CHAPTER VII

THE BIRTH OF GERMAN NATIONALITY

[843-936 A.D.]

Although by the Treaty of Verdun the empire remained in some measure united and the emperor had a certain pre-eminence over the king, he was certainly not endowed with supreme prerogatives; the districts were as distinct from each other as they once were in the divisions of the Merovingians. The idea of imperial theocracy was gone, the customary arrangement of succession of the Frankish monarchy had prevailed. This victory was rife with consequences for the Frankish kingdom and all the races ruled by the Franks.

Although it was not the interests of the people but those of the rulers which had led to the Treaty of Verdun, it was of great importance for the evolution and cultivation of nationality in the West. Whilst Ludwig’s kingdom almost entirely consisted of German lands, Charles on the other side had those parts of Gaul already permeated by the Roman character; and out of the great German Roman Empire in the East Frankish kingdom there arose a state whose people, albeit separated in clans, were similar in language, customs, and thought, and their connection began to be shown in their language.

In contradistinction to the Roman language of the learned clergy and the Romanised tongue of their southern and western neighbours, they called this language German, _i.e._, the “popular” tongue, and they called themselves the German-speaking to distinguish themselves from the Romans.

The feeling of their union must necessarily have increased as they were united in one kingdom and were separated by the bond of the kingdom from other races. In like manner the Frankish Roman nationality was more notably evolved in the West Frankish kingdom, after the union with the purely German races was dissolved.

[Sidenote: [843-845 A.D.]]

The Germans therefore, like the French, and not without reason, regard the Treaty of Verdun as the birth-hour of their nationality. After the breaking up of the Carlovingian kingdom, the natural differences of the various races did not reappear with their narrow, sharp distinctions, but they began to form fresh nationalities upon a wider and more universal basis, and this fact was productive of the most important results. There was much to cause the delay of the further separation of the East and West Frankish kingdom. The political elements which Charles had united in his kingdom were by no means equally distributed over all districts, and they had not gained the same force everywhere. The feudal system had especially gained ground on Gallic soil and there attained to such power that the freedom of the lower classes was quite stifled; all the lower circles of the population were dependent on the powerful feudal princes. The great vassals thereby became so strong that they soon instituted the hereditariness of their fiefs, and the king only retained real power over the crown possessions, having elsewhere only the rights of a chief feudal lord. The royal power such as had been exercised by the Merovingians and the first Carlovingians diminished more and more, and royalty was only instituted here later, on quite a fresh basis.

It was different in the East Frankish kingdom. The freedom of the communities had there taken root too deeply to be so easily displaced; vassaldom only gradually gained ground and mostly only because the royal feudal people were introduced to the people as officials. There was therefore far more strength and union in the government; the king was still the people’s king and he could call directly upon the fighting power of the masses. This was chiefly why Ludwig the German was superior to Charles the Bald and also to Lothair. In almost the same way, Lothair’s kingdom consisted of German and Roman districts without any national unity; it was therefore weak and unstable, albeit the chief lands of the government and the first cities of the kingdom belonged to him.[b]

THE REIGN OF LUDWIG THE GERMAN (843-876 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [845-853 A.D.]]

Ludwig’s[140] independent sovereignty commenced at a moment of great national disaster. In the year 845 King Horik of Denmark, who had a large fleet of Norse pirate vessels at his disposal, commenced a general attack upon all the maritime provinces of the Frankish Empire. One division of his fleet, amounting, it is said, to six hundred ships, sailed up the mouth of the Elbe and made an unexpected assault upon Hamburg, the seat of missionary activity in the Scandinavian north. The city was taken and burned to the ground before the local levies (Heerbann) could hasten from the surrounding country to its aid. Many of the inhabitants fell by the Northmen’s swords, the rest were scattered or perished as they fled. Bishop Anskar sought refuge for himself and his books and relics in the desolate moorland between the Elbe and Weser. Another detachment of the Norman fleet wrought hideous havoc in the kingdom of the West Franks; Paris was committed to the flames and most of its inhabitants slaughtered by the Northmen. King Charles the Bald went so far as to collect an army, but he did not dare to confront the invaders; indeed, he was well content to procure the withdrawal of the pirates--who dreaded the vengeance of the patron saints of the churches they had plundered and burned far more than the Frankish _arrière-ban_--by the payment of a considerable sum of money. The Northmen carried home with them from their raid a deadly pestilence, to which King Horik himself succumbed after grievous suffering. Before his death he sent an embassy to Ludwig the German to entreat his pardon for the destruction of Hamburg, at the same time promising to restore the prisoners and booty.

The Northmen repeated their incursion no later than the following year. They respected the dominions of Ludwig the German, but ravaged the whole coast of western France as far as Bordeaux. The Saracens pillaged the coasts of Italy at the same time; it seemed as though the Norman pirate excursions had emboldened them to similar enterprises. From Africa their fleet sailed to Rome and took the city on the right bank of the Tiber, including the church of St. Peter. They then marched into south Italy, pillaging and slaughtering as they went. On the return voyage a storm at sea sent part of the fleet to the bottom of the Mediterranean, and the Christian world saw the avenging hand of God in their destruction. On the other hand, it was keenly alive to the shame of knowing that Rome and other famous holy places had fallen into the hands of the infidels.

WAR WITH THE SLAVONIC TRIBES

At this time King Ludwig was engaged in war with the Slavonic tribes. As early as the year 845 he had not been able to keep the Abodrites in subjection except by force. At the beginning of 846 he conquered a Slavonic tribe on the Elbe which we cannot more closely identify, and then took the field against the Moravians, whose duke, Moimir, was suspected of contemplating rebellion. Ludwig deposed the duke, and nominated his nephew Ratislaw as his successor. On his return march the king took the way through Bohemia, where, in mountainous ground and the depths of the forest, he found himself suddenly assailed by the Czechs, and the German army suffered severely before it could escape from the ambush. Immediately afterwards the Bohemians, who up to this time had been nominally subject to Frankish dominion, proceeded to open hostilities against the kingdom of the East Franks, and Ludwig consequently found himself under the necessity of undertaking a great expedition against them in the year 849. He himself was prevented by sickness from taking part in the campaign, and was obliged to send his army into the field under the leadership of several counts who were at variance among themselves. These commanders, after gaining some slight preliminary advantages, suffered heavy loss in men amongst the forests of Bohemia, and were actually compelled to give hostages to the Bohemians to insure their own return home unmolested. This occurrence aroused the profoundest indignation among the East Frank people, who had hitherto gloried in their military reputation above all things.

Since neither of the three kingdoms had any lack of enemies, the three brothers determined to maintain friendly sentiments towards each other and to make common cause for defence against their foes, adjusting their own small differences at a diet of princes (Fürstentag) to be held at short intervals. They met thus for the first time at Diedenheim in 844, then in 847 at Mersen on the Maas [Meuse], and at Mersen again in 851. With them appeared their great vassals, temporal and spiritual. The brothers swore to assist one another with counsel and deed against their enemies, and they directed that their mutual agreement should be put on record and made known among their subjects. But unhappily this act of brotherly concord was deficient in honest purpose, for each one was silently watching and suspecting the others, as though they had been his worst enemies.

LUDWIG TURNS AGAINST CHARLES THE BALD (853-860 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [853-855 A.D.]]

Up to this time Ludwig had remained the most loyal of the three to this friendly compact; but in the year 853 he allowed his greed of territory to seduce him into an act of treachery towards Charles the Bald. The Aquitanians, who had long struggled under the leadership of Pepin--son of a brother of the three kings who had died young--against union with the dominions of Charles the Bald, appealed to King Ludwig for aid after the death of their prince, proposing that he should either become their king himself or send one of his sons. The war with the Slavs was assuming ever vaster proportions, and Ludwig was unable to quit Germany. He therefore despatched his second son, Ludwig the Younger, with an army to Aquitaine. Charles the Bald was hard pressed by the Northmen at that time, and could only spare a small force to oppose the German troops. But the expedition of the German monarch’s son to Aquitaine was not the success he had anticipated. Only a fraction of the nobility took his part; another party adhered to the son of their late ruler; others, again, held with Charles the Bald. The whole attempt came to nothing. Ludwig was constrained to seek safety in a retreat which bore a strong resemblance to flight. The Aquitanians returned to their allegiance to Charles the Bald when he had set his son, who was still a minor, over them as king, and thus assured their country of a certain degree of independence.

The year 855 summoned King Ludwig to fresh martial enterprises. The Moravians had become restless and menaced the eastern regions of the kingdom with invasion. Ludwig undertook an expedition against Ratislaw, their prince, but without effect, for the enemy took refuge in secure fortified places behind lofty ramparts of earth. After the king had withdrawn the Moravians pressed forward into Germany along the right bank of the Danube, pillaging as they came. Ludwig could do little to protect this part of the country, as the Slavs were stirring again in the northeast. In the succeeding years he had to undertake various small expeditions against the Daleminzians, who dwelt between the Elbe and Mulde, and the Czechs of Bohemia. The results were in most cases inconsiderable, but even in these minor campaigns the German losses in fighting men were heavy. The greatest danger with which Ludwig was at that time menaced loomed from the east. The whole Slavonic world was in a ferment, and strove to gain breathing-space by pressing westwards.

[Sidenote: [858-860 A.D.]]

Under these circumstances we cannot but be surprised that Ludwig thought the moment propitious for extensive military operations against Charles the Bald. In the kingdom of the West Franks, a terrible state of things prevailed, for not only did the Northmen ravage the most fertile regions--especially the lowlands of the Loire--almost every year, but in the interior of the kingdom the insubordinate nobles were at war with one another and with the king. The malcontents of the western kingdom had repeatedly turned their eyes towards the German king. When, therefore, in the year 858, he received an appeal from many persons of consequence in the kingdom of Charles the Bald to deliver them from the king’s tyranny and to protect their country from the incursions of the heathen, Ludwig gave up the idea of a campaign against the Slavs, for which he had already made preparations, and marched his army to the west, veiling his dastardly breach of the peace under many fine phrases. The emperor Lothair had died a short time before, and the intervening kingdom of Lorraine had descended to his son, Lothair II, a young and incapable ruler, and Ludwig had therefore good reason to hope that he might be able to reunite the major part of the dominions of Charlemagne under his own sceptre. He advanced with his forces as far as Orleans while Charles the Bald and his nephew Lothair were engaged in a joint struggle with the Normans on the banks of the Loire. Imagining himself already in secure possession of the western kingdom, the king dismissed the greater part of his army, which according to ancient custom, could demand to return home after three months service in the field. Then the temper of the people suddenly changed. The bulk of the Austrasian clergy had remained loyal to Charles the Bald, the temporal lords were ill pleased to see that Ludwig governed the country with a strong hand, and the soldiers of his army had been guilty of the grave error of allowing themselves to perpetrate acts of violence against the country folk. Ludwig suddenly found himself deserted by the Austrasian nobles, disaffection was rife about him on every side, while troops of vassals were gathering round his brother Charles. Suspecting treachery everywhere, he took his departure with all possible speed, having reaped nothing from the whole campaign beyond a considerable loss of prestige. After protracted negotiations a peace was ultimately concluded between Charles and Ludwig at Coblenz in 860. The latter was forced to rest content with being spared a public humiliation and with the grant of a pardon to the Austrasian nobles who had done homage to him.

THE END OF LOTHAIR

[Sidenote: [860-869 A.D.]]

From the year 860 onwards the affairs of Lorraine occupied the foreground of political attention for both the German and Austrasian kings. In 855 the emperor Lothair died in the monastery of Prüm, into which he had retired sick and world-weary. His unfilial conduct towards his father appears to have weighed heavily upon his spirit and estranged the hearts of others from him to such an extent that he never afterwards throve in men’s esteem. In accordance with ancient Frankish usage his three sons divided amongst them the dominions he had left. Italy and the imperial dignity fell to Ludwig II,[141] the Rhone provinces to Charles, who was yet a minor, and the most important share, Lorraine (Lotharingia) proper and Friesland, to Lothair II. From the time that he was little more than a boy the young king, Lothair, had lived with his father’s connivance in a sort of marriage relation with a lady of rank, Waldrada by name, who had borne him several sons. After his father’s death he took to wife, not the love of his youth, but Thietberga, the daughter of a distinguished Burgundian noble whose possessions lay in the Alpine valleys between Italy and the kingdom of the West Franks. There was no issue of the marriage, and the king conceived the desire to rid himself of his consort that he might marry Waldrada and so secure the kingdom to his children. With this object he caused all sorts of scandalous rumours to be disseminated about Thietberga, implying that before her marriage she had lived in incestuous intercourse with her own brother.

The time-serving clergy of Lorraine, with Archbishop Thietgand of Trèves and Günther of Cologne at their head, were venal enough to grant a divorce on the ground of these calumnious reports at a synod held at Aachen in the year 860, and to condemn the queen to do penance in a nunnery. Lothair thereupon celebrated his nuptials with Waldrada with great pomp. But both his uncles, Charles the Bald and Ludwig were adverse to the divorce, because if Lothair left no legitimate issue they would be the heirs to his kingdom. At the instigation of Charles the Bald Hincmar, the learned and disputatious archbishop of Rheims, published a pamphlet exposing the whole tissue of falsehoods which had been invented to Thietberga’s disadvantage and vehemently impugning the proceedings of the synod of Aachen. The unhappy queen escaped from her nunnery and threw herself upon the protection of Charles; she also appealed to the pope for help. The papal chair was at that time occupied by Nicholas II, a mighty prince of the church, who gladly embraced the opportunity thus offered of summoning a king before his judgment-seat. He sent legates to Lorraine to inquire into the king’s matrimonial affairs at a Frankish synod. But the legates were not proof against bribery, and at a synod at Metz in the year 863 they pronounced in favour of the king.

Nicholas, learning of the corruptibility of his agents, condemned the conclusions of the synod of Metz in a Lateran synod and deposed the archbishops of Trèves and Cologne. A lengthy and repulsive controversy on the subject of the royal divorce ensued in Lorraine, finding an echo even in the chambers where the women sat spinning. Lothair was forced to bow to the pope’s will, and his consort Thietberga returned to his court. But he presently began to live with Waldrada again, although he could not procure the church’s sanction to a divorce and a marriage with his mistress. This scandalous quarrel, which kept the mind of all the western world in a state of agitation, was still dragging its length along when Nicholas II died in 867. Lothair hoped that he might gain his end with the new pope Adrian II, and with the object in view he undertook a journey to Italy in 869. At his interview with the pope he swore, to the horror of all pious souls, an oath notoriously false, declaring that in recent years he had avoided all commerce with Waldrada. But the new pope, who held the king in profound contempt on account of his corrupt morals, also refused to grant the divorce, and could be brought to promise no more than that he would inquire into the matter once again in a synod which he would summon to meet at Rome. Lothair died of a raging fever on his homeward way, and his devout contemporaries saw in his death the divine judgment on his crime. His children were not recognised by the law, and his dominions therefore passed to the other monarchs who were of kin to him. His brother, the emperor Ludwig II, was childless, so that Ludwig the German and Charles the Bald were the only heirs whom it was necessary to take into account.

LUDWIG AND CHARLES DIVIDE LOTHAIR’S POSSESSIONS (870 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [870 A.D.]]

At the time of Lothair’s unlooked for decease the king of the East Franks was engaged in a war against the Slavs. His eldest son, Carloman [or Carlmann], had for years been warring on Ratislaw, prince of Moravia, and had gained some successes. The Czechs also frequently made excursions into Bavaria at this period, carrying the inhabitants of the country away into captivity. Ludwig therefore resolved to attack the Czechs all along the line in one great campaign. In the August of 869 his armies were equipped and ready to march against the foe. His second son, Ludwig the Younger, was to attack the Sorbs, he himself in concert with his son Carloman was to reduce the Moravians to subjection once more. At this juncture he suddenly fell sick of a serious malady at Ratisbon; and his third son, Charles, as yet untried in arms, led the army to join Carloman in his stead. The war was conducted with success at all points. The Sorbs were compelled to submit. The German warriors attacked the Moravians behind their apparently impassable earthworks, burned many places to the ground, and returned home laden with spoil.

Meanwhile, Charles the Bald was making haste to take possession of Lothair’s dominions. He had been busy with defensive measures against the Norman pirates, when the news of his nephew’s death was brought to him. The emperor Ludwig II, Lothair’s brother, was far away and his forces were insignificant, and the reports of Ludwig’s illness sounded so unfavourable that there seemed no chance of his recovery; so that Charles the Bald hoped that he might succeed in making himself Lothair’s sole heir. He hurried to Metz, where he had himself crowned king of Lorraine, and thence proceeded to Aachen to receive the homage of the nobles. Very few of the nobles, however, presented themselves. He then ventured to encroach upon the kingdom of the East Franks, for he took possession of Alsace, which Lothair had previously ceded to Ludwig in return for the assurance of his support in his matrimonial quarrel.

But Charles the Bald was not destined long to enjoy his bloodless victory; for Ludwig recovered and threatened him with war unless he consented to a fraternal division of the dominions left by Lothair. Thus came about the famous partition treaty, which was concluded at Mersen in the year 870. By this treaty one-half of Lorraine fell to the western kingdom, and the other to the eastern. The boundary line ran southwards from the mouth of the Maas [Meuse], following the course of the river for some distance until it reached Ourthe, then crossed to the middle Moselle, just touched upon the Marne, and then ran along the Saône to the level of the Lake of Geneva. Thus, east Lorraine, Alsace, and north Burgundy, passed to Germany. The Treaty of Mersen was a corollary to the Treaty of Verdun; all the purely Germanic elements of the population were now combined with the eastern kingdom, and the way was prepared for the formation of two great states and nations, the one Germanic and the other Romance.

LAST YEARS OF LUDWIG THE GERMAN

[Sidenote: [870-876 A.D.]]

In the latter years of his life, King Ludwig was afflicted by the same misfortune which he and his brothers had conspired to bring upon their father; for his grown-up sons rebelled against him. He had early conferred upon them a share in the sovereignty of parts of his dominions, and after his kingdom had been considerably aggrandised by the Treaty of Mersen, they demanded a corresponding extension of their dominions. Carloman, the eldest, ruled Bavaria almost as an independent kingdom, and therefore received a considerable accession of territory. The younger sons, Ludwig and Charles, felt themselves aggrieved by this proceeding, and refused to render obedience to their father any longer. This occurrence took place at an unpropitious time for the king, as the Moravian prince, Suatopluk, had just inflicted a crushing defeat upon a Bavarian contingent. Under these circumstances Ludwig endeavoured to come to a compromise with his sons. In a diet at Forchheim they were reconciled to him, on condition that they should all share equally in the heritage of Lorraine. Thereupon a great expedition against the Moravians was undertaken in 872. But fortune did not favour the Germans. A detachment of Saxons, at variance among themselves, was worsted in battle and turned back in shameful rout, and another army, under the command of Bishop Arno of Würzburg, came back with heavy loss and without having accomplished its object. Carloman was attacked in the rear by the Moravians, and forced to beat a retreat with heavy loss. The king himself was unable to take part in the war, being busy with the affairs of Italy.

A grievous domestic trouble was soon added to these military reverses. His two younger sons conceived the criminal design of dethroning their father, and holding him in captivity. The project came to light as by a miracle. Charles, burdened with an evil conscience, was seized with a fit of the epileptic disease from which he suffered, and betrayed part of his secret, probably during the convulsions. According to the ideas of the time, it was believed that the devil had entered into him, and he was taken to church, where the clergy tried to cure him by prayers and exorcisms. The sight of his brother’s ravings wrought such an effect on the mind of Ludwig the Younger that, stricken with remorse, he confessed their design to his father. The king refrained from punishing his sons; he was reconciled to them again, and left his dispositions for the succession unaltered. Grown wise by such experiences, he thenceforth granted his sons a fuller measure of independence in their subordinate dominions.

About the end of Ludwig’s reign a peace was concluded with the Danes, to his great satisfaction. After King Horik’s death his two sons declared their willingness to enter into a compact with Ludwig, whom they were prepared to honour as a father, to the effect that the Eider should constitute the boundary between the two kingdoms, and that the two nations should thenceforward live in peaceful intercourse with one another. On this basis a peace was concluded, greatly to the benefit of missionary enterprise in particular. The archiepiscopal see of Hamburg and Bremen was at that time governed by Rimbert, a pupil of Anskar’s, who worked in complete harmony with the spirit of his predecessor. He endured the hardships of many sea-voyages, labouring to spread Christianity among the Danes and Swedes.

In the following year the long war with the Moravians was also brought to a close. A Moravian embassy appeared at Forchheim in 874 to sue for peace. Prince Suatopluk undertook to render fealty to the king of Germany and to pay a regular annual tribute. From a German province Moravia thus became a feudal state under German suzerainty, an alteration which must be reckoned almost as a defeat for Ludwig.

In the last year of Ludwig’s life an event took place to which he had latterly devoted his whole attention. The Italian emperor Ludwig II died and left no heir, and the throne of the Roman Empire thus fell vacant. Both Ludwig and Charles the Bald laid claim to this dignity. Engelberga, the widow of the deceased monarch, favoured the German king, who had made an agreement with her at Trent in 872 to the effect that his eldest son Carloman should be the successor of Ludwig II; Pope John VIII, on the contrary, wished to confer the succession upon Charles the Bald. When the news of Ludwig II’s death reached Rome the pope immediately despatched an embassy to the king of the West Franks and invited him to come and be crowned emperor. On the other hand a convocation of Lombard nobles, at which the Empress Engelberga was present, declared in favour of the king of Germany.

Charles the Bald outwitted his rival by the celerity of his action, for no more than four weeks after he had received the tidings of the emperor’s death he and his army stood upon Italian soil. But his way to Rome was barred by the sons of Ludwig, for Charles was in Italy at the time, and Carloman hurried thither from Bavaria with an army. By gross imposture, however, Charles the Bald contrived to render his opponents harmless; he concluded a compact with Carloman, according to which they were both to leave Italy, taking their armies with them, and the fate of that country was then to be decided by amicable agreement between the two kings. When Carloman, relying on this compact, had withdrawn from Italy, Charles the Bald hastened to Rome and there received the imperial crown from the pope in return for lavish gifts and promises. This clumsy fraud so enraged Ludwig the German that he undertook an expedition against the kingdom of the West Franks, not with a view to the conquest of the country but in order to compel his brother to come back from Italy and make a fair arrangement with him. But the old king himself was summoned home by mournful tidings; his wife Imma, the loyal companion of so many years, had died after protracted suffering, and her death plunged him into profound dejection. He nevertheless determined to await his brother’s return and then march against him with his sons at the head of a well-found army. But the projected expedition never came to pass, for Ludwig died soon after, in August, 876. The momentous question whether the imperial dignity and the sovereignty of Italy should pass to the kingdom of the West Franks or that of the East Franks thus remained undecided.

In retrospect the total result of the reign of Ludwig the German is seen to be not unfavourable. Amidst severe struggles he maintained his dominions intact at almost every point, and secured a valuable accession of territory from those left by Lothair II. Moreover the first vehement onslaught of the Slavonic races on the eastern division of the Frankish Empire had been successfully repulsed.

THE SONS OF LUDWIG THE GERMAN; CHARLES THE FAT (876-887 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [876-877 A.D.]]

After the death of Ludwig his three sons undertook the government conjointly. Carloman regarded Bavaria as his proper heritage, and hoped to win Italy and the imperial crown into the bargain. Charles the Fat reigned in Swabia, and Ludwig the Younger ruled over the northern provinces of the kingdom. This tripartite division was agreed upon by the three brothers at a meeting at Riess, but it had hardly time to take effect, for the assaults of foes from without and other grave disasters followed in such rapid succession that they were fully employed in remedying immediate evils.

No sooner did Charles the Bald receive the welcome tidings of his brother’s death than he made ready to rob his East Frankish nephews; he was eager to seize upon the whole of the dominions left by Lothair II, and to gain possession of the intervening kingdom of Lorraine as well as of the imperial crown. Though his own country was at this time suffering grievously at the hands of the Northmen, he led his army into Lorraine and occupied the important cities of Cologne and Aachen. But he had mistaken the character of Ludwig the younger, who was one of the last vigorous offshoots of the mighty Carlovingian breed, a valiant soldier and a sagacious leader. Charles allowed Ludwig to decoy him into giving battle under disadvantageous conditions at Andernach, and suffered a severe defeat, in which the greater part of the West Frankish army was put to the sword and many nobles were taken prisoners or robbed of their costly robes and jewels. Many of them were obliged to return home without even their weapons, and their cowardly king saved himself by shameful flight.

After Charles the Bald had come back to his kingdom the Norman pest began anew. The pirates could only be induced to withdraw by the payment of a huge sum of money, which Charles levied upon the whole country under the name of the Norman Tax (_Normannensteuer_). Soon afterwards an urgent appeal for help reached him from Italy, from the pope, who was suffering at one and the same time under the oppression of the Saracens and of the Italian nobles. The latter were at permanent feud with him, and did not even respect the churches and the consecrated vessels. Charles was not profoundly touched by the pope’s entreaties, but he was keenly alive to the fear that some Italian noble might set the imperial crown upon his own head, and therefore, in spite of the desperate state of his own country, he resolved to make a fresh military expedition into Italy. In the summer of 877 he held a convocation of lords temporal and spiritual at Quierzy, to take counsel with them on the subject of the Roman expedition. Most of them tried to dissuade him from it, urging the miseries under which his own kingdom was suffering; but Charles, nevertheless, started for Italy at the head of an army.

[Sidenote: [877-879 A.D.]]

Pope John VIII, who had but shortly before confirmed Charles’ election to the imperial dignity at a synod held at Ravenna, hastened to Pavia to meet him. There they were also met by the alarming news that King Carloman had come in haste with an army from the kingdom of the East Franks, and was already in upper Italy. The feeble monarch’s timorous spirit made him welcome the further tidings which came from his own country, to the effect that the nobles whom he had left behind in the kingdom of the West Franks were conspiring against him. He hurried back to his own dominions in hot haste, without waiting to confront his adversary; and the pope had to go home with his purpose unachieved.

Death overtook the West Frankish monarch suddenly as he was crossing the Alps. The rumour ran that Zedekiah, his Jewish physician in ordinary, had poisoned him with a powder administered as medicine. Despised by all and loved by none, the king departed this life in the forty-sixth year of his age, a man wholly vile, as his contemporaries said, and one whom the annalist of Fulda[c] calls “timorous as a hare.”

LUDWIG THE YOUNGER

Carloman meanwhile remained in upper Italy. When the news of the death of Charles the Bald reached him he addressed a letter to the pope, requesting him to bestow upon him the imperial dignity in return for the customary promises. Negotiations on the subject had nearly come to their conclusion when an infectious malady broke out among the German forces and Carloman fell a victim to it. The army had to retreat hastily across the Alps, carrying their sick king in a litter. This admirable prince was not destined to recover. Like all the sons of Ludwig the German, he had a tendency to brain disease and paralysis, inherited probably from their mother Imma. From this time forward he lived on one of his estates at Oetting in Bavaria. Later the unhappy man was smitten with a paralytic stroke which deprived him of the power of speech and motion. He died in the autumn of 880, after languishing for three years in a condition which rendered him incapable of discharging any of the functions of government. There was no issue of his marriage, but he had an illegitimate son, the offspring of a liaison with a lady of rank, upon whom he had conferred the Mark of Carinthia during his illness. All his contemporaries agree in describing Carloman as a prince of great valour and exceptional ability, and the decline of his powers in the prime of life as a great misfortune for the empire.

From the year 877 onwards Ludwig the Younger, second son of Ludwig the German, reigned practically alone, and ruled with great vigour and sagacity. He first came to a good understanding with the kingdom of the West Franks, where a son of Charles the Bald, Louis the Stammerer, had ascended the throne. The weak health of the latter prevented him from conducting the war in person, and he therefore endeavoured to come to terms with the eastern kingdom. For this purpose he met Ludwig the Younger at Fouron in the north of Lorraine, and in an interview at that place ratified the treaty concluded with the king of the East Franks at Mersen in 870 and resigned all pretensions to the imperial dignity. Almost immediately after the king of the West Franks fell ill of a grievous malady, of which he died in the following year, leaving as heirs to his kingdom two sons still under age. Hence the ambitious King Ludwig the Younger readily conceived the idea of winning the Austrasian crown for himself and so uniting all the dominions of Charlemagne once more under his own sceptre. The same idea suggested itself to many a West Frankish noble. The influential abbot Gauzlin of St. Germains and Count Conrad of Paris tried to convince their fellow-countrymen that Ludwig the Younger, whose prowess in the battle of Andernach was still held in the liveliest remembrance, ought to be chosen king. A large number of nobles, having arrived in council at a resolution to this effect, sent messengers to invite Ludwig to take possession of the country. He replied by entering it at the head of an army, but failed to find favour in the eyes of the people because he allowed his soldiers to pillage as ruthlessly as the Normans had done. There was another party among the Austrasian nobles, who desired to preserve the crown to the sons of Louis the Stammerer. They therefore offered Ludwig the Younger compensation in the form of the western part of Lorraine, which had fallen to the share of the western kingdom in the Treaty of Mersen. He acquiesced in this arrangement, and the crown was conferred on Louis and Carloman, the sons of Louis the Stammerer, conjointly. But the misery of the western kingdom was only just beginning. Boson, the ambitious count of Provence, son-in-law of the emperor Ludwig II, rebelled and exalted his county into an independent kingdom, and an important part of the monarchy was thus lost. And, to add evil to evil, the Normans renewed their pirate incursions.

[Sidenote: [879-882 A.D.]]

After the conclusion of the treaty Ludwig the Younger proceeded to Bavaria, to secure the heritage of his brother, who, though sick to death, was still alive; and deprived the impotent ruler of his dominion, leaving him only his estates. Returning from Bavaria to the western portion of his kingdom, he again conceived the idea of conquering the neighbour state with which he had just concluded a treaty. He marched into the country, and came everywhere upon the traces of Norse devastations. Even the local nobles held aloof from him, and he realised that this was no time for the Frankish Empire to rend its own flesh in fratricidal strife, but that all its united forces ought to be directed towards expelling the pirates from its borders. For this reason when he found himself confronted by a West Frankish army he did not offer battle but professed his readiness to renew the peace. A fresh compact was made in 880, by which Ludwig again renounced his pretensions to the western kingdom in return for the cession of some frontier districts in Lorraine. By this agreement four Lorraine bishoprics--Liège, Cambray, Toul, and Verdun--fell to the eastern kingdom. The boundary line now started from the Schelde, and thence passed over to the Maas where that river makes its way out of the Ardennes, then trended westwards in a wide sweep, running about halfway between the Maas and Marne, and finally turned towards the southern end of Alsace. By this treaty the whole of Lorraine passed to Germany, and her predominance was thus assured for a long time to come.

Ludwig the Younger promptly set to work to rid his territory of the Northern pirates. The latter had established themselves at the mouth of the Schelde, where they had constructed strong bulwarks, behind which they were wont to place their ships in shelter while they perpetrated their ravages upon the country. Godefrid, king of the Danes, was even then making his way back to his ships, laden with rich spoils from a raid inland. Ludwig overtook the robber horde on the march, and inflicted such a severe defeat upon them that five thousand of the enemy were left on the field and the remainder took to flight.

As the king was returning from the scene of his victory he was met by tidings of disaster which plunged him into profound grief. A Saxon levy (Heerbann) had succumbed to a surprise of the Northmen. The latter had made an attack on the Elbe district, not far from Hamburg. A Saxon detachment had hastened thither, but had been dispersed by an unexpectedly high tide and so hemmed in between the arms of the river that it fell a helpless victim to the Northmen, who assailed it on all sides from their ships. Bruno, the commander and the king’s brother-in-law, was slain, together with many bishops and counts, and many nobles were carried into captivity.

From this time forward the king, once so energetic, gradually succumbed to the malady to which his brother Carloman had fallen a victim. For two years he was obliged to watch idly the miseries of his country from his palace, confined to his couch by paralysis and incapable of leading an army. He lived on till the year 882. He had married Liutgard, a daughter of Liudolf, count of Saxony, from whom the royal house of Saxony claims descent. His son, whom he had destined to succeed him, fell from a window in Ratisbon in the year 879 and broke his neck. An illegitimate son, Hugo by name, had already fallen in the battle against the Northmen on the Schelde.

RAVAGES OF THE NORTHMEN

[Sidenote: [880-882 A.D.]]

During the two years in which Ludwig the Younger was slowly pining away the kingdom became a scene of woe indeed. Charles the Fat, the third son of Ludwig the German, might have been expected to assume the government of the kingdom; but, unlike his energetic brothers, he was of feeble intellect, and had suffered from epilepsy from his youth up. As long as his brother was alive he concerned himself solely with the affairs of Swabia and Italy, so that for two years Germany was practically without a ruler. The state of the kingdom answered to this defect. The Northmen came back to the Schelde and the mouth of the Rhine, and thence made predatory excursions, directed indeed for the most part against the Austrasian kingdom, but occasionally touching upon German territory. They soon afterwards sailed up the Waal with a large fleet, got as far as Xanten, and proceeded to establish themselves at Nimeguen, the imperial seat of Charlemagne. This roused the sick king Ludwig to hasten with an army to the Rhine; but, unable to expel the invaders by force of arms, he was obliged to grant them permission to withdraw unmolested; and in their retreat they set fire to the castle of Charlemagne. Only a portion of the Norse host left for the winter, another portion overran the coasts of the kingdom of the West Franks and spread hideous devastation through the country. With the spring of 881 the swarms of Northmen again made their appearance. This time their depredations were confined in the main to the districts about the Schelde and Somme. And now once again the sick king of Germany appeared on the scene with a detachment of his army, and arranged a meeting with Louis, the king of the West Franks, to take counsel with him for combined defence against the Northmen, for the unhappy man was incapable of taking the command of his army in the field. The sight of the horrors perpetrated by the Northmen so inflamed the West Frank warriors and their youthful king that they flung themselves upon the robber hordes and gained a brilliant victory at Saucourt on the Somme in 881. Joy at this fortunate event inspired a contemporary writer, a cleric without doubt, with the famous _Ludwigslied_, a noble monument of old German poetry. The Northmen then left the territory of the West Franks, but only to sail up the Meuse immediately and continue their ravages on East Frankish soil, where the king’s illness gave them little cause for fear. At Elsloo, not far from Maestricht, in the vicinity of a royal palace, they constructed a great camp to protect their ships, and thence undertook raids on the cities of the Rhine, as yet untrodden ground to them, under the leadership of their chieftain kings (_heerkönige_) Godefrid and Siegfrid. Cologne and Bonn were burned, Aachen laid waste, the palace of Charlemagne there set on fire, and the famous _Marienkirche_ turned into a stable; the abbeys of Malmedy, Stablo, and Prüm then fell into their hands and were stripped of all their treasures. Wherever the Northmen came they set the houses alight and slaughtered the inhabitants. The country-folk often gathered together in troops for self-defence, but they were generally surrounded by the practised Northmen warriors, who regaled themselves with the torments in which their victims perished. Smitten with the sight of so much misery, the sick king sent an army to the Maas, but the news of his death overtook it and it soon turned homewards.

[Sidenote: [882-884 A.D.]]

In the following year, 882, the Northmen laid waste the district along the Moselle. The German king whom they had dreaded was no longer alive, and they therefore gave themselves up without concern to the work of plunder. In a little while the whole region between the Maas, Moselle, and Rhine was a scene of wreck and blackened ruins; the cities of Trèves and Metz were destroyed by fire. The archbishop of Trèves and the bishop of Metz, together with a few of the neighbouring nobles, collected a small army; but they were defeated, and the bishop of Metz himself fell in the battle. The unhappy inhabitants of the country turned in despair to Louis, the young king of the West Franks and the victor of Saucourt, and declared themselves willing to elect him their king. This offer he declined by a reference to existing treaties, but moved with compassion he sent an army to expel the Normans. Never before had Germany fallen upon such evil days.

At the time of Ludwig’s death Charles the Fat, the heir to his kingdom, was in Italy, where he had spent most of his time during the period of measureless misery which had laid his country waste. Pope John VIII, under other circumstances no friend to the German branch of the Carlovingians, had summoned him thither because he was the only prince who, as wearer of the imperial crown, could guarantee at least the possibility of protection to the church. After protracted negotiations over the conditions upon which he was to receive the crown--dealing in the main with the long-claimed papal territory and definite sovereign rights therein--Charles the Fat had been crowned emperor at Rome in February, 881. But the pope, who was so harassed by his quarrelsome nobles and by the close neighbourhood of the Saracens that his life was hardly safe, found himself in no better plight than before; for in spite of all his urgent appeals Charles the Fat stayed in upper Italy and made no preparations for coming to Rome. Pope John VIII met his end soon afterwards, being assassinated at Rome in the year 882.[d]

CHARLES THE FAT (882-887 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [882-887 A.D.]]

Charles the Fat [or the Thick], youngest son of Ludwig the German, inherited in 882, on the death of his childless brother, Ludwig the Younger, all the German and Lorraine territory, with the exception of Burgundy; and in 884, also France, properly the inheritance of Charles the Simple, whose two elder brothers were dead, but who being the issue of a marriage pronounced illegal by the pope, and, on account of his imbecility, being recognised by the French themselves as incapable of succeeding to the throne, Charles the Fat easily took possession of the country, and before long reunited France with Germany, in which he was greatly assisted by the pope, to whom he secretly made great concessions, in order to be acknowledged by him as legitimate heir to the crown.

Charles the Fat was good-natured and indolent. His favourite project, the restoration of the empire as it stood under Charlemagne, he sought to realise by means of bribes and promises, treaties of peace, and other transactions, perfectly in conformity with his character, in which he ever unhesitatingly sacrificed honour to interest. The same means that had succeeded with the pope he imagined would prove equally successful in treating with the Northmen, who, after the death of Ludwig the Younger, renewed their depredations under Godefrid, and laid the Rhine country waste. The palace of Charlemagne at Aachen was converted by them into a stable. Bishop Wala fell bravely fighting at the head of an unequal force before the gates of Metz. The cities on the banks of the Rhine were burned to the ground, and the whole country between Liège, Cologne, and Mainz, laid desolate. At length Siegfrid, the brother of Godefrid, was induced to withdraw his ravaging hordes by the gift of two thousand pounds of gold, and for the additional sum of twelve thousand pounds of silver (to defray which Charles the Fat seized all the treasures of the churches) consented to a truce of twelve years. Godefrid was, moreover, formally invested with Friesland as a fief of the empire. The Northmen, however, notwithstanding these stipulations, continued their depredations, advanced as far as the Moselle, and destroyed the city of Trèves, but were suddenly attacked, in the forest of Ardennes, by the charcoalmen and peasants, and ten thousand of them cut to pieces [883 A.D.]. Charles now became anxious to free himself from his troublesome vassal in Friesland, and the Markgraf Henry, who guarded the frontier at Grabfeld against the Sorbs, brother to Poppo, duke of Thuringia, the confidant of the emperor, invited Godefrid to a meeting, at which he caused him to be treacherously murdered. Godefrid’s brother-in-law, the bastard Hugo, was also taken prisoner and deprived of sight. These acts of violence and treason were no sooner perpetrated than the Northmen, glowing with revenge, rushed like a torrent over the country and laid it waste on every side, forcing their way in immense hordes up the Rhine, the Maas, and the Seine. On the Rhine they were opposed by Adalbert, of the race of Babenberg (Bamberg).[e]

In the autumn of the year 885 a great Norse fleet, consisting of ships large and small, almost without number, and carrying an army of between thirty and forty thousand men, sailed up the Seine as far as Paris, even then a flourishing city. Under the leadership of Bishop Gauzlin and Count Eudes of Paris, the inhabitants hastily repaired the old fortifications and collected a little army of some hundreds, which was brought into the city to defend it. The Northmen encamped round about Paris and made their first attempt to storm the city in November, 885, by a violent assault which lasted two days. The Normans were obliged to withdraw to collect wood in the country round for the construction of new siege instruments. In January, 886, they made a fresh assault which lasted for three days, and were again repulsed by the garrison. The siege lasted into the summer of 886. The besieged were reduced to more desperate straits still by a flood which destroyed the Seine bridge, and thus caused the strong tower situated on its farther side to fall into the hands of the Northmen. After this Count Eudes stole through the cordon of the enemy to implore help of the emperor. Charles had hitherto calmly left the city to its fate; but now he summoned a diet and proclaimed a great advance upon Paris. When, in the August of 886, a mighty army marched upon Paris, all men expected that a great battle would be fought there under the eyes of the emperor. Charles, however, preferred to purchase the withdrawal of the enemy. The treaty which he concluded with the Northmen was an insult to the former might of France. The enemy declared that they could not withdraw during the winter season, and he therefore gave Burgundy to them for winter quarters, and undertook to pay them seven hundred pounds in gold in the following spring. And then the great German army marched home without having struck a blow. This act of disgraceful cowardice enraged the army and the nation, and deprived Charles of the last remnant of his reputation. Moreover all kinds of evil reports were current concerning him among the people. It was said that by the help of the pope he intended to legitimise his illegitimate son Bernard, and to procure the succession for him.[d]

In the east, he also allowed the Slavs to gain ground, and neglected to support his nephew Arnulf, who could with difficulty defend himself against Suatopluk, who continued to extend his dominions; at the same time, the sons of the old markgrafs Engelschalk and Wilhelm declared war against each other, and Aribo, a son of the former, went over to the Moravians. Suatopluk was victorious on the Danube, and laid the country waste, until Charles appeared in person to beg for peace, which was concluded in 884 on the Tulnerfeld. This monarch proved himself as weak and despicable in his private as in his public character, by carrying on a scandalous suit against his wife, Ricardis, whom he accused of an adulterous connection with his chancellor, Bishop Lintward, and who proved her innocence by ordeal, by passing unharmed through fire in a waxen dress.

The great vassals of the empire, some of whom beheld in the fall of a sovereign they justly despised that of the Carlovingian dynasty and their own aggrandisement, whilst others were influenced by their dislike of the treaties entered into with foreign powers, the pope and the Northmen, and by an anxiety to make reparation for the loss of their national honour, convoked a great diet at Tribur in the valley of the Rhine, and deprived Charles of his crown (887 A.D.), a degradation he survived but one year.

ARNULF (887-899 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [887-892 A.D.]]

The Anti-Carlovingian party was partly successful. The French made choice of Eudes, count of Paris, as successor to the crown, whilst the lower Burgundians in the Nether-Rhone-land (Arles) elected Boson, the son of Ludwig, and the upper Burgundians in the Western Alps, Count Rudolf, a descendant of the Welfi. In Italy the dukes Guido of Spoleto and Berengar of Friuli made themselves so independent, that they even set themselves up as competitors, through the favour of the pope, for the imperial crown. The Germans alone remained faithful to the Carlovingian house, and elected, to the exclusion of Charles the Simple, who was still alive, Arnulf, the young and energetic, but illegitimate son of Carloman, a brother of Charles the Fat, who had greatly distinguished himself as duke of Bavaria against the Slavs. The consideration in which he was held was so great, that Eudes came to Worms to do homage to him as emperor, a ceremony with which Arnulf contented himself, the Northmen and Slavs affording him no opportunity for recalling his rebellious subjects to their allegiance.

Fresh hostilities instantly broke out on the part of the Northmen, who made an irruption into Lorraine, and after a bloody engagement defeated the Germans near Maestricht, where the archbishop of Mainz, who had marched against them at the head of his vassals, fell. Arnulf now took the field in person, and a dreadful battle ensued near Lyons, where the Northmen had encamped, in which Arnulf, perceiving that the German cavalry were unable to cope with the Norse foot-soldiers, who fought with unexampled dexterity, was the first to spring from his saddle; all the nobles of the arrierban followed his example, and the contest became a thick fray, in which the combatants strove hand to hand. Victory sided with the Germans. Siegfrid and Godefrid fell on the field of battle, with several thousands of their followers, whose bodies also choked up the course of the Dyle, across which they had attempted to escape. Arnulf, in gratitude for this deliverance, made a great pilgrimage, and ordained that this day, St. Gilgentag, the 1st of September, should be kept as an annual festival. The Northmen, panic-struck by this fearful catastrophe, henceforward avoided the Rhine, but made much more frequent inroads into the west of France.

Arnulf had also fresh struggles to sustain against the Slavs; the Abodriti crossed the frontiers and laid the country waste. The loyalty of Poppo and of the house of Babenberg, who had been in such close alliance with Charles the Fat, and who now found themselves neglected, became more than doubtful, and Arnulf was constrained to remove the former from his government. Engelschalk the Younger also proved faithless, seduced one of Arnulf’s daughters, and then took refuge in Moravia. He was subsequently pardoned, and appointed to guard the Austrian frontier.

As a means of securing the eastern frontier of his empire, Arnulf made peace and entered into an alliance with Suatopluk, prince of Moravia, who was a Christian, in the hope that the foundation of a great Christian Slavian kingdom might eventually prove an effectual bulwark against the irruptions of their heathen brethren in that quarter. The Slavian Maharanen or Moravians had been converted to Christianity by St. Cyril and St. Methodius, who had visited them from Greece. Borziuoi, prince of Bohemia, being also induced to receive baptism by Suatopluk, his pagan subjects drove him from the throne, and he placed himself (with his wife, St. Ludmilla) under the protection of Suatopluk and Arnulf. Arnulf now gave Suatopluk Bohemia to hold in fee, and unlimited command on the eastern frontier. As a proof of their amity, Suatopluk became sponsor to Arnulf’s son, to whom he gave his name, Suatopluk, or Zwentibold; their friendship proved, nevertheless, of but short duration. The Moravian, perceiving that he could not retain his authority over the Slavs so long as he preserved his amicable relations with Germany, yielded to the national hatred, whilst at the same time he gave fresh assurances of amity to the emperor (892 A.D.). He was also supported in his projects by a great conspiracy among the Germans. The thankless Engelschalk again plotted treason, in which he was upheld by Hildegarde, the maiden daughter of Louis the German, the last of the legitimate descendants of Charlemagne, whilst the Italians, who dreaded Arnulf’s threatened presence in their country, were not slow in their endeavours to incite the Moravian to open rebellion. Arnulf, however, discovered the conspiracy, caused Engelschalk to be deprived of sight, and imprisoned Hildegarde at Chiemsee, but afterwards restored, her to liberty.

[Sidenote: [892-894 A.D.]]

An unexpected ally now came to Arnulf’s assistance against Suatopluk. At that period there appeared in ancient Pannonia, first peopled by the Lombards, and at a later date by the Avars, a nation named in their own language Magyars, or Hungarians (strangers), from whom the country derived its name, or Huns, as they were at that time termed by the Germans, who imagined that they again beheld in them the Huns of former times. They were pagans, wild and savage in their habits, and extraordinary riders. Leo, the Grecian emperor, had called them to his assistance against the Bulgarians, and they at first settled under seven leaders (among whom the most distinguished was one named Arpad), each of whom erected a fort or _burg_, in the country known from that circumstance as Siebenburgen, but not long after turned westward and threatened Moravia. Arnulf formed an alliance with them, but never, as he has been accused, invited them into Germany, and Suatopluk, perceiving himself pressed on both sides, gladly remained at peace (894 A.D.).

ARNULF ENTERS ITALY

In Italy, Guido of Spoleto was victorious over Berengar of Friuli, and in 891 was crowned emperor by the pope, Stephen V. He died in 894, and his son Lambert also received the imperial crown, from Pope Formosus. Arnulf had been acknowledged emperor throughout the north, but not having been anointed or crowned by the pope, his right was liable to be disputed by Guido, and being entreated by both Berengar and Formosus, the latter of whom was held in derision by the insolent Spoletan, he resolved to march at the head of a powerful force into Italy. He has been blamed for quitting Germany, at that period not entirely tranquillised, and exposing himself and his army to the hot climate and diseases of Italy, and to the treachery of the inhabitants, which might easily have been turned upon themselves, and never could have endangered him on this side of the Alps. Arnulf’s visit to Italy, the first so-termed pilgrimage to Rome which was undertaken with the double aim of having the ceremony of an imperial coronation performed and of receiving the oath of fealty from his rebellious vassals, has been regarded as a misfortune, because visits to Rome became from this period customary, and ever proved disastrous to the empire. But judgment ought to be given according to the difference of times and circumstances. The union between the people of Lombardy and of Rome was not so close at that time as it became at a later period; no Italian national interest had as yet sprung up in opposition to that of Germany; the Italians were uninfluenced by a desire of separating themselves from the empire, as in later times, but were rather inclined to assert their right over it. Guido, who was connected with the Carlovingians, attempted to turn the separation that had taken place between the northern nations to advantage, and appropriated to himself the title of emperor; and, as far as these circumstances are concerned, Arnulf’s visit to Italy appears to be justified. The visits undertaken at a later period to Rome were, on the other hand, unjustifiable in every respect, by their imposing, as will hereafter be seen, a foreign ruler on Lombardy and Rome, whose union had become gradually stronger, and whose erection into an independent state, to which they were entitled by their geographical position and by their similarity in language and manners, was ever prevented by fresh invasions.

[Sidenote: [894-914 A.D.]]

Arnulf crossed the Alps, 894 A.D.. Ambrosius, graf of Lombardy, closing the gates of Bergamo against him, he took the city by storm, and hanged his faithless vassal at the gate. His further progress was impeded by the treachery of Eudes, the French king, who took advantage of his absence to arm against him, whilst Rudolf of upper Burgundy actually marched to the assistance of the Spoletans, and Arnulf was thus reluctantly forced to retrace his steps. He undertook a second expedition across the Alps in 896, and advanced into Tuscany, where he was amicably received by Adalbert, the faithless markgraf,[142] and by Berengar, who no sooner found themselves deceived in their expectation of making him subservient to their own interest and of easily outwitting him, than they assumed a threatening attitude. Arnulf, undismayed by the dangers with which he was surrounded, instantly marched upon Rome, whose gates were closed against him by the Spoletans, who successfully repelled every attack on the walls, and the emperor was on the point of retreating, when his soldiers, enraged at the sarcasms of the Italians who manned the walls, rushed furiously to the attack, and carried the city by storm. Lambert’s adherents fled, and the rescued pope placed the imperial crown on Arnulf’s head.[e] But Germany, divided and helpless, was in no condition to maintain her power over the southern lands; Arnulf retreated in haste, leaving Rome and Italy to sixty years of stormy independence. Arnulf died in 899 at Öttingen and was buried at Ratisbon.[a]

On Arnulf’s retreat, Lambert regained the sovereignty of Italy, and again reduced Berengar and Adalbert to submission.[143] He was assassinated in 898, and his adherents invited Ludwig, the son of Boson, into Italy. This prince was a Carlovingian, and grandson to Ludwig II, and at that time reigned over Burgundy. Bertha, the ambitious wife of Adalbert, who was residing at Lucca, and whose pride could not brook the idea that her son Hugo was merely count of Arles, and Ludwig’s vassal, plotted his destruction. In order to lull his suspicions, she gave him a friendly reception, but no sooner beheld him entirely in her power than she betrayed him to Berengar, who caused him to be deprived of sight (905 A.D.). Hugo then made himself master of lower Burgundy (Arelat), and after the assassination of Berengar (925) was placed by his mother on the throne of Italy. This country seemed destined to be governed by women; after the death of Bertha, a wealthy Roman, named Theodora, seized the reins of government, revived the ancient spirit of paganism, and drew all in her licentious train. One of her lovers she caused to be elected pope, as John X. Her daughter Marozia, who surpassed her mother in lewdness, married successively two of the sons of Bertha, first Guido, and then King Hugo, with whom she lived in the most profligate manner. She kept lovers, and he a harem of mistresses, to whom he gave the names of different heathen goddesses. Her son, Octavian, who became pope, as John XI, died suddenly, and Hugo was driven from his throne (946 A.D.) by his stepson, Alberic, the son of Guido and Marozia, who made Rome his seat of government, whilst a grandson of Berengar, Berengar II, reigned in upper Italy. Hugo’s former inheritance, and the Arelat or lower Burgundy, were united with upper Burgundy under Rudolf II, and even his Italian kingdom seemed forever lost to his remaining son, Lothair, whose wife, the beautiful Adelheid, was destined to decide the fate of Italy.

THE BABENBERG FEUD

[Sidenote: [895-946 A.D.]]

Arnulf had, during his lifetime, placed his son, Zwentibold, on the throne of Lorraine, in order to guard the frontiers of the empire against the Normans. This young prince entered into alliance with Eudes of Paris, whose daughter he married, and by his insolence drew upon himself the dislike of the clergy. His ill treatment of Rathod, archbishop of Trèves, also rendered him unpopular with the commonalty. A rebellion broke out in Lorraine, and he lost both his crown and his life in a battle that took place on the Maas (900 A.D.). Eudes’ reign in France was also of short duration. Charles the Simple was replaced on the throne by the bishops and the vassals, who found their advantage in the imbecility of their monarch. Charles created Regingar duke of Lorraine, and was forced to acknowledge Rollo, duke of Normandy.

In Germany the great vassals, and the bishops also, usurped the direction of affairs. Ludwig, the second son of Arnulf, surnamed the Child, on account of his being at that time only in his seventh year, was, by the intrigues of Otto, duke of Saxony, and of Hatto, archbishop of Mainz (Mayence), who sought to reign under his name, placed upon the imperial throne. The power of the bishops had become exorbitant without the aid of the popes, whose licentious conduct threatened at this period to endanger the church. Hatto, a man of daring courage and deep cunning, unprincipled and cruel, bore unlimited sway in France and in southern Germany, in which he was upheld by Otto, who sought to strengthen himself in Saxony, and to aggrandise his house by the aid of the church. Adalbert, the opponent of the Northmen, Henry and Adelhart, the sons of Henry of Babenberg, finding themselves neglected, and pressed from the north by the Saxons, from the west by the bishops, set themselves up in opposition. Rudolf, bishop of Würzburg, who was supported by Hatto, having obtained a considerable fief for his family by the abuse of his spiritual authority, Adalbert had recourse to arms, upon which Hatto, probably favoured by the ancient hatred of the rest of the vassals to the house of Babenberg, succeeded in having him put out of the ban of the empire.

Henry was killed, and Adelhart was taken prisoner and executed. Adalbert, meanwhile, made a vigorous resistance, and slew Graf Conrad, Bishop Rudolf’s brother, but was, erelong, closely besieged in his fortress of Bamberg. Hatto, finding other means unavailing, treacherously offered his mediation, and promised him a free and safe return to his fortress, if he would present himself before the assembled diet. Trusting to the word of the wily priest, the graf issued from his fort, at whose foot he was met by Hatto, who, in the most friendly manner, proposed their breakfasting together within the fortress before setting off on their journey. The graf assented, and returned with him to the fort; he then accompanied him to the diet, where Hatto declared himself exempted from his promise by his having restored the graf unharmed to his fortress for the purpose of taking his breakfast, and that now he was free to act as he deemed proper. The assembled vassals, upon this, unanimously sentenced Adalbert to death, and he was beheaded. Conrad, Bishop Rudolf’s nephew, was created duke of Franconia. This family of the Würzburg bishop was surnamed the Rothenburgers, from Rothenburg on the Tauber; their descendants acquired, at a later period, far greater celebrity under the name of the Saliers.

The treacherous policy of Bishop Hatto, however, made a deep impression upon the minds of the commonalty, among whom loyalty was still held in higher honour than the sacred head of the churchman, and historians relate that, whilst the dukes overlooked the conduct of the bishop and yielded to the outbreak of the popular dissatisfaction, Hatto’s name and the memory of his infamy were execrated and derided in popular ballads throughout Germany. His name represented the idea of hierarchical lust of power and avarice, and hence arose the legend that records his miserable death. It is said that, during a famine, a number of peasants who came to the bishop and begged for bread, were by his order shut up in a great barn and burned to death. From the ruins there issued myriads of mice, which ceaselessly pursued the wretched bishop, who vainly attempted to elude them, and who at length, driven to despair, fled for safety to a strong tower standing in the middle of the Rhine near Bingen, but here also the mice continued their pursuit, swam across the water, and devoured him. The tower is still standing, and is known at the present day as the Mäuseturm or mouse-tower. This example is a manifest proof that the popular fictions were founded upon fact, and clearly express the spirit of those times.[c]

THE HUNGARIAN INVASIONS

[Sidenote: [900-908 A.D.]]

It was during this time that the second great invasion of Teutons by Asiatics took place. The Huns of Attila were not more fierce nor more victorious than the wild Magyars who had succeeded to the inheritance of the “scourge of God” and had seized Hungaria. This second invasion, coming at the time when the Northmen were overrunning West Frankland and were still a danger on the northern coasts, affected the history of Germany and of Europe to an extent little seen by those who see no interest in the dim beginnings of modern society. For, as we shall see, it was this second great wave of barbarian invasion which forced upon the free country-dwelling Germans the rude discipline of feudalism and the protecting restraints of city walls. Viewed in this light the dark page of history before us grows luminous and significant.

The great Hungarian, more correctly, Magyar, movement began in the first year of the tenth century, upon the break-up of the Kingdom of Moravia.[a] The Hungarians continually made fresh conquests along the Danube. Cussal, one of their leaders, was, however, defeated in two great battles on the Enns and near to Vienna, and was left on the field (900 A.D.). Undismayed by these disasters, the Hungarians attacked the Carinthian Alps, whilst the Abodriti under Crito made an inroad into Saxony; but being again repulsed, they made an incursion into Italy and laid that country waste (902 A.D.). For a third time they appeared in such force, that Liutpold, the son of Ernst, the former markgraf, was defeated and killed near Presburg, and Ludwig, who was present in this battle, narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. They next invaded Thuringia (908 A.D.) where the new markgraf, Burkhard, after making a valiant defence, also fell. The following year (909 A.D.) they entered Franconia, where the markgraf Gebhard vainly attempted to stem their progress, and was killed. The death of these leaders at once proves the obstinate resistance made by the Germans, and the numerical superiority of the enemy.

[Sidenote: [908-911 A.D.]]

The Hungarian warrior was irresistible in the fury of his onset, invincible in battle by his contempt of death, untiring in pursuit, or secured from it by the rapidity of his horse. His blood-thirstiness, his inhuman treatment of the unarmed and helpless, his destructive and predatory habits, astonished and terrified the milder German, who regarded him in the light of an evil spirit, as the Goth had formerly regarded the Hun, until he became habituated to him. The suddenness with which these mounted hordes appeared in the heart of the country and again vanished, greatly strengthened the belief in their supernatural powers. They also acted with a sort of religious fanaticism, from a belief that every enemy they slew would be their vassal in a future state. They were so blood-thirsty, that they would make use of the corpses of their opponents as tables during their savage feasts. They bound the captured women and maidens with their own long hair, and drove them in flocks to Hungary.

Ludwig the Child, dismayed by these repeated disasters, concluded a treaty of peace with these people, and consented to pay them a ten years’ tribute. The Enns was declared the boundary of Hungary, and the wild Arpads erected their royal castle on the beautiful mountain on the Danube, on which the splendid monastery of Mölk now stands. The Germans were deeply sensible of the dishonour incurred by this ignominious tribute, of the danger of their internal dissensions, and of the misfortune of being governed by so impotent a monarch. It was even publicly preached from the pulpit, “Woe to the land, whose king is a child!” The youthful monarch died (911 A.D.) before he had even reigned, and with him ended the race of Charlemagne in Germany.

CONRAD THE FIRST (911-918 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [911-912 A.D.]]

The cessation of the Carlovingian line did not sever the bond of union that existed between the different nations of Germany, although a contention arose between them concerning the election of the new emperor, each claiming that privilege for itself; and as the increase of the ducal power had naturally led to a wider distinction between them, the diet convoked for the purpose represented nations instead of classes. There were consequently four nations and four votes; the Franks under Duke Conrad, whose authority nevertheless could not compete with that of the now venerable Hatto, archbishop of Mainz, who may be said to have been, at that period, the pope in Germany: the Saxons, Friedlanders, Thuringians, and some of the subdued Slavs, under Duke Otto: the Swabians, with Switzerland and Alsace, under different grafs, who, as the immediate officers of the crown, were named Kammerboten, in order to distinguish them from the grafs nominated by the dukes: the Bavarians, with the Tyrolese and some of the subdued eastern Slavs, under Duke Arnulf the Bad, the son of the brave Duke Liutpold. The Lothringians (people of Lorraine) formed a fifth nation, under their duke, Regingar, but were at that period incorporated with France.

The first impulse of the diet was to bestow the crown on the most powerful among the different competitors, and it was accordingly offered to Otto of Saxony, who not only possessed the most extensive territory and the most warlike subjects, but whose authority, having descended to him from his father and grandfather, was also the most firmly secured. But both Otto and his ancient ally, the bishop Hatto, had found the system they had hitherto pursued, of reigning in the name of an imbecile monarch, so greatly conducive to their interest, that they were disinclined to abandon it. Otto was a man who mistook the prudence inculcated by private interest for wisdom, and his mind, narrow as the limits of his dukedom, and solely intent upon the interests of his family, was incapable of the comprehensive views requisite in a German emperor, and indifferent to the welfare of the great body of the nation. The examples of Boson, of Eudes, of Rudolf of upper Burgundy, and of Berengar, who, favoured by the difference in descent of the people they governed, had all succeeded in severing themselves from the empire, were ever present to his imagination, and he believed that as, on the other side of the Rhine, the Frank, the Burgundian, and the Lombard, severally obeyed an independent sovereign, the East Frank, the Saxon, the Swabian, and the Bavarian, on this side of the Rhine, were also desirous of asserting a similar independence, and that it would be easier and less hazardous to found an hereditary dukedom in a powerful and separate state, than to maintain the imperial dignity, undermined as it was by universal hostility.

The influence of Hatto and the consent of Otto placed Conrad, duke of Franconia, on the imperial throne. Sprung from a newly arisen family, a mere creature of the bishop, his nobility as a feudal lord only dating from the period of the Babenberg feud, he was regarded by the church as a pliable tool, and by the dukes as little to be feared. His weakness was quickly demonstrated by his inability to retain the rich allods of the Carlovingian dynasty as heir to the imperial crown, and his being constrained to share them with the rest of the dukes; he was, nevertheless, more fully sensible of the dignity and of the duties of his station than those to whom he owed his election probably expected. His first step was to recall Regingar of Lorraine, who was oppressed by France, to his allegiance as vassal of the empire.

[Sidenote: [912-917 A.D.]]

Otto died in 912, and his son Henry, a high-spirited youth, who had greatly distinguished himself against the Slavs, erelong quarrelled with the aged bishop Hatto. According to the legendary account, the bishop sent him a golden chain, so skilfully contrived as to strangle its wearer. The truth is, that the ancient family feud between the house of Conrad and that of Otto, which was connected with the Babenbergers, again broke out, and that the emperor attempted again to separate Thuringia, which Otto had governed since the death of Burkhard, from Saxony, in order to hinder the over-preponderance of that ducal house. Hatto, it is probable, counselled this step, as a considerable portion of Thuringia belonged to the diocese of Mainz, and a collision between him and the duke was therefore unavoidable. Henry flew to arms, and expelled the adherents of the bishop from Thuringia, which forced the emperor to take the field in the name of the empire against his haughty vassal.

This highly unfortunate civil war was a signal for a fresh irruption of the Slavs and Hungarians. During this year the Bohemians and Sorbs also made an inroad into Thuringia and Bavaria, and in 913 the Hungarians advanced as far as Swabia, but being surprised near Ötting by the Bavarians under Arnulf, who on this occasion bloodily avenged his father’s death, and by the Swabians under the Kammerboten, Erchanger and Berthold, they were all, with the exception of thirty of their number, cut to pieces. Arnulf subsequently embraced a contrary line of policy, married the daughter of Geisa, king of Hungary, and entered into a confederacy with the Hungarian and the Swabian Kammerboten, for the purpose of founding an independent state in the south of Germany, where he had already strengthened himself by the appointment of several markgrafs, Rudiger of Pechlarn in Austria, Rathold in Carinthia, and Barthold in the Tyrol. He then instigated all the enemies of the empire simultaneously to attack the Franks and Saxons, at that crisis at war with each other (915 A.D.), and whilst the Danes under Gorm the Old, and the Abodriti (Obotrites), destroyed Hamburg, immense hordes of Hungarians, Bohemians, and Sorbs laid the country waste as far as Bremen.

The emperor was, meanwhile, engaged with the Saxons. On one occasion Henry narrowly escaped being taken prisoner, being merely saved by the stratagem of his faithful servant, Thiatmar, who caused the emperor to retreat by falsely announcing to him the arrival of a body of auxiliaries. At length a pitched battle was fought near Merseburg between Henry and Eberhard (915 A.D.), the emperor’s brother, in which the Franks were defeated, and the superiority of the Saxons remained, henceforward, unquestioned for more than a century. The emperor was forced to negotiate with the victor, whom he induced to protect the northern frontiers of the empire whilst he applied himself in person to the re-establishment of order in the south.

[Sidenote: [917-919 A.D.]]

In Swabia, Salomon, bishop of Constance, who was supported by the commonalty, adhered to the imperial cause, whilst the Kammerboten were unable to palliate their treason, and were gradually driven to extremities. Erchanger, relying upon aid from Arnulf and the Hungarians, usurped the ducal crown and took the bishop prisoner. Salomon’s extreme popularity filled him with such rage that he caused the feet of some shepherds, who threw themselves on their knees as the captured prelate passed by, to be chopped off. His wife, Bertha, terror-stricken at the rashness of her husband and foreseeing his destruction, received the prisoner with every demonstration of humility, and secretly aided his escape. He no sooner reappeared than the people flocked in thousands around him: _Heil, Herro! Heil, Liebo!_ (“Hail, master! Hail, beloved one!”) they shouted, and in their zeal, attacked and defeated the traitors and their adherents. Berthold vainly defended himself in his mountain stronghold of Hohentwiel. The people so urgently demanded the death of these traitors to their country that the emperor convoked a general assembly at Albingen in Swabia, sentenced Erchanger and Berthold to be publicly beheaded, and nominated Burkhard (917 A.D.), whose father and uncle had been assassinated by order of Erchanger, as successor to the ducal throne. Arnulf withdrew to his fortress at Salzburg, and quietly awaited more favourable times. His name was branded with infamy by the people, who henceforth affixed to it the epithet of “The Bad,” and the _Nibelungenlied_ has perpetuated his detested memory.

Conrad died in 918, without issue. On his death-bed, mindful only of the welfare of the empire, he proved himself deserving even by his latest act of the crown he had so worthily worn, by charging his brother Eberhard to forget the ancient feud between their houses, and to deliver the crown with his own hands to his enemy, the free-spirited Henry, whom he judged alone capable of meeting all the exigences of the state. Eberhard obeyed his brother’s injunctions, and the princes respected the will of their dying sovereign.

REIGN OF HENRY (I) THE FOWLER (918-936 A.D.)

The princes, with the exception of Burkhard and of Arnulf, assembled at Fritzlar, elected the absent Henry king, and despatched an embassy to inform him of their decision. It is said that the young duke was at the time among the Harz Mountains, and that the ambassadors found him in the homely attire of a sportsman in the fowling floor. He obeyed the call of the nation without delay, and without manifesting surprise. The error he had committed in rebelling against the state, it was his firm purpose to atone for by his conduct as emperor. Of a lofty and majestic stature, although slight and youthful in form, powerful and active in person, with a commanding and penetrating glance, his very appearance attracted popular favour: besides these personal advantages, he was prudent and learned, and possessed a mind replete with intelligence. The influence of such a monarch on the progressive development of society in Germany could not fail of producing results fully equalling the improvements introduced by Charlemagne.

[Sidenote: [919-936 A.D.]]

The youthful Henry,[144] the first of the Saxon line, was proclaimed king of Germany at Fritzlar (919 A.D.) by the majority of votes, and, according to ancient custom, raised upon the shield. The archbishop of Mainz offered to anoint him according to the usual ceremony, but Henry refused, alleging that he was content to owe his election to the grace of God and to the piety of the German princes, and that he left the ceremony of anointment to those who wished to be still more pious.[e]

The accession of Henry I is an event of the utmost importance in the history of Germany. From the days of Ludwig the German the eastern Carlovingians had been engaged upon protecting and welding together that eastern section of the empire which to-day we know as Germany. But they had ruled over the various German tribes by the right that Charlemagne had made for himself, and then the right of conquest. This domination of the Carlovingian kings of the Franks over the Germans died out in Arnulf. In the failure of Conrad’s reign the second great step was taken in severing the tie with the past. The domination of the eastern Franks was now to be rejected altogether, and with the substitution of the Luidolfings for the Carolings, the race of Wittekind succeeded to the inheritance that had been seized by Charles.[a]

THE UNIFICATION OF THE EMPIRE

[Sidenote: [916-936 A.D.]]

Before Henry could pursue his more elevated projects, the assent of the southern Germans, who had not acknowledged their choice of their northern compatriots, had to be gained. Burkhard of Swabia, who had asserted his independence, and who was at that time carrying on a bitter feud with Rudolf, king of Burgundy, whom he had defeated (919 A.D.) in a bloody engagement near Winterthur, was the first against whom he directed the united forces of the empire, in whose name he, at the same time, offered him peace and pardon. Burkhard, seeing himself constrained to yield, took the oath of fealty to the newly elected king at Worms, but continued to act with almost his former unlimited authority in Swabia, and even undertook an expedition into Italy in favour of Rudolf, with whom he had become reconciled. The Italians, enraged at the wantonness with which he mocked them, assassinated him. Henry bestowed the dukedom of Swabia on Hermann, one of his relations, to whom he gave Burkhard’s widow in marriage. He also bestowed a portion of the south of Alamannia on King Rudolf, in order to win him over, and in return received from him the holy lance, with which the side of the Saviour had been pierced as he hung on the cross. Finding it no longer possible to dissolve the dukedoms and great fiefs, Henry, in order to strengthen the unity of the empire, introduced the novel policy of bestowing the dukedoms, as they fell vacant, on his relations and personal adherents, and of allying the rest of the dukes with himself by intermarriage, thus uniting the different powerful houses in the state into one family.

Bavaria still remained in an unsettled state. Arnulf the Bad, leagued with the Hungarians, against whom Henry had great designs, had still much in his power, and Henry, resolved at any price to dissolve this dangerous alliance, not only concluded peace with this traitor on that condition, but also married his son Henry to Judith, Arnulf’s daughter (921 A.D.). Arnulf deprived the rich churches of great part of their treasures, and was consequently abhorred by the clergy, the chroniclers of those times, who, chiefly on that account, depicted his character in such unfavourable colours.[e]

With wonderful acuteness of perception Henry comprehended the situation and recognised in what way alone a union of the German tribes was possible; how, in other words, the existence of the east-Frankish, _i.e._, of the German kingdom, could alone be preserved. He took care not to follow the wrong lead of King Conrad; he struck out new paths for himself with ingenious and undaunted spirit. He did not wish to establish the authority of the state by the subjection of the single stems under one ruling one, as the Merovingians and after them the Carlovingians had done, nor to establish Saxon dominion according to Frankish rule; he did not plan to rule and administer the lands from one centre with the aid of the officials who were dependent on him alone, as had been the way of the Frankish kings. Only through a more liberal organisation of the realm, as Henry saw, could a union of the German people be maintained at the time. The ideal which presented itself to his mind was something as follows: each stem was to stand by itself as far as its own affairs was concerned, and was to rule itself according to old rights and tradition; it was to be ruled and led in times of war and peace by a duke to whom the counts and lords of the land owed military attendance and obedience. This duke was to settle the disputes among the lords of the land at his diets, was to preserve peace and protect his boundaries from the inroads of the enemy; but just as the dukes governed the single stems in the realm, so the king was to rule over all the lands of the empire; he was to be the highest judge and general of the whole people. So it was to be, and so it was.

In the idea which Henry conceived, the kingdom appeared almost as only an alliance of German stems under the leadership of a king jointly elected by them. And yet they were far from willingly recognising this leadership. Bavaria and Swabia had separated themselves from the kingdom for the moment: in the former Arnulf ruled, in the latter Burkhard, with wholly independent power; and Lorraine had been allied with the west-Frankish kingdom for years. Franconia and Saxony alone formed the kingdom at first; for the moment Henry’s power did not go beyond them. And although he as king was raised above Eberhard, still the latter as a duke stood practically on a level beside him. Just as Henry reserved for himself the full ducal power as he had always possessed it, so also in the Frankish lands it was preserved for Eberhard in the same way; the position which his family had won and established under Conrad’s rule was in no wise lessened. Never again did any disagreement break out between Henry and Eberhard; they remained allies until Henry’s death and the growing state was founded chiefly upon their accord. Henry’s thoughts, however, were not limited to Saxony and Franconia; from the very beginning they had been directed to the union of all the German tribes, and hence he made it his first business to bring all the stems which had once belonged to the east-Frankish kingdom to a recognition of his supremacy.

In the sixth year of his reign King Henry had accomplished the immense task of uniting all the German lands and tribes; he had succeeded in doing that for which King Conrad had striven so obstinately and yet so unsuccessfully. Not with haste and impatience, not with terror and the sound of arms, had he done it; but through a quiet, clear perception of the true position of things and that lauded pacific disposition which would not let him shed German blood against Germans for no purpose. Thus a bond of unity was woven around the German stems, which became more and more close in time and surrounded by which the Germans first came to a clear consciousness of their own nationality. The kingdom as it now stood appears almost like an alliance of states; but out of it grew quickly enough a powerful, united state under as strong a monarchy as those times could produce. Henry had reached the goal which the pope and bishops at the council of Altheim had set themselves and had not been able to reach--the unification of Germany; but he reached this goal by a wholly different road than the one those bishops had taken. Thus it was not they who laid the cornerstone of the German Empire, but the man who had refused to accept the crown from the hand of a priest.

Everything was accomplished almost in silence; a new order of things for centuries to come was established with ease--by magic, one feels inclined to say; endless confusion was seen to be solved in the simplest fashion. It was as when an unknown terror breaks upon a large number of people in the darkness of night--everything is thrown into a confusion which increases from moment to moment, until the sun shines out in the morning and its beams gild the fields: the confused masses then easily assort themselves, quiet returns, and the world beams again in clear sunshine. Henry’s clear spirit was the sun which turned the night of the German lands into day.

WARS AGAINST OUTER ENEMIES

[Sidenote: [924 A.D.]]

But of what use was all this building and creating if he could not succeed in enduringly protecting the empire against its outer enemies and above all against the Hungarians? However, in spite of the discouragement caused by repeated defeats, Henry did not lose faith in the strength of his people, and fortune favoured the courageous man. For it was fortune that led the Hungarians just at that time to spare the German lands of the hither Rhine for a longer space of time and to direct their attacks chiefly against Italy, the west-Frankish kingdom, and Lorraine. But in the year 924 they appeared again and turned towards Saxony. Everything whither they came was laid desolate. The castles and strongholds, the cloisters and churches, the dwellings of the poor peasants, were all reduced to ashes; old and young, men and women, were slaughtered; again by the clouds of smoke and the appearance of fire in the sky could the path be followed which was taken by the terrible enemy; again the people took refuge in the forests, on the tops of mountains, and in hidden caves. “It is better to be silent on this subject,” says Wittekind [the historian], “than to increase suffering by words.”

King Henry did not dare to meet the superior forces of the enemy in an open battle. He had learned to know what war with them meant at an early date, and he did not believe his army was able to face them. It is true that every free Saxon who had completed his thirteenth year was bound to service, and had to take up arms against an approaching enemy; the old military provisions of the Frankish kingdom were also in force according to the letter of the law, and according to them every free man who owned at least five hides of land had to serve personally in the militia, and the smaller landowners had to equip a fighter in common. But these provisions had fallen into disuse; hard times had decreased the number of freemen; the militia, seldom assembled, was formed of men knowing nothing of war.

Moreover, the Hungarians had to be met with cavalry, and although the Frankish feudal army consisted almost entirely of mounted knights, yet in Saxony cavalry service was still new and not widespread; the greatest part of the nobility here kept only poorly armed dependents who performed their military service on foot. Henry avoided a battle, therefore, and shut himself up with his faithful followers in his fortified castle Werla at the foot of the Harz, not far from Goslar. The favour of fortune again did not desert him. A prominent Hungarian was captured by the king’s men and brought before him. The captive stood in high favour with his people, and consequently ambassadors were sent at once to free him from the bonds of the enemy. Gold and silver were offered for him in large measure, but that was not what Henry sought. He wanted peace, only peace, and he even offered, if he should be granted a truce of nine years, not only to give back the captive but also to pay the Hungarians a yearly tribute. On these conditions the Hungarians, swearing to observe a truce of nine years, withdrew to their homes.

Larger fortified towns were at that time still unknown in Saxony and Thuringia; only on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, and beyond these rivers where the Romans had once lived, were there on German soil populous towns with fortified walls and towers, which, however, since the expeditions of the Normans and the Hungarian wars, lay mostly in heaps and ruins. The Saxons according to ancient custom still lived in single houses standing alone in the midst of their fields and meadows, or else they assembled in open villages. Only here and there arose royal palaces and castles of the nobles, only here and there were the enclosed seats of bishops, priests, and monks, the first gathering-places of a more active intercourse. The boundaries were also poorly protected; the strongholds which Charlemagne had once laid out had been mostly destroyed in the wars against the Danes and Wends. The land thus, without being able to offer any resistance, lay open to the inroads of the enemy, which could not be checked in the interior either, on account of the scattered settlements. The first necessity, therefore, seemed to Henry to be to enlarge the existing forts and fortify them more strongly, to lay out new strongholds so as to be able to assemble larger forces in secure places. This was especially imperative on the frontiers in order to repulse the enemy on the very threshold.

Henry had already succeeded in destroying the Serbs on the Saale, and at the same time the Wendian tribes which had forced their way across the middle Elbe had been driven back across the river. In these frontier regions, which had fallen to him as the victor, Henry had settled large numbers of his dependents and bound them to military service in return for larger or smaller fiefs. He had thus at the same time established military colonies on the conquered territory, and here, where everything was on a military footing, and in the neighbouring districts which stood mostly under the same leadership with the marks he had free hand to carry out his plans. In the same way King Edward of England had a few years before restored or newly built a long line of frontier forts, and thus secured his realm against the inroads of the enemy; perhaps Henry in his undertakings had the example of the Anglo-Saxons in mind.

Day and night people were now at work building in the frontier districts. House had to adjoin house, and court, court; everything was surrounded with walls and ramparts. The work went on without a moment’s pause. Henry encouraged the people to unaccustomed efforts, because he wished them to become hardened in times of peace, so that they would be better able to endure the privations of war. Thus there grew up in those districts settlements surrounded with walls and ramparts: smaller places were enlarged, destroyed fortifications restored; often large numbers of human habitations suddenly sprang up, where before only a simple hut had stood. At that time, Quedlinburg in the Harz was wholly rebuilt; Merseburg, which was always a place dear to the king, was enlarged and surrounded by a stone wall.

Henry at the same time opened at Merseburg an asylum for criminals; this was done in order to populate the town and make it capable of defending itself against the enemy. These suspicious characters lived in a suburb of Merseburg, whereas the citadel itself was occupied by more reliable dependents. These criminals were called the Merseburgans, and formed a troop of soldiery which Henry seems often to have used in especially dangerous enterprises. “It was,” says Wittekind[f] [the historian], “a band composed of robbers; for the king, who liked to be mild towards his subjects, exempted even thieves or robbers, when they were brave and warlike men, from their deserved punishment and caused them to settle in the suburb of Merseburg. He gave them fields and arms and ordered them to keep the peace with their countrymen; against the Wends, however, he let them make plundering expeditions as often as they pleased.” So strong was this Merseburg troop that a few years later it furnished 1,000 men for the war with Bohemia.

But also in other ways Henry tried to increase the population of the fortified towns. He commanded all diets, popular gatherings, and festivities to be held within the walls of the citadel; as often as the Saxons came together they were to assemble in the strongholds so that they might gradually become accustomed to life in enclosed places, which they still regarded as imprisonment. Here also he perhaps was following the example of King Edward, who in the same way ordered all commercial dealings to be conducted within the gates of the citadel. But the fortified places of Saxony and Thuringia were not only to provide the possibility of offering a strong resistance to a fresh attack of the enemy; they were at the same time to provide refuge and safety to all the inhabitants of the frontier regions. Consequently every ninth man had to move into the town to erect a dwelling for himself and his eight companions, and also to provide granaries and storehouses, since the third part of all the fruits of the field which were produced had to be delivered in the citadel and were there stored. The eight, however, who remained outside cultivated the field of the one within, sowed it and harvested it, and brought the harvest into his granaries. Without the citadel there could be no buildings, or only worthless ones, since these were destroyed at the first attack of the enemy.

His military provisions, so far as can be seen from the scanty records, dealt with feudal service in Saxony, which he compelled from now on to be rendered in horses and mounted soldiers. Henry remodelled the organization of the army and the conduct of war, and brought them into new lines which were followed by the Germans for a long time afterward.

[Sidenote: [924-929 A.D.]]

Henry was occupied four years with the ordering of all these things. “My tongue,” says Wittekind,[f] “cannot tell with what precaution and watchfulness he did everything at that time which could help to protect the fatherland.” As soon, however, as Henry knew that his army was in fighting trim, he used it to attack the Wend tribes (928). They were the nearest enemies of the empire and of Saxony, and at the same time less dangerous than the Hungarians; so that the war against them was considered the best school to prepare for the stronger enemy. The first attack was upon the Hevelli, a Wend tribe, which dwelt on both sides of the Havel and on the lower Spree. Several times they fought, and Henry conquered each time, penetrating finally to the chief stronghold of the tribe, the present Brandenburg. The city, at that time called Brennaburg, lay surrounded by the Havel. It was midwinter when Henry laid siege to it, and he pitched his camp on the ice. Ice, iron, and famine,--the three brought about the fall of Brennaburg, and with it the whole of the land of the Hevelli fell into the hands of the conqueror.

Henry next proceeded southward against the Daleminzi, against whom he had won his first laurels. They were familiar with the strokes of Henry’s sword and did not dare to meet him in open battle. They shut themselves up within their stronghold, Gana, but this also was taken on the twentieth day. Deadly hatred had long reigned between Wends and Saxons, which here demanded sanguinary sacrifices. The city was plundered, the grown men were killed, the children sold as slaves. Severe custom would have it thus, and the German has taken his word “slave” from the Slavs.

Henry also proceeded against the Czechs in Bohemia, whose lands adjoined those of the Daleminzi, with whom they were tribally related. Only since one generation had the tribe been ruled by one family, that of the Premyslids; Christianity had made some headway under this single rulership, although it found difficult entry among the stiff-necked tribe.

A more powerful resistance was to be expected from this numerous tribe, united under one rule, than from the other Slavic stems. Therefore the king called on Duke Arnulf for aid, and a Bavarian army advanced through the Bohemian forest, at the same time with the king, into the land of the Czechs. It was the first time that the Bavarians had given the Saxons military attendance. They penetrated clear into the centre of the country where Prague is located on the bank of the swift Moldau. Here the young Bohemian duke Wenceslaus, who had already accepted Christianity through the influence of his pious grandmother, Ludmilla, surrendered himself and his land to the king (929). He received it again in fief and from now on paid the Saxons a tribute, which perhaps already at that time, as later, consisted of 500 silver marks and 120 oxen. From that time on the kings of Germany demanded feudal service and obedience from the Bohemian princes, until finally the land itself at a much later period fell to the German princes.

[Sidenote: [929 A.D.]]

While the king himself was subjugating these Slavic stems, his counts had fought with success against the Wends living in the north. The Redarii living in the lake districts north of the Havel as far as the Peene were first conquered, then the Abodriti and the Wilzi who dwelt north and west of them clear to the shores of the Baltic. Within a short time the greatest part of the land between the Elbe and Oder was won for Saxon rule, but the hard will of the Wend tribes living in these districts was not broken and the blood of their relatives which had been shed cried for vengeance. First the Redarii arose in rage against German rule; they gathered together and fell upon Walsleben. The strongly fortified town was at that time well populated, but it could not defend itself against the superior numbers of the enemy. It was taken by assault and all its inhabitants were killed; not one saw the light of the coming day. This was a signal for a general uprising. The Wend tribes of the north arose to a man, to throw off the hated yoke of the Saxons.

Henry prepared quickly for battle and ordered Count Bernhard, to whom he had intrusted the guardianship of the Redarii, and Count Thietmar, to begin the war at once, by the siege of Lenzen, a stronghold which was in the hands of the Wends. The Saxon militia was assembled as well as possible in the general haste, and together with the war forces from the marks, was placed under Bernhard’s command. When Lenzen had been besieged for five days, it was announced by spies that an army of Wends was in the vicinity and that it would attack the Saxon camp at the fall of night. Bernhard at once assembled his warriors in his tent and ordered them to remain under arms the whole night. The crowd separated and each gave himself up to joy or sorrow, hope or fear, according to whether he desired the battle or not. Night came on; it was darker than usual, the sky covered with heavy clouds, and the rain fell in torrents. In such weather the courage of the Wends sank and they gave up the attack. When, however, the morning dawned, although the Saxons had been under arms all night, Bernhard decided to venture an attack himself, and gave the signal for battle. Thereupon all took an oath forgiving themselves their failings and each other their ancient feuds--such was the custom before a battle--and with a solemn oath swore to support and aid each other in the strife as they would their leaders. Then when the sun came up--the sky shone in clear blue after the storm of the night--they marched out of camp.

At the first assault Bernhard had to give way before the superior force of the enemy. But he noticed that the Wends had no more cavalry than he, although they had countless numbers of infantry which moved forward on the muddy ground only with great difficulty and was driven back by the force of the cavalry. Consequently he did not lose courage, and the confidence of himself and his followers increased when they saw that a dense steam went up from the wet garments of the Wends, whereas they themselves were surrounded with clearest light; it was as if the God of the Christians were fighting with them against the heathen. Again the signal for attack was given, and with a joyful war cry they charged on the ranks of the enemy. The Wends stood close together, and it was attempted in vain to break a path through their compact ranks; only on the right and left were a few isolated squads of Wends attacked, conquered, and killed. Much blood had already been shed on both sides and the Wends still kept their stand. Then Bernhard sent a messenger to Thietmar asking him to hasten to the help of the army, and the latter quickly sent a captain with fifty knights clad in armour, to attack the enemy from the side. With the rattle of armour this band charged like a tempest upon the Wends; their ranks wavered, and soon the whole army broke into the wildest flight. The sword of the Saxons raged in all parts of the field. The Wends tried to reach Lenzen, but in vain; for Thietmar had occupied all the roads. Thereupon many of them in despair plunged into a neighbouring lake, and those whom the sword had spared found death in the waves. Not one of the infantry escaped and very few of the cavalry. Eight hundred were taken captive; they had been threatened with death and they all found death on the following day. More than one hundred thousand Wends were said to have perished. The Saxons also suffered severe losses and lost many a noble man from their army. With this victory the war was ended. The battle was fought on September 4th, 929; Lenzen surrendered the next day. The inhabitants laid down their arms and asked only for their lives; this was granted them, but they had to leave the city naked. Their wives and children, their slaves, their possessions--all fell into the hands of the conquerors.

[Sidenote: [929-933 A.D.]]

Bernhard and Thietmar won great renown above all the German people, because they had won a glorious victory over an innumerable army of the detested Wends with a comparatively small force collected in haste. The king received them with the greatest honour, and from his mouth their deeds received the highest tribute. Other joyful sounds mixed with the jubilee of victory. Just at that time Henry was celebrating the marriage of his eldest son Otto. He had chosen a life companion for him from the royal family of the tribally related Anglo-Saxons; the beautiful Editha, daughter of King Edward and a sister of King Athelstan, who at that time ruled England with a strong hand, was to be led to the altar by Otto. Athelstan had felt himself so flattered by Henry’s suit that he sent over to Germany not only Editha, but also her sister Elgiva; Henry and Otto might choose between the two. Accompanied by Athelstan’s chancellor Thorketul, the princesses sailed up the Rhine as far as Cologne, where they were met by Henry’s ambassadors. Editha remained the chosen one and the marriage was celebrated at once with great pomp (930). As a rich dowry from her husband Editha received Magdeburg and many beautiful estates in Saxony.

But the nine years of the truce with the Hungarians were now nearing their end and war was again threatened with these most terrible enemies of the empire. Henry had made good use of his respite. Saxony was protected by firm strongholds, the king had at his disposal an army experienced in war and faithfully attached to him; it was now time to measure swords with the old enemy. It was not long until the ambassadors of the Hungarians appeared to demand the tribute as usual, but they returned this time with empty bags. Thereupon the mounted bands of the Hungarians saddled quickly, and countless swarms took their way towards the west through the land of the Daleminzi; but the latter knew that Henry was prepared for war, and instead of the demanded tribute they scornfully threw a fat dog before the enemy. However angry the Hungarians were at this insult, they nevertheless did not stop for revenge, but hurried on to the land of Thuringia, which they laid desolate in the winter of 932-933. When Thuringia could no longer support the large numbers of the enemy, a part of the army proceeded further west in order to attack Saxony from another side.

[Sidenote: [933-934 A.D.]]

Henry had already collected a strong force of cavalry from Saxony and Thuringia and had ordered out the militia. Also from Bavaria and the other lands subject to him, many knights, it is related, had hurried to his standard. Quietly he awaited the moment when the countless swarms of the enemy should separate. Scarcely, however, had that troop separated and started towards the west, than Saxons and Thuringians attacked it impetuously. In a sanguinary battle the leaders of the enemy fell and their hordes fled panic-stricken in all directions. Many perished from the winter frosts, others died of hunger; a large number fell into captivity.

The other, larger part of the Hungarian army, however, which had remained in the east, in Thuringia, had in the meanwhile been informed that there was a castle in the neighbourhood where lived a sister of the king--she was born to Duke Otto out of wedlock and had married a Thuringian named Wido--in which there was much gold and silver. Consequently they at once set out and assaulted the castle. They would have taken it at the first attack if the fall of night had not put an end to the battle. Scarcely, however, were their arms at rest, when they heard of the defeat of their companions, of the victory of the Saxons, and of how King Henry was advancing against them with a powerful army. They lit great bonfires to collect their scattered troops and at once began their retreat.

Henry was camped that same night not far from the Hungarians in a place which was then called Riade, perhaps the present Rietheburg, in the golden meadow on the Unstrut, where many strongholds of the Luidolfings were scattered on all sides. When morning broke and it was learned how near the enemy was, the king determined to attack them at once and placed his army in battle array. He exhorted his followers to put all their trust in God, and declared that he would be with them to-day as in so many other battles; the Hungarians were enemies of the empire and of them all, they must fight to avenge their fatherland and their fathers; the enemy would soon give way if they would only charge bravely and strike boldly. Then the heart of each one in the army swelled with courage; they all saw with joy how their king hurried about on his horse, now in front, now in the middle, and now on the last ranks of the army, and how everywhere the flag of the archangel Michael, the chief banner of the empire, waved before him. The king was afraid that when the Hungarians saw the large numbers of armed horsemen of the Saxons they would not keep their stand but would break apart and thus frustrate a decisive battle. Consequently he sent on ahead a small force of one thousand Thuringian infantry with only a few armed knights. He thought that when this force appeared the Hungarians would at once give battle and then be led on, clear up to the battle ranks of his army. And so it happened. The Hungarians ventured close to the king’s army, but as soon as they caught sight of the troops of knights they turned and fled. And they fled so rapidly that, although they were pursued for two miles, only a few of them were captured or killed; the king, however, stormed their camp and freed all prisoners. It was the 15th of March, 933; after it, so long as Henry lived, no Hungarian was seen on German soil.

When this memorable victory had been fought, there was no end to the jubilee in the army and in the whole Saxon land. As father of the fatherland Henry greeted his army and his people; they extolled him as world-ruler and emperor almost as if they had had a premonition of the greatness and power which were reserved for his son Otto. He, however, gave God the glory for the victory; he attributed his success to divine aid alone, and the tribute which he had been accustomed to pay to the enemy he now gave to the church in order to give it to the poor. Far over the whole world spread the renown of the great Saxon king, who had been the first to conquer the much-feared Hungarians in a great battle and had driven them out of his land.

And Henry’s sword was to reach even the last enemy of the Saxons--the Danes. The latter had long since overstepped the bounds which the emperor Charles had once marked out for them. Not only the frontier district between the Eider, the Treene, and the Schlei had they taken in possession, but also, after the unfortunate battle in which Duke Bruno fell, they had seized all the land north of the Elbe, with the aid of the Wends, and had with fire and sword laid waste the fruitful districts of the Holsteins. The whole German population which had settled here was crowded over the Elbe, and they were hardly safe from the plundering of the enemy even on the hither side of the broad stream. It was only gradually that the Danes were driven back so that the Saxons could return to their old seats across the Elbe. But the Germans were also harassed by the Danes from a different quarter; bands of northern pirates landed continually on the coasts of Friesland and penetrated far into Saxony and Lorraine.

[Sidenote: [934-936 A.D.]]

The Danes seem often to have been overpowered, since we learn that in 931 Henry baptised the kings of the Abodriti and of the Danes. But the struggle was not ended. Therefore, the old hero rose once again at the end of his life and led his army across the boundaries of the Danes (934). Their king, Gorm the Old, although he was skilled in many battles as a successful fighter, and had first united the kingdom of the Danes on the islands in Skane and Jutland, yet did not dare to meet the conqueror of the Hungarians in an open battle. He sued for peace and promised to accept any conditions. Henry re-established the old boundaries of the empire, by giving the abandoned districts as a fief to Saxon warriors; he gave these northern districts a similar military organisation to the marks captured from the Wends. The districts between the Eider, the Treene, and the Schlei, called later the mark of Schleswig, remained in the German Empire until Conrad II, nearly a hundred years later, ceded to the Danes the land as far as the Eider. This cession seemed to be favoured by circumstances, but it was not a fortunate act, since it displaced the boundaries which Charlemagne had established and Henry had restored.[b]

The same year (934 A.D.) a friendly meeting took place between him and the kings of France and Burgundy on the Char, a tributary of the Maas. Henry afterwards planned a visit to Rome, but died without accomplishing that project (936 A.D.), when at the height of his splendour and renown. He was buried at Quedlinburg, his favourite residence.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[140] [The form “Louis” is very commonly met with, but we prefer the German.]

[141] [_i.e._ Emperor Ludwig II; Louis le Débonnaire being the emperor Ludwig I.]

[142] Bertha, the wife of Adalbert (who was blindly guided by her), a woman of an intriguing disposition, was the daughter of Lothair II and of Waldrada. Her first husband was Theobald, count of Arles, by whom she had Hugo, afterwards king of Italy. Sigonius relates the manner in which all the intrigues of those times in Italy and Burgundy were conducted by this woman.

[143] He took the latter prisoner in a stable, and said to him, “Your wife would have made of you either a king or an ass, now you have become the latter.”

[144] [Known to Germans as Heinrich der Vogler.]