The earliest among those endless divisions that we need mention is the division of 817, by which two new subordinate kingdoms were founded within the Empire. Lewis and his immediate colleague Lothar kept in their own hands _Francia_, German and Gaulish, and the more part of Burgundy. South-western Gaul, Aquitaine in the wide sense, with some small parts of Septimania and Burgundy, formed the portion of one under-king; South-eastern Germany, Bavaria and the march-lands beyond it, formed the portion of another. Italy still remained the portion of a third. Here we have nothing in the least answering to modern France. The tendency is rather to leave the immediate Frankish kingdom, both in Gaul and Germany, as an undivided whole, and to part off its dependent lands, German, Gaulish, and Italian. ♦Union of Neustria and Aquitaine the first step to the creation of _France_. 838.♦ But, in a much later division, Lewis granted Neustria to his son Charles, and in the next year, on the death of Pippin of Aquitaine, he added his kingdom to that of Charles. A state was thus formed which answers roughly to the later kingdom of France, as it stood before the long series of French encroachments on the German and Burgundian lands. ♦Character of the _Western Kingdom_.♦ The kingdom thus formed had no definite name, and it answered to no national division. It was indeed mainly a kingdom of the Romance speech, but it did not answer to any one of the great divisions of that speech. It was a kingdom formed by accident, because Lewis wished to increase the portion of his youngest son. Still there can be no doubt that we have here the first beginning of the kingdom of _France_, though it was not till after several other stages that the kingdom thus formed took that name. ♦Division of Verdun. 843.♦ The final division of Verdun went a step further in the direction of the modern map. It left Charles in possession of a kingdom which still more nearly answered to France, as France stood before its Burgundian and German annexations. It also founded a kingdom which roughly answered to the later _Germany_ before its great extension to the East at the expense of the Slavonic nations. And, as the Western kingdom was formed by the addition of Aquitaine to the Western _Francia_, so the Eastern kingdom was formed by the addition of the Eastern _Francia_ to Bavaria. Lewis of Bavaria became king of a kingdom which we are tempted to call the kingdom of _Germany_. Still it would as yet be premature to speak of France at all, or even to speak of Germany, except in the geographical sense. ♦Kingdoms of the Eastern and Western Franks.♦ The two kingdoms are severally the kingdoms of the _Eastern_ and of the _Western Franks_. But between these two states the policy of the ninth century instinctively put a barrier. The Emperor Lothar, besides Italy, kept a long narrow strip of territory between the dominions of his Eastern and Western brothers. After him, Italy remained to his son the