Charles the Bald

Charles the Bald was the youngest son of Louis the Pious and the only child of the emperor's second marriage, to Judith of Bavaria of the Welf family. His birth in 823 disturbed the succession settlement of 817, and his father's efforts to provide him with a kingdom helped provoke the rebellions that dominated the last decade of Louis the Pious's reign. After the emperor's death in 840, Charles allied with his half-brother Louis the German against Lothair I; the two confirmed their pact in the Strasbourg Oaths of 842, and the Treaty of Verdun in 843 assigned Charles the western third of the Frankish empire.

His long reign in West Francia was shaped by the pressure of Viking raids along the Seine and Loire. The Edict of Pîtres of 864 ordered the construction of fortified bridges and reformed the coinage, one of the more systematic royal responses to the raids. Charles also relied heavily on powerful regional commanders, among them Robert the Strong, whom he entrusted with the defense of the lands between Seine and Loire; Robert's descendants, the Robertians, would eventually supplant the Carolingians as the Capetian dynasty. In 870 the Treaty of Meerssen divided the kingdom of the deceased Lothair II between Charles and Louis the German.

Charles married first Ermentrude of Orléans and, after her death, Richilde of Provence. His daughter Judith was married successively to two kings of Wessex, Æthelwulf and Æthelbald, and then to Baldwin I of Flanders, making her an ancestress of the comital house of Flanders. His court was a notable center of learning and manuscript production, and the philosopher John Scotus Eriugena worked under his patronage.

When his nephew the emperor Louis II died in 875, Charles crossed into Italy and was crowned emperor by Pope John VIII on Christmas Day of that year, adding the imperial title to his West Frankish kingship. His final years were burdened by renewed Viking activity and resistance from his magnates. Returning from a second Italian expedition, he died in the Alps in October 877 and was succeeded in West Francia by his son Louis the Stammerer.