BDC #9 - Kingdom of Franks: Where was it?

I am a little bored in the lab, kinda tired reading scientific journals. My brain need something light to digest. Thus, I randomly typed "Learn something new today" in the Google search bar. And...TADAAA... I clicked one random link. I read some sentences, and my curiosity finally landed on a sentence: Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great;Hearts-Charlemagne and Diamonds - Julius Caesar (link).

 

Interesting... I did listen to this several times, but 've never really given a special attention until today. Is there anything interesting for you? 

For me, it's the King Charlemagne... to be totally honest.. I've never heard any great king named Charlemagne (well, it's probably just me, pardon my ignorance >.< ). Well, as usual, I searched it...and it turns out that Charlemagne is also known as Charles the Great (German: Karl der Große, Latin: Carolus or Karolus Magnus) or Charles I, was the King of the Franks from 768, the King of Italy from 774, the first Holy Roman Emperor, and the first emperor in western Europe since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire three centuries earlier. 

WOW!!! I thought... OK, next question.. Where was the Kingdom of Franks? Since there is a German name for this Great King... I assume that it might be around Germany (my mind immediately jumped to Frankfurt for no reason). Well, I didn't guess it very wrong, but it was actually a lot bigger than Germany. As we could see in the given image below, the original territory was indeed around the current Germany, but as the kings ruled, they expanded the territory until it covered nearly all region of Western Europe by the end of King Charlemagne's period.  

We could talk a very long conversation about the history of this kingdom from the very beginning they supported the Roman Kingdom, until how they got their own authority and territory... BUT I will skip that. Instead, I am more interested of how was the end of this huge kingdom. As usual, every kingdom has their own inheritance problem which usually lead to the downfall, include Kingdom of Frank. 

As any other kings, Charlemagne also had several sons, but only one survived him. The son was Louis the Pious. He followed his father as the ruler of this united empire. But when Louis died in 840, they adhered to the custom of partible inheritance, and after a brief civil war between the three sons, they made an agreement in 843, the Treaty of Verdun, which divided the empire in three:

1. Louis' eldest surviving son Lothair I became Emperor in name but de facto only the ruler of the Middle Frankish Kingdom, or Middle Francia, known as King of the Central or Middle Franks. His three sons in turn divided this kingdom between them into Lotharingia (centered on Lorraine), Burgundy, and (Northern) Italy Lombardy. These areas with different cultures, peoples and traditions would later vanish as separate kingdoms, which would eventually become Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Lorraine, Switzerland, Lombardy and the various departments of France along the Rhone river drainage basin and Jura massif.
2. Louis' second son, Louis the German, became King of the East Frankish Kingdom or East Francia. This area formed the kernel of the later Holy Roman Empire by way of the Kingdom of Germany enlarged with some additional territories from Lothair's Middle Frankish Realm: much of these territories eventually evolved into modern Austria, Switzerland and Germany. 
3. His third son Charles the Bald became King of the West Franks, of the West Frankish Kingdom or West Francia. This area, most of today's southern and western France, became the foundation for the later France under the House of Capet. 

This was the territory after the treaty

 
After this disseverance, each part of the kingdom kept on dividing or re-uniting until they established as individual kingdoms.

Well, at least it was one huge kingdom. I understand now, why Charlemagne was once called a Great King.