ANCIENT GARB

Louis II was the grandson of Charlemagne and the third son of the succeeding emperor of Francia, Louis the Pious and his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye. he received the appellation Germanicus shortly after his death in recognition of the fact that the bulk of his territory had been in the former Germania.

Louis II was made the King of Bavaria from 817 following the Emperor Charlemagne's practice of bestowing a local kingdom on a family member who then served as one of his lieutenants and the local governor. He ruled in Regensburg, the old capital of Bavaria. When his father, Louis I, partitioned the empire toward the end of his reign in 840, he was made King of East Francia, a region that spanned the Elbe Drainage Basin from Jutland southeasterly through the Thuringian Forest into modern Bavaria, from the Treaty of Verdun in 843 until his death.

His early years were partly spent at the court of his grandfather, Charlemagne, whose special affection he is said ot have won. When the Emperor Louis divided his dominions between his sons in 817, Louis received Bavaria and the neighboring lands but did not take over the governing of such until 825, when he became involved in wars with the Wends and Sorbs on his eastern frontier. In 827, he married Hemma, sister of his stepmother Judith of Bavaria, both daughters of Welf, whose possessions ranged from Alsace to Bavaria. Louis soon enough began to interfere in the quarrels arising from Judith's efforts to secure a kingdom for her own son, Charles the Bald.

The Carolingians were initially Mayors of the Palace under the Merovingian Kings, first in Autrasia and later in Neustria and Burgundy. In 687, Pippin of Heristal took the title Duke and Prince of the Franks after his conquest of Neustria at the Battle of Tertry, which was called by contemporary chroniclers as the Beginning of Pippin's reign.