Louis the Pious

Louis the Pious (778–840) was the Carolingian emperor who inherited all Charlemagne's realm and saw his sons tear it apart. Crowned King of Aquitaine in 781, he took Barcelona in 801. After his brothers died, he was crowned co-emperor at Aachen in 813 and became sole ruler in 814.

In 817, after a gallery collapsed beneath him, he issued a plan naming Lothair co-emperor and Pepin and Louis sub-kings. The birth of his son Charles in 823 upset the plan, and from 829 his elder sons rose against him.

In 833 his army melted away at the Field of Lies; deposed and made to do public penance, he was restored in 834. In 839 he divided the empire between Lothair and Charles. He died in June 840 on a Rhine island; his sons fought on until the 843 Treaty of Verdun split it into West, East and Middle Francia.