_Lorraine in Medieval Times._--The original kingdom of Lorraine was the northern part of the territories allotted by the treaty of Verdun (August 843) to the emperor Lothair I., and in 855 formed the inheritance of his second son, King Lothair. This kingdom of Lorraine was situated between the realms of the East and the West Franks, and originally extended along the North Sea between the mouths of the Rhine and the Ems, including the whole or part of Frisia and the cities on the right bank of the Rhine. From Bonn the frontier followed the Rhine as far as its confluence with the Aar, which then became the boundary, receding from the left bank in the neighbourhood of Bingen so as to leave the cities of Worms and Spires to Germany, and embracing the duchy of Alsace. After crossing the Jura, the frontier joined the Saône a little south of its confluence with the Doubs, and followed the Saône for some distance, and finally the valleys of the Meuse and the Scheldt. Thus the kingdom roughly comprised the region watered by the Moselle and the Meuse, together with the dioceses of Cologne, Trier, Metz, Toul, Verdun, Liége and Cambrai, Basel, Strassburg and Besançon, and corresponded to what is now Holland and Belgium, parts of Rhenish Prussia, of Switzerland, and of the old province of Franche-Comté, and to the district known later as Upper Lorraine, or simply Lorraine. Though apparently of an absolutely artificial character, this kingdom corresponded essentially to the ancient Francia, the cradle of the Carolingian house, and long retained a certain unity. It was to the inhabitants of this region that the name of _Lotharienses_ or _Lotharingi_ was primitively applied, although the word _Lotharingia_, as the designation of the country, only appears in the middle of the 10th century.