ABSTRACT
The unified structure that Charlemagne’s rapid conquests had imposed on the vast reaches of his empire eventually seemed to penetrate far less deep into society than he must have hoped. Of the three kingdoms that sprang from the Treaty of Verdun (Chapter 3) only Lothar’s Middle Kingdom was subjected to further subdivision; in the end, its three main parts – all three kingdoms – were successively added to the East Frankish kingdom: Lorraine in 925, Lombardy/Italy in 951 and finally Burgundy/Provence in 1034. After the last annexation the western border of the Empire came to lie along the line of the Rhône, Saône, Meuse and Schelde. In the east, the frontier, stretching from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and along the Danube, had since Carolingian times consisted of reinforced and colonised ‘marches’ (border territories) – the Elbe Marches, the Eastern March, Styria, Carinthia, Krajina and
the Marches of Verona and Friuli – intended to hold back the Magyars and Slavs, and also to contain the outposts of Byzantium. This did not in any way impede cultural integration of Western Slavic and German populations. The German Empire, certainly after its extension with the kingdoms of Italy and Burgundy, had a richly diverse population including Germanic-, Romance-and Slavonic-speaking peoples covering a wide variety of regional identities.
