After protracted clashes with his father and his brothers, Louis received the East Frankish kingdom in the Treaty of Verdun (843).

The 860s were marked by a severe crisis, with the East Frankish rebellions of the sons, as well as struggles to maintain supremacy over his realm.

His rule shows a marked decline in creation of written administration and government documents, a trend that would continue into Ottonian times.

[9] His involvement in the first civil war against his father's reign was limited, but in the second his elder brothers, Lothair I, then King of Italy, and Pepin I, Duke of Aquitaine, persuaded him to invade Alamannia which their father had given to their young half-brother Charles the Bald, by promising to give him the land in the new partition they would make after a victory.

[7] A few weeks later, he and Charles defeated Lothair and their nephew Pepin II of Aquitaine at the battle of Fontenoy on 25 June.

In June 842 the three brothers met on an island in the river Saône to negotiate a peace and each appointed forty representatives to arrange the boundaries of their respective kingdoms.

[7] Louis may be called the founder of the German kingdom, though his attempts to maintain the unity of the Empire proved futile.

[7] Having in 842 crushed the Stellinga rising in Saxony,[14] in 844 he compelled the Obotrites[15] to accept his authority and put their prince, Gozzmovil, to death.

Thachulf, Duke of Thuringia, then undertook campaigns against the Bohemians, Moravians, and other tribes, but was not very successful in resisting the ravaging Vikings.

However, treachery and desertion in his army, and the continued loyalty of the Aquitanian bishops to Charles the Bald, brought about the failure of the whole enterprise.

[7] In May 868, Louis convoked a synod at Worms to deal with the aftermath of the Photian schism and to get the church's support against Moravia.

In the years 872 and 873, ambassadors of the Eastern Roman Emperor Basil I came to Louis in Regensburg and showed that his rule was perceived as far as Constantinople.

For this purpose, Abbot Sigihard von Fulda undertook a trip to Rome to Pope John VIII.

On 18 May 876 he returned to Ingelheim and reported to Louis that, in December 875, Charles the Bald had been able to obtain the title of emperor by a swift move to Rome.

As there exist only 172 royal documents from 50 years of reign, it is impossible to create a detailed picture of Louis' whereabouts in the East Frankish kingdom.

By comparison, Louis the Pious had 18 certificates created per year, and his half-brother Charles the Bald had 12 produced annually.

As former stem duchy, the Rhine-Main area contained Frankfurt, Mainz and Worms, and had plenty of Imperial Palaces and treasuries.