The Franconian
stem duchy, part of former Frankish
Austrasia, was seized by King
Otto I of Germany after the unsuccessful revolt of the
Conradine duke
Eberhard had shattered at the 939
Battle of Andernach. With the advancement of Count
Conrad the Red, Rhenish Franconia became the heartland of the Imperial
Salian dynasty, which provided four emperors in the 11th and 12th centuries:
Conrad II,
Henry III,
Henry IV, and
Henry V. It contained the ancient cities of
Mainz,
Speyer and Worms, the latter two being the administrative centres of countships within the hands of the Salian descendants of Conrad the Red. These counts were sometimes referred to informally, on account of the great power in the region, as dukes of Franconia. Emperor Conrad II was actually the last to bear the ducal title. When he died in 1039, Rhenish Franconia was governed as a constellation of small states, like the cities of
Frankfurt, Speyer and Worms, the
Prince-bishoprics of
Mainz,
Speyer, and
Worms, as well as the
Landgraviate of Hesse, then part of
Thuringia. Alongside these powerful entities there were many smaller, petty states. In 1093, Emperor Henry IV gave the Salian territories in Rhenish Franconia as a
fief to
Henry of Laach, the
Count palatine of
Lower Lorraine at
Aachen, his lands then would evolve into the important principality of the
Electoral Palatinate. While Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa in 1168 granted the ducal title to the
Prince-Bishops of Würzburg in Eastern Franconia, Rhenish Franconia was divided and extinguished. Its territories became part of the Imperial
Upper Rhenish Circle in 1500. ==Successor states of Western Franconia==