Louis II
(born
c.
822?died Aug. 12, 875, near
Brescia
, Lombardy) was a Frankish
emperor
(850?875) who, as ruler of
Italy
, was instrumental in checking the Arab invasion of the peninsula.
The eldest son of the Frankish emperor
Lothar I
, who ruled the “middle realm” of what had once been
Charlemagne’s
empire, Louis took over the administration of Italy on his father’s behalf in 844 and was
crowned
king of the Lombards in
Rome
on June 15 of that year. In April 850 he was crowned emperor. When his father divided his realm in September 855, Italy was allotted to Louis. After
Lothar’s
death a few weeks later, Louis was sole emperor, a dignity which at that time implied rule over only part of the Carolingian dominions, without suzerainty over the whole.
Britannica Quiz
Kings and Emperors (Part III) Quiz
In 859 Louis II acquired territory from his brother
Lothar II
, king of Lotharingia (Lorraine), and at the death of his other brother, King
Charles of Provence
, in 863, he received a large part of that kingdom.
Louis II’s most important task was the war against the Arabs, who had seized
Bari
and various other places in southern Italy. In 866 he began an extensive campaign that, with the help of the
Byzantine
fleet, culminated in the conquest of the Arab headquarters at Bari (February 871). In August 871, however, the emperor was made prisoner by Adelchis, duke of
Benevento
. The duke feared that Louis would attempt to assert his
sovereignty
, and he extracted from his prisoner a promise not to reenter the southern part of the peninsula.
Adelchis soon set Louis free, but after obtaining from the pope a dispensation from his oath, the emperor returned to southern Italy. Although he won another victory, near
Capua
, in 872, his power and energy no longer
sufficed
for a decisive blow against the Arabs. He gave up his hopes and withdrew to northern Italy, where he died shortly thereafter. His only child was a daughter, and the elder male line of the
Carolingian dynasty
thus expired with him.