The Creation of France

Hugh Capet was acknowledged as overlord by the dukes of Normandy, but many of the other local rulers rejected his authority. North of Hugh’s central lands around Paris, were the counties of Artois and Flanders which did not accept the Capetians, neither did the province of Aquitaine which subsumed Gascony after 1052. Brittany continued to remain aloof from the Frankish kingdoms, peopled as it was with the pre-Frankish Gauls and Celts.

Meanwhile, to the east, the ‘middle kingdom’ of Lotharingia had also split up – the north became Lorraine, the section to the south, but north of the Alps was the county of Burgundy, whilst over the Alps, was the kingdom of Lombardy, with the title of Emperor.

Lorraine was later subdivided into Upper and Lower (roughly north and south) and overlordship of it was disputed for centuries (until the Treaty of Versailles in 1919).