Henry and Count Otto died in 944. After attempting unsuccess fully to govern Lorraine through his son-in-law Conrad of Fran conia, Otto the Great in 954 gave it to his brother Bruno, arch bishop of Cologne. Bruno had to contend against the efforts of the last Carolingians of France to make good their claims on Lorraine, as well as against the spirit of independence exhibited by the Lotharingian nobles; and his attempts to raze certain castles built by brigand lords and to compel them to respect their oath of fidelity resulted in serious sedition. To obviate these difficulties Bruno divided the ducal authority, assigning Lower Lorraine to a certain Duke Godfrey, who was styled dux Ripuariorum, and Upper Lorraine to Frederick (d. 959), count of Bar, a member of the house of Ardenne and son-in-law of Hugh the Great, with the title of dux Mosellanorum. In 977 the emperor Otto II. gave the government of Lower Lorraine to Charles I., a younger son of Louis d'Outremer, on condition that that prince should acknowl edge himself his vassal and should oppose any attempt of his brother Lothair on Lorraine. Charles left two sons, Otto, who succeeded him (c. 992) and died without issue, and Henry, who is sometimes regarded as the ancestor of the landgraves of Thuringia. The duchy was then given to Godfrey (d. 1023), son of Count Godfrey of Verdun, and for some time the history of Lorraine is the history of attempts made by his successors to seize Upper Lorraine. Gothelon (d. 1043), son of Duke Godfrey, obtained the whole of Lorraine at the death of Frederick II., duke of Upper Lorraine, in 1027, and victoriously repulsed the in cursions of Odo, count of Champagne, who was defeated and killed in a battle near Bar (1037). At Gothelon's death in 1043, his son Godfrey the Bearded received from the emperor only Lower Lorraine, his brother Gothelon II. obtaining Upper Lorraine. Godfrey attempted to seize the upper duchy, but was defeated and imprisoned in 1045. On the death of Gothelon in 1046, God frey endeavoured to take Upper Lorraine from Albert of Alsace, to whom it had been granted by the emperor Henry III. The attempt, however, also failed ; and Godfrey was for some time deprived of his own duchy of Lower Lorraine in favour of Fred erick of Luxemburg. Godfrey took part in the struggles of Pope Leo IX. against the Normans in Italy, and in 1053 married Beatrice, daughter of Duke Frederick of Upper Lorraine and widow of Boniface, margrave of Tuscany. On the death of Fred erick of Luxemburg in 1065 the emperor Henry IV. restored the duchy of Lower Lorraine to Godfrey, who retained it till his death in 1069, when he was succeeded by his son Godfrey the Hunchback (d. 1076), after whose death Henry IV. gave the duchy to Godfrey of Bouillon, the hero of the first crusade, son of Eustace, count of Boulogne, and Ida, sister of Godfrey the Hunchback. On his death in Ho° Lower Lorraine was given to Henry, count of Limburg. The new duke supported the emperor Henry IV. in his struggles with his sons, and in consequence was deposed by the emperor Henry V., who gave the duchy in 1106 to Godfrey, count of Louvain, a descendant of the Lotharingian dukes of the beginning of the loth century. This Godfrey was the first hereditary duke of Brabant, as the dukes of Lower Lor raine came to be called.
Upper Lorraine.—The duchy of Upper Lorraine, or Lorraine Mosellana, to which the name of Lorraine was restricted from the 11th century, consisted of a tract of undulating country watered by the upper course of the Meuse and Moselle, and bounded N. by the Ardennes, S. by the table-land of Langres, E. by the Vosges and W. by Champagne. Its principal fiefs were the countship of Bar which Otto the Great gave in 951 to Count Frederick of Ardenne, and which passed in 1093 to the lords of Montbeliard; the countship of Chiny, formed at the end of the loth century, of which, since the 13th, Montmedy was the capital; the lordship of Commercy, whose rulers bore the special title of damoiseau, and which passed in the 13th century to the house of Saarebriicken; and, finally, the three important episcopal lord ships of Metz, Toul and Verdun. After having been the object
of numerous attempts on the part of the dukes of Lower Lorraine, Upper Lorraine was given by the emperor Henry III. to Albert of Alsace, and passed in 1048 to Albert's brother Gerard, who died by poison in 1069. He was the ancestor of the hereditary house of Lorraine, of which the male line possessed the duchy continu ously until the death of Duke Charles the Bold in 1431. By his will Lorraine was to pass to his daughter Isabella, who married René of Anjou, duke of Bar, in 142o. But Anthony of Vaude mont, Charles's nephew and heir male, disputed this succession with Rene, who was taken prisoner at the battle of Bulgneville (July 1431). It was not until 1436 that René obtained his liberty by paying a ransom of 200,000 crowns. In 1444 Charles VII. of France and the dauphin Louis went to Lorraine, accompanied by envoys from Henry VI. of England, and procured a treaty, by which Yolande, Rene's eldest daughter, married Anthony's son, Ferri of Vaudemont, and Rene's second daughter Margaret be came the wife of Henry VI. of England. After his return to Lor raine in 1442, René was seldom in the duchy. Like his successor John, duke of Calabria, who died in 147o, he was continually occu pied with expeditions in Italy or in Spain. John's son and suc cessor, Nicholas (d. 1473), died without children, and his heir was Rene, son of Frederick of Vaudemont. He died in 1508, leaving by his second wife three sons—Anthony, called the Good, who succeeded him; Claude, the ancestor of the house of Guise; and John (d. 155o), known as the cardinal of Lorraine. Anthony had been brought up from the age of 12 at the French court, where he became the friend of Louis XII., whom he accompanied on his Italian expeditions. He succeeded in maintaining a neutral position in the struggle between Francis I. of France and the emperor Charles V. He died on June 14, 1544, and was succeeded by his son Francis I., who died of apoplexy (Aug. 1545) at the very moment when he was negotiating peace between the king of France and the emperor.
Lorraine in Modern Times.—Francis's son Charles, called the Great, succeeded under the tutelage of his mother and Nicho las of Vaudemont, bishop of Metz. Henry II. of France took this opportunity to invade Lorraine, and in 1552 seized the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun. In the same year the em peror laid siege to Metz, but was forced to retreat with heavy loss before the energetic resistance of Duke Francis of Guise. On leaving Lorraine, Henry II. took Charles to France, brought him up at the court and married him to his daughter Claude. After the accession of Francis II., the young duke returned to Lorraine, and, while his cousins the Guises endeavoured to make good the claims of the house of Lorraine to the crown of France by virtue of its Carolingian descent, he devoted himself to improving the administration of his duchy. He reconstituted his domain by revoking the alienations irregularly granted by his predecessors, reorganized the working of the mines and saltworks, unified weights and measures and promulgated edicts against vagabonds. His duchy suffered considerably from the passage of German bands on their way to help the Protestants in France, and also from disturbances caused by the progress of Calvinism, especially in the neighbourhood of the three bishoprics. To combat Calvin ism Charles established the Jesuits at Pont-a Mousson, and gave over to them the university he had founded in that town in 1572. To this foundation he soon added chairs of medicine and law, the first professor of civil law being the maitre des requetes, the Scotsman William Barclay, and the next Gregory of Toulouse, a pupil of the jurist Cujas. Charles died on May 14, 16°8, and was succeeded by his eldest son Henry II., called the Good, who died in 1624 without issue.