With Charles ended the Carolingian dynasty.  From the death of the illustrious Charlemagne the race had gradually but surely declined.  After the removal of Charles the Fat there came a lapse of seventy-four years.  Conrad I (911-919) founded the Gascon dynasty of Germany, and was succeeded by Henry the Fowler (919-936).  His son, Otto I, called the Great (936-973), was crowned Roman Emperor in 962.  In 936 his elevation to the Germanic kingdom was a popular one.  A portion of Gaul to the west of the Rhine along the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle was ceded to the Germans.  Otto’s supremacy between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps was acquired and held for his successors.  With the sword he propagated Christianity, subdued Italy, and delivered the Pope from his enemies, who, to show his appreciation, invested him with the imperial title, which ever after belonged to the Germanic nation.  The German Emperors, however, still continued to exercise the right of electing the Pope, thereby reducing the Roman Church to a level of servitude.

Toward the close of the Carolingian dynasty France and Germany had become irrevocably detached; both nations suffered from internecine wars.  The Slavonians penetrated into the Empire, even to the banks of the Rhine.  Feudal princes began to make war upon each other, and, within their respective districts, were virtual sovereigns.

At the partition of the domains of Charlemagne in A.D. 843 the Rhine formed the boundary between Germany and the middle kingdom of Lotharingia, but by 870 the latter had been absorbed by the larger country.  For a period verging upon eight hundred years it remained the frontier of the German Empire.  In the early Middle Ages the heritage of the ancient Roman civilization rendered it the most cultured portion of Germany.  By the time of Otto I (died 973) both banks of the Rhine had become German, and the Rhenish territory was divided between the duchies of Upper and Lower Lorraine, the one on the Moselle and the other on the Meuse.  But, like other German states, on the weakening of the central power they split up into numerous petty independent principalities, each with its special history.

The Palatinate

Chief among these was the state known as the Palatinate, from the German word Pfalz, a name given generally to any district ruled by a count palatine.  It was bounded by Prussia on the north, on the east by Baden, and on the south by Alsace-Lorraine.  We first hear of a royal official known as the Count Palatine of the Rhine in the tenth century.  Although the office was not originally an hereditary one, it seems to have been held by the descendants of the first count, until the continuity of the race of Hermann was broken by the election of Conrad, stepbrother of the German king Frederick I, as Count Palatine.  From that time till much later in German history the Palatinate of the Rhine appears to have been gifted during their lifetime to the nephews or sons-in-law