it was often referred to as simply the House of Habsburg.

The progenitor of the House of Habsburg may have been Guntram the Rich, a count in the Breisgau who lived in the 10th century, and forewith farther back as ht early medieval Adalrich, Duke of Alsace, father of the Etichonids from which Habsburg derives. His grandson Radbot, Count of Habsburg founded the Habsburg Castle, after which the Habsburgs are named.

Mohrer Family Crest

 The origins of the castle's name, located in what is now the Swiss canton of Aargau, are uncertain.

There is disagreement on whether the name is derived from the High German Habichtsburg (Hawk Castle), or from the Middle High German word "hab/hap" meaning ford, as there is a river with a ford nearby.

The first documented use of the name by the dynasty itself has been traced to the year 1108. The Habsburg Castle was the family seat in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries.

The Habsburgs expanded their influence through arranged marriages and by gaining political privileges, especially count-ship rights in Zürichgau, Aargau and Thurgau. In the 13th century, the house aimed its marriage policy at families in Upper Alsace and Swabia.

They were also able to gain high positions in the church hierarchy for their members. Territorially, they often profited from the extinction of other noble families such as the House of Kyburg.

After the assignment, on 21 April 1521, of the Austrian lands to Ferdinand I by his brother Emperor Charles V (also King Charles I of Spain) (1516–1556), the dynasty split into the junior branch of the Austrian Habsburgs and the senior branch of the Spanish Habsburgs.

Tucher Family Crest

 The Austrian Habsburgs held the title of Holy Roman Emperor after Charles' death in 1558, as well as the Habsburg Hereditary Lands and the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary.

The senior Spanish branch ruled over Spain, its Italian possessions and its colonial empire, the Netherlands, and, for a time (1580–1640), Portugal. Hungary was partly under Habsburg rule from 1526. For 150 years most of the country was occupied by the Ottoman Turks but these territories were re-conquered in 1683–1699.

In the secret Oñate treaty, the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs settled their mutual claims. The Spanish Habsburgs died out in 1700 (prompting the War of the Spanish Succession), as did the last male of the Austrian Habsburg line in 1740 (prompting the War of the Austrian Succession), and finally the last female of the Habsburg male line in 1780.