"I.gwttteft Baokir for- pie fojuri^gtlf n. & Co.. London, ffewlbrk, Bomb ay & Calcutta-. GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES, 476-1250 BY WILLIAM STUBBS, D.D., FORMERLY BISHOP OF OXFORD, AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD EDITED BY ARTHUR HASSALL, M.A. STUDENT, TUTOR, AND SOMETIME CENSOR OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD WITH TWO MAPS LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1908 All rights reserved PREFATORY NOTE The absence of satisfactory histories of Germany in the English language is as keenly felt now as it was when Bishop Stubbs was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. The present volume originated in a series of Lectures delivered in Oxford, and form a very striking sketch of the history of Germany from the days of Clovis to the thirteenth century. The reader will at once recog nise that each chapter bears the impress of a master hand, and is written by one whose knowledge of the subject was profound. Being originally composed in the form of lectures, the chapters are so arranged as to prove attractive to the general reader, while the student will recognise that he has presented to him the results of laborious investigation and of a very intimate know ledge of the history of Germany. The character of each German monarch is sketched with that skill and accuracy which is so remarkable a feature of Bishop Stubbs' historical writings. To many who associate the name of Bishop Stubbs with English History, it may be a surprise to find that he was as conversant with the history, political and constitutional, of Germany as he was with that of the British Isles. In view of the want of a Short History of Germany in the early Middle Ages, Bishop Stubbs, some thirty- five years ago, had in contemplation the publication vi PREFATORY NOTE of a volume somewhat on the lines of the present one. I am confident that this volume will be welcomed not only by students in the Universities and in University Colleges, but also by all who are interested in the history of Germany. ARTHUR HASSALL. CONTENTS PAGE Introductory Chapter . . i CHAPTER I Germany at the opening of the Middle Ages — The Migrations — The Franks — The Alemanni — The Bavarians — The Saxons — Clovis — The Lombards — Neustria and Austrasia — Fall of the Merovingians — Germany ...... .... CHAPTER II Germany under the later Merovings — Their fall — Charles Martel — The conversion of Germany — The reign of Pipin — The reign of Charles the Great — The Saxon Wars — Annexation of Bavaria — The Huns and the Avars — The character of Charles the Great — A German by birth — The Celtic character of Neustria — The German character of Austrasia 19 CHAPTER III Charles the Great as Emperor — The year 800 — The question of the succession — Charles' plans — The organisation of his empire — The reign of Lewis the Pious — The division of the empire on his death — The birth of Charles the Bald — The division of Verdun, 843 — The reign of Lewis the German, 843-876— Feudalism ... 39 CHAPTER IV Feudalism in Germany — Feudalism in France — The royal power m France and Germany — The Karoling States — Lotharingia — Arnu f king and emperor, 887-899, and his son Lewis, 900-911 — Tht Hungarians — Otto of Saxony and Conrad of Franconia — Importanc s of Conrad's reign — Advent of the Saxon emperors ... -59 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER V PAGE The reign of Henry the Fowler — Hungarian wars — His internal policy — The towns — The marks — His death and character — Otto I. — The first Civil War — Henry the Quarreller's conspiracy — The reorganisa tion of the Duchies — The Second Civil War — Otto's imperial position — Battle of Lechfeld — The Bohemians and Danes — The character of Otto's Empire ........ 79 CHAPTER VI Europe in the middle of the tenth century — The political condition of Italy — Otto I. and the Papacy — Death of Otto, 973 — His character and work — The fatal connection of Germany and Italy — Otto II. , 973-983 — His character — Otto III., 983-1000 — The year 1000 . 98 CHAPTER VII Otto III. — His coronation at Rome — Second and third visits to Italy — His last visit to Italy, 1000 — His death, 1002 — Condition of the Empire — Accession of Henry II. — His Wars with the Bohemians, Poles, and Flemish — England's connection with Lorraine and Flanders — Henry's visit to Italy — Coronation at Rome — Henry's third visit to Rome — His death and character — His relations with the German Church — Ecclesiastical organisation of Germany . . 116 CHAPTER VIII England and Germany compared— Development of feudalism in England, Germany, and France— Conrad the Salic, 1 024- 1039— Conrad visits Italy— Coronation at Rome— The Edict making fiefs hereditary, 1037— Changes in the great Duchies— Henry III., 1039-1056— Characteristics of the English, French, and German nations . . 134 CHAPTER IX Henry III. and Otto III., their characters— The influence of Hildebrand —Henry III.'s European position— Criticism of Hallam's charges against Henry III.-The wars of Henry III.— His death— Accession of Henry IV.— His character— Quarrel with the Papacy— Growth of papal influence— The Saxon revolt— The beginning of the In vestiture contest— Canossa and after— War between Henry and Gregory VII.-Death of Gregory VIL-War in Germany-Death of Henry IV., 1 106 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER X PAGE The importance of the reign of Henry V. — Revolt of Conrad — Character of Henry V. — His coronation at Rome — His triumph over Pope Paschal — The Concordat of Worms, 1 122 — Changes in the German Duchies — Henry's visit to Italy — German wars — French war — Henry's death, 1125 — Election of Lothair II. — Papal schism — Lothair's relations with the Normans of Sicily — Henry the Proud — Importance of Lothair's reign — Election of Conrad III., 1138 — Results of the death of Henry the Proud — The Second Crusade — Death of Conrad III., 1 1 52 — His character . . . . 173 CHAPTER XI The accession of Frederick Barbarossa — Condition of Italy — The situa tion in Germany — Frederick's first and second expeditions to Italy — The diet at Roncaglia — Frederick's later expeditions to Italy — The Lombard League — Henry the Lion — His quarrel with Frederick — Downfall of Henry the Lion — The results of the quarrel — The power of Frederick Barbarossa — Frederick's marriage with Beatrice of Burgundy — His policy to the Slavs — His eastern expedition and death, 1190 — Frederick's character 194 CHAPTER XII The reign of Henry IV., 1190-97 — His marriage, 1195 — The attempt to make the imperial dignity hereditary — Philip of Swabia crowned king — Otto of Saxony also crowned king as Otto IV. — Death of Philip, 1208 — Otto IV. emperor — Frederick II. crowned king, 1215 — His death, 1250 — The geographical and national divisions of Germany — The connection between England and Germany — The government of Germany — The German dukedoms — Growth of the hereditary idea — Gradual extinction of the dukedoms — The out lines of modern Germany to be seen in the Middle Ages — The relations of Germany and Italy ....... 214 Index .... 233 MAPS Europe at the Death of Charles the Great, 814 Frontispiece Europe in the Twelfth Century .... To face page 194 b SOME AUTHORITIES Bryce : Holy Roman Empire. Bury : History of the Later Roman Empire. Chalandon : Alexis Ier. Comnene. Davis : Charlemagne. Einhard : Vita Karoli Magni. Finlay : History of Greece. Fisher : The Medieval Empire. FUSTEL de Coulanges : Histoire des Institutions Politiques de l'Ancienne France. Gibbon : Decline and Fall. Giesebrecht ¦ Gesch. der deutschen Kaiserzeit. GREGOROVIUS : Gesch. der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter. Gregory of Tours : Historia Francorum. Hodgkin : Italy and her Invaders. Theodore the Goth. Lavisse : Histoire de France. Lavisse et Rambaud : Histoire Generale. Luchaire : Les Communes Frangaises. Milman : Latin Christianity. Nitzsch : Gesch. deutschen Volkes. Oman : The Dark Ages. Otto of Freising: Gesta Friderici I. Paul the Deacon : Historia Langobardorum. Ranke : Weltgeschichte. Tout : The Empire and the Papacy. Waitz : Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, Vol. II. ZELLER : Histoire d'ltalie. Historical Maps, ed. Poole (Clarendon Press). CHRONOLOGY: Hassall, "A Handbook of European History Chronologically Arranged." GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER Next to the study of the history of our own country, nearest in the degree and in the character of the interest with which it should be regarded, comes the history of Germany. I say comes, because in my own case I have found it so. I should perhaps say more generally, should be expected to come. For it is a melancholy fact that it does not in the ordinary process of education take this place. It might be expected that the natural advance upon the acquired knowledge of English history, the origin, the development of the institutions, and the vicissitudes of external influences which have made our nation and ourselves what we are, would be followed up by an attempt to learn the history and developments which, from the same germs, have produced so very different a nation in our German kinsmen : that we should be tempted to study the initial, fundamental basis of Teutonic institutions, which we trace in all the developments of English fortunes, in the development of German life as well ; to account for the circumstances that have made two so different trees grow apparently from the same seed if not from an identical root. There is very much a priori to draw us to German history in this view, and the study would involve, at least for the 2 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES knowledge of its outline, no. very recondite research. We can see at a glance how in England every modifying influence that affected the free development of German institutions transplanted to the island soil, was still Teutonic in itself : Jute, Angle, Saxon, Dane, Norwegian, Norseman, all were Teutonic in origin, branches of one great tree of nations, springing from the stem at different heights from the ground, and therefore possessing their natural institutions, at different stages of their develop ment, at the various periods at which they became able to affect one another directly. In Germany itself it was otherwise. Not only was the education of the various tribes which composed the nation different from that which the conquerors of Britain had gone through, but the influences by which the nationality and the national institutions were tempered were alien to the original stock. Germany passed through a period of discipline, in her contests with Rome, which our forefathers escaped. The Angles and Saxons, from whom we spring, neither met the Roman armies in the field nor supplied the raw material for their legionaries. The impression made upon Germany, first by her struggle with Rome, then by her partial subjection and consolidation under Roman principles, then by her emancipation from Roman in fluences exerted directly by Romans, an emancipation won by the arms of nations, akin in origin to her own, but falling quickly into the grooves of Roman law and civilisation : an emancipation crowned by the work of the Great Charles in taking to himself the empire under which the kindred races had so long groaned, and against which the triumphant barbarians had so fiercely struggled, succumbing to the genius of the South in the midst of their victory : the reconquest of independent INTRODUCTORY 3 Germany by the Romanised Teutons, the Franks of the empire, and the revindication by itself of the ancient nationality, although unable to eliminate the forms and laws and institutions of the Latin empire, in the long struggles of the Middle Ages ; — the impression made, I say, by these changes of fortune, has been such as to render the pure German of to-day a very different being from the pure Englishman, although 'the one may be as purely Teutonic in blood and character and even in the fundamental principles of his constitution as the other. From an investigation of these things much that would be of the greatest interest to Englishmen might naturally be expected. Again from the very association of the two nations in history we might gather much more : the strange phenomenon of the fertility of the transplanted genius of the race, repaying with interest its debt to the Motherland; the many ways in which England has acted upon Germany ; the fact that in the free English air, German literature first became vocal, and that the English language is the earliest literary language of the common stock, if we except the Gothic Bible of Ulfilas which belongs to a different stage, a different region, a different stock of Teutonism. From England a great part of Germany received Christianity : from England Germany received in common with the rest of the Northern Empire much of the learning and knowledge that lighted her throughout the Middle Ages : from England Germany received the inquiring and dis puting spirit which ended in the Reformation. Wycliffe was the predecessor of Huss as Huss was the predecessor of Luther ; and Wycliffe was, so far as his education, his place as a doctor and a reformer went, a product of influences, political, literary, religious, which had been working from time immemorial in England, and which 4 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES proved their kindredship to the Teutonic genius by the readiness with which they spread in Germany when the impulse was once given. The actual support given to the Reformation in Germany by England, the close alliances, formed with German states during the last three centuries, all arise almost from this and were pregnant of effects on the political state of both countries. The fact that it is from English pseudo-philosophy that the modern German pseudo-philosophy has arisen, and that in the writings of English philosophers, the religious schools of Germany have sought the antidote to the mental poison thus insinuated — all these things are full of common interest. Nor are we to shut our eyes to the other side ; to the advantages gained to England by German commerce, by German ingenuity : — the dis coveries of science, the invention of the printing-press, the enormous industry and apparatus of German investigation. All these things might seem to make German history a study almost of necessity to an Englishman wishful to acquaint himself with the influence and vicissitudes of his own country in European politics. And yet, strange as it seems, we are yet without a satisfactory History of Germany in the English language. Certain episodes of it have been written, and brilliantly written, by Englishmen. Carlyle's Life of Frederick the Great, immoral and one-sided as it most certainly is, is yet a work of great genius, of enormous industry, and of corresponding interest. But as a picture of German history it stands almost by itself ; for Robertson's Charles V.,1 and the lucid, eloquent, touching chapters of Milman on the Church History of the land, are really of European rather than German scope, and embrace This has now been superseded by Mr, Armstrong's Charles V. INTRODUCTORY 5 many features, and those the most conspicuous, which are distinctly non-German, and throw the true Teutonic history into darkness and obscurity. The connection of the Empire with Germany has also had the same effect as the connection of Church History with German History. Men, in attempting to study the life of Germany, have been insensibly led off to study the history, of the Empire, a subject possibly more akin to the studies for which our early classical education both in history and language have qualified us, than that of the race, however near akin and united in political and religious affinity, whose annals have to be learned through the medium of a language which must, to be acquired at all, be made the subject matter of a distinct and new industry. Again, the study of French and Italian have until of quite late years shut out the study of German as a necessary part of the education of an accomplished man ; and, with the study of the language, the interest of the history has been excluded. So long as German was a language which did not, as it did not until the end of the eighteenth century, claim a classical character or to have a literature of its own, that was not to be wondered at ; but now Germany has a literature, if not as ancient, at least as well worth reading as that of France and Italy ; and her tongue has become, from a variety of reasons, the key to a treasury of every sort of human knowledge. Even history, even English history itself, cannot be now examined, with a due regard to the latest scholarly investigation, without recourse to German writers, such as Pauli, Gneist, Ranke, and the enthusiastic band of fellow workers. Yet, with the increased study of German as a language, we have not yet arrived at an increased and intelligent 6 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES study of the history of our Teutonic kinsmen : a history which should be as interesting to us as our own is to our transatlantic cousins. For after all, the divergency created by the expanse of time that lies between English and German history, is not greater than that which is created by the distance in space and still more in ideas between us and the men of the United States. It is not indeed true of us that German history is the history of Englishmen, as English history is the history of Americans ; but it is true that the rapid extension and development of American ideas, since the Declara tion of Independence, has so created a history for them, that in less than a century we shall find ourselves more closely akin, even in history and historical interests, with Germany than with America. CHAPTER I Germany at the opening of the Middle Ages — The Migrations — The Franks — The Alemanni — The Bavarians — The Saxons — Clovis — TheLombards — Neustria and Austrasia — Fall of the Merovingians — Germany. Germany at the Opening of the Middle Ages. — The Ger many of modern history, the Germany of the Holy Roman Empire, lies partly within and partly without the general limits of the ancient or unholy Roman Empire. Taking as a rough limit the line of the Rhine and the Danube as the boundaries of the actual posses sions of imperial Rome, it will be seen that all Germany east of the Rhine and north of the Danube remained practically unsubdued, or if partially subdued, uncon solidated. Great part of modern Germany lay outside the empire, and the part that lay inside it was counted to belong to provinces not in themselves radically German ; the portion of Germany west of the Rhine was accounted a part of Gaul ; and the German regions south of the Danube were for the most part regarded as Illyrian. The Germans of the heart of Germany had withstood successfully the attacks of Rome, although they had, it would seem almost of necessity, been leavened by her civilisation, and affected, after the adoption of Christianity in the empire, by the influences of her religion. Cologne, Trier, and Mainz, the three great metropolitical sees of later Germany, were Roman cities, sometimes the seats of emperors themselves ; and all had churches, founded long before the general evan- 8 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES gelisation of Germany by Roman Christians. They were akin in habit and institutions to the churches of Gaul, and continued to be leavened by the same secular spirit throughout the Middle Ages ; the Archbishops of the three great Roman cities were the spiritual electors of the heads of the Holy Roman Empire. The Migrations. — It would be impossible, and useless if it were possible, to give in detail the migrations of the different tribes of Germany during the decline of the empire, the period that intervenes between the Germania of Tacitus and the foundation of the dominion of Clovis. They were partly the result of the state of societies emerging from barbarism : of the wandering of hunting tribes : the choosing of permanent settle ment by pastoral tribes : the invasions of warlike ones : the constant draining of the more distant lands towards the empire, which by conquering and devastating regions far too wide for it to hold, was constantly leaving border lands open to the incursion of neighbour tribes, whose movements involved the movements of their neighbours behind them. So the Lombards are found moving down from the Baltic to the Danube, and the Vandals in the same way, if indeed the two sets of Vandals are really identical. After the fall of Rome before the Goths, the Huns, and the Vandals, the Eastern barbarians of kindred race experienced this result even more than the Western. Hence that Arian Christianity which had been implanted among the Goths by Ulfilas did not penetrate the nations of Western Germany to any great extent, but, being carried southwards by the Eastern barbarians, affected only the Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians : it did not affect the Franks, or the Saxons, or any of the more northern and western tribes to whom modern Germany, THE FRANKS 9 and indeed modern Europe, owe their history. It would be impossible to load the memory with the minutice of the internal changes of position and relation of the tribes of interior Germany between the time of Tacitus and that of Clovis ; but it is necessary to have some definite idea of the relation of the nations at the latter periods, for it is a key to most of the mediaeval history, and cannot be dispensed with. As we lay the foundation of the history of France by learning the position and relations of the Gallo-Romans, the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Franks, and the Alemanni, so we lay the foundation of the history of Germany by discriminating the positions and histories of the Franks, the Saxons, the Bavarians, and the Alemanni or Swabians. The Franks. — I. The Franks, as is learnt from Gibbon, first emerge from total darkness as a strong people in the reign of the Emperor Gallienus : from such obscurity and in such strength that it is impossible to ascribe the phenomenon to hypothetic migration, and is most reasonable to imagine that they were a confederation, or, as that word does not approve itself to modern authorities, who are strongly against the idea of federation, a combination resulting from the aggrandise ment of a particular tribe, and known under a new name ; the association, under the new name of Franks or Freemen, of the ancient Teutonic inhabitants of the lands which they then occupied in full force. This confederate or conglomerate character belonged also to the Alemanni, and in all probability to the Saxons ; and must be taken for granted as an obscure but ascer tained fact. This Frank people, into whose history it is not necessary to go further, was divided into two great branches, themselves possibly distinct agglomera- 10 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES tions with distinct history, with laws and institutions of their own, as soon as they become persona of history ; the Salians, who occupied the present Netherlands from the sea to the river Meuse ; and the Ripuarians, who inhabited the country between the Meuse and the Rhine, and the eastern bank of the Rhine as well, as far up the stream as Cologne. Beyond them lay the Saxons of Westphalia, while south of Cologne the Franks extend widely towards interior Germany, with the Main for their boundary, and the duchy of Fran- conia or of the East Franks remained bearing their name down to the collapse of the empire in 1806. The Alemanni or Swabians. — II. The confederation or agglomeration of the Alemanni, a similar mixture and reappearance under a collective name of the tribes of the Suevi, had been forced south about the time of Caracalla. By a variety of adventures, partly peaceful and partly aggressive, they established themselves in the south-west of Germany between the Saxon and Frank nationalities to the north and the Burgundians and Roman provinces to the south ; from Mainz to the Lake of Constance to the west, as far as the river Lech to the eastward. They thus occupied Eastern or German Switzerland, as it is now called, and that part of modern Germany which formerly bore the name of Swabia, and which is now roughly represented by the kingdom of Wiirtemberg and the southern part of the Grand Duchy of Baden. Western or French Switzerland was a part of the kingdom of the Bur gundians. The name of Alemannia continued to be given in legal documents throughout the Middle Ages to these lands, including Alsace and Swabia, but to all intents and purposes the name of Swabia and the Swabians succeeds historically to its importance at an THE BAVARIANS n early period, the name of Alemannia being given some times in Latin and almost universally in French to the whole of Germany. The Bavarians. — III. Beyond the Lech to the east lay the Bavarians, Boioarians — a strong and important nation who, like the Alemanni, had been forced into the southern and western position as compared with their original seats at the opening of history. The Bavarians represent the Marcomanni, or some more mixed agglomeration of tribes who drove the Boii, a Gallic tribe, out of Bohemia, and becoming Boiarii [Boi-wara] moved on into the modern Bavaria under pressure by the Czechs. Then as now, the German nations were bounded on the east by vast hordes of Slavonians, and somewhat later by Tartaric or Turanian tribes, who were gradually driving them westward, as for the last few centuries they have themselves been driven eastward. Under the names of Antes and Slavonians, Slavonic tribes occupied Poland and modern Prussia ; as Wends they pressed on the Saxons in Mecklenburg, as Czechs on the Boians in Bohemia, and as Serbs and Slavs in Hungary on the Illyrian provinces of Rome. The Slavonians were themselves pressed on the east, and sometimes pene trated by the more distant Tartaric races, from which sprang the Magyars of later Hungary. Bohemia was the historical home of the Boii or Bavarians ; forced before the Czechs, they moved west and south into the modern Bavaria and Austria, and there under their king, Theodo the Agilolfing, they were established by Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, as a bulwark of his empire against the aggressions of the Franks. The whole south of Germany, as far as the South Tyrol southwards and Hungary eastwards, was thus Bavarian, 12 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES and continued to bear the name until the March of Austria was created out of the eastern half of it, and the territory assumed its modern and present dimensions. The Saxons. — IV. The Saxons, who, like the Franks, had probably migrated little within the historic period, but, like the Franks and Alemanni, had substituted a new national name for a quantity of tribal distinctions, covered the north of Germany from the line of the Franks and the Rhine to the neighbourhood of the Oder eastward, where they abut in the Wends. Between them and the Franks and Bavarians lay three or four ancient small nations which had preserved their tribal identity : the Chatti or Hessians, the Thuringians, and the inhabitants of Meissen and Lausitz, Misnia and Lusatia, which at a later period developed into the Marches bearing those names, later still into the electorate and duchy of Saxony, and ultimately into the kingdom of Saxony. The country now called Saxony was no part of the ancient territory of the Saxons or Lower Saxony, which included Westphalia and the territory of the kingdom of Hanover with much that lies south of them, and thus a great part of the kingdom of Prussia before 1866. In fact, the kingdom of Prussia as it existed before 1866, i.e. the West Prussia of Brandenburg and its accretions — not the eastern part — roughly represented the ancient Saxony. From the northern part of this Saxony to wards Denmark, the land of the Jutes, Angles, and Frisians, came our own forefathers in the fifth century to Britain ; and this is the Saxonia, the old Saxony, as it is called by Bede and the early chroniclers, which was converted by the missions of Boniface and his predecessors who came from the monasteries of Wessex and Northumbria. VICTORIES OF CLOVIS 13 Summary. — These then are the materials out of which a historical nation of Germans has to be constructed : the initiation of union comes in the shape of the conqueror Clovis. Of course it will be understood that, besides these great tribal divisions, or national divisions, as they might be called, there were innumer able small tribes, some ranging under these conglome rate names, and some not included under them, but too small and obscure much to affect general history. It is upon these great ones that the Germany of history is based, and to their rivalries, their amalgamations, attractions, and repulsions that the history of Germany, read analytically, must trace the mainspring of its move ments and its power, and the occasions of its weakness. Victories of Clovis. — Clovis, whose career in its details it is unnecessary to describe, was originally King of the Salian Franks, but by his fame as a warrior and personal influence united the whole of the Franks under his sway, and began the foundation of a kingdom which developed into the Western Empire. It will be re membered how in the year 486 he vanquished Syagrius and acquired the remaining territories of Rome in Gaul : how in 496 he conquered the Alemanni at Zulpich, and in 507 the Visigoths at Vougle. The conquest of the Burgundians was a tougher work and occupied not only himself but his successors from 499 to 532.1 Theodoric the Ostrogoth, 437-526. — Great, however, as Clovis was, and strangely powerful as was the impetus which survived him, he was not the arbiter of the West, nor was the Frank kingdom to approach the majesty of empire for nearly three centuries after his time. Theodoric, the great King of the Ostrogoths, 1 See Gibbon, "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,'' Cap. 38. 14 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES occupied a far more important position both before and after the death of Clovis ; and although Theodoric was brother-in-law to Clovis, and no doubt quite willing that he should subdue the north, as he himself did the south of the empire, it was by no means his purpose that Clovis should take all. Hence, as he sustained the Visigoths in Septimania, he sustained the Bavarians in Germany, and it was not until after his death in 526, and the collapse of the Ostrogothic power, that the Franks acquired even the nominal supremacy in Gaul or in South Germany either. In Northern Germany they were still less powerful : for the Saxons continued in their old seats as savage and independent as ever ; and, although the East Franks seem to have gradually admitted the dominion of the Merovingians, and the border states between the Saxons and the Bavarians to have rejoiced in Frank protection, their relations with the Bavarians themselves were anything but heartily friendly. However, although the Bur- gundians continued to struggle against the Franks for many years after the death of Clovis (in 511), the Alemannian country seems to have been quickly con solidated, being annexed with Thuringia and Alemannia to Austrasia, by King Theodoric, in or about 532. The Bavarians, unsupported, gradually fell into an uneasy sort of dependence. The Lombards and Franks. — In the flourishing period of the Lombards, the Franks acted occasionally as nominal allies of the empire, which, owing to the efforts of Belisarius, was enabled to retain a hold on Italy ; and, so long as the Lombards were practically rivals to the Franks, the Bavarians maintained an alliance with the Lombards. The Lombard power, however, declined almost as quickly as it rose (Lombard power, NEUSTRIA AND AUSTRASIA 15 sixth century), whilst that of the Franks went on in creasing in spite of the weakness of the princes. By the middle of the seventh century it may be said that Germany, with the exception of the Saxons in the north, was nominally Frank and nominally Christian. Neustria and Austrasia. — But in the meantime new names are appearing for the partitioned empire of Clovis, and under the descendants of Clovis we find a kingdom of Neustria and a kingdom of Austrasia added to the ancient divisions of Aquitaine and Burgundy. The kingdom of Neustria embraced all that part of modern France which was not included in Aquitania or Austrasia : it was France between the Loire and the valley of the Meuse, the Sylva Carbonaria, north of Ardennes, being the boundary. Austrasia comprised the German possessions of the house, Franconia, Ale- mannia, the nominal command of Bavaria, and the Ripuarian territory of Western France, including the country which was afterwards Champagne. The divi sion emerges about the year 561. Austrasia, of course, was the territory of the East, or Eastern Franks, a name which still belongs to the most Frank remnant of it, Franconia ; the rest was Neustria, i.e. Non- Austria, as it is said : Paris was the capital of Neustria, Metz the capital of Austrasia. Of the sovereigns of either we know ^little to recommend them to our memories. What little we can retain shows that the reigning house was subject to alternations of energy and faineantism, that it did not break up permanently into two dynasties, but was continually being consolidated and subdivided, and that the moral and political character of the princes was such as combined the worst evils of bar barism with the worst evils of civilisation. It is to Gregory of Tours that we are indebted for the most 16 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES part for our knowledge of the Merovingians ; and, as was natural, his attention is devoted far more to Neustrian than to Austrasian matters. It is thus with reference to the history of France rather than to that of Germany that he is chiefly studied. When he leaves us, we have for a long period only very scanty annals and those still French, or rather concerning what is now France. Break-up of the Merovingian Power. — But now while the Merovingian house still retained a sort of unity, under the influence of the servants of that house, their dominion was rapidly breaking into two, nearly by the very line that in ancient times had separated the Salians from the Ripuarians, and lower down, Gaul from Germany : the empire, from the independent tribes. Though Neustria and Austrasia might often have the same king, they had two rival officers, mayors of the palace as they were called, who were gradually advancing to the position of kings and ultimately to the title of which the Merovingians were to be de prived ; and then to the empire itself. The mayor of the palace of Austrasia was the real King of Germany, the mayor of the palace of Neustria was becoming King of France. It never actually was so. Before the Merovingian house in its degradation had destroyed the unity of the Frank dominion, the mayor of the palace of Austrasia had overcome his rival and founded the house from which the Great Charles proceeded. In 638 Dagobert I., who eight years before had united the whole dominion, died, leaving Sigebert II. King of Austrasia, and Clovis II. King of Neustria and Burgundy. Sigebert had for mayor of the palace Pipin of Landen. Grimoald, Pipin's son, succeeded him as mayor ; and, on the death of Sigebert in 656, endeavoured to place his own son, Childebert, on the GERMANY, BAVARIA 17 throne to the exclusion of Dagobert II. The attempt cost him his life. For the moment Neustria gained the supremacy with Erchinoald for sole mayor; Childeric II. and Clotaire III., the two sons of Clovis II., in the same year, 656, redivided the states, Childeric with Wulfad for mayor in Austrasia ; Clotaire with Ebroin for mayor in Neustria. But the house of Pipin of Landen was not extinct ; his daughter Bega married Ansegis, son of S. Arnulf, who bore the title of Duke of Austrasia, and their son, Pipin of Herstal, was nourishing deep designs. In 679, Dagobert II., the successor of Childeric, died, and Austrasia under Martin, son of Wulfad, and Pipin, son of Ansegis, refused the authority of Thierri of Neustria, wielded by the mayor Ebroin. In a battle in 680 near Laon, Ebroin beat his rivals, but did not live long enough to recover Austrasia ; he died in 681. For six years Pipin, who had rid himself of his colleague Martin, governed alone ; in 687 he beat Berthaire, the mayor of the palace of Neustria, at the battle of Testri, and took the king prisoner. Henceforth, although mayors for Neustria are still appointed, they are appointed by Pipin. In 714 he appointed his grandson, a boy of six years old, mayor to the king, Dagobert III., who was fifteen : one phantom, as Montesquieu says, set over another phantom : he himself governed Austrasia for thirty-four years, and the whole Frank dominion for twenty-seven. He died in December 714. The same year was born the third and greatest Pipin, son of Charles Martel, and father of Charles the Great. Germany, Bavaria. — In these dreary details we see little of Germany. The internal struggles of the Frank monarchy occupy the whole energy of the mayors. But for this, the lingering remnant of Lombard empire, 18 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES and the Exarchate of Ravenna itself, must have long ago fallen before the energy of the North German races. But now the Agilolfings in Bavaria were drawing nearer to the Lombards, and even aspiring to act as arbiters between the two races. In 708 Theodo IV. was strong enough to place his own ward Liutpert on the throne of Lombardy, and drew the cords of alliance closer. But the power of the Austrasian princes for half a century before this had been defied by the Bavarians. King Dagobert, between 630 and 638, had reformed the Bavarian laws ; but this was the last act of authority exercised by the Merovingians.1 Theodo VI., who reigned from 653 to 660, although bearing only the title of Duke, governed his states without any pretence of subordination to the King or Government at Metz ; and his descendants persevered in the same independent course, until they were conquered by Charles Martel. To this point then there is very little on which much criticism can be bestowed. Saxony is still heathen and independent. Alemannia is consolidated with Franconia as the territory of the kings of Austrasia at Metz. Bavaria has obtained a prescriptive but precarious independence. In the next chapter an attempt will be made to clear the way towards the appreciation of the position of Germany under the Great Charles. 1 Theodo III., who became Duke of Bavaria in 612, married a daughter of King Theodebert of Austrasia and became a Christian. IMPORTANT DATES Clovis, 481-511. Theodoric the Ostrogoth, 487-526. Dagobert, 628-638. The Rois Faineants, 639-752. CHAPTER II Germany under the later Merovings — Their fall — Charles Martel— The conversion of Germany — The reign of Pipin — The reign of Charles the Great — The Saxon Wars — Annexation of Bavaria — The Huns and the Avars — The character of Charles the Great — A German by birth — The Celtic character of Neustria — The German character of Austrasia. The Situation under the later Merovings. — There are one or two considerations which ought not to be over looked. In the first place, although it is a great mistake to regard the Merovings and the house of Pipin from which Charles sprang as French in the modern sense of the word, or indeed as anything but German in every sense, it is nevertheless certain that Neustria or modern France was much more completely subject to them, and more thoroughly and regularly organised than Austrasia, much more than those further portions of the German land which, like Bavaria, lay practically beyond the limits of the Austrasian half of the dominion. Saxony and Thuringia were frequently at open war with the Franks ; while Bavaria, only in very imperfect subjection and that under a brave race of native princes, was strong in foreign alliances and deemed herself, as a nationality and a national sovereignty, nowise inferior to the descendants of Clovis. German or Eastern France had indeed been without that civilisation and training that Neustria had had from the Romans, and, with the exception of the close neighbourhood of the Rhine, was far more thinly inhabited and far more 20 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES purely German than any portion of the western king dom. The difficulties of the Merovingians in Germany were then owing rather to imperfect civilisation and neighbour war than to the internal and more political quarrels, which were the result of a higher organised and more ancient civilisation in the other half. The dynastic quarrels and the political or open struggles for the mayoralty and for the substance of royal power took place accordingly either in Neustria or in that part of Austrasia which was most like Neustria — the western and more anciently settled territory on the Rhine. Hence in Germany proper we have much less incident, and much less interesting incident. The Fall of the Merovings. — Another point closely con nected with this is that, although we regard the Mero vingians as permanently and finally set aside by Charles Martel (although not formally disposed of until the following reign), we are not to suppose that this arrange ment was acquiesced in at all pleasantly or succeeded by a season of perfect peace. It was far otherwise : the reign of Charles Martel was a continual series of struggles. The great territory of Aquitaine was still possessed by a branch of the Merovingians which did not share the general decadence of the family, and this was a source of difficulty down even into the reign of Charles the Great. But even the rot faineant of Noyon and Metz was not entirely a puppet, or at least a puppet of Charles Martel, and had still rival mayors of the palace to set up in opposition to the Duke of Austrasia. The result of this is that although Charles and his house were decidedly Austrasian or German in original position, the greatest part of their action lies in Neustria ; and Germany proper has less recorded history now than it deserves. Several isolated THE REIGN OF CHARLES MARTEL 21 campaigns were fought by Charles with the Frisians, the Saxons, and the Bavarians, which may be summed up briefly ; but on the whole it is not surprising that Frenchmen and indeed some historians regard both him and Pipin as Frenchmen. Their bones lie in the great sanctuary of the French at S. Denys, and the great exploit by which Charles is best remembered, the battle of Tours against the Moors, and his great constitu tional act, the secularisations of church property, belong to Western France. Charles the Great, on the other hand, was a German of the Germans in life and death. The Reign of Charles Martel, 715-741. — The reign of Charles Martel lasted from 715-741 i1 during that time, besides his more famous wars with Aquitaine and with the Moorish invaders, and his constant, internal diffi culties, he fought the following campaigns with the independent Germans. In 716 he was attacked by the Frisians under Radbod their king, and the same year by the Saxons. He seems to have been actually beaten by the Frisians. He was then in fact in his greatest difficulties, the Merovingian king being still powerful on the Rhine. Having, however, in 716, got possession of Cologne and of the treasures of his father Pipin, he administered a severe rebuke to the Saxons, overrunning their country as far as the Weser. In 725 he brought the Bavarians under his sway : de feated the Dukes Grimoald and Hugobert, and humbled them so thoroughly that they did not venture to stir during the remainder of his reign. He himself, to secure the peace, married a Bavarian princess, and 1 Charles Martel, d. 741 I Carloman Pipin le Bref, King 752-768 Charles the Great, 768-814 22 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES gave one of his daughters as wife to Odilo, the son of Hugobert, who succeeded to the Bavarian throne in 739. In 732, at the battle of Poitiers, he overthrew the Arabs and saved Aquitaine. In 733 he defeated and slew Poppo, Duke or King of the Frisians ; in 734 he again defeated them. In 738 he conquered and made tributary the whole of the south of Westphalia, between the Lippe and the Rhine. In 741 he died, leaving his dominions between his sons Pipin and Carloman — Pipin to have Neustria, Burgundy, and Provence ; Carloman to have Austrasia, Alemannia, and Thuringia, with of course the later conquests of his father from the Saxons and Frisians. The Conversion of Germany. — But although in one sense these events are nearly all that is known of Germany during this period, in another sense it be comes apparent that a very important change was going on amongst the independent nations. They were being Christianised. The reign of Charles Martel and Pipin is in fact the great and most brilliant period of the missionary exertion of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and it was to Friesland and Saxony that her missions were sent. The missions of the Northumbrian Church were directed to Holland as it now is, North and Western Frisia, and resulted in the formation of the Church of Utrecht, the Mother Church of the Nether lands ; the missions of the Scots were directed to the more southern parts of Germany, Franconia, Bavaria, and the mountains of Alemannia, and may be regarded as represented by the Churches of Wiirzburg, Salzburg, and Saint Gallen. The West Saxon missions went to the old Saxon and the East Frisians, under Boniface, the great English martyr of the eighth century, who was not only a great missionary, but a great reformer THE REIGN OF PIPIN AND CARLOMAN 23 of the French and German Churches ; who baptized Charles the Great, consecrated Pipin to the kingdom, and who, as much perhaps as any man, contributed to bring about that accord between the Court of Rome and the family of Pipin which ultimately resulted in the establishment of the empire in the person of his son. There can be no doubt that the conversion ol interior and northern Germany was a far greater step towards the consolidation of the empire than any cursory exploits of Charles Martel, but the effect was not yet apparent, and even thirty years after the death of Charles very much remained to be done. The Reign of Pipin and Carloman, 741-747. — Pipin and Carloman reigned jointly from 741 to 747, when the sovereign of Austrasia retired to Monte Casino (on the plan of the English, and especially the Nor thumbrian and West Saxon princes, who had exchanged the crown for the tonsure). During these six years he signalised himself as a warrior little less than did his brother ; joined Pipin in plundering their third brother Grippo of the small territory bequeathed by his father, and in humbling in Neustria and Austrasia, in Aquitaine and Germany, the enemies of the house. In particular, Dietrich, King of the Saxons, who main tained a brave and obstinate resistance, was defeated by Carloman in 743, and taken prisoner in 744. In 745 Saxony was again attacked, and the people to some extent compelled to receive baptism. Odilo, Duke of Bavaria, was also attacked, notwithstanding a strong papal inhibition in 743, and only allowed to retain his dominions at the intercession of his wife, the sister of Pipin and Carloman.1 Pipin le Bref, sole King, 751-768. — In 751 Childeric 1 In 747 Carloman, after a vigorous reign, abdicated. 24 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES was deposed, and that year saw Pipin sole sovereign of the domains of his house. For several years he con tinued an aggressive policy. Grippo, his brother, whom he had released after the resignation of Carloman, fled from him to Bavaria, the administration of which he usurped after the death of Odilo. The struggle in Bavaria lasted until 751, when Pipin overcame Grippo and restored his nephew Thassilo. Before going into Bavaria, Grippo had raised the Saxons against Pipin, subjected the valiant Dietrich to a third imprison ment, and having exhausted and ruined his friends in Germany he retired to Aquitaine and fomented war there. Ultimately he perished in Lombardy in 753. But now Pipin was setting his mind on still greater things, and, in the assumption of the title of king, and in protection of the interests of the Pope, was opening up a new region of conquest and danger, which for a time again obscured the interests of Germany. In 752 he was consecrated King of the Franks by S. Boniface at Soissons ; in 754 he was reconsecrated by Pope Stephen II. at S. Denis ; in 755 he invaded Lombardy and compelled Aistulfus to promise the cession of his conquests. In 756 he put an end to the exarchate of Ravenna, the dominion of the empire of Constantinople in Italy, and by giving it to the Pope laid the foundation of the temporal power of the Papacy. The remaining years of Pipin were taken up by wars in Saxony and Aquitaine, which he did not succeed in entirely subjugating. The war with Saxony, however, was continued in a chronic struggle from year to year; in 755 Boniface suffered martyrdom in Friesland ; in 757 Pipin received the solemn homage of Thassilo and all the Bavarian chief tains in a great assembly at Compiegne ; in 758, after CHARLES THE GREAT AND CARLOMAN 25 obtaining a victory, he compelled the Saxons to pay a tribute of three hundred horses annually ; from 760 to 763 he was engaged in war with Aquitaine. In 763 Thassilo deserted him and never returned to his allegi ance. Pipin indeed made preparations for reducing him to order, but year after year passed before he could carry out his intention. Pipin died on the 24th of September 768, leaving a thick crop of troubles for Charles and Carloman. Charles the Great and Carloman, 768. — It can hardly be said that Pipin's reign had much altered the position of the eastern kingdom. Vast as was the increase of the power of his house, by the adhesion of the Papacy and by the humiliation of the Lombards, the line of the frontier in Germany was very little advanced beyond what Clovis had left it, and the attitude of the German provinces was not less threatening. The young princes, on their accession, saw the work of a lifetime before them ; Aquitaine still Merovingian and hostile ; Saxony still heathen and equally hostile ; Bavaria arming and fortifying for independence ; Lombardy waiting for revenge ; and, to crown all, a more complete con federacy of these foes than had ever before existed. Charles was the eldest son, but as usual the domains were divided. To Carloman fell Austrasia and North Neustria, and to Charles Southern Neustria and Burgundy. Aquitaine, as yet unconsolidated, was to be a common burden. Carloman was accepted as king at Soissons, Charles at Noyon. In 771 Charles married, in opposition to the Pope's advice, the daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius. In December of the same year Carloman died, and his brother, disregarding the very proble matical rights of his children, succeeded to the whole empire of the Franks. 26 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Charles, sole King, 771-814. — It is impossible to over rate the importance of the position and character of Charles in its relation to the whole history of the Middle Ages. There is, in Eginhard, a very succinct and clear account of his several wars. Although several of these wars have no immediate concern with Germany, nearly all are in some way connected by the network of Lom bard policy, and, until the Lombard kingdom was finally extinguished, the domestic policy of Charles can be only very scantily discovered and still more scantily indicated. Charles, as has been stated, had married a daughter of Desiderius ; a year after his marriage he returned her to her father. Whatever may have been his reason for returning her, policy might have made him keep her ; for not only by the alliance did he secure the friendship of his most powerful rival, and, by that means, opportunity for the entire consolida tion of his dominions, but he held in his hand the thread of a family confederacy. Luitburga, one of her sisters, was the wife of Thassilo, the revolted Duke of Bavaria ; another was married to Aragis, Duke of Bene- ventum, a very dangerous neighbour to Charles's friend the Pope. Aquitaine was also on the closest terms of friendship with Lombardy. To Lombardy, accordingly, the widow and children of Carloman fled for protection after his death, and the repudiation of Desiderata or Hermengard. This Lombard connexion gives a clue to the early wars of Charles. The Wars of Charles in Aquitaine, Italy, and Saxony. — The first war was the Aquitanian, which took place in 769 before the death of Carloman. It nowhere touches German history. The Lombard war succeeds, and lasts until Desiderius is beaten in 774 and his son Adalgis taken as a hostage. The Lombard empire, after two CHARACTER OF CHARLES' CONQUESTS 27 hundred and six years of existence, ends with Desiderius' defeat in 774 ; the Lombard state of Friuli survived until 776, Spoleto to 773. Whilst the Lombard war was raging, the Saxon war began in 772 and lasted off and on for thirty-three years. Setting it aside for the moment, we pass over the Spanish war in 778, the Breton war and the Italian war against the remnant of the Lombard power in South Italy, which took Charles the third time to Rome in 787. In all these Charles obtained a victory which, whether easy or not, was apparently final, and which placed France and Italy very completely at his feet. It was altogether different in Germany. The Saxon is not the only war on the Austrasian frontier: we have also the Bavarian, the Slavic, the Avar and Hunnic, the Bohemian and Livonian wars. Forty-seven years in all they lasted, and at the end he had increased his dominions by the acquisition of Saxony, which, Eginhard tells us, is twice as large as Franconia and of Pannonia, Danubian Dacia, Histria, Liburnia and Dalmatia. Besides these, in Germany itself he had subdued the barbarous nations between the Rhine and the Vistula, the Welatabi, Sorabi, Abo- trites, and Boemanni. In France he had secured Aqui taine, Italy as far as Calabria, and Spain as far as the Ebro.1 The Character of Charles' Conquests. — It is now neces sary to ascertain by what means he gained so large a territory in Germany, and what was the real character of his tenure of it, for it is impossible to regard it as equable throughout, or in the more distant borders as anything more than either a nominal submission, or the 1 In 778 Charles invaded Spain and extended his boundary to the Ebro. The famous Roland died in an engagement in the Pass of Roncesvalles during Charles's retreat. 28 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES enforcement of occasional obedience by ravaging ex pedition. There is, however, no doubt but that on every side Charles pushed the dominion of the German nation further than it had ever yet extended. He did not content himself with merely subduing the kindred races, such as the Bavarians and Saxons, but humbled their still more warlike and alien neighbours : the Slavs beyond Saxony ; the Scandinavians beyond Frisia ; the Avars and Huns beyond Bavaria ; the still more bar barous and possibly Tartar hordes to the south of Hungary and the neighbourhood of the Hadriatic. The Saxon Wars, 772-804. — The Saxon war began, or rather the Saxon Conquest, for war was the normal relation, was undertaken definitely in 772. Charles got together a great assembly at Worms, entered the Saxon territory, took Eresburg and overthrew the Irminsul, then proceeded as far as the Weser, where he re ceived the submission of the people. This campaign permanently added a portion of Westphalia to the kingdom. But whilst the Lombard war was straining every nerve of Charles's power, in 774 the Saxons again began hostilities by invading Hesse, and retaliating for the overthrow of the Irminsul, by the demolition of the Church of S. Boniface at Fritzlar, which was only prevented by a panic, caused, according to the annalist, by divine interposition. As soon as the Lombard war was over Charles sent three armies into Saxony, and devastated the country, carrying off great booty. The following year, 775, he subdued Engria and Westphalia, the remaining parts of Saxony, advanced as far as Liibeck northwards, and, after a very narrow escape from the active and now experienced foe, retired into his own dominions having taken hostages of the West- phalians. In 776 the war was again in Westphalia. THE PACIFICATION OF SAXONY 29 Charles was recalled from Italy by the attack of the Saxons, who destroyed the fortifications he had built to overawe them. In 777, at a great Diet at Paderborn, he received the submission of all the chieftains except Witikind : it was there that he received the invitation to the Spanish war, which occupied him in 778. Of his absence in Spain the Saxons took advantage so far as to push on to the Rhine. But it is hardly any use to repeat the same thing year after year. Every season Westphalia is invaded by the Saxons and reconquered by the Franks. In 780 Charles advanced to the Elbe : in 782 he held a national council in the heart of West phalia. Each time, as soon as his back was turned, the indefatigable Witikind returned to the charge and undid what the king had done. In this latter year, 782, a great expedition, projected against the Slav population beyond the Elbe, was arrested and defeated by the Saxons on the Weser, with great slaughter, which was avenged by a cruel massacre of four thousand and five hundred Saxons by Charles's command at Verden on the Aller. The year 783 * began with a continuance of the war. Having defeated the Saxons at Detmold, Charles proceeded to Paderborn, and there heard that they were waiting to give him battle on the Hase near Osnabriick. There he won a second great battle, and these were the only two, Eginhard remarks, in which he personally took part during the whole Saxon war. The principal part of the war of 784 was managed by his son Karl, but late in the year the king himself advanced into the heart of Saxony and spent the winter at Eresburg, hold ing his great spring assembly again at Paderborn. The Pacification of Saxony, 785-804. — This apparent permanent occupation of their territories seems to have 1 In that year his wife Hildegarde died and Charles married Fastrade. 30 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES exhausted the spirit of the Saxons ; and they prepared to submit. Witikind and Abbio, their leaders, were persuaded to reconcile themselves with the king, and they were brought to him at Attigni and there baptized. From that date Saxony formed a part of the Frank empire, and, although there were occasional renewals of war down to 804, they were not such as to call for more than passing notice. Charles, as soon as the sub mission of the natives was complete, set himself to reorganise the administration and to strengthen the Church ; divided the country into eight bishoprics, and appointed a Count Trutman to preside in the pro vincial assemblies, protect the clergy, and direct the administration of justice. To Witikind, it is said that he left the duchy of Engria, the middle portion of Westphalia ; and this would have been in agreement with the usual policy of the German conquerors, but it is not quite certain : the laws, however, which were drawn up for Saxony are extant, and partake largely of the character of the jurisprudence that would be required by a nation at once conquered, Christianised, and civilised. This organisation seems to have been completed by the year 789. The new laws do not, how ever, quite lead us to suppose that the people for whom they were enacted were mere barbarians, for they con tain an enactment on the point of perjury, which simply confirms the old custom of the nation ; and of course other points of that custom, untouched by these laws, would remain in full force. The last of the laws forbids the holding of assemblies without the presence of the king's representative. Annexation of Bavaria, 788. — But before the pacifica tion of Saxony was thus completed, war or rebellion, if we choose to call it so, had broken out in the south. ANNEXATION OF BAVARIA 31 As early as 785 there had been a great conspiracy against Charles in Franconia under Count Hardrad, which was suppressed only by great promptness and cruelty ; but the real danger arose from the still hostile position of Bavaria, where Thassilo still held out in sulky independence, forgetful of the oath that he had taken to Charles when a boy, and prompted by his wife to avenge if possible the injuries of the Lombards. In the year 781, whilst he was at Rome, Charles had agreed with the Pope Hadrian to send an embassy to Thassilo, which resulted in his attending at Worms and renewing his oath, but he very soon relapsed into his former attitude. For nearly three hundred years, this had been the attitude of Bavaria, which was an enormous state, occupying the whole of modern Bavaria and the German states of Austria as far as the frontiers of Hun gary. It was now being Christianised and rapidly civilised, but it had not strength or consistency to withstand the hostility of the Franks, and had been maintained in its semi-independence first by the balance of power created by the Ostrogoths, who may be said to have established it, and after their fall by a similar relation with the Lombards. It was not like Franconia or Alemannia, which were provinces of the Frank dominion : for Bavaria had never been reduced ab solutely to this state; its kings or dukes were rather subject allies of the Frank sovereigns than actual officers, even after they had begun to be regarded as a part of the empire. The Frank king named, or rather recognised, the Bavarian duke at each vacancy, and had a right of supreme justice where he could enforce it ; otherwise the administration was carried on in dependently on the ancient national system. The position was thus intermediate between the entire ex- 32 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES emption enjoyed by the Saxons and the entire subjec tion of the East Franks and Swabians. This position Bavaria was now to lose, and by that loss to give some sort of unity and symmetry to the German possessions of the house of Pipin. Thassilo had lost his last ex ternal safeguard in the destruction of the Lombard kingdom, and was not wise enough to continue faithful to the new lord of the West, to whom he was bound both by cousinship and by the most solemn oaths more than once repeated. He now formed a league with the Huns and Avars, his neighbours in Pannonia, with the Lombards of Beneventum, and with the Empress Irene. These manoeuvres reached the ears of Charles, and as soon as he returned from Italy in 787 he began to look towards Bavaria. Thassilo in vain attempted to get a reconciliation by the aid of the Pope. His ambassadors were found to be without proper powers, and this by itself was an argument of bad faith. Charles advanced to Augsburg, which was close on the Bavarian frontier, and there met Thassilo, who for the third time took oaths and gave hostages. The next spring, 788, Charles called a general assembly of the whole of his empire at Ingelheim, which was attended by representatives of all the nations under his sway, the Saxons, Alemanni, Bavarians, and Lom bards. There Thassilo was accused, by the Bavarians themselves, of treason against Charles : he was con demned to death ; but Charles spared his life and sent him into a monastery, annexing his states as a per manent province to the kingdom. War with the Huns and the Avars, 788-797. — The Huns and Avars, faithful to their agreement with Thas silo, now undertook to avenge him, or rather perhaps to prevent their own impending subjugation, and invaded POSITION OF CHARLES IN GERMANY 33 both Bavaria and the duchy (march) of Friuli, which Charles had acquired from the Lombards. The war with these barbarians lasted eight years ; it was chiefly carried on by Pipin the son of Charles, and the result of it seems to have been to reduce the Hungarians to something like the position which the Bavarians had hitherto occupied. And the same may be said of the war with the Slavs on the other side of the Elbe ; they were humiliated, half conquered, and half Christianised, but not so thoroughly amalgamated or organised as were the Saxon and Bavarian population, nor were they ever so regularly and formally a portion of the Frank empire as the interior states became.1 Bohemia was rendered tributary also by Charles, but it was not Christianised for a long time to come, and cannot be regarded as more than nominally conquered. These border states, at the utmost estimate of their subject character, were different from Bavaria in its former condition, in this that they were still heathen, and so had neither the advantages nor the disadvantages of a common religion with their conquerors. Position of Charles in Germany in 790. — Thus, by the year 790, Charles the Great saw himself at the head of the whole of the German tribes ; of all the Teutonic tribes except the Scandinavians, for his dominion did not extend northwards into Denmark. Liibeck is pro bably as far north as he reached towards Denmark ; the great Luneburg heath was the actual, although the river Eyder may have been nominally the limit of the empire. Eginhard gives an account of a Danish war, in which Godfred, the King of the Danes, attempted to push 1 In discussing the history of the Ottos the subject of the Hungarians will be returned to, and when we come down to the times of Frederick Barbarossa and Henry the Lion that of the Slavs will be discussed. C 34 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES through Friesland and Lower Saxony to Aix-la-Chapelle, but was prevented by death (810). His successor, Heming, accepted the Eyder boundary. It should be added, that whilst the war with the Slavs and Wends was carried on only by Charles the son of the king, that in Hungary was carried on only by Pipin, whilst Lewis acted as his father's lieutenant in France and on the Spanish march. Lewis was at his birth created King of Aquitaine ; Pipin from the year 781 was called King of Italy ; and Charles, King of Franconia. Already the plan of empire was being marked out for the father. The year 790 is a convenient date for the subjection of Germany, because by that time all was formally in corporated under Charles ; but several severe campaigns were fought with Saxons before the year 804, when the Saxon war is counted by Eginhard to have terminated. Still, from the deposition of Thassilo, and the organisa tion of Saxony and Bavaria under new laws, the future kingdom of Germany was completed. At this point, it is convenient to take a review of the state of affairs before the coronation of Charles as emperor, -as suc cessor to the status of Augustus and Constantine, and the consequent involution of Germany with the general politics of Europe in a way in which no other state was ever so involved; the imperialising of Germany and Germanising of the empire, which must be the matter for discussion in future lectures. The Character and Position of Charles the First. — What was the real character of this German kingdom before the assumption of the empire, and, with the imperial title, some shadow of imperial forms and principles of government ? Charles has been called a German of the Germans, in opposition to his forefathers, who were rather Franks than Germans in the broad sense. CHARLES A GERMAN 35 It may seem fanciful to do this ; but whatever the truth of the thing may be in itself, so far as the opinion and fame of after ages goes, such he was. His grand, stern, rugged figure stands out Titanic throughout the Middle Ages : there is no one like him after him, few enough like him before, and none so great as he. Not free from the pride, lust, and cruelty of conquerors, he is yet singularly free from the errors, misfortunes, and crimes into which such passions lead conquerors. A persecutor he was, perhaps, when a king who was a missionary and a civiliser could hardly fail to persecute ; an oppressor, perhaps, where oppres sion is the only guarantee of order. In many respects he might have been a better man ; and if a better then also a greater : but he was both better and greater than those who came before or after. We cannot wonder that he is the hero of two mighty nations, the hero of their mythical as well as of their true history ; the central figure of their Pantheon and Walhalla. Charles a German. — To what extent was Charles a German hero ? Certainly not in the sense in which either Egbert or Alfred was an English one. His birth as Frank was pure German ; his favourite home of Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle was a purely German home. But he was not the chosen representative of the German race. He was a German conqueror of Germans, i.e. a Frank conqueror of Bavarians and Saxons. He did not reunite the divided elements of a single nationality ; Germany had never been one before him, as it really has never been one after him. Never in historic times had the Bavarians and the Saxons been one nation ; the case of England, with its several kingdoms united by Egbert and Athelstan, is very different. Their people were of one race ; their kings descendants of one 36 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Woden ; their religion had come to them from the same commingled stream, and had made them one Church before they became one State. But Germany had no such bond of union, nor was the empire of Charles the expression of any yearning for such union ; it was not even acquiesced in as satisfying such a want as it seemed to create. The Saxons and Bavarians were opposed as heathens to Christians ; the Bavarians and Franconians received their Christianity from a different source : the West and East Franks were rival races from the beginning of history. Setting aside the Neustrian and Burgundian states, and in regarding Charles as a German, we must not fall into the corre sponding error to that of those who regard him as ex clusively a Frenchman. The Population of Neustria mainly Celtic. — As a Frank he was at the head of two great kingdoms, to which the name of Neustria and Austrasia may be broadly given, or France and Germany. Of these, Neustria or France possessed the older organisation : it had shared the civilisation of Rome ; it had enjoyed such settled government as was possible under the Merovingian rule ; it was more compact, above all, there was as yet no rival power to that of the sovereign. The bishoprics and the secular magistracies were arranged and divided on the lines of imperial Rome, or on the still more ancient lines that imperial Rome had been herself guided by. But the population was not Frank; the basis of it was still as Celtic as it had been in the time of Caesar. The towns were indeed full of Roman families ; the Latin language was the language of the courts and literature ; even the Visigoths used the law of imperial Rome in the Code of Theodosius, and unquestionably great parts of the Frank law was derived from the same POPULATION OF AUSTRASIA GERMAN 37 source ; the bishops chosen from the leading burgher [i.e. Roman) families, use Roman names and cultivate Roman literature. Rome had, after the invasion of the barbarians, a stronger hold on France than on Italy ; and the Franks were themselves attached to Roman traditions much more than any of the other German races. Franks had fought with Rome against Attila ; Franks had resisted the Goths and Lombards ; Clovis himself had been proud to take a Roman title, and Brunechild had had a persistent Roman policy of des potism and centralisation. But supposing that political principles and associations like these had a correspond ing weight in Austrasia to what they had in Neustria, still Austrasia was but a small part of the Germany of Charles. The Population of Austrasia were German. — But the population of Austrasia, at least of Franconia and Ale mannia, was far more thoroughly German than that of Neustria, and of course the countries that he conquered were pure. I take it to be rather true that Charles made Germany than that Germany produced Charles ; and that his greatness as a German consists largely in his forgetting that he was a Frank, and in at once admitting all his German conquests to a condition of freedom, right, and equality, which obtained for him the credit of a founder and a lawgiver. It was not that he united a divided family, but that he made into a family a group of nations that had for centuries been hostile and jealous, that had in their divergency of dialect, religion, and institutions altogether lost sight of that original primeval unity of blood, which he recognised, and on which he hoped to work for a true and corporate unity. This combination, unity of race with persistent opposi tion in laws, language, institutions, religion, and political 38 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES affinities, is the great problem of German history which even Charles failed to solve. IMPORTANT DATES Charles Martel, 715-741. War with the Bavarians, 725. Battle of Poitiers, 732. Pipin the Short, 752-768. Charles the Great, 768-814. Death of Carloman, 771. Beginning of the Saxon Wars, 772. Charles King of Italy, 774. Charles invades Spain ; battle of Roncesvalles, 778. Deposition of the Duke of Bavaria, 788. CHAPTER III Charles the Great as Emperor-— The year 800— The question of the succession— Charles' plans— The organisation of his empire —The reign of Lewis the Pious— The division of the empire on his death— The birth of Charles the Bald— The division of Verdun, 843— The reign of Lewis the German, 843-876— Feudalism. Charles the Great as Emperor. — From the year 768 to 800, Charles the son of Pipin governed the states which he inherited as king of the Franks, and those which he had conquered as king of the nations that composed them ; he was king of the Lombards from 785, as he had been king of the Franks before; and the acquisitions he made in Germany were regarded as extensions or revindications of the rights of the Frank supremacy. From the year 800 to his death, he governed as emperor most serene of the Romans as Cassar and Augustus; "as crowned by God," the great pacific emperor governing the Roman empire, who also by the mercy of God was king of the Franks and Lombards. Into this eminence he had entered by default of the Caesars of Byzantium, as his father Pipin had entered on the kingdom of Clovis by default of the Merovingians ; in both cases the symbol of dominion had come from the Pope, and in both for some eminent service done by the Frank to the Pope in great peril. To a man at once so politic, so honest, and so strong as Charles was, the title of emperor could bring little access of power : it brought no accession of dominion ; it involved no change in the 39 40 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES relation between himself and the nations he governed before ; it was but the crowning of the supreme power by the supreme title, and the recognition by the Eternal City of the authority of a prince, but for whose help the eternity would have become a nonentity. It might impose on the barbarous nations whom he had checked, and to whom the name of Caesar had traditional terrors, but it could do, in his person, little else ; all the sub stance of power he had before. Charles does not sink his titles either as hereditary king or conqueror in the more imposing one, but, as in his own description of himself, which I have read, preserves the mention of Franks and Lombards although giving precedence to the imperial name. There is not too much in a name ; ' but, if we would rightly understand the form, we must remember that all the German nations, united under the name of Franks, entered into the rights of Franks. The Saxons and Bavarians are counted to have become Franks by the conquest, but neither they nor the original Franks are to be regarded as sunk in the empire, under Charles at least. Charles' Title of Emperor : the year 800. — The word emperor might be an unique title of the right of uni versal empire, but Charles knew that he was emperor because he was king of the Franks and Lombards; he knew that the Franks and Lombards owed him no more binding allegiance as emperor than as king. He continued to govern as a king ; he issued his capitularies as the kings before him had done ; he governed by dukes and counts ; he held his great placita twice in the year ; he made no innovations from the imperial law ; he did but strike his money in his imperial name. Hallam recognises this in the sentence in which he declares that Charles continued to be a THE QUESTION OF SUCCESSION 41 German and not a Roman sovereign, and adds that throughout the period of the Karolings the same German character continued. Yet from this date, 800, begins the long period during which the imperial name and its accompanying rights, varying constantly with the power of the bearer, become inseparable ; in which we see the title given only to German sovereigns, and the only dominions which practically it conveys German dominions ; a fact which almost seems to justify the vulgar error of regarding the empire as German rather than Roman, and speaking of the Holy Roman Emperor as Emperor of Germany. The lesson of the ninth century regarding Germany is the tracing of the process by which this great country, far the largest part of which had never belonged to the old empire, now became imperial, and so much so that it was able to retain for its sovereigns the title of emperor so long as it continued to be worth holding. The Question of the Succession. — Charles survived all his sons except one, Lewis the Pious, who succeeded him in the empire. Whilst his elder sons, Charles and Pipin, were alive, they had borne titular royalty as Lewis himself did. The three were kings of Franconia, Italy, and Aquitaine ; new titles, having no reference to the ancient rights which the father had conquered, but invented by him to give additional honour to the really ducal jurisdiction which they occupied under him. As a Frank he could not but look forward to the partition which, according to all precedent, would be made of his dominions after his death. As the sons of Clovis and of Clotaire had divided their inherit ance ; as Pipin and Carloman, his father and uncle, had divided theirs ; as he himself and his brother Carloman had done in their turn, so Charles, Pipin, and Lewis 42 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES would, when he should die. He might see that it would be far better otherwise, that the nations whom he was trying to make one should continue to be one ; and that the principle of Unity, which he might esteem himself to have obtained with the title of em peror, should live on. The prestige of the imperial title might supply a basis of cohesion ; the kings of the Franks need no longer be opposed to one another, equally independent and jealous, at Soissons and Noyon, at Paris and at Aix-la-Chapelle ; but one might be emperor and keep a hand, if not of actual authority, at least of moral arbitration and restraint ; nay, why should not one be emperor and suzerain and the others his allied and titularly subject princes ? If such a plan had been devised and could have been carried out, it would have been a perfect development of the feudal principle applied to the highest subject matter. It may have been the idea of Charles, as it was of Lewis within a few years of his father's death ; but the necessity for such a device did not press on Charles : his son Pipin died in 810 ; Charles died in 811 ; Lewis only survived ; and on Lewis, subject only to the pro vision made for Bernard, son of Pipin, as King of Italy, devolved the accumulated honours of his father. We have not, however, to depend on conjecture for the details of the scheme which commended itself to Charles' mind, whilst his sons were alive. Charles' Proposed Division of his Empire. — In the year 806 Charles published a capitulary in which he divides his dominions among his three sons. He begins the document with a declaration that it is intended to prevent quarrels among the sons concerning the limits of their states ; and then accurately defines the limits. He does not in this division recognise anything like a CHARLES' DIVISION OF HIS EMPIRE 43 united France, a united Germany, or a united Italy. The first division includes Aquitaine and Gascony, up to the Loire ; and the south of modern France in prolongation of the line of the Loire, Languedoc and Provence, Savoy and Maurienne, and the parts of Burgundy and Spain that fall within these lines — this is given to Lewis. The second division, that of Pipin, contains Lombardy and Bavaria ; Alemannia to the south of the Danube, and the portions of what is now Switzerland that fall between that and the inheritance of Lewis. To Charles is left Austrasia, Saxony, the north or Neustrian part of France, Thuringia and Alemannia to the north of the Danube, and the rest of Burgundy. Each is to have a way by his own territories into Italy, Lewis by the valley of Susa, Pipin by the Noric or Tyrolese Alps, Charles by the valley of Aosta — the French, Swiss, and German passes. A further division is made in case of either brother's death, and provision in case the nations should wish to be governed by a son of the defunct. Several strict injunctions follow for perpetual peace between the brothers, for the settlement of all disputes, for the protection of the Church and Holy See, for the pre vention of the cruelties and oppressions amongst his posterity by which he had seen competitors for the throne disposed of amongst his predecessors. Of the inheritance of the empire there is not a word. Was it too sacred to be divided ? Or too hazardous to be promised ? Or was not the bestowal of it to be decided otherwise ? All was decided otherwise ; in 813 Charles, seeing his two other sons dead and his own end approaching, declared Lewis to be Emperor and King after him. In 814 he died, and with him the strength of the Franks. We learn from this that Charles, with 44 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES all his wisdom, did not foresee the natural division of his empire which took place at a later period. Perhaps he saw, more strongly than later ages, the division between Northern and Southern France, and Northern and Southern Germany ; anyhow, his division is lateral rather than vertical, as was the later one which prevailed under his grandsons, and more or less throughout modern history. The Organisation of Charles' Dominions. — As for the lower organisation of the dominions of the Franks under Charles, it is impossible to go into much detail with much certainty. Most of the institutions of the several German races have a strong family likeness : the annual placita, or general conventions, once for deliberation, and once for military demonstration ; the administration of the provinces by dukes, appointed from time to time by the king, and by their title explaining that it was for the purposes of war that they were first and chiefly appointed ; the subdivision of the duchies into counties, with a count and his assessors to administer justice and to account for revenue; the regulation of lay and ecclesiastical assemblies, the mallus and the council, according to the nature and extent of the jurisdiction of the pre siding officer; the division of the countships into hundreds and the jurisdiction of the centenarius ; — all these are points in which the records of the Franks, and of any other Teutonic nation, recall simply to our minds the corresponding system among the Anglo- Saxons : the ealdorman, and the sheriff and his thanes ; the county court and the hundred court; the juris diction of the bishop and the abbot. All these develop ments of the ancient German rule subsisted under the several varieties of law. The wide dominions of ORGANISATION OF CHARLES' DOMINIONS 45 Charles embraced populations living under several systems of laws, several of them not German ; the Roman, the Visigoth, the Burgundian, had his own law, derived doubtless in one way or other from the Imperial Code. The Visigothic was a translation of or selection from the Theodosian Code ; the Roman was probably the Theodosian Code itself ; the Burgundian leavened more slightly. The Frank, the Saxon, the Alemannian, and the Bavarian had his own purer or more genuine German institution. Each man carried his law with him. Of course in Germany, where the population was purer, there were less chances of difficulty arising from such commixture, and the varieties of law were more distinctly local. Still the populations were so ruled, and not by a central legislation, although the central legislation was constantly being called in to amend or to add to the law. Throughout Germany, then, native law was still administered by native tribunals, in which the royal officers appointed to preside presided. There was, however, in the insti tution of the Missi Dominici, a distinct central juris diction, exercised by agents of the king, travelling through every province and bringing supreme justice within the reach of every freeman. Such in broad outline is the constitutional condition of the dominions of Charles the Great. The feudal system was further off in appearance than it was in time; and it might seem that many and great changes must take place before the hereditary duchies and counties should take the place of imperial appointments, and the hereditary possession of land become a sign of subordination instead of freedom. The times were, however, rapid in movement, and before the century ends there are clear indications of the existence of the system, although 46 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES as yet wanting in elaboration and consistency. The changes, geographical and successional, of the century of the Karolings will now be described, followed by a speculation on the actual rise of feudalism and its peculiarities in Germany. The Reign of Lewis the Pious, 814-840 : the Division of his Dominions. — It is by the growth of feudalism that Germany, and the dependencies of the German sove reigns, became formed into an imperial whole,' one and uniform in appearance, although wanting in real and lasting unity. The reign of Lewis the Pious began favourably enough : his sons were only boys ; he had three, a number on which Charles had congratulated himself in 806 ; and the eldest was but fifteen. The first measure of Lewis was to reconcile himself with the Saxons ; he received the homage of all the tributaries of the Franks, the adhesion of the Pope, and, two years after his accession to the empire, the imperial crown. Therewith began his troubles. He must proceed, as his father had, to a division of his dominions, but he was already hampered by the gift which Charles had made of Italy to his grandson Bernard. The division was published at Aix-la-Chapelle in 817; Lothair, the eldest son, was, after prayer and deliberation with fasting and almsgiving, chosen to be crowned and associated with his father in the imperial dignity ; Pipin and Lewis were to be kings, and, sub seniore fratre, to enjoy royal power under certain conditions after the father's death. A step is here taken, in advance of Charles' programme, by the provision of a constant central authority in the suzerain or emperor. The actual division is this : Pipin had Aquitaine, the march of Toulouse, one county in Languedoc, and three in Burgundy ; nearly the position which Lewis had himself received in 806. To Lewis is REIGN OF LEWIS THE PIOUS 47 given Bavaria, with all Germany to the east of Bavaria. The rest is retained for the associated father and son, and includes of course the whole northern half of what then was Christian Europe. To the emperor (imperial brother) every year the two kings were to pay a visit and presents, to be accepted by him and returned with a liberality proportioned to his superior power ; to him they were to look for aid in foreign wars ; internal wars were to be no longer possible ; but such foreign wars were not to be undertaken without his leave, although they might receive messages of peace and friendship without his interference. Provision is made for succes sion to the several portions, so that in case of death the dominion shall not be further subdivided ; a new king out of the children of the defunct is to be chosen by the people ; if he leaves no children, his portion is to return to the elder brother ; the elder brother is to be guardian of the realm in case of a minority. Italy is to go to the elder brother on the father's death ; by this we learn that Bernard, to whom his grandfather had given Italy, was in disgrace. He claimed, in fact, the right of empire as his father's son ; for this he was tried, condemned to death, and blinded. He died three days after the operation was performed, and so left the stage clear. It will be seen that the theory of this division was to preserve, with Germany and the imperial dignity, a decided superiority to the elder brother, with some semblance to what would later be called feudal supre macy. The two did not indeed hold their lands of him, but they were obliged to recognise his suzerainty by presents, whilst he retained the right of wardship and escheat. By one clause, however, Lewis provides that the vassal of each brother shall, after his own death, hold his benefice in the power of his lord only; and 48 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES that those who had no lords should be allowed to commend themselves to which of the three they chose, and to possess their private or allodial lands according to their own native law. Such a plan as this has sym metry and much else to recommend it ; but it required less ambitious, less violent men to administer it. Nor would it bear much alteration ; a finger laid upon it would shake it ; the acquisition of new territory by any one of the brothers might upset the balance ; death or a new competitor might split up the whole amalgamation. And in point of fact so it was. The Effect of the Birth of Charles the Bald, 823. — The result of the birth of a fourth son to Lewis, Charles, afterwards Charles the Bald, was such as to discredit for ever the second marriages of princes.1 He was the 1 Chari.es the Great I Lewis the Pious 814-840 Lothair, Emperor 840-855 I Pipin, King of Aquitaine Lewis, King of Germany 843-876 Lewis, Charles of Lothair of Carloman, Emperor Provence, Lotharingia, King of 853-863 855-869 Bavaria Lewis, King of Saxony Arnulf, King of Germany, Emperor 887-899 I Charles the Fat, Emperor 876-888 Lewis III. Carloman Charles the Simple, 898-929 I Lewis IV. (d'Outremer) 936-954 I Lothair, 954-986 Lewis V., 986-987 Charles, Duke of Lorraine Charles the Bald, King of Neustria 843-877, Emperor 875-877 I Lewis II. 877-879 EFFECT OF THE BIRTH OF CHARLES 49 son of Lewis by Judith the daughter of Welf, the Lord of Weingarten in Bavaria, and was born in 823. For him his father very naturally wished to make pro vision, and tried to persuade Lothair to join in bestow ing on him a part of the territory hitherto reserved. Alemannia, with Rhaetia and part of Burgundy, i.e. Swabia and modern Switzerland, were accordingly allotted to him at a diet at Worms in 829, greatly to the disgust of the other brothers. The immediate result of this act was a rebellion, and the deposition of Lewis the Pious from any share in the administration, a measure which was forced on him by Pipin at Com- piegne in the year following. But this arrangement was short-lived. Lothair, who had consented to his father's deposition, was forced to return to his obedi ence, and the measures of Pipin were reversed ; for the time Lothair was obliged to be content with the kingdom of Italy. There was thus for a short period a fivefold division. The father keeps North France and North Germany, Pipin has South France, Charles South-Western, and Lewis South-Eastern Germany. But this was itself a short-lived arrangement ; in 832 Pipin was disgraced, and Aquitaine was taken from him and given to Charles. A new division was pro posed between him and Lothair, and a new quarrel followed. The Pope attempted in vain to mediate. Lewis led an army to chastise the rebels, and was deserted by them at the Liigenfeld (the. field of lies), between Basel and Strassburg. The great humiliation of Lewis followed ; he was now deposed from the empire, deprived of the society of his wife and little son, and condemned by the bishops to retire to a monastery. Lothair was placed at the head of the Frank empire, and is said to have meditated even the 50 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES death of his father. The supremacy of Lothair again provoked a reaction in favour of Lewis. Lothair fled before his brothers, Lewis was again released and re habilitated at S. Denys, and restored to his kingdoms. He and Lothair met in arms before Blois, and the son, seeing himself unequal to a battle, submitted. The sons were then replaced in their estates and peace followed. But hardly two years after, Lewis the father provoked a new rebellion by proposing to associate the little Charles in the imperial title and authority ; the brothers objected, and the project was for the time frustrated — instead of the empire Charles being invested with the kingdom of Neustria, Pipin consent ing. But a further division followed in 837, which gave to Lothair the empire, Italy and the lands between the Rhine and Meuse, with part of Burgundy ; to Lewis the son, besides Bavaria, Saxony and the other con quests of his grandfather ; to Pipin, Aquitaine and Neustria ; to Charles, Burgundy and Franconia. To this division Lewis the son demurred ; he wanted the whole of Germany, and to gain it he took up arms and held out against his father for two years. Death of the Emperor Lewis : the Division of Verdun, 843. — Just at the moment that the father was expecting to mediate between the conflicting brothers, he died. Pipin had died two years before him, and Charles had then entered upon Aquitaine. The division of the empire had thus become very nearly what was after wards arranged : modern France was held by Charles ; Lewis had the most of Germany ; Lothair the inter mediate territory and Italy, with imperial supremacy. Into the minutiae of the quarrels which occupied the three following years it is almost impossible to go ; Lothair attempted, by using one brother against the THE DIVISION OF VERDUN 51 other, to get the reality of imperial authority into his hands ; Lewis took the opportunity of securing the allegiance of the whole of the German provinces ; after several other combinations, the three brothers met and fought at Fontenai on the 25th of June 841. Lothair was beaten. For two years more he struggled on with great pertinacity and incurable bad faith, and at last, in August 843, at Verdun, the final division took place. Lewis at last got the whole of Germany to the east of the Rhine, with several cities on the west of the Rhine to provide him with wine ; Charles had France to the west of the Meuse and Rhone ; Lothair had Italy, the name of emperor, and the in tervening territory, which had once been Ripuarian France, the duchy on the Mosel, Burgundy and Pro vence, which in the Karoling times was called, after either him or after his son of the same name who succeeded to it, Lotharingia or Lorraine, including what was later the county or kingdom of Burgundy and the kingdom of Aries, and later still the inheri tance and conquests of Charles the Bold and the county of Provence, and later still the Austrian Nether lands (the plunder ground of Lewis XIV.), the whole including what is now Belgium and the east of France down to the Mediterranean. Its Importance. — The great importance of the division of Verdun is the fact that it set Germany free from the rest of the Frank empire, for the three sons of Lewis were henceforth equals ; Lothair remained emperor, but the imperial title involved no supremacy. From this point the administration of public law and constitutional history in Germany begins. The Germany of Lewis the German comprised Bavaria with all the territory to the East — Alemannia, Franconia, Saxony, and Thuringia. 52 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES The Rhine for the greatest part of its course was the boundary between him and Lothair, and in the north, where the Rhine was not the limit, a line drawn from the mouth of the Weser to the Rhine, where it takes a bend a little below Coblenz. To this division of Fries land we are to attribute the fact that the present kingdom of Holland, the only German-speaking land beside England, was not included in Germany, nor, whilst Germany and the empire were nearly conterminous, in the empire itself, although belonging to the person who was emperor ; nor, after the empire expired, was it included in the Germanic Confederation which ended in 1866. It remains perhaps for us to see whether it may not yet be swallowed up in a Prussian ised Germany.1 It is almost impossible to retain these details in the memory, but the effect of an attempt to do so ought to enable the historian to realise more thoroughly than any other process the actual continuance of the old national limits within this constantly changing aggregate of empire. Although held by different brothers and in different combinations, Alemannia, Saxony, Bavaria, Franconia, Hessia, Thuringia, Meissen, and Lausitz pre serve their identity and continue to preserve it, with their nationality, their own laws, and the characteristic ecclesiastical differences which have from the first dis tinguished them. Further, we ought to try to gather from the details the impression of the pertinacious and foreseeing policy of Lewis, well called the German, who from the beginning of his father's reign was in possession of Bavaria, and bent on gradually annexing all the German conquests of Charles the Great. We see that he finally succeeded in doing so, and so doing 1 This remark, made many years ago (in 1868), is well worthy of notice. THE REIGN OF LEWIS THE GERMAN 53 separating them for ever from the kingdom which retained the name of the Franks. Henceforth Germany rapidly ceases to be Frank at all. The Reign of Lewis the German, 843-876. — Lewis the German reigned a long time, thirty-three years after the peace of Verdun ; he lost no part of his estates, and acquired nothing from Lothair or Charles. He laboured hard to extend his dominions eastwards ; in 844 he conquered the Obotrites, in modern Mecklenburg ; in 848 he humbled the Bohemians, although he was de feated by them the next year ; and in 855 he was unsuccessful against the Slavs, though after that year his fortune seems to have looked up, and he not only defended but extended the eastern frontier. The northern boundary of the Eyder also he managed to preserve. But he was not spared the fate of his family, his sons, by their jealousies and demands of estates, being a source of constant difficulty to him. His career, however, is a marked contrast to that of his brothers Lothair and Charles, and on the whole there seems to have been either in his conduct or in his character more that redeems him in the eyes of the historians. Although not a missionary king like Charles, he did a great deal for the promotion of learning and religion amongst his more civilised subjects, and left a good report behind him. He died in 876, leaving three sons — Carloman, King of Bavaria (880) ; Lewis II., King of Saxony (882) ; and Charles the Fat, King of Alemannia, the last becoming afterwards also emperor (876-888) and pos sessor nominally of all the lands of the Franks. Of these sons Carloman survived him four years, succeeded to Italy on the death of his uncle Charles the Bald, and died in 880.. Lewis succeeded in 877 to Lorraine, and, on the death of Carloman, to Bavaria, but survived him 54 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES only two years, dying in 882. Charles the Fat succeeded in 879 to the empire ; in 880 to Italy ; in 882 to Bavaria and Saxony ; in 884 to France and Burgundy. But he was not a man of any real power, nor were the Germans willing to be again lost in the empire of a nominal prince. Carloman, the popular son of Lewis the German, had left a bastard, Arnulf, Duke of Carinthia, who headed a confederacy against Charles the Fat, who was deposed at Tribur in 887 when Arnulf was created King of Germany. The French had been very shy of acknow ledging Charles the Fat ; he does not count amongst their Charleses at all. Losing Germany he lost all the real power he had ; he died the next year, 888. With the succession of Arnulf we must begin a new period. Feudalism. — Attention must now be directed to the process which underlies all this chopping and changing ; the development of feudalism and the feudalising of Germany. Unfortunately the growth of feudalism has been treated generally far more in reference to French than to German history : the French, with their great power of definition and organisation, have imparted to the growth of the system a hardness of outline which it did not possess, and which of course approaches the truth more nearly in France than elsewhere ; which is therefore inapplicable generally to the history of Eng land and Germany. In some measure this may be justified by the fact that feudalism was an especially Frank system, and was really carried out more definitely in France than elsewhere. Still it is a misfortune that we have no more definite account of its growth in Germany also. Feudalism, I need hardly tell you, is that system of mutual interdependence between lord and vassal, depending on the holding of land, and STAGES IN GROWTH OF FEUDALISM 55 binding the whole body politic in a system of close gradations, the vassal holding his land of, doing his duty to, and expecting protection from his immediate lord, who is in the same relation to another until the social pyramid is crowned by royalty. The system in theory originates in the conquest of a kingdom, which is parted out by the king or general amongst his followers, who hold their shares of him by military service, and subdivide that share to their followers in turn on similar or lower services. Practically it has not grown up under such conditions, except perhaps in England after the Conquest by the Normans, when the law was to some extent accommodated to the theory ; and in the Frank colonies of the Crusades, where it was pure and simple. Certainly in the Frank Empire it grew up otherwise, for it sprang not out of a general division of the kingdom, but from a gradual concretion and assimilation of different territories and different characters in their owners. Stages in the Growth of Feudalism. — The first stage of such feudalism was of course the bestowal of an estate by way of provision on a faithful servant or an im portant minister ; which involved the performance of certain duties generally if not always military, and was termed beneficium ; the second step was for the bene- ficium to become hereditary ; and the third was as soon jas hereditary succession gave the means of en suring a perfect title, when the beneficiary was allowed to carve out minor holdings, for his own dependants, to be held by similar services. But even after this had been done two great points remained to be added. First the universalising of the system, so that all states should be held on feudal tenure; and secondly, the joining to the feudal ownership such rights of actual 56 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES jurisdiction as made the large beneficiary sovereign over his feudal dependants, except so far as the authority of his own superior entered in. The first of these points, the spreading of feudalism over the whole of a country, was attained by the process of commenda tion, according to which the small independent land owners were constantly putting themselves under the protection of one neighbour lord for and against another, and as a condition of that dependence, grant ing him a feudal hold on the land which was hitherto all their own. This process had largely prevailed in England before the Norman Conquest, though without actual mention of feudality. But in France it spread probably with more rapidity and covered the whole country. The second point, the conjunction of heredi tary magistracy with feudal possession, can only have sprung from the union of the office of imperial governor with the ownership of great lands in the province of which the government was so held. As the benefice became hereditary, so the magistracy might also follow suit, and then as the central power became weaker and the feudatory more powerful at home, the authority which had been delegated would become inherent, and so either exclude the superior jurisdic tion of the suzerain or make it impossible to exercise it until every provincial count or duke was really sovereign in his own duchy or county. It is well known how this did result in France and how from Charles the Bald to Lewis IX. France was full of kings, amongst whom the real sovereign was often the weakest and had less territory than many of his nobles. Illustrations from French and German History, — The greatest part of French history, down to the end of ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HISTORY 57 Lewis IX.'s reign, is taken up with the succession to, the absorption of, and emission of these great fiefs from the demesnes of the owner, whilst the efforts of the feuda tories to maintain their several privileges quite puts out of sight the existence of anything like the ancient machinery of national unity. Private war, private alliances, private courts of injustice, private coinage and the exclusion of royal jurisdiction, are the subjects of the constitutional history of France. With Germany, however, it was very much the reverse, although the actual result of subdivision was the same, and owing to the position of the two countries at the close of the Middle Ages, is even now historically clearer in Germany than in France. This will form a leading topic in most of the ensuing chapters ; and the more detailed view even of the theory of German feudalism must now be left to the next chapter. It is only necessary here to remark that the differences in Germany arose from the greater extent of power left in the hands of native allodial owners, often the descend ants of the old hereditary rulers of the provinces ; secondly, from the greater strength of the central power, a source of strength as well as of weakness being the title of the empire, both Roman and Frank ; and thirdly, from the greater force of disruption resulting from the removal of the greater force of cohesion. Both in France and Germany feudalism grew, owing to the necessities of the same time, the time of the dis sensions of the Karolingian house ; but in France the royal power, at first infinitesimal, is seen growing and strengthening from Hugh Capet to Lewis XI. ; in Germany what was a strong central force at first, made stronger by adjunction to the empire, is seen breaking up in the misfortunes of Frederick II., and at once 58 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES proceeding to a thorough and still working disruption of elements never from the first thoroughly amalga mated. IMPORTANT DATES Coronationpof Charles the Great as Emperor, 800. Death of Charles the Great, 814. Reign of Lewis the Pious, 816-840. Treaty of Verdun, 843. Reign of Lewis I. the German, 843-876. Death of Charles the Fat (King, 876-888 ; Emperor, 880-888), 888. CHAPTER IV Feudalism in Germany — Feudalism in France — The royal power in France and Germany — The Karoling States — Lotharingia — Arnulf king and emperor, 887-899, and his son Lewis, 900-911 — The Hungarians — Otto of Saxony and Conrad of Franconia — Importance of Conrad's reign — Advent of the Saxon emperors. Feudalism in Germany. — There are many points in the history of feudalism, as exemplified in Germany, which would be interesting if we were now investigating the customs and jurisprudence of that country. In this chapter, however, only such particulars will be adduced as throw light upon the process by which Germany passed from being a geographical expression for a group of kindred but independent nations, to be a consolidated kingdom under a central authority, and how from being a kingdom consolidated under central authority, it became a confederation of almost independent states bound together by an elective head, whose power and authority rested more on his own personal influence than on the endowments or prerogatives of his official position. By the conquest of Charles the Great, and by the uniform policy of the long reign of Lewis the German, Germany had become one state, and one with well-defined limits ; and that consolidation survived the line of its creators, short as it may have been. Charles the Fat was deposed and perished twelve years after the death of his father, and his German kingdom bestowed itself with one consent on the son of his brother Carloman, Arnulf, Duke of Carinthia, the last 60 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES German king of the line of the Great Charles. But although Arnulf was a son of Carloman, he was the son of a concubine, and he succeeded by the election of the subjects of Charles not by virtue of any family compact. The very succession is a proof of the change which already prevailed in a feudal direction, that the barons of Germany so lately the Antrustiones, the bene ficiaries or officials of Frankish kings, were now able to command the election of their own master. But the change is really not so great as it seems : the right of choosing a king on a vacancy from the members of the royal house was primitive among the German nations ; and it was expressly provided for in the settle ment by Charles in the year 806 that, if either of his younger sons should die, the people of the kingdom he had ruled might choose, if they liked, one of his sons to reign over them in preference to the surviving uncles. Bastardy counted for little in those days, as we see from the succession of Bernard in Italy ; and Arnulf was the recognised son of Carloman, the eldest son of Lewis the German. Characteristics of Feudalism : (1) In Germany. — Before summing up the reigns that intervene between the end of the Karolings and the institution of the Saxon line, in which was restored the empire to Germany in the person of Otto I., it is advisable to amplify what has been already written about feudalism in Germany. (1) The fact that Germany, although a conquered country, was conquered by a kindred race, and that the wisest monarchs of that race were content with the acquies cence of the conquered nations in their jeligion and government, without insisting on a reappointment of their lands or repudiation of their ancient laws, but admitted them at once, -or very shortly after- their sub- CHARACTERISTICS OF FEUDALISM 61 jugation, into an equality of position with their con querors, had the effect of continuing a large portion of the land of the conquered countries in the same allodial tenure on which it was held before the con quest. Feudal tenure was not a fundamental principle of the Frank system, nor indeed was the feudal principle as yet so fully developed, and to feudalise the whole of Germany would have required an extent and a disper sion of Frank nobility which, if possible, would have been dangerous. The result of this was the leaving allodial estates of considerable extent, which continue to subsist in the heirs of the ancient indigenous nobility, and whose tenure was unaffected by ever so large an admixture with properties feudally held, or as it became the fashion to call them on the principles of the civil law, fidei commissa. The existence of an indigenous allodial nobility has of course an enormous effect in the maintenance of national or provincial feeling. Still more is this the case when, in the distribution of imperial offices, magistracies, or provincial governor ships, accompanied by large beneficiary provision, were given to the leading nobles of the old stock. Such gifts would, having once become attached to an ancient national house, have a tendency to become hereditary, and having become hereditary, would have the strongest possible chance of being lasting ; for the basis of their duration lying in the good government they could carry out, they would have the firmest support in the affection of those under their charge ; the supreme power, if above jealousy, being thankful to the house that proved its faith by its wise government. Hence, if it is found, for instance, that in Saxony large estates were retained by their ancient owners on an unaltered tenure, and that the emperors or kings were wise enough to fill 62 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES the magistracies with these and bestow on them the provision meet for such a position, it may be taken as certain that it will not be long before the Saxon duke dom becomes hereditary, and that under hereditary dukes it will continue, perhaps indeed faithful to the general interest of the empire of which it forms a part, and far more certainly as national or as provincial in spirit as it was before, or even perhaps more so. (2) In France. — With France it was not so. Owing to the fact that the old Gauls were an alien people from the Frank conquerors, and civilised under a law of their own, much less amalgamation took place ; the conquerors retained their character of a superior race and the land was more thoroughly subject to a feudal tenure, the overlordship passing entirely to Franks. Thus the Frank provincial governors, who afterwards developed into the great feudatories, were less of national or provincial princes than the German, were more definitely provided for by feudal benefices, were more dependent on the maintenance of their feudal position, were less likely to recover power after once having lost it, but were more likely to become speedily and uninterruptedly hereditary. If they lost their bene fices, their feudal estates, they were nothing ; but the German allodial lord, even if he lost his imperial office, could fall back on his own ancestral one. Hence with a strong tendency in the German counts and dukes to become hereditary, and to maintain hereditary houses from which their successors could be taken, there was a much greater tendency in the French nobles to retain consecutive hold of power. Thus whilst the early portion of the tenth century is the period at which dukedoms and counties in France became hereditary, in Germany, in spite of the tendency, it is not until POWER IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 63 the eleventh. It is not to be forgotten, however, that in France the Franks had been established since the sixth, whilst in Germany the old national divisions had subsisted almost in integrity until the ninth century. The Royal Power in France and Germany. — Taking these things together it is not difficult to see that the central authority, the supreme king, will retain his power longer, and also that the general assembly of the estates of his kingdom will continue to be a sub stantive power in the empire much longer, where the great provincial dignities have not become permanently hereditary, and yet a provincial nobility has grown into hereditary wealth and strength. In France where the feudalism was complete, the assembly of estates was little else than a collection of minor feudatories under the direction of their overlords, lay or ecclesiastical ; they were faithful, or could not help being faithful, to their hereditary counts, and if the hereditary counts were strong enough to keep them faithful they were strong enough to coerce the king. This they did. They reduced him to a nonentity, and might have set him aside without finding the want of him. In Germany, however, the king could always look for support in a diet of the estates, which contained an element of independent hereditary nobility, not de pendent on the dukes or counts ; in which the dukes or counts were still nominated not yet hereditary, and the office therefore a matter for competition among the faithful nobles ; and, even where it had become hereditary, there would always be a strong independent party to support the central power against the sub ordinates. And so it was. Very much as in England before the Norman Conquest, the earldoms were tend ing to become hereditary but were not yet so ; there 64 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES was an abundant aristocracy able and willing to claim them when they became vacant ; but the king could depend on the resolution of the Witenagemote when it became necessary to remove or to punish any of them, and there was no fear of the king sharing the fate of his fellow in France. Of course, as has already been said, the removal of the central pressure would have a much greater tendency to produce disruption in Germany than in France. France and Germany in the Tenth Century. — These reasons account for the difference between the histories of Germany and France in the Middle Ages. At the point now reached France was falling rapidly, had in fact nearly fallen into the hands of the great counts and dukes whose successors, and often their descendants, portioned it out among themselves for several centuries, until Philip II. by lying and chicanery, and Lewis IX. by wise marriages and honest policy, managed to re cover most of the great fiefs and vest them in members of the royal house. In this very year, 887, at the time of the deposition of Charles the Fat from the throne of Germany at Tribur, he was deposed from that of France, and Eudes, Count of Paris, was chosen king. Here was at once a vassal who had succeeded his father and left his inheritance to his brother, in the county of Paris and duchy of France. In Germany the time was not yet ripe for the choosing of a mere vassal ; but, when it does come, it will be seen that the choice fell on a noble whose position is by no means so well ascertained, but who practised the rule, which long continued in force, of immediately devolving his former dignities upon another prince. The Close of the Reign of Charles the Fat, Emperor 880-888, and King of France 884-887. — It is now neces- THE KAROLING STATES 65 sary to return to Charles the Fat.1 For three years we see this unfortunate prince at the head of all the posses sions of his house. The great line of the Karolings being now reduced to himself, a childless man, and the little Charles, son of Lewis the Stammerer, with hereditary claims on the throne of France, but now only five years old. The misfortunes of Charles the Fat came upon him suddenly and overwhelmingly ; he lost all powers of body and mind by disease ; the deposition of him in 887 was a matter of necessity, but it was carried out with, it would seem, unnecessary barbarity. If he was diseased and idiotic or even raving mad, there was no reason why he should be deprived of the necessaries of life and left as pensioner to the charity of a bishop. His death, which occurred in 888, was attributed to strangulation ; and, as there is no reason to imagine that Arnulf would have been un necessarily cruel, or that it was the interest of any one else to get rid of him, it is perhaps most reasonable to suppose that he was put out of the way as an un manageable and dangerous madman. He died at Indingen in his own Alemannian kingdom, and was buried at Richenau near Constance. The Karoling States. — Of the other Karoling States little need be said. France became the ground of contention between Charles the Simple and his house, and the Counts of Paris who finally supplanted them. Italy fell into the hands for many years of its own nobles, who elected themselves kings and emperors at Roncaglia, until Otto of Saxony in the following cen tury recovered the empire ; to this period belong the emperors Guy and Lambert of Spoleto, Berengar of 1 From 876 to 879 Charles the Fat reigned along with his brothers Carloman and Lewis. On their deaths he reigned alone. E 66 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Friuli, Hugh of Aries, Berenger of Tuscany, and the rest who puzzle the student by their insignificance and contemporaneousness. Italy was indeed a battle ground for the rival families, who, out of its own bounds, thought themselves entitled to its sovereignty. It was a debatable ground for competitors from all the other kingdoms. Lotharingia. — But, if the history of Italy at this period is confusing, still more is that of Lotharingia, the king dom of the Lothairs, that lay between France and Germany and the stock of whose rulers was quite worn out. The failure of Charles the Fat in 888 was remedied by an election in France and Germany ; but in Lotharingia it was the signal for a break-up. The territory had no natural unity and never fell again really under one sceptre, until the time of Napoleon I. Several subdivisions of Lotharingia under the sons and nephews of Lothair I. had helped the process of disin tegration, but it had been nominally united under Charles the Fat, and for the last time. Boso, King of Provence, who had some sort of claim by the gift of Carloman of Bavaria, maintained himself in his portion of Lotharingia and left it to his son. Trans- jurane Burgundy erected itself into a kingdom for Rudolf, a son of Conrad, Count of Auxerre, whose successor Rudolf II. united the kingdom of Provence with his own and called himself King of Aries ; the crown descended in his posterity until it was be queathed by Rudolf III. to Conrad the Salic king and emperor in 1032. The northern half of Lotharingia retained the title of Lorraine, but it also broke up into Upper and Lower. It still remained nominally subject to Germany, and came with Germany to Arnulf, who ARNULF, KING AND EMPEROR 67 made it a kingdom for his son Zwentibold ; on his misbehaviour the Lorrainers chose his brother Lewis, and on his death Charles the Simple. It soon after, in 959, fell under the sovereignty of its dukes, who had been hitherto beneficiary only. Otto gave Lower Lorraine to Godfrey I. and Upper Lorraine to Frederick, Count of Bar ; from thenceforth, although occasionally personally united, they became permanently divided ; the last remnant of the Karolings wore themselves out in Lower Lorraine, and Upper Lorraine became a hereditary dukedom of no great importance to German history. It is important, however, to observe that Lotharingia continues to be, in its integrity or in its disruption, feudally a part of the Germany which in the next century was to reconstitute the empire. Arnulf, King 887-889, and Emperor 894, and his son Lewis 900-911. — Arnulf1 was elected King of Germany in 887 at Tribur ; subject to his approval Eudes was elected King of France ; Berengar, one of the com petitive kings of Italy, made him his protector. He followed up for the most part the policy of his grand father in attempting to humiliate the Slav nations on the eastern frontier, and he conquered the Moravians ; but he also fought the Normans and drove them out of the Low Countries. In 893 he recovered Lorraine and gave it to his son Zwentibold ; by his management Charles the Simple received the crown of France ; he himself at length entered the lists for the empire and was crowned by Pope Formosus in 896. His character does not strike us very forcibly ; but there was no doubt considerable power about the man, probably of 1 Arnulf, the successor of Charles the Fat in Germany, was the illegitimate son of Carloman, brother of Charles. 68 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES the same sort as his grandfather Lewis the German had possessed. He reigned three years after he took the imperial title, and was kept constantly on the move between Bavaria and Italy. He died in 899, or, as some writers say, 900; his legitimate children were the child Lewis, who succeeded him, and two daughters : — Hedwige, whom he married to Otto the Great, Duke of Saxony, the father of Henry the Fowler, and Glismond, who married Conrad of Fritzlar, Count of Franconia, and was mother of Conrad I., King of Germany. His son Lewis, often known as Lewis the Child, succeeded him as King of Germany at seven years old, and soon afterwards he was received as King of Lorraine. He was placed under the government of Otto of Saxony, his brother-in-law, and Archbishop Hatto of Mainz. His great war was with the Hungarians, by whom he was defeated, and who now begin to bear an important part in German history ; this defeat seems to have broken his heart, for he died in 911 and left no children. His cousin Charles the Simple was too contemptible, it would seem, to be accepted as his successor, and we close with him the record of the fortunes of the Frank kings of Germany. Henceforth we find our selves in the midst of a new set of actors of whom an account will now be given. The Hungarians. — And first of all, who were these Hungarians who defeated Lewis ? Just at the same moment the Frank kingdoms were assailed on the west and on the east ; on the west by the Normans, on the east by the Hungarians, or Magyars. How the Normans were bribed by Charles the Simple with the gift of Normandy, and how they gradually were Christianised into Crusaders and civilised into French THE HUNGARIANS 69 speaking before they conquered England, we learn from French and English history. But of the Hun garians we know little comparatively, but that they were a Tartar tribe, known in their own tongue as Magyar ; they were a fierce tribe of hunters and fisher men, and they drove with them enormous herds of sheep and oxen. For a picture of their march, a little perhaps indebted to fancy, the 55th chapter of Gibbon must be consulted. The historians have not ventured to give a date for the beginning of their wanderings, but relate that they started from the country on the west side of the Chinese wall, and partly conquering before them, and impelled by other barbarous tribes, especially the Patzinaks behind them, reached Pannonia, then a Slavonian country and nominally subject to the empire, about fifteen years before the end of the ninth century. The date of their entering Germany is well fixed, it is the year 890. Just then Arnulf was sore pressed by the Normans and was engaged in a war with the Moravian chieftain to whom he had just given Bohemia. Unhappily for getful of the example of the Lombards, he invited the Magyars to his help and with their aid succeeded in humbling the Slavs ; but the step was fatal, and for a hundred years these Magyars or Huns, as they were called, desolated Germany, destroyed the cities as far north as Bremen and as far south as Pavia, whilst towards the west they reached the Rhine in the reign of Lewis. During Arnulf's reign they rested, but with Lewis their aggressions began ; they invaded South Germany, met him at a place called Ansburg, and broke his young spirit by the defeat. As Gog and Magog, the astonished Germans regarded them as the forerunners 70 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES of Antichrist, and of that end of the world which was to come in the year iooo. Happily the year, although it did not see the end of the world, saw the end of their barbarism ; for in the year 997 Stephen their leader was converted and baptized, whilst, in the year of destiny, he was received into the number of Christian kings with the special title of Apostle or Apostolic Majesty. Otto of Saxony and Conrad of Franconia. — Such was the cloud which hung over Germany when Lewis, the last of the Karolings, died. The crisis was one which demanded a general, or rather a dictator ; it was no time for balancing equivalent claims, or enduring weak ness for the sake of an hereditary title. Charles the Simple had to surrender Normandy the very year that Lewis died. But who were the men, and what were the relations among themselves, from whom a saviour of the fallen kingdom could be chosen ? Fortunately there were two men whose character fitted them for the position, and who had both greatness of mind not to begrudge it to the other. These were Otto, Duke of Saxony, the brother-in-law, and Conrad, Duke of Franconia, the nephew of the late king. The constant chopping and changing of the divisions of Germany among the Karolings had had the effect of preserving the definiteness of the boundaries of the old nations ; whilst the decline in personal importance of the kings had greatly increased the power of the officers, the governors, beneficiaries, dukes or counts who were set over them, and who sometimes added ancient inde pendent claims to the delegated authority. In Saxony, Otto, the son of Ludolph, was believed among the Saxons to be a descendant of their ancient princes. CONRAD OF FRANCONIA 71 Ludolph was the son of Egbert, and his mother Ida, who was a canonised saint, was a daughter of the Duke Dietrich who had held out against the Great Charles. Other genealogies gave him Witikind as an ancestor. He was a Saxon prince, and was the third of his house who had held the office of duke or imperial lieutenant. Nowhere was the patriotic feeling so strong as in Saxony, consequently Otto was a thoroughly strong, powerful man ; and he had exercised very great influ ence under both Arnulf and Lewis. But he was now growing old. The other prince, Conrad, Duke of Fran conia, was, as you would naturally expect, a Frank probably by extraction ; his father's name was Conrad, and it was rumoured that he was akin to the Karolings themselves, but the obscurity of the rise of the family seems fatal to any pretension of high nobility. His father Conrad, however, had been a very powerful man under Arnulf. His history illustrates the unsettled state of Franconia, under the administration of its imperial duke.1 He by whatever title, and his three brothers, formed a design of conquering the Count of Bamberg, Adalbert, a nephew of Otto. They besieged him and a brother perished on one side : on the other side two, the brothers of Adalbert. The blood feud continued for several years, during which Conrad became Duke of Thuringia. It ended with his death in 905 or 907 in battle against Adalbert. The latter was persuaded by Archbishop Hatto to surrender, and was beheaded by Lewis. The example shows that private war, one of the essential evils of a feudal government, was an under- 1 Lewis, King of Franconia, son of Lewis the German, died 882 ; and Franconia was divided between Adalbert of Bamberg and the imperial Duke Conrad. 72 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES stood practice ; it also shows that Franconia,1 in which Bamberg is so important a portion, was in a condition of very little permanent consolidation. Bavaria, Swabia, and Alsace. — In fact, here as in France, under the influence of the earlier Frank posses sion, it is natural to expect to find feudalism more widely and early developed. Conrad the father may safely be called the founder of the house of Franconia ; and Adalbert, who is called a nephew of the Duke of Saxony, may be considered to have been a competitor for the duchy. Bavaria was only now emerging from the state of subjection to movable governors, under a duke named Leopold, who, from the office of guardian of the Bavarian marches, had risen an important step ; his origin is obscure, and he himself was not a likely man to be chosen. Of Swabia very little is known at 1 Franconia, on the death of Lewis (King of Saxony and Franconia, son of Lewis the German) in 876, fell between the Duke Conrad and Adalbert, Count of Bamberg. Poppo = 1 1 Henry, Duke of = Thuringia and Saxony, d. 886 at siege of Paris = Brunehilda 1 Poppo II. 1 Adalbert of Bamberg, be headed 908 1 Berthc Baben 1 Henry, = killed in 902 = Barbara, dau. Otto I. , Duke of Saxony la of = berg 1 1 Otto 1 Adalbert, Count = of Mertal, d. 954 1 1 .eopold I. , the first Babenberg duke, and Margrave of Austria, 928-994 ELECTION OF CONRAD AS KING 73 this period. The duchy of Alemannia had been a good deal pulled about during the decline of the Karolings. Alsace had been made a duchy for Hugo, son of Lothair II., and perhaps then detached from Swabia. The Swabian house from which the later emperors came, sprang up in the eleventh century ; and, although a duchy of Swabia was reconstituted by Henry the Fowler, none of the houses which held it were long lived, and the list of beneficiary dukes continues there longer than elsewhere. Election of Conrad as King, 911. — There is no exact contemporary account of the election of emperor ; but it seems certain that a general assembly of the German nations took place, and that unanimously the throne was offered to Duke Otto ; that Otto excused himself on the ground of age and proposed his nephew Conrad. Conrad was accepted and crowned. The fact that the Franks and Saxons alone are mentioned as taking part in this transaction by the contemporary historians, has led to a question whether the Bavarians and Alemanni really took part in it. It seems probable that the Fran- conians and Saxons only were represented in it by men of much mark, who added like Otto and Conrad high nobility to high office. By such men neither Bavaria nor Alemannia could force herself into a foremost place ; but it would appear from the words of Witikind of Corvey, that the election was per cunctos populos, that it was at least formally carried out. Conrad's character fully justified the choice, in which Duke Otto had over looked the claims of his own children. Clearly Conrad's prospects of strong government depended much on Otto's life. Conrad's Reign and Difficulties, 911-919. — Otto died the year after the election, and the king found himself in 74 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES immediate difficulties. The five nations over which he was called to rule in turn opposed themselves to him as rebels. They were, of course, the Saxons, Bavarians, Alemanni, Franconians, and to them have now to be added the Lorrainers. The quarrel with the Saxons began only too naturally on the death of Otto. Henry (called by laterwriters "the Fowler"),his son and Conrad's cousin, claimed, or took possession without claim, of his father's honours and estates. Conrad fearing his youth, it is said, but quite as probably fearing his power, did not admit him to the whole of the benefice possessed by his father, i.e. he either diminished his official estate, or diminished his official power ; it is not certain which. But it is certain that Henry and his Saxons took umbrage at the treatment and rose in arms. Eberhard, Duke of Franconia, to whom Conrad had delivered over his duchy when he accepted the empire, was sent with an army into Saxony, and besieged Henry. Eberhard, deceived by a stratagem, retired from Saxony without any result, and Henry continued practically independent during the rest of the reign. In 913 Erchanger, Count of Alemannia or Alsace, rebelled, but the war was prevented by the marriage of Conrad with his sister. In the following year Erchanger rebelled again and was exiled. On attempting again to claim the authority of a duke, he was condemned to death as a traitor at Mainz in a Diet, and beheaded. His duchy was given to Burchard, who, possessing the government of Swabia also, bore the title of Duke of Alemannia in full right. He is in fact said to be the first Duke of Alemannia or Swabia, under the new kingdom. Encouraged by these difficulties of the king, Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria, who was nephew of Erchanger of Alsace, and had been active and successful in defending the frontiers against the THE IMPORTANCE OF CONRAD'S REIGN 75 Hungarians, attempted to raise himself to the rank of an independent prince, but his fall was as signal as that of Erchanger. He fled to his old enemies the Hungarians, and invited them into Germany as his allies. These dreadful barbarians had not been at rest during the struggle in Saxony ; they annually invaded Germany, taking a different route each year. In 912 they ravaged Thuringia and Franconia, in 913 Bavaria, in 915 and 916 Alemannia, Thuringia, and Saxony. In 917 they penetrated as far as Lorraine. In the valley of the Inn, a land fatal to invaders, they were defeated, but there only. In 919 Conrad went into Bavaria against Arnulf and his new allies ; in the expedition he received a wound which ended in his death. Returning to Germany he called together the princes and recom mended them to choose Henry, Duke of Saxony and Thuringia, as his successor. Shortly after this he died. The Importance of Conrad's Reign. — The place occupied by this short reign is sufficiently definite, so definite in fact that on this probability a school of German jurists founded a theory, according to which Conrad reduced the whole of his dominions to a feudal symmetry ; it was even held that the several dukes offered to hold their lands of Conrad in fee, and acquired the rights of sovereigns each in his own duchy. But this idea is rejected by the later scholars, and it seems better to regard the reign as a period, from which the causes which had been long at work begin to show their results more plainly. So viewed, it is the time at which the hereditary principle begins to oust the principle of nomination, except where the hereditary succession itself fails; and so henceforth the princes are rather vassals of the empire than its ministers. Certainly this is the case in Saxony, Franconia, and Bavaria ; that it is 76 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES not so in Lorraine and Alemannia is due rather to other circumstances such as have been described. It cannot be denied that in this matter Conrad sacrificed some what of the shadow of power for the reality ; and although humbled by the success with which Henry the Fowler vindicated his independence in Saxony, gained by having him for a friend instead of a foe. But he did not proceed in the same way in Alemannia, where Erchanger paid the penalty of his great designs with his head ; nor in Bavaria, where Arnulf was banished and exiled. But the reign of Conrad is too short to reveal much of his individual character, and the recommenda tion of Henry the Fowler for king must be set against the story which accuses Conrad of having sought to take his life. It is convenient to take this for an epoch, to which character perhaps there is little else to entitle it than that it comes between two great dynasties of dis tinctly different origin and policy, both of which bore the imperial title, and made it respected throughout the world. But to make it a period either of pure feudalism or even of distinct transition to feudalism is a mistake. Still more so would it be to suppose that the feudal idea was so rooted in Germany that the extinction of the Karolings involved the rise of their vassals to the rank of independent princes. Although it was certainly the object of the dukes to become kings, as they had seen the Karolings themselves kings of each one of the nations out of which the kingdom of Lewis the German had been composed, it would be to antedate the feudal idea far too much if we were to suppose that these men would have regarded the extinction of the house of the suzerain as a release from allegiance. It would be wiser to go back for a cause to the ancient national identity of the several nations, which is certainly seen in the Saxons THE SAXON EMPERORS 77 and Bavarians, and in a less degree in the Franks. But it is more likely that Henry and Arnulf and Erchanger looked on themselves as candidates for the succession to Saxony, Bavaria, and Alemannia, as so many distinct thrones left open by the extinction of Karoling occupants, than as vacant by the conquest of Thassiloor or of Witikind. There was a time when Charles the Fat had been King of Franconia, Lewis of Saxony, Carloman of Bavariaf with no overlord. The imperial authority of the senior Karoling had been abolished at Verdun, and, although Arnulf was both King of Germany and emperor, the tie between the two characters was not yet drawn close ; Germany could do without either an emperor or a single king. The next period, that of the dominion of the Saxon house, which in its own representatives re conciled for one of the great divisions of the empire the substance and show of power, put an end for many centuries to the idea of dividing Germany into the old petty kingdoms. Bavaria and Saxony, although kept apart by jealousies and antipathies, do not come out as distinct monarchies until in the eighteenth century Prussia, and in the nineteenth Hanover, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg, realised the dreams of the Bavarian Arnulf on the extinction of the Holy Roman Empire. The Saxon Emperors. — The Saxon emperors are all men who vindicate their place in history by personal character. Hitherto we have watched the play of events with little knowledge of the lives or idiosyn crasies of the actors. Except the great Charles we have very indistinct conceptions of the Frank rulers ; of Lewis the Pious we know more perhaps than of the younger ones ; but the men for whom, whilst at the head of enormous territories, their subjects could find no better names than the Bald, the Stammerer, the 78 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Fat, and the Simple, were perhaps more likely to leave a mark in history by their misfortunes and failures than by any origination of history by themselves. From this time we shall be able to trace the minds and working of great men for nearly three centuries of troubled but not obscured splendour. IMPORTANT DATES Accession of Arnulf (king and emperor), 887. Deposition of Charles the Fat, 887. Eudes (Odo), Count of Paris, becomes King of France, 887. Defeat of the Northmen by Arnulf, S91. Arnulf takes Rome, and is crowned Emperor, 894-896. Charles the Simple succeeds Eudes, 898. Arnulf is succeeded by his son, Lewis III., 899. Reign of Lewis III., 899-911. Reign of Conrad I. (of Franconia), 911-918. Treaty of Clair-sur-Epte, 911. CHAPTER V The reign of Henry the Fowler — Hungarian wars — His internal policy — The towns — The marks — His death and character —Otto I. — The first Civil War — Henry the Quarreller's con spiracy — The reorganisation of the Duchies — The second Civil War — Otto's imperial position— Battle of Lechfeld — The Bohemians and Danes — The character of Otto's Empire. The Reign of Henry the Fowler, 919-936. — In Henry the Fowler, Germany had for the first time a really national sovereign. Whether or no his descent from Witikind and the old independent kings of the Saxons be allowed, it cannot but be admitted that he vindi cated his claim to such a descent so far as it could be vindicated by patriotism, valour, and prudence. By his marriage with Matilda, daughter of Count Dietrich of Ringelheim, he acquired for his children an un doubted claim on the affections of Saxons. Whatever he was, she at least was sprung from Witikind ; but he was himself Saxon enough to represent all the interests of his people. He was born in 876, and on his father's death became Duke in 912. After having with diffi culty succeeded in recovering the position which his father had held from the unwilling Conrad, he was recommended by him on his deathbed as his successor in 919. The news brought to Henry by Eberhard, Duke of Franconia, and brother of Conrad, surprised him, it is said, whilst he was out hawking, whence the name by which he is known amongst later historians, Henry the Fowler, although the name may have been given him from the fact of his being represented in 80 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES pictures with a hawk on his wrist, as was not unusual in ancient portraits of princes. The election, having first been arranged on Conrad's recommendation, was formally transacted at Fritzlar in Hesse, where at a great assembly of the five nations, Henry was accepted and crowned King of the Germans by Heriger, Arch bishop of Mainz. He reigned for seventeen years ; — seventeen years they were of hard and good and effectual work. Hallam allows that to Henry the Fowler and Otto I., Germany was more indebted than to any sovereign since the great Charles. More than that may be admitted by way of praise. Charles had conquered and incorporated Germany ; he had partly organised it, and in Christianity had given it an element of unity. Lewis the German had kept it from falling to pieces when the rest of the empire did so ; Conrad of Franconia had recognised the individuality of the five nations, and the half imperial, half confederate character of the royal position. But from Henry the Fowler the nation derived a working unity which lasted for three generations after him, and continued to make itself felt at intervals for a much longer period. By his wise policy and the consistent pursuit and enforce ment of it, he laid the foundation of a great national system. Reading of his measures for the foundation of cities seems like reading a story of colonisation ; his extension of the boundaries of the empire entitles him to the praise of a conqueror, his victories over the Hungarians to that of a deliverer. His Policy in Germany. — His first difficulty of course was to obtain from the dukes whom Conrad had recog nised the substance as well as the show of fealty. From Eberhard of Franconia he had nothing to fear. Burc- hard of Swabia, cowed by the manifestation of his THE DEFENCE OF THE EMPIRE 81 power, yielded as soon as he could with a good grace. Arnulf of Bavaria, who had himself laid claim to royalty, was besieged by Henry at Ratisbon, and compelled to own himself vanquished as much by the wise and con ciliating policy of Henry as by his power. In 921 he submitted honourably, became Henry's man, and was confirmed by him in his possession of Bavaria, while his daughter was married to Henry the Quarrelsome, a younger son of Henry the Fowler, who ultimately became Duke of Bavaria himself. Lorraine was pro pitiated in the same way after a long series of quarrels with Charles the Simple ; Giselbert the duke, who had taken upon himself to act as an independent sovereign, fell about 924 into the hands of Henry, who restored him to his duchy and gave him his daughter Gerberga in marriage. The great dukes lived quietly during the rest of Henry's reign ; from this time the duchy of Lorraine remains a part of the German kingdom. Two petty quarrels with Boso, King of Provence, and Rudolf, King of Burgundy, were speedily settled ; in 933 the two kingdoms were consolidated under Rudolf under the title of the kingdom of Aries ; and henceforth, until the extinction of the royal race, they remained faithful allies to the German king. Such is nearly all the internal history of Germany under Henry the Fowler, the results of his pacificatory policy lasting unimpaired throughout his life, and the great dukes owning themselves his vassals and acting as faithful ones. The Defence of the Empire against the Hungarians. — The terrible scourge of Hungarian invasion, however, still threatened, and did indeed more, much more, than threaten. In 923 the Hungarians invaded Saxony in great force, and laid it waste with such cruelty as to amount almost to the extermination of the inhabitants, F 82 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Henry having no force to oppose to them, fled before them and shut himself up in Westphalia; a fortunate accident placed, however, one of their princes in his power, and in 924, on condition of his release, the barbarians consented to a peace for Saxony which was to last for nine years, and to involve the cessation of the payment of tribute. They then turned their arms in another direction, desolated Italy, and put Constanti nople to ransom. The truce lasted out its time, and, as the termination approached, Henry, who had spent the intervening years in the discipline of his people, took every means of rousing in them a spirit of resistance. In the year 933 the Hungarian ambassadors appeared with their ordinary demand for tribute. Henry offered them a little dog with cropped ears and tail. He had not thrown down the challenge before he was able to prosecute the quarrel. The barbarians, indignant at the presumption of their foe, directed the whole of their forces upon his own especial dominion, Saxony and Thuringia. But the people were prepared for them ; in a series of skirmishes they considerably weakened the staff of leaders, who had advanced to Westphalia ; the hosts began to straggle and fell victim to the guerilla tactics of the Saxons. The main body, which had not advanced with the rest, but had stayed behind besieging Merseburg in Thuringia, fled in panic fear on the news of the destruction of their brethren, and Henry, without much loss, obtained a brilliant victory. The tribute to the barbarians, as disgraceful as it was oppressive, ceased from that time. Henry's Administration — His Policy to the Great Dukes. — The intervening years of the truce, 924-933, and the three remaining years of the reign, were the time that Henry had to devote to developing the internal arrange- THE CREATION OF TOWNS 83 ments by which he hoped to give unity and consistency to his states. These measures divided themselves into those of territorial and social regulation. The great dukes had accepted him as their king ; most of them survived him, and he had no wish or purpose of inter fering very much with their internal governments. In some respects he seems even to have increased their prerogatives, as for instance in giving to Duke Arnulf in Bavaria the right of nominating to bishoprics. Gener ally speaking, however, his personal influence, once vindicated, was a sufficient motive with them ; quarrels were averted by policy, and the kingdom assumed the terms of a family confederacy. It is in Saxony there fore, and in those detached territories which formed the demesne of the German crown, that the most distinct traces of his administrative policy can be found. The Creation and Encouragement of Towns. — The first point to notice is the creation of towns and the en couragement of settlers. This is commonly reckoned as the only or the great feature of Henry's reign. It was certainly the most long-lived fruit of it. For no one who has any knowledge of the later history of Germany, and of the part played in it by the towns, who recollects anything of the Hanseatic League in the North, the commercial enterprise of such places as Augsburg and Nuremberg, and the municipal indepen dence fostered by the commercial adventure and the acquisition of wealth, or how that municipal indepen dence affected the progress of the Reformation and whatever else on the direction of freedom and organi sation that has followed the Reformation, can hesitate to ascribe to Henry the actual origination of what becomes a leading mark in German history. The creation of towns by Henry the Fowler was not like 84 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES that by Edward I. in Aquitaine, where the English, although welcome perhaps, were really foreigners and protectors against a home tyranny ; it is simply the binding together the scattered village populations and giving them centres of defence, of jurisdiction, and of all civilising appliances. Of the cities which Henry the Fowler built in Saxony, Meissen, Quedlinburg, Merseburg, and Goslar were the chief. In these he placed a soldierly order of burghers from whom the civic aristocracy of the Middle Ages were descended. It is stated that the assemblies of bishops and counts, and other national councils, were held by him within the cities, not as in former times on the wide plains or under the shade of the forest. The Germans and French as Warriors. — The institution of tournaments has been attributed to Henry, but this is doubtless a mistake based on the measures which he took for teaching his people the use of arms, a teaching the efficacy of which their successes against the Hungarians sufficiently prove, and which serves to distinguish his subjects very favourably from their neighbours on the other side of the Rhine ; for, strange as it may now seem, the French, from the time of Charles the Bald to the time of Philip Augustus, fell from the fame of their fathers as warriors, into great contempt. The wars of the Crusades were fought rather by Belgian and Lotharingian warriors than by Frenchmen, although the name of Franks was borne in common by their leaders. But it was an interesting topic of conversation in the reign of our English Henry II. how this apparent decadence of French valour could have been caused ; and it was, by Ranulf Glanvill, set down to the account of the massacres by the Norman invaders under which the youth and spirit of Neustria THE MARKS 85 fell. A succession of wise sovereigns would have at tempted to recover and practice the .art of war in self-defence ; but the strength of France was almost immediately broken up, and, although the men of Champagne retained the character of warriors more than the rest of the French, the Normans did the bulk of the fighting, and in them only was much soldierly skill to be found. Henry the Fowler managed matters better in Germany, where the Hungarians had not shown, as did the Normans, any signs of amalga mating with the nations they devastated. And through out the Middle Ages Germany and Lotharingia were a nursery of soldiers who, very often in the character of barbarians and Dutch reiters or routtiers, were a curse to the nations that hired them. The Marks. — Although Henry the Fowler did not interfere much with the territories of the great dukes, he had sufficiently extensive frontiers of his own, as well as of the kingdom in general, to make the task of organisation and defence a constant occupation. He is to be remembered further as the originator and definer of the German marks, or border jurisdictions out of which, more directly than out of the great duchies, the later German states have sprung. For Prussia is but the outgrowth of the ancient march between Saxony and the Slavs ; Austria is the march between the Bavarians and the Hungarians; the Saxon kingdom of to-day is the old march of Meissen ; the kingdom of Sardinia is the old march of Italy. Throughout the tendency of the great duchies is to disruption; and of the marks to agglomeration. The first were wide, thinly organised, and unwieldy; the latter were each of them a nucleus of defence and civilisation round which new conquests gradually and 86 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES closely grouped themselves. The marks, or Margravi- ates, or marches, instituted by Henry the Fowler were (i) Schleswig, which, having revindicated the Eyder as the boundary of Germany, he founded as a Saxon military colony against the invasions of the Danes, and forced their king, Gorm the Old, to pay tribute; (2) the march of Meissen against the Moravians, and (3) that of Austria against the Hungarians. The origin of the march of Brandenburg is less certainly to be attributed to Henry; but that of Salzwedel, the march against the Wends, which afterwards grew into Brandenburg, probably may owe its origin to him. Antwerp was the head of the march against the French, and Lausitz, which lasted only a short time, being swallowed up in the others, was also formed against the Wends. The three first mentioned are to be most certainly attributed to Henry, and the remaining three with much probability. Austria he bestowed on Leopold of Babenberg or Bamberg, the representative of that ancient house from which sprang Duke Henry, the defender of Paris against the Normans, and Adal bert, the rival of Conrad of Franconia in that duchy. From Leopold sprang the first or Babenberg line of Margraves or Dukes of Austria which became extinct in the person of Frederick the Warrior in 1246 — a long hereditary succession of brave men. From the Margraves of Meissen sprang the later Dukes of Saxony. The marks of Sleswig, Salzwedel, and Lausitz did not continue long, nor make much place in history under those names. But north of the march of Brandenburg, towards the region where Charles had fought his Linonian war, Henry was obliged to content himself with warring without organising ; and further south the Bohemians were not yet amenable to his authority. HENRY THE FOWLER A GREAT KING 87 There was in these regions a constant border warfare in which the now civilising power of the German arms made slow progress. Tributary, however, both Bohemia under its several princes, and the Obotrites under their king Miecislas, certainly became. Miecislas, moreover, embraced Christianity; Bohemia was, however, only half converted, alternating between policies of prose- lytism and persecution which ended in favour of Chris tianity in the next reign. Henry the Fowler a Great King — His Death, 936. — Such is in brief the outline of the career and influence of this great king, of whom, if more was known, as favourable an idea might be formed as of Charles the Great or even as of the English Alfred. In him, just as in Alfred, is summed up the national hero, conqueror, colonist, deliverer ; but it cannot be denied that the range of his immediate power was small compared with that which much weaker sovereigns before him had enjoyed. Like Alfred he had to be content to see him self labouring with effect only in his paternal dominions, Bavaria and Swabia being little more amenable to his rule than Northumbria and East Anglia were to Alfred. Nor, like Alfred, does he take to himself any great title. He is no more than King of the Germans, sometimes King of the Eastern Franks, sometimes even advocate of the Romans : the empire was not even offered to him, although it had been hawked about among the little kings of Burgundy and the turbulent barons of Lombardy. He never approached Italy ; but towards the end of his life, after the defeat of the Hungarians and pacification of the north, the desire of the empire is said to have come upon him, and he was prevented only by paralysis from asserting the right of the German king to the crown of Charles. As he knew his death 88 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES approaching, following the example of his predecessor he called together his council of princes at Erfurt, and recommended them to elect his son Otto, whom he himself designated king. This done he retired to the monastery of Memleben, where he died a few days after, July 3, 936. Otto I., 936-973. — The proceedings which attended the succession of Otto are very much like a repetition of those by which the election of Henry the Fowler himself was carried out. The assembly of the princes agreed to elect him, as his father had recommended ; but this time the assembly was held at Aix-la-Chapelle, instead of at Fritzlar, and immediately after the election, which was transacted by the four nations, the Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, and Swabians, the king was crowned by the Archbishop of Mainz. It is said that on this occasion for the first time the dukes executed their honorary offices in attendance on the king — the Duke of Bavaria as master of the horse, the Duke of Franconia as steward, Hermann, the Duke of Swabia, as cupbearer, and the Duke of Lorraine as purveyor- chamberlain. The Saxon duchy was vested of course in Otto himself ; but the offices as discharged on this occasion do not answer to the later ones assigned to the several electors by Charles IV. Of the circum stances of the election itself there is little record ; but it is said that a claim to the succession was put in by Henry, the eldest son born to Henry the Fowler after his accession, which, if really asserted, would be paralleled by the case of Henry I. of England, whose character as porphyrogenitus is so much enlarged on by Sir Francis Palgrave. A claim of less importance was also made by Thankmar, the half brother of Otto, to the estates of. his mother; both these were set aside. THE CHARACTER OF THE REIGN 89 Otto followed the example of his father in retaining the duchy of Saxony after his accession, instead of devolving it on a brother, as Conrad had done with Franconia ; but this, as we shall see, was afterwards changed. The opening difficulties of Otto's reign were also like those of his father's ; the desire of independence on the part of the great dukes gave rise to both ; and the struggle is carried on in detail through the several duchies. The Character of the Reign. — The whole reign of Otto is, however, a series of wars, several going on at the same time, and in so far it resembles that of Charles the Great. Without ascribing to Otto the full glory of Charles, a very high place among his followers cannot be refused him. As far as regards Germany, the difficulties of Otto were greater, and his means were smaller ; and although in universal history Charles has left a broader and deeper mark, it may be ques tioned whether Otto did not secure more firmly than Charles did the actual purposes for which he worked, or left a more consolidated power to his successors. To attempt an exact chronological resume of the earlier years of Otto would be simply to give a string of dates, names, and battles. It will be less puzzling to arrange under the heads of the duchies the principal changes and struggles and their causes. The First Civil War, 938-941. — Strange to say, the first difficulties arose in Saxony, owing to the jealousies of the nobles, who, being vassals of the king as Duke of Saxony, declined to show feudal respect to the Duke of Franconia, of whom they held other fiefs. These disputes of course concerned Thuringia and Hesse, the debatable country between Saxony and Franconia, which had been sometimes attached to the one and sometimes to the other. Eberhard, Duke of Franconia, 90 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES smarting under the insults of the Saxons, burned a town on the Weser, and provoked Otto to punish him. Eberhard was fined ioo talents in horses, the inferior nobles were condemned to the disgrace of the " Hunescar," to carry a dog on their shoulders for a space of two leagues. This disgrace sank deep into the mind of Eberhard, who took part in every rebellion against Otto until his death in 939. Thankmar, the son of Henry by his first divorced wife, was the next transgressor ; and his rebellion has more political meaning. Otto, it is related, whilst retaining the duchy of Saxony in his own hands, administered it by the service of a Count Siffrid ; this Count died, and Thankmar, who was a cousin of his, not unnaturally looked for the succession to the county. Otto, how ever, who had refused him his mother's estates, was not likely to put him into so important a place, and entrusted it to Count Gero. Thankmar took up arms in conjunction with Eberhard, who at the first was so successful as to take prisoner Henry the Quarrelsome, brother of King Otto. But the triumph was short. Otto advanced against Eresburg, which was in Thank- mar's hands, and was gladly received by the citizens. The rebel brother was killed in a church, and Eberhard releasing his prisoner (having persuaded him into rebellion), was pardoned and the war ended. Conspiracy of Henry the Quarreller, 939. — But the very next year, 939, the other brother, Henry the Quarreller, originated a new conspiracy in which he drew not only Eberhard but Giselbert of Lorraine, the king's brother-in-law and his own. It is difficult to penetrate the object of this conspiracy, the imme diate aim of which was to dethrone Otto. Henry was doubtless tempted by the idea of being in his brother's REORGANISATION OF THE DUCHIES 91 place, but Giselbert and Eberhard had each a selfish design in view ; Giselbert wished, it appears, to restore the kingdom of Lotharingia in his own person as he had done in the reign of Henry the Fowler. Eberhard, rather to place himself on the throne of Germany. But the war which they provoked, although eventful, was short. Otto's forces summarily defeated Henry and Giselbert near Cologne. Henry, after being be sieged for two months in Merseburg, surrendered and was allowed to retire from Saxony into Lorraine. In Lorraine, Otto was by no means so successful as his cause deserved : his failure encouraged Eberhard to join openly in the war, and Lewis of France now joined the league. But the luck suddenly changed. Otto's general, Conrad the Wise, and Udo, brother of Herman, Duke of Swabia, met Eberhard and Giselbert at Andernach. Eberhard was slain in battle, Giselbert drowned in the Rhine ; in one moment Otto was freed from his most dangerous enemies and stood secure. The French king fled out of Alsace ; and Conrad, King of Burgundy, commended himself and his kingdom as vassal to Otto. The attempted Reorganisation of the Duchies. — Otto was now in a position nearly as good as his father's had been. This year 939 saw him with two duchies at his disposal, Franconia vacated by Eberhard, and Lorraine by Giselbert. But Bavaria also was lawfully vacant ; Arnulf died in 937, and Otto had not yet received the homage of his successor. Lorraine, the king gave to his quarrelsome brother Henry, Franconia to Conrad the Wise (or Red), Count of Naven, Worms, and Speyer, the ancestor of the Franconian emperors and son-in-law of Otto.1 But Henry the Quarrelsome 1 He married Luitgarde, daughter of Otto. 92 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES did not keep Lorraine for more than a year; his old propensities made him intolerable ; and Otto, after trying some intermediate experiments, gave the duchy to Conrad to hold with Franconia, which he did for several years. In 953 Otto gave it to his brother Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne, who divided it into Upper and Lower Lorraine and administered it by two dukes, himself bearing the title of Archduke. There are many anomalies in this arrangement of Lorraine which would be hard to explain : in particular, the lower nobility, as they should be called, did not hold feudally of the duke but of the empire, the duke only being feudal lord over the vassals of his own demesne. Amongst these tenants in capite as they at this time became, were the three Bishops of Toul, Metz, and Verdun, whose territory was so long afterwards the bone of contention between Charles V. and Francis I., and the loss of which broke the proud and tenacious spirit of the former sovereign. Henry the Quarrel some being ousted from Lorraine was planted in Bavaria (he had married a daughter of Duke Arnulf), and there founded a family which continued the Saxon line in the person of Henry II. The old Dukes of Bavaria descended from Ludolf and Arnulf, subsided into the Counts of Scheyren, from whom the present house of Bavaria, the Wittelsbachers, is said to descend. Otto thus, instead of reconciling enmities by the gift of his daughters as Henry the Fowler had done, re placed his enemies in their duchies by his own firm friends. Herman of Swabia gave his only child in marriage to the king's son, and Germany was again a family party. Unfortunately family parties, even when exemplified on this august scale, are not always peaceful ones, and as the result shows, this of Otto's SECOND CIVIL WAR 93 furnishes one more to a very common stock of his torical parallels. Otto had married during his father's lifetime Eadgitha, daughter of Edward the elder, King of England, sister of Athelstan and granddaughter of Alfred. She brought him a son named Ludolf, who was born in 934, before Otto's accession, and a daughter Luitgarde, married to Conrad the Wise (or Red): she died in 947. Almost immediately after her death, Otto declared Ludolf king, his partner and successor, and provided for him for the present by the gift of Swabia, 950, marrying him to the daughter of Duke Herman. For a time this worked well ; but when, in 951, Otto married again, and it was reported that the children of the new wife would have a share in the kingdom although no son was yet born (until 955), Ludolf, just as the sons of Lewis the Pious had done, took alarm and prepared to rebel. Second Civil War, 953. — Otto had now become King of Italy, and this seems to have shaken the faith or the affection of the Germans ; he had much less standing ground in Saxony than Henry the Fowler had had, and Saxony, jealous as of old, upheld Ludolf. Hermann Billung, the royal deputy or duke under Otto in Saxony, was faithful, but the nobles widely rebelled, and un happily Conrad the Wise, the brother-in-law of Ludolf, joined the conspiracy. Again North Germany is banded against South, for only Henry of Bavaria continued faithful to his brother. Even the Archbishop of Mainz was a rebel. Otto was prompt in his measures, and, almost as soon as hostilities were begun, hurried to Mainz, surprised Ludolf, and compelled him to reveal the names of his allies. In a council at Fritzlar they were condemned to exile. But Ludolf, although he escaped for the time, did not become obedient : again 94 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES he took up arms, and again was compelled to ask pardon. Now he was besieged in Mainz, now he was victorious in Bavaria. In 953 all Germany was in arms. The Hungarians were summoned by Conrad and Ludolf to aid them against Otto. Bruno, the Archbishop of Cologne, was ready to crown Conrad king. Whether it was really the discontent of Germany provoked by the Italian measures of Otto, or the jealousy of the old friends and companions of his difficulties, or the out break of more concealed causes finding an opportunity by these jealousies, it is impossible to say. For five years more or less the storm lasted. At length Bruno and Conrad, with the Archbishop, returned to their allegiance, and Ludolf, although never quite reconciled with his father, was reduced to insignificance. He died in 957. Conrad had to resign Lorraine, which was entrusted to Bruno, and died soon after, leaving Fran conia to his son. Swabia was taken from Ludolf and given to Burchard II., who married Duke Henry of Bavaria's daughter. And very shortly after Otto dis engaged himself from the ancient connection of his house with the Saxons, by making Hermann Billung, the allodial lord of Liineberg, the head of the most venerable house in Saxony, who had already acted for some years as duke under him, full Duke of Saxony. He retained for his family only the hereditary allods of his ancestors. Otto's Imperial Position. — In all this previous history it is easy to see that Otto was rising out of the position with which his father had been content, and gradually becoming more of an emperor. Germany was not to him, as it had been to Henry, all in all ; still less was Saxony the object of his peculiar care and the source of his strength. Into the designs of Otto in Italy, and DEFEAT OF THE HUNGARIANS 95 his restoration of reality to the empire, an account will be given in the next chapter. And with the beginning of Otto's imperial projects we lose much of the clear ness with which we have been able hitherto to analyse German history. Defeat of the Hungarians on the Lechfeld, 955. — It seems strange to find, whilst all this dynastic striving and conspiring is on foot, that the Hungarians are still annually ravaging Germany. Yet so it is ; every year they devastated the country as far as the Rhine. In 955, however, at the invitation of the unhappy Ludolf, and seeing the difficulties in which Otto was involved, they marched into Germany with a larger force than they had ever had before. Luckily Otto was ready for them. He overtook them at Augsburg, which they were besieging, and on the Lechfeld, on August 10, inflicted on them such a defeat that they never dared to enter Germany again. This may well be called one of the decisive battles of the world. Wars with the Bohemians and the Danes, 937-950. — The frontier wars which had employed Henry the Fowler were also a constant work for Otto. With Bohemia, relapsed into heathenism, he waged war for thirteen years, from 937 to 950. The last year saw the complete subjugation of Boleslas, and the con version of the nation followed. In 948 the Danes challenged Otto to war ; he invaded and overran the country and compelled Harold the king to hold his kingdom as his vassal. He insisted also on his being baptized, with his wife and child Swein, to whom the conqueror gave his own name and called him Swend Otto. By way of completing the matter, the country was divided into three dioceses, which were made suffragan to the Archbishop of Hamburg. The King 96 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Harold is Harold Bluetooth, and Swend Otto is no other than Sweyn the conqueror of our king, Ethelred the Unready, and father of Canute, King of England. Extension of Otto's Empire. — The Slav border was strengthened by continual extension. The empire was extended to the Oder, and the whole of that side of the country placed under the Margrave of Lausitz ; for the Christianised population, an archbishop see was erected at Magdeburg, to which Brandenburg and Havelberg were made suffragan, with the addition of new sees at Meissen, Merseberg [Zeitz], and Naumburg. Further north, among the Obotrites and to the east of them, he founded the church of Oldenburg, after wards Liibeck, under the archbishopric of Hamburg. The rest of the history of Otto, the first and greatest, belongs to Italy, and to a region of study which will be treated in the following chapter. The aim of the present chapter is to give an adequate idea of the Germany which Otto governed, and of the condition of his kingdom at the time that he united it with the heavy and soulless companionship of the empire. The ground, although not abounding in romantic incident or much play of character, has a clear matter of fact aspect, that, whilst it presents us with no great pro blems, repays study by fixing itself in the memory and preparing the mind to understand intelligently the complications and developments of the coming time. Germany is now feudalised, Christianised, organised under its dukes and margraves and bishops. Its weak ness in the still subsisting national divisions which have but to a small degree closed in is apparent. But at its head is a monarch who, after many struggles, has made himself the master of the whole ; no longer content like his father with the actual sovereignty of EXTENSION OF OTTO'S EMPIRE 97 the strongest nation, but able to balance his throne on the equal obedience of all. His German kingdom is something like an empire now. But the imperial title is still to be won, and the imperial dignity carries everywhere with it new dangers and new manners of death. IMPORTANT DATES Henry I. (the Fowler), 918. Truce with the Hungarians, 924. Renewal of war with the Hungarians, 933. Henry's death, 936. Otto the Great succeeds, 936. The First Civil War, 938-941. Defeat of the Hungarians near Augsburg, 955. CHAPTER VI Europe in the middle of the tenth century — The political condition of Italy— Otto I. and the Papacy — Death of Otto, 973— His character and work — The fatal connection of Germany and Italy — Otto II., 973-983 — His character — Otto III., 983-1000— The year 1000. Condition of the Continent in the Middle of the Tenth Century. — Early history busies itself so much with the movements of kings and princes, and depends so entirely on the evidence of those who watched, like the biographers of the saints, chiefly the personal inci dents of the periods they were employed upon, that it is difficult to follow the series of events where the chief actor is not present. From the year 962 to the year 973, Otto the Great was constantly employed in Italy ; nay, from 951 to 973, from his first visit to Lombardy, his thoughts and acts were so taken up with Italian and imperial politics that, in the personal string of his history, Germany is almost lost sight of. It cannot be said, or even supposed, that the intervening years were a time of peace for Germany ; still, the national or tribal jealousies sub sisted, and were only temporarily and intermittently smothered by the strength, or by the family policy of the king. Still on the north and east of Germany were pressing on warlike hosts of barbarians, alien in race, language, and religion ; or only so far humanised, Germanised, and Christianised as to render them more dangerous, because more secret, subtle, and experienced GERMANY IN THE TENTH CENTURY 99 enemies. Still on the French frontier Lorraine was a disputed territory between the perishing Karolings and the Germans, although by repeated conquest, and repeated commendations, it had become, so far as the law of nations could make it, a part of Germany. But that the Kings of France were now so weak, and their great vassals content with the substance of power, this borderland would have been a scene of perpetual war. Nof indeed was the war that desolated less than continual, for on every opportunity the claims of the French and German titles were asserted by the chief of the nobles, and constantly the one or the other power was being dragged in. After the death of the unhappy Ludolf in 957, and the administration of the Archduke Bruno from 959 downwards, little is heard of the events of Lotharingian history during the rest of the reign. In 955, Duke Henry the Quarrelsome of Bavaria died ; and although he left his dukedom to a son of the same name, and not less quarrelsome than his father, the son continued steady in his allegiance so long as his uncle reigned. So also in Franconia, which from 955, the year of Duke Conrad's death, was administered, during the minority of his successor, by the Archbishop of Mainz, William, the son of Otto. Swabia had continued in the hands of Burchard, who died the same year with his master. Germany in the Middle of the Tenth Century. — The intention of this book is primarily to describe German history, and to diverge as little as possible into French and Italian history. The interest of the remaining years of the Saxon dynasty is, however, so completely Italian that it is impossible now to avoid giving a glance across the Alps. The year 950 has now been reached. Italy has been left to itself for nearly fifty ioo GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES years ; in fact, since the time of the Emperor Arnulf, no German king has set foot there. A happy time for Germany comparatively, for during it, in spite of many civil and border wars, the process of consolida tion and civilisation has been going on rapidly ; the influence of Christianity increasing; learning and all the arts of peace enjoying an occasional breathfing time ; and the idea of national unity obtaining some sort of recognition. King Otto, from his favourite city of Magdeburg, or on frequent expeditions through his demesnes, or in constant border warfare, is showing himself necessary to Germany, and by his foundation of cities, churches, and sees, by his arrangements of duchies and marks, by his renewal of the missions of royal judges, and by his bestowal of regalia on the prelates, is preparing for the imperial arrangement of Germany. In spite of rebellions, quarrels, difficulties, wars of every kind, Germany is growing stronger and stronger ; France is being torn to pieces ; Italy is losing any little semblance of unity and strength that it had gathered under the administration of the Karolings. The Condition of Italy. — In fact, looking at Italy now, all that can be asked is what had the Frank empire, the Frank dominion done for it ? Charles the Great had found it desolated under Lombard tyranny, and claimed by various titles, none of which were the owners strong enough to vindicate. The Lombard kings in the north and the Lombard dukes in the south, the Exarchate of Ravenna and the district of Calabria, the last relics of the Byzantine dominion, the papal claims and those of the Roman nobles and people in central Italy — all these are historical factors difficult to define and impossible to feel interest in. By the middle of the tenth century (nearly two cen- THE CONDITION OF ITALY 101 turies after the delivery of the Papacy and the donation of Pipin), i.e. after a century of separate government away from the rest of the Karoling inheritances, there are to be still found factors difficult to define and un able to inspire interest. The names of the petty rulers have ceased to be Lombard and become German ; there are Adalberts and Lamberts and Berengars and Bernards, instead of Grimwalds and Landulfs. But the wretched medley is little altered ; the old adhesive Greek jurisdiction still holds out in the South, but the Papacy and the empire are hopelessly degraded : he who would pick the imperial crown out of the mire must stoop rather than climb, and instead of coming as the defender must appear as the judge, the arbiter, the giver, the avenger of the Papacy. Since the de position of Charles the Fat no Karoling had been King of Italy. Charles the Simple and his descendants confined their pretensions to France and Lorraine, re taining a portion of the former by the consent of their great vassals, and obtaining a portion of the latter as vassals of the German kings. In default of the heredi tary line the Popes had played two sets of emperors off against each other ; and while Kings of Italy had been chosen sometimes with and sometimes without the imperial name, emperors had been crowned sometimes with and sometimes without the Italian dominion. The Italian kingdom at the widest meant only Lom bardy and Tuscany ; it frequently meant nothing at all. For this shadow there had competed first Berengar of Friuli, who, on his mother's side, was descended from Charles the Great, first with Guy of Spoleto, then with Lambert his son, and last with King Lewis of Aries, the son of Boso, also descended remotely from the Karolings. From 888-924 Berengar maintained the 102 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES rivalry. Under the name of Kings of Italy, during the following period, is to be found Rudolf of Burgundy, 922-926, Hugh of Aries, 926-945, and Lothair, his son, 945-950. This Lothair was the husband of Adelheid, who brought Otto the Great into Italy. Berengar II., son of the Marquis Adalbert of Tuscany, and a daughter of the first Berengar, in the hope of acquiring Italy, poisoned Lothair and imprisoned Adelheid, who, as daughter of King Rudolf, had some sort of title to Italy herself. From her imprisonment Adelheid, by the assistance of her chaplain, escaped to Canossa, to the protection of the Marquis Azzo, and by his advice sent to ask the aid of Otto. This was in 951. Otto had been a widower for four years. He had just completed the war against the Bohemians, and had not yet been disturbed by the ambition of Ludolf ; he readily ac cepted the invitation, drove Berengar from Pavia, and married Queen Adelheid. He was himself elected King of Italy ; but, being coldly received by the Pope, re turned to Germany without the imperial title, leaving Pavia and Lombardy, which had yielded without a blow, under the charge of Conrad the Wise. The next year, however, Berengar submitted, came to Otto at Magdeburg, and became Otto's vassal for the kingdom of Italy. Observe Otto, as yet only King of Germany, gives or accepts the commendation of the kingdom of Italy as a fief. The war with Ludolf occupied Otto for several years from this time, and he had no leisure for Italy, where Berengar had almost immediately cast off the yoke and begun to play the tyrant, until in 956 when he sent Ludolf, after his submission, to represent him there; but Ludolf died on the expedition, although not before he had conquered the kingdom of Berengar. Otto and the Papacy, 962-973. — It was the condition of OTTO AND THE PAPACY 103 the Papacy which brought Otto the second time to Italy. The abuses of the Roman see in the tenth century justified and demanded external interference. When John XII. invited Otto to deliver him from Berengar and Adalbert, received him and crowned him emperor on the 2nd of February 962, a step of vast importance to Europe had been taken. As soon as Otto had left Rome, John turned round, and began to intrigue with Adalbert ; Otto returned, the Pope and Adalbert fled before him, while the Romans received him as a deliverer, and in a solemn agreement with him promised never to make another Pope without the consent of the emperor. He then deposed John and made Leo VIII. Pope in his place. But as soon as he had departed John returned, and on his death in 964 a new Pope, Benedict V., was chosen and Leo again rejected. Again Otto came to the rescue, but this time he was obliged to besiege Rome, and on its surrender carried off Bene dict to Germany. Leo, whom he re-established, died the next year. The great officers of Rome then visited Otto in Saxony to obtain his leave for an election, and on their return, by Otto's permission, John XIII. was chosen. The same year Burchard, Duke of Swabia, defeated Adalbert in Italy and made Otto irresistible. John XIII. was not a wise Pope ; relying on the imperial support, he offended and persecuted the nobles; they expelled him from Rome and imprisoned him. Again Otto is brought from Germany in 967, delivers the Pope, and this time hangs the rebels, and has his son Otto, who in 961 had been crowned King of Germany, now crowned emperor. After remaining for a long time in Italy, and settling the affairs of the German Church, holding councils, negotiating for the marriage of his son Otto with Theophano, the daughter of the Byzantine 104 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES emperor, Romanus II., with whom Apulia and Calabria were to be given up to him ; then conducting war with the Greeks, and finally succeeding in getting the lady into his hands and imposing tribute on the Calabrian and Apulian Greeks. Death and Description of Otto the Great, 973.— This done, he returned to his dear Magdeburg, and spent his last days, as his father had spent his, in the neighbourhood of Merseburg, and at Memleben, where his father had died. He also died, on the 7th of May 973, and was buried next his English wife Edith, in the Cathedral at Magdeburg. A fair picture of Otto is drawn by his own contemporaries ; and it is that of a true venerable German hero, full of life and strength. A man of great height and muscular strength ; scanty grey hair, but a magnificent long beard reaching to his waist, unlike the Karolings, who wore short beards or none at all. A broad, shaggy chest ; a spare athletic figure ; gait rapid and yet dignified ; his dress always the old Saxon habit of his father and grandfather. Most pious, most con stant ; severe but gentle where he could be gentle ; cheerful and liberal ; a most faithful friend. More fortunate than Charles the Great, he was able to learn both reading and writing (not from his English wife, for it was after her death that he began his studies), and he could speak the language both of his German and of his Slav subjects. There had been no such king, say the historians, since Charles the Great. He died in a good old age, and left all his kingdoms in peace. The Value of His Work. — It might be asked, what did he gain by his acquisition of the empire ? What good did he do to himself, or to Germany, or to the Papacy, or to Italy ? It would be hard to answer the question with anything like satisfaction. To Germany he brought FATAL CONNECTION OF GERMANY 105 from the very first step he took for the deliverance of Adelheid, nothing but sorrow, the renewing of half slumbering jealousies, the opening of half-healed wounds. He broke up the peace of the family amongst which the real as well as the nominal jurisdiction of Germany was divided ; impaired the hold which his personal greatness had upon it ; and set in arms against himself his own son, his brothers, and the most faithful of his servants and friends. It is true that all these things were, so far as his personal influence went, remedied before his death ; he died supreme, and was buried in the midst of his people. But at how great a cost, — the loss of his dearest child and of the confidence of his best friends ! Still he survived those old friends and found new ones who were faithful. The Fatal Connection of Germany with Italy. — For Germany, however, the fatal alliance with Italy was the beginning of unnumbered woes, and hardly less so for Italy herself.1 Still Otto cannot be blamed for the evils that followed from his great success. As for the counterbalancing gains, it is difficult to see what they were beyond the semi-divine title of Caesar and Augustus. Italy was a constant drain of blood and treasure upon Germany from the year 962 to the year 1866; nine hundred years of wasted men and money. It is true that sometimes great good resulted to Italy from German interference ; but never anything but harm resulted to Germany from the Italian dominion. There was lost the honour of Otto II., and there the life of Otto III. was wasted ; there was wrought the humiliation of Henry IV, the one great failure of Frederick Barbarossa, the profound, astounding ruin of Frederick II., "the wonder of the world " ; and there the new empire that 1 See in a later chapter. 106 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Charles V. had founded, shaken from its very foundation by Italian enmities, lost its strength and credit, and parted with the very name of empire under the defeats inflicted by Napoleon Bonaparte. Was there in Ger many itself a basis or groundwork of unity which might have supported a great self-contained, unenlarged empire ? But it is no question that so long as the dead carcase of Italy was attached to the living body of Germany there could be no healthy action for Ger many. And, to avoid metaphor, it may be said that never since the time of Charles the Great, and of course never before, had there been sufficient union and con sistency in the mass of the kindred nations of Germany to make it safe for a moment to withdraw the ordering governing hand, or to distract the ruling head with foreign cares. The annexation of Italy meant the disruption of Germany ; but the fact that Germany could be so easily and so generally broken up, shows that the annexation of Italy was not the cause, but the occasion of disruption; that the crack and flaw was in the mass itself, and the pains that might have been well spent on the welding of it, being diverted to other purposes, would have left the cracks and flaws to spread, even if the troubles of the Italian connection had not been so great as to shake it, thus cracked and flawed, to pieces. Otto II., 973-983.— The first result of the Italian con nection was the emperor Otto II., son of Otto and Adelheid, a very degenerate son of so great a father. He was born in 955, elected King of Germany at Worms in 961, crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, and crowned em peror at Rome in 967. But although he had borne these dignities for several years and had published edicts as king and emperor, his title to the entire succession BAVARIAN WAR 107 was not considered complete until he had received the oaths of fealty from his vassals. No one yet thought of refusing them, however, and he was un animously recognised as king and emperor in his father's stead. As he was only eighteen years old, the Empress Adelheid undertook to act as prime minister. Otto, however, was not inclined to submit to much interference, and very soon drove his mother into exile at the court of her brother, Conrad of Burgundy. She was, some time after, recalled, but finally left her son and settled down at her old home at Pavia, where she made herself useful in managing the Italian vassals. She must have been a woman of considerable power, as, independently of the influence which she exerted over her husband, she seems to have kept the German court in order whilst she was present in it. Anyhow, as soon as she had left, the troubles of Otto II. began, first with Bavaria and afterwards with France and Lorraine. These troubles with a constant Slav war on the north-eastern frontier comprise nearly all the German history of the reign of Otto II. ; and the circumstances are so much like those of the similar quarrels in the two preceding reigns, that it will be unnecessary to dwell upon them at any length. Bavaria was the only one of the interior duchies that gave him any trouble. Saxony was faithful all his time under Benno or Bernard Billung, who was put in his father's place the year of Otto's accession. Otto of Franconia was faithful all his time. Alemannia or Swabia was given in 973 to Otto, son of Ludolf, nephew of the emperor, and he also was faithful all his time. Bavarian War, 973-978. — The Bavarian race was, however, incurably quarrelsome. Henry the Wrangler conspired with the Czechs of Bohemia and some of io8 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES the Bavarian bishops, especially Abraham, Bishop of Freising. Otto learned the plot and summoned Henry to court ; he attended, and was detained there for some time. On his release he returned into Bavaria, and renewed his plot. Otto then marched after him, and again imprisoned him. He escaped and took refuge in Bohemia. Otto followed him, and was beaten by the Bohemians at Pilsen. Henry then threw himself into Passau, where he was besieged by the emperor and afterwards pardoned. But his duchy was partly broken up, and what remained was taken from him and given to Otto of Swabia, the son of Ludolf, who held it until his death in 982. This struggle extends over the first five years of Otto's reign, and originated undoubtedly in the wish of Henry to make Bavaria an independent kingdom, rather than in any idea of un seating Otto. Otto gained no fame or advantage from the struggle, but does not, on the other hand, seem to have conducted himself with much harshness. His administration in Germany may thus be favourably compared with his conduct in Italy. The War in Lorraine, 978-980. — The troubles in Lorraine resulted from the uncomfortable and unsettled relations with the remaining Karolings. It seems almost incredible that the emperors, who maintained their court at Aix-la-Chapelle, should have governed Lorraine with such a weak hand, whilst they devoted all their strength to extend the empire towards the east and south. But there can be no doubt that the confusion in Lorraine was owing to the machination of the Karolings, and that the Saxon emperors did not wish by crushing the Karolings to give the Counts of Paris and Dukes of France the chance of raising a strong monarchy at Paris on the ruins of the weak OTTO'S ITALIAN EXPEDITION 109 monarchy of Laon. They constantly gave way to Charles the Simple and Louis d'Outremer on the subject of Lorraine, and these took advantage of the freedom, which their own weakness gave them, to trouble the empire. The present struggle seems to have been a relic of the administration of the Archduke Bruno, and to have begun before the reign of Otto. The county of Mons was the bone of contention at first, being disputed by Rainer, the nephew of old Duke Giselbert, who had been deprived of it by Bruno. Otto does not seem to have been successful against him. The duchy itself Otto gave to Charles, the son of Lewis d'Outremer, and brother of the French king Lothair ; but Lothair himself imagined that he had claims upon it, and undertook to revenge the cause of the dispossessed Rainer. He made a sudden inroad into the empire, advanced rapidly as far as Aix-la- Chapelle, and all but succeeded in catching Otto and his wife at dinner. Otto retaliated, collected his forces, and driving Lothair I., who had enjoyed himself for three days at Aix, before him, pursued him, ravaging the country on his way, as far as Paris. Whilst Otto was returning, Lothair had his revenge, the emperor losing part of his baggage in one river and a great part of his army in another. In 978 Otto again in vaded France, but with no final success, until in 980 the two potentates met in a friendly way near Rheims, and Lothair resigned his claims on Lorraine. Im mediately after that pacification, Otto was called away into Italy. Otto's Italian Expedition, 980. — If the annalists are to be taken literally, and if they did not confuse the dates of Otto's expeditions, he must have made at least three journeys into Italy : the first immediately after his ac- no GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES cession, the second in 980, and the third in 981. But it would seem that he really made but one, and that in the autumn of the year 980, after the conclusion of the peace with France. He had three objects in view, the humiliation of the Lombard towns and nobles who had expressed the utmost contempt for him, and were building castles in and out of the cities to strengthen themselves against him ; the protection of the Pope Benedict VII., who had done his best to support the imperial cause ; and the annexation to the empire of the Greek provinces in the South, which were partly in the hands of the Saracens, and which had been promised to Otto as the inheritance of his wife Theophan6, by the Byzantine court. In the first of these objects he was apparently successful ; he held a great diet at Roncaglia, and there did justice upon his enemies and restored peace. Thence he went to Rome, where in March 981 he held with the Pope two ecclesiastical councils. He was next employed, if not so successfully, in Apulia and Calabria, whither he now hastened. The Western writers are divided in opinion as to his object in this war, some even supposing that he claimed the Greek crown in the right of his wife, others that he was pro voked by the refusal of the Greeks to pay any longer the tribute from these provinces due to Theophand. Probably he wished to complete the kingdom of Italy by the conquest of Magna Graeca, the fatal conquest which no German prince but Frederick II. ever really was enabled to make. He descended into Apulia : the wretched Greeks called in the Saracens against him. The Greeks,1 having recovered this territory from the Saracens with the aid of the Emperor Lewis II., had governed it as the " Theme of Lombardy," by an officer 1 Gibbon, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," c. 56. THE CHARACTER OF OTTO II. in or catapan seated at Bari, and had held out successfully by treachery against Otto the Great when he wished to enforce the claims, as he considered them, of his daughter-in-law. Finding Otto II. prepared to attack them they called in their old enemies to their help. Otto's Death in Italy, 983. — In 982 Otto won a great victory at Cotrone, and slew such a great number of Saracens as to earn himself the title by which Otto of Freising commemorates him: "The pale death of the Saracens." A few days after they had their revenge ; they surprised Otto near the coast, where he was wandering with his nephew, Otto of Swabia, and some of the other princes, and surrounded him in great numbers. Otto on horseback swam out to a ship which was within sight and which carried him to Rossano, where he escaped by swimming from his deliverers, who were anxious to put him to ransom. He made no further attempt on Calabria, but, after seizing Benevento, returned northwards and held a diet at Verona, where he bestowed Bavaria on Henry, Duke of Carinthia, son of Berthold, son of Arnulf, and pro cured the election of his son Otto as his successor. This year he again visited Rome, and on the death of Benedict VII. placed John XIV. on the throne of S. Peter. One of the new Pope's first acts was to receive the last confession of Otto. He fell sick at Rome, made his will, and died on the 7th of December 983. He was buried in the vestibule or nave of S. Peter's. The Character of Otto II. — It is impossible to say much about Otto II. Had he been more successful we should probably have heard less of his faults, but he was unlucky both in Germany and in Italy, and did not live long enough to redeem his misfortunes. He was a little red-haired, red-faced, violent, passionate man ; 112 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES according to Thietmar, who knew him, he grew more temperate and less tyrannical as he grew older ; but it is to be remembered that he was only twenty-eight when he died, and that, although the beginning of his reign had been without the usual troubles of a con tested election, he had been subject to a series of mishaps, more annoying perhaps than serious, in every thing that he set his hand to. He is described, more over, as liberal and as a faithful friend ; his friends certainly were faithful to him, and that is much in his favour. Otto III., 983-1000. — Otto I I.'s wife, Theophand, bore him one son, Otto, " Mirabilia mundi," as he was called, born in the year 980, and now therefore only three years old. There might have been a stormy succession, but it blew over with only a little risk. As soon as the news of the death of Otto II. reached Aix-la-Chapelle, the Archbishops of Ravenna and Mainz took and crowned the little heir on Christmas day. No elaborate form of election could have taken place, but none was needed ; the succession had descended hereditarily for two reigns, the son of the last emperor succeeding. There was no other son ; for the first time the great Saxon house, the great German empire, is represented by a little child. But there were agnates : there was Henry (the Quarrelsome's son) of Bavaria, who had claimed his duchy and was as anxious as ever to be made a king. He put in a claim to be guardian of the little Otto, and by the connivance of the Archbishop of Cologne succeeded in getting hold of him. With this pledge in his hands, he prevailed on a body of Saxon nobles to salute him as king at Quedlinburg at Easter 984; but the attempt shocked the sounder thinkers of the body, and ended in a fiasco. The faithful Bernard OTTO III. 113 Billung headed the loyal party, and with him the Arch bishop of Mainz and Conrad of Alemannia, a descend ant of the former race of dukes who had been put into that duchy on the death of Otto in 983. By these men Henry was compelled to give up the little king, and by the following Easter harmony was restored. Then at Quedlinburg a court was held with great solemnity at which Duke Bernard acted as master of the horse, Henry of Bavaria as cupbearer, Conrad as chamberlain, and Henry the younger as steward ; the dukes of the Obotrites, Slavs, and Bohemians likewise submitted. The two empresses, Adelheid, wife of Otto I., and Theophano, wife of Otto II., acted as regents,1 and the child was committed for his education to Bernard, Bishop of Hildesheim. He owed his later teaching, after 995, to the very remarkable scholar Gerbert, who afterwards became Pope Sylvester II. — a man of the greatest learning and research in every accessible de partment of knowledge, and capable of inspiring his pupil with the greatest ardour for knowledge and with great affection for himself. During this long minority the warlike reputation of Germany was sustained by Otto, Duke of Franconia, the son of Conrad the Wise, who played the same part with the young Otto as the first Otto of Saxony had done with Lewis, the son of Arnulf the emperor, and occupied his duchy without a single act of rebellion or cause of offence for fifty-five years. [During Otto's minority Eckhard of Meissen drove back the Slavonic invaders and averted all danger from the Poles and Bohemians.] The first ten or twelve years of the reign were free from internal warfare. Lothair of France made in 985 an ineffectual attempt to conquer Lorraine, and the barbarians on the eastern 1 Adelheid during Otto's minority ruled Italy from Pavia. H 114 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES frontier were in continual motion ; but partly by policy and partly by force they were at length sub dued, and in the year 996 Otto, now sixteen, made his first expedition into Italy, and was crowned emperor at Rome. The Year 1000. — At this moment great issues were commencing for the empire and for the world. There were many things which made the era important. The utter collapse and ruin of the Karolings in France, the destruction of the once formidable power of England under Ethelred by the Danes, and the abject condition of the Popes might not unnaturally hold out to the mind of a young and enthusiastic prince, nurtured on the choicest and most abstruse knowledge of the time, a dream of universal dominion. In the next chapter will be found a survey of German influence on the Continent, as wielded by the hands of Otto, and also of the condi tion of the Papacy and of the Church under his pious successor St. Henry. Already it has been seen that in Otto the German kingdom has become clearly and decidedly hereditary and with it the imperial dignity. The next century exhibits the imperial dignity realised to its fullest extent by Henry III. and abased to its lowest depth by his unhappy son. IMPORTANT DATES Otto visits Italy, 951. Coronation of Otto by Pope John XII., 962. Embassy sent to Constantinople to ask for the hand of Theophano for Otto's son, 968. Marriage of Theophano to Otto's son at Rome, 972. Death of Otto I., 973. Otto II., 973-983- IMPORTANT DATES 115 Civil war in Germany, 973-978. War in Lorraine, 978-980. Italian expedition, 980. Otto's death, 983. Otto III., 983-1002. Failure of Lothair of France to conquer Lorraine, 985. Death of Theophano, 991. CHAPTER VII Otto III. — His coronation at Rome — Second and third visits to Italy — His last visit to Italy, iooo — His death, 1002 — Condition of the Empire — Accession of Henry II. — His Wars with the Bohemians, Poles, and Flemish — England's connection with Lorraine and Flanders — Henry's visit to Italy — Coronation at Rome — Henry's third visit to Rome — His death and character — His relations with the German Church — Ecclesiastical organisation of Germany. The Aspirations of Otto III. — Although it has been stated without any adequate grounds that the approach of the year 1000 A.D. was viewed by the more ignorant with alarm, as a likely date for the ending of their present dispensation, it was certainly regarded with very little feeling of awe at Rome or at Aix-la-Chapelle. The Romans went on their own way, and the youthful emperor nursed dreams of a high noble ambition which were never to be fulfilled. The beginning of the new century was to be the inauguration of a reign of universal order and justice ; Rome was to be the seat of both temporal and spiritual supremacy ; a German king and a German Pope would give laws from the Eternal city to the whole Church and to the whole world. Otto's early teaching had been full, no doubt, of such high lessons. Whatever he may have learned from Adelheid and Theophan6, and they could tell him much of high enterprise and sovereign magnificence, from Bernard he had learned the true sound German honour and modesty, and when he came under the influence of Gerbert he had built up the designs of a universal reformation based on his empire. Gerbert, besides being CORONATION OF OTTO AT ROME 117 a scholar, was a deep thinking and fearless politician, a fit director for the young knight-errant, as we might think him, who was to go out to renew the golden age. Rome was to be the capital and seat of the empire ; Rome was to be purged of all the vices and crimes that had cried out so long for the punishment of Sodom. The wicked priests and abandoned nobles were to be made to give place to an apostolic company of holy fathers and a gallant court of true faithful heroes. It was not to be a mere vision either : deep political con trivance, unswerving honesty and force of purpose, were there as well as high imagination. The corruption of Rome must be rooted out ; life must be put into all that was good that remained ; that which was rotten must perish. The romantic love of Otto was given to his ideal Rome, the mother of the Churches, the queen of the world. The Coronation of Otto at Rome, 996. — The early feuds of the reign having been settled by the victories of Otto and his generals, the danger of hostility from France being ended by the final displacement of the Karolings by Hugh Capet, and the power of Otto in Germany itself being universally accepted, in the year 996 Otto made his first expedition to Rome. John XV., in the midst of his struggle with Crescentius, had invited him two years before to come and receive the imperial crown ; but the young king was too wise to leave Germany whilst the Slavs were ravaging the frontier. Nor had he yet got from Gerbert the political lessons which were to make the way practical to his noble ambition. Gerbert had been the friend and corre spondent of Queen Adelheid, but had of late been estranged from the imperial court. For on the death of Lewis, the last of the Karoling kings of France, and 118 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES on the deposition of Arnulf, Archbishop of Rheims, the earnest partizan of that house, he had suffered himself to be placed in the primatial see by the influence of Hugh Capet The Karoling interest was still under stood to be under the protection of the German kings, who had tolerated and supported them so long ; and the Empress Adelheid, herself took up the cause of Arnulf. Gerbert, too independent a man to be a tool of any policy, was condemned and interdicted in a council of bishops held at Soissons in 995. He then retired from France and devoted himself to Otto. With him for his chief adviser the young king the next year started for Italy, intending to crush the re publicanism and other hydra-headed abominations of Rome and realise his dream. He was but sixteen years old now, and if we find fault with him, his age must excuse him. With a great host of counts and bishops he crossed the Alps ; he kept Easter at Pavia ; at Ravenna he heard of the death of the Pope John XV. (985-996), and there he determined to place his cousin Bruno, son of Otto, Duke of Franconia, upon the papal throne. Bruno was sent on in advance, and was received by the Romans under the name of Gregory V. (996-999). Otto followed him, and was crowned emperor on the 21st of May 996. Crescentius was summoned before him, but was pardoned at the request of the Pope, whom, as soon as the emperor had left, he ex pelled from Rome. Otto, having received an oath of fealty to himself and the Pope, returned in September to Germany. Second Visit to Italy, 998. — Whether Otto's return was to resist a new invasion of the Slavs, or to take measures for a future visit to Italy which should be permanent, it is difficult to determine ; but the year OTTO'S RETURN TO GERMANY 119 997 was spent in the reduction of this obstinate enemy, and it was not until the end of it that Otto was able again to be on the move. In the meantime Crescentius had expelled Bruno from Rome ; had placed John Philagathus, a Greek and an old favourite of the Empress Theophano, on the papal chair, and had him self taken the title of emperor. The Germans believed that Rome was to be permanently withdrawn from their dominion and restored to the Byzantine emperors, whose viceroy Crescentius would willingly be. This touched the very root of Otto's favourite scheme ; he committed Germany to his aunt Matilda, the Abbess of Quedlinburg, a lady who seems to have inherited the spirit and ability of Otto the Great, and hastened into Italy in the depth of winter. In January 998 he reached Pavia ; in February, with Gregory V. in his train, he advanced upon Rome ; no resistance was offered him. He deposed the antipope, who was cruelly mutilated and ill-treated by his austere rival ; and Cres centius, after surrendering the castle of St. Angelo, was hanged with his head downwards. Otto remained for more than a year in Italy on this occasion. In the February of 999 Gregory V. died, poisoned, it was said, by the Crescentian party, and Gerbert, whom in 998 he had made a Bishop of Ravenna, the emperor now made Pope. He took the name of Sylvester 1 1., intending doubtless, as Milman reminds us, to be the new Sylvester of the new Constantine. Otto's Return to Germany, 999. — On his return to Germany, Otto went through two ceremonial obser vances which are significant in his case. He went to Gnesen in Poland on pilgrimage to the scene of the martyrdom of St. Adalbert, who had died there four years before. The Church itself he raised into an 120 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES archiepiscopal see, and erected three others as suffragans to it. The Duke of Poland, Boleslaus, he entrusted with the guardianship of the frontier against the Slavs, and according to the Polish historians allowed to be crowned king. He then went to Aix-la-Chapelle and held a diet there, at which he opened the grave of the great Charles, and took out the golden cup which was hung to his neck. There, the historians tell us, he showed his wish to adopt the imperial state and pomp, sitting alone at a semicircular table on a high dais. Otto's Last Visit to Italy iooo, and Death, 1002. — In October 1000 he was again at Rome. The transactions of these latter days are not clear ; but it is plain that the emperor had thrown himself, with too little reserve, on the good faith of the Romans, and had not retained force enough with him to keep order. Instead of being able to initiate a new reign of order, he found himself involved in petty squabbles, and obliged to treat by means of envoys with his own subjects. In February 1001 he left Rome with the Pope and spent the next few months in attempting to produce a better understanding. Otto did not die at Rome, but on January 23, 1002, at Paterno, near Civita Castellana: his body was embalmed and carried to Aix-la-Chapelle, where it was buried. With him the descendants of Otto the Great in the male line ended. Such was the sad con clusion, at the age of twenty-one, of a life full of so bright hopes — a prince of such noble gifts and accomplish ments, so pious, so virtuous, so high-minded, at the head of a realm so united, surrounded by followers so faithful and undivided — a life such as the Middle Ages had never seen. Charles the Great was an old man before he obtained anything like peace, or time for legislation HENRY II. EMPEROR 121 and study; Otto, mirabilia mundi, the wonder of the world for wisdom, eloquence, prudence, and high enterprise, at the age when other princes are putting on their arms first, died full of glory. The grief of the German empire left without such a ruler can well be understood. Gerbert survived him for about a year and a half, and then the Romans poisoned him. Otto's death took place on the 22nd of January 1002, Sylvester's on the 12th of May 1003. Condition of the Empire at the Time of Otto's Death. — When Otto died Germany was enjoying profound peace. The old sore about Lorraine with France was healed ; the King of Aries was a faithful vassal of his kinsman ; Italy, except Rome itself, was at peace and likely to remain so. Byzantium was not likely to stir; Otto was nephew of the emperors Basil and Constantine, and in treaty for a Grecian empress. Poland was organised and tributary; the Hungarians had received in the year 1000 a crown from the Pope for their Apostolic King Stephen, under whom they were Chris tianised permanently. It is impossible to think Otto irrationally sanguine, if he did dream of a restored empire, the seat of which should be Old Rome. But Rome, after every cleansing, was reoccupied by seven spirits more wicked than the first, and the last state is ever worse than the former. Rome, the object of Otto's peculiar love, was the one exception when all besides loved him. And Rome was his destruction.1 Henry II. Emperor, 1002-1024. — Notice has already been taken of Henry the Quarrelsome the first and his son, Henry the Quarrelsome the second. The first, a younger son of Henry the Fowler, was made 1 I have dwelt on him thus long because I do not think that Milman, with all his admiration for him, does him justice. 122 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Duke of Bavaria by his brother, Otto I.; he married Judith, a Bavarian princess, daughter of Duke Arnulf ; and was himself a constant rebel and divider of the strength of the imperial house. And notice has also been taken of his son, Henry the Quarrel some II., the rival of Otto II., and kidnapper of Otto III. How hard these men had striven, first to separate Bavaria from the German kingdom, then to separate the German kingdom from the empire; then to divide the allegiance of the Saxons ! Now they are dead, Henry II. in 995; and the representation of Henry the Fowler and his Saxon and Bavarian de scendants centres in another Henry, who is not Quarrel some III., but Saint Henry, the father of the monks, also called the Glorious and the Lame ; a sad sick prince troubled with many diseases, but a good prince and popular upon the whole. It is satisfactory to know that his father had repented heartily on his deathbed, and given him the best advice ; also that the pious son had taken it. The question of succession was not clear. Poor Otto, in the pain and misery of his sick ness, had left no clear recommendation about the suc cession. According to one story he had commended the Royal Insignia to Herbert, Archbishop of Cologne, to be conveyed to his brother-in-law, the Count Palatine Ezzo, but it was not clear whether it was as to the official trustee of the regalia or as to the presumptive heir. On the other hand, Duke Henry, who had been with Otto in Italy, had, as his nearest relation, taken charge of his funeral. And Henry was the candidate who met with most favour, although Hermann of Swabia united many votes. The diet was held at Werle in Westphalia (Lower Saxony), and there, by the influence of Bernard Billung, Duke of Saxony, WARS WITH THE BOHEMIANS 123 and Dietrich of Lorraine, greatly supported by the clergy, Henry was chosen king, and to him was com mitted the sacred lance of Constantine which, since the days of Henry the Fowler, had been the most precious of the imperial treasures. The ceremony of election was transacted at Mainz on the 6th of June, and Henry was forthwith anointed and crowned. The ceremony was repeated a few days after at Aix. He reigned for twenty-two years. His Wars with the Bohemians, the Poles, and Flanders. — The new king was as usual welcomed with a little rebellion ; in which his brother Bruno, Bishop of Augsburg, a very young man, and Hezelo or Henry Junior, the son of Berthold, joined. But both this and the short resistance offered him by Duke Hermann of Swabia, seem to have been movements originated by mere restlessness and personal ambition, taking the opportunity from the yet untried and reported weak ness of Henry. The king was strong enough not only to conquer but to pardon them, although they had done their worst by attempting to draw the Bohemians into their quarrel. The wars with Bohemia spread over more than twelve years of the reign ; they are very uninteresting and tedious, but serve to show the hand of the German king gaining gradually a firmer hold on the Slavonic countries. A new mark on the Elbe was created by Henry against the Slavs and Bohemians, and his wars with Poland and the Northern Slavs seem to have been equally successful. His home management was good. His wife, Cuni- gunda, was a daughter of Sigfrid, Count of Luxemburg, and a lady of great piety and influence. To her Henry allowed a great deal of authority ; had her specially crowned at Paderborn soon after his own accession, 124 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES and bestowed his duchy of Bavaria on Henry, her brother, in 1004. The same year rid him of his rival, Hermann of Swabia, whom he replaced by a second Hermann, son of the first ; and the next year he was able to put a man of his own into Lorraine. His sister Gisela was married to Stephen, the apostolic King of Hungary. Unfortunately as usual the family party did not agree, and the king was obliged to re sume the duchy of Bavaria for several years; but Henry was subsequently restored and continued faith ful. He had probably done little more than justify his right to the confidence of the Bavarians by at tempting to make them again an independent nation. A more significant transaction is the war with Baldwin, Count of Flanders, which occurred in the year 1006; and which shows the rising power of that important county, destined in after ages so greatly to affect both Germany and France, and in the person of Charles V. to overshadow all Europe. Baldwin had seized Valen ciennes, which was on the border of the imperial dominions, the march of Antwerp. The emperor in vaded, Flanders, and after some difficulties compelled Baldwin to submit ; but, perceiving the desirableness of making him a friend, he subsequently gave him the place and a handsome fief with it. In 1005 he bestowed the duchy of Lower Lorraine upon Godfrey, Count of the Ardennes, under whose posterity it continued to be held, not without occasional changes, as a benefice for nearly a century. Connection of England with Lorraine and Flanders. — The period is interesting as being that of the closest intercourse between England and Lorraine, which filled the sees of Wessex with Lotharingian bishops, and introduced or rather failed to acclimatise the Lothar- HENRY II.'S VISITS TO ITALY 125 ingian rule of canons to the air of the English cathe drals. Very noticeable also is the close connection between the courts of Flanders and England under both Ethelred II. and Canute, as illustrated by the marriage of Tostig, the son of Godwin, with the daughter of the Count of Flanders, and the protec tion received by that house when in exile at St. Omer. Nor should it be forgotten that it is with the Emperor Henry II. and Stephen, King of Hungary, his brother-in-law, that the sons of Edmund Ironside find refuge, and that to a niece of the emperor Edward the Atheling is married. Henry II.' s Visits to Italy, 1004 and 1013. — With the exception of one important measure upon which some thing will be said later, the remaining interest of Henry I I.'s reign lies in Italy. One of the great measures of Otto III. had been to bind the Romans, so far as they could be bound, to an agreement that the person on whom for the future the suffrages of the Germans should fall, should be received by the Romans as King of the Germans, and forthwith con secrated emperor. The fact that such an agreement had been made was a great inducement to break through it ; and accordingly, as soon as Otto was dead, the Italians chose themselves a king, Ardoin, Marquis of Ivrea. The Italian bishops, however, re sisted this election, and meeting with severe treatment from Ardoin in consequence, had recourse immediately to Henry for assistance. He forthwith sent Otto, the Duke of Franconia, into Lombardy in the year 1002, and, finding him successful against Ardoin, followed in person in 1004. In this expedition he took Verona and Brescia and burned Pavia, but was notwith standing crowned there as King of Italy. From this 126 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES time for the next seven years a languid sort of war was carried on between Henry and Ardoin, the ad vantage being chiefly with the former. In 1012, Pope Benedict VIII. implored Henry's assistance, and even came to him in Germany to persuade him to make an effort to win the imperial crown. Henry was not proof against the prayers and promises of a Pope; in 1013, he started at the head of a large army. Ardoin, at his approach, sent in his submission en treating to be provided for by the gift of some county by way of a fief ; but Henry, supported by the bishops, refused to do this, and Ardoin accordingly took up arms, seized Vercelli, Novara, and Como. Henry, however, was much more than a match for him ; by one lucky stroke he took prisoners four Italian marquises, who were the chief supporters of Ardoin, retook Vercelli, and reduced Ardoin to complete in digence. He took refuge in a monastery, deposited his royal robes on the altar, and remained there him self in sanctuary until his death in 1015. In this little episode of Italian life, far more interesting than all the disputes at Rome about the candidates for the Papacy, can be traced a considerable growth of that spirit which was to make Italy impossible for the Germans, and which was seen in the springing up of a native aristocracy in Lombardy and Piedmont, under whose protection the cities were sooner or later to spring up to vigorous life. The names are still for the most part German in origin but being softened down into Italian, a sure token of the incorporation of the nobles, once German or Frank officials, into the mass of the Latin-speaking people. Ardoin was a Lombard hero, as his opponents were German and imperialised bishops. CORONATION OF HENRY AT ROME 127 Coronation of Henry at Rome, 1014 — His Third Visit to Italy, 1022. — After the conquest of Ardoin, Henry followed Benedict to Rome, and there, after some little reluctance on the Pope's part, he was crowned emperor on the 14th of February 1014 ; Queen Cunigunda was crowned empress with him. It was, however, only a tame proceeding. Although Henry coined money at Rome as emperor, and administered justice in person, the Pope, who had a strong party at Rome, maintained a very independent position ; and although on friendly terms with the emperor, treated with him as an equal, which Henry's pious humility was well able to tolerate. This same Pope Benedict reigned until 1024, and was quite equal to his position temporally ; he roused up the Pisans to drive the Saracens out of Italy, and was on the whole a very vigorous Pope. In 1022, Henry at his invitation made another expedition to Italy, in tended to subdue Apulia and Calabria, where the Greek empire was again showing signs of life. He descended with a great army, defeated the Greeks, and took several cities. But the occasion is chiefly memorable as that on which the presence of the Normans in Apulia was first formally recognised. Henry bestowed, according to Hermann Contractus, some lands upon them in this expedition. They were probably mere adventurers who had taken service with him as their brethren were ready to do with the Greeks of Naples or the Saracens of Bari ; but from this little seed sprang first the little State of Aversa, and after it the goodly tree of the Sicilian kingdom, so fatally affecting the empire and Germany itself in the history of Frederick II., Conrad, and Conradin. On his return from this expedition Henry suffered greatly from the heat of Rome and the Campania, and hastened back into Germany. One of 128 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES his last acts was to make a treaty with Robert, King of France, in which all disputes between the kingdoms were arranged. Henry had already been declared heir of the kingdom of Aries, but he did not live to claim it. After calling a council, at which he nominated Conrad the Salic to be his successor, he died at Grun in Saxony on the 14th of July 1024. Henry's Death, 1024, and Character. — There can be no doubt that he was a very good prince, and that Germany enjoyed peace and good government under him. Al though not a warrior and physically incapacitated for much exertion, he showed himself vigorous on occasion, and experienced fewer defeats either in war or policy than his predecessors. In some respects he resembles Edward the Confessor, but the comparison must be to the advantage of Henry. Take him altogether he seems to have been a quiet, pious, and honest prince ; his character as a saint, which was not fully recognised until nearly two centuries after his death, may have been founded rather on his supposed possession of the virtues attributed to Edward the Confessor, than on his actual merits. Still he was a great temporal benefactor to the Church : a great founder and re former, and the first of the German kings who had taken a pride in being so. Otto the Great and Henry the Fowler had spread the influence of Christianity, divided sees and founded churches for the consolida tion and evangelising of the kingdom ; but Henry was the first who, by his munificent or rather lavish out lay on the Church, seemed to be laying up a stock of merits without any other determinate object. Yet in this point, in which he comes nearest to Edward the Confessor (for what Westminster was to Edward, Bamberg was to Henry), we see the difference of RELATIONS WITH GERMAN CHURCH 129 character. Westminster was but a monastery, although one of unparalleled beauty and wealth ; Bamberg was a strong bishopric and principality, able to succour the empire with arms and counsel as well as to pray for the souls of himself and Cunegunda. Henry's Relations with the German Church. — This foundation of Bamberg is the typical act of Henry's reign, and illustrates his Church policy. Henry's benefactions were, however, by no means confined to Bamberg, but all the great churches of the kingdom were largely indebted to him ; and he seems to have taken a pleasure in being enrolled on the lists of the monks or canons as a sort of honorary member thus entitled to the benefit of their prayers and alms. In one case he is said to have prevailed on an abbot to admit him as a monk, but, as soon as he had taken the vow of obedience, the abbot commanded him to return and resume the empire, not to part with it until his death. But this story, which is said to have happened at Verdun, Strassburg, and Monte Casino, is not likely to be true. The history of the Bamberg foundation was as follows. The Counts of Bamberg had been turbulent in the reign of Henry the Fowler, had disputed the duchy of Franconia with Conrad I., and were subsequently provided for by Henry with the Margraviate of Austria. On the forfeiture of Count Adalbert, Bamberg had been given either by Henry or Otto I. to Henry the Quarrelsome I. of Bavaria, as a piece of private property ; from him it descended to his grandson the Emperor Henry II., and he devoted it to the foundation of a bishopric. The diocese was cut out of the diocese of Wiirzburg, and the magnificent church was built in which Henry and Cunigunda still lie. This church was privileged to be subject to no 130 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES metropolitan, or to any human superior but the Pope of Rome ; it was endowed with estates in several re mote parts of the empire ; and, as a peculiar privilege, the four great dukes were enjoined to perform, to the bishops, the same services of Grand Serjeanty that they performed to the emperor : 1 — the Duke of Saxony as marshal, the Duke of Bavaria as steward, the Mar grave of Brandenburg as chamberlain, and the King of Bohemia as cup-bearer. The subjection of the bishop to Rome was to be expressed in the gift of ioo marks of silver and a white horse annually to the Pope, but this was exchanged by the Emperor Henry III. for the town of Benevento, which ever after that belonged to the Popes. The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the German States. — The processes by which the different states of Germany had been ecclesiastically organised have often been mentioned. We saw that the dioceses or archbishoprics of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier were of the Gallo-Roman foundation ; that the Franconian as well as the Ale- mannian churches sprang up under the Merovingian kings, the Bavarian about the beginning of the seventh century on the conversion of Theudo. The West- phalian dioceses were created by Charles the Great ; the rest of those of Saxony, Denmark, and the march of Brandenburg, with some in Bohemia, by Otto the Great ; those of Poland and Hungary by the advice or more determinate action of Otto III. All these sees were apportioned to the older and more dignified churches as suffragans, the province of Mainz being far the larger ; Bavaria was subject to the Archbishop of Salzburg, and the Slav churches and marches to the north-east to Magdeburg. Westphalia was given 1 The story of the Grand Serjeanty is very apocryphal. THE ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANISATION 131 to the Archbishop of Cologne as its spiritual head. Amongst these, however, the three archbishops on the Rhine succeeded in getting the most political power into their hands, as might be expected. Especially under Otto the Great they received both titles and privileges. The Archbishop of Mainz became Arch- chancellor of the empire, that of Cologne, Arch- chancellor of Italy, and that of Trier, Archchancellor of Burgundy. But this must have been later than Otto's time, probably in the eleventh century after the kingdom of Aries fell into the empire. Otto did, however, greatly augment the power of the archbishops, to whom he is said to have given Hesse and Thuringia, which were afterwards held by the Landgraves as a fief under the archbishops ; but this is thought to be an invention of later times, and is not mentioned by the contemporary historians. A more substantial gain was the acquisition of secular rights over the domains of their churches. From the Karoling rulers it was common for the prelates to obtain for their tenants exemption from the jurisdiction of the secular officers of the empire and from imposts and taxes payable to them. Upon this basis they erected their own courts, coined their own money, and held and regulated their own markets ; a further step was to accept the offices of secular jurisdiction over other territories and join them to their sees. Mosheim fixes this to the tenth century, and probably it is to Otto the Great that we are to ascribe the common introduction of the grant of regalia to the bishops and archbishops ; meaning by the word, the right of coining, of jurisdiction, and of fortifying their own castles. To distinct gifts of such privileges and to the distinct extension of the immediate jurisdiction of prelates by the gifts of new 132 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES estates, can be ascribed the difference of the positions of the German prelates in the diets of the empire. As a rule the more ancient the See, the nearer the Rhine, the greater the privileges. But they did not spring up at once ; they were the result of accumulations and of pretensions ever on the increase. An attempt has already been made to point out how they were created. The leaven of the old Gallo-Roman secu larism in the Rhenish Churches was one cause ; the growth of Christianity under the Imperial system was another ; a third was the entrance by the prelates upon the escheated and forfeited estates of the counts and barons, and their secular acquisitions made by war, purchase, and exchange after their position as secular as well as ecclesiastical princes was recognised. Summary. — Of great interest then is the history of the conversion of Germany, of the acquisition of regalia by the prelates, and of the improvement of their secular position by the acquisition of territory. What advantages the prelates have secured under the Ottos were confirmed and strengthened under Henry II. Each prelate was, like the Pope of Rome, getting a little temporal principality quite distinct from his diocesan or provincial jurisdiction ; and to this he sometimes added, as the Archduke Bruno did to his jurisdiction as archbishop, the administration of an imperial duchy or even more than one. Of course this increased considerably after the fall of the great houses, and still more after the humiliation and long abeyance of the empire. The growth of the German Church is comparable to nothing else in Europe except the Papacy; but now the Papacy was subject to the empire much as the prince bishops were. The IMPORTANT DATES 133 time was coming when it would vindicate for itself a superior claim and meet its stoutest opponents in these very prelates. IMPORTANT DATES Coronation of Otto at Rome, 996. Otto's second visit to Rome, 998. Otto in Germany, 999. His third visit to Italy, 1000. His death, 1002. Henry II. Emperor, 1002-1024. Wars with Poland, 1003-1017. Henry visits Italy, 1004. Coronation of Henry at Rome, 1014. The Pope visits Henry at Bamberg, 1020. Henry wars against the Greeks in the South of Italy, 1021. CHAPTER VIII England and Germany compared — Development of feudalism in England, Germany, and France— Conrad the Salic, 1024-1039 — Conrad visits Italy — Coronation at Rome — The Edict making fiefs hereditary, 1037 — Changes in the great Duchies— Henry III., 1039-1056— Characteristics of the English, French, and German nations. The Condition of England and Germany in the early Years of the Tenth Century compared. — The increasing light which we now begin to have with reference to the internal administration of Germany, coming at a time when for England also both our historians, laws, and corpus diplomaticum are so much fuller than they have been, seems to invite a comparison between the conditions »of the two countries so near akin in blood and insti tutions. Both kingdoms were composed of several minor states which had become subject about the same time to a central authority. The year 800, which marks the acquisition of the empire by Charles the Great, marks the accession of Egbert, who was to unite all the kingdoms of the English under the supremacy of Wessex ; in both countries great drawbacks to central isation and civilisation had been experienced by the invasion of barbarians ; within a very few years England was desolated by the Danes and Germany by the Hun garians ; within a very few years also the same date might do for the termination of these ravages, the Hungarians being finally defeated by Otto in 955, and the Danes firmly kept down in England by Athelstan and his immediate successors. In both countries, both PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 135 now and long after, the different tribal divisions had their distinct codes of law; the West Saxon, Mercian, and Danish law in England, answer to the Alemannian, Bavarian, and Saxon laws in Germany. Each kingdom stood in a sort of feudal superiority to neighbour kingdoms. Putting aside the Imperial Theory, what Germany was to Bohemia, Denmark, and Burgundy, England was to Scotland and the kingdom of Strath Clyde. By commendation the inferior kings had made themselves the vassals of the superior. Nor should we carry our parallel further than we are warranted in doing, if we compared the marches of Wales with those of the Wends, Slavs, and Obotrites in Germany. Nearly at the same time the ecclesiastical constitution of the two countries had been completed. Edward the elder filled up the tale of bishoprics by his new foundations in 909, just as Otto the Great was doing in Germany thirty years later. In both countries the remnants of the rival dynasties, which had been com pelled to yield submission to the superior state, remained for a long time to prevent perfect union and to give a gathering point for discontent. Points of Similarity and Dissimilarity in Principles of Government. — Almost all the fundamental principles of government and administration were the same, derived and with little difference of growth as yet from the old Teutonic model. Such were the divisions of the country, the character of jurisdictions, the distinct judicial peculiarities of process ; the weregild, the corn- purgatory oath, the periodical meetings of the district, the central placita, secular, religious, and military ; the names of the officers differing, but the reality corresponding — the earl or ealdorman answering to the duke or herzog ; the scygerefa or sheriff to the 136 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES graf or count; the centenarius to the headman of the hundred ; the German duchy to the Anglo-Saxon sub- kingdom ; and possibly or approximately their gau to our shire. Against these points of similarity we shall have to set several points in which the condition of Germany is to be contrasted with that of England. 1. Difference in Size. — The first and most obvious is that of size. England is fitted, as an island and by its extent, to be a compact country ; Germany is so large as to be unwieldy. With the size comes the diversity of nationality. The several nations of Germany had had a history, a distinct history each of its own, before they became one. But the Anglo-Saxons had no national existence before they became English ; at the best their history was tribal, at the worst it was merely the adventures of companies of colonists emigrating from their country in conjunction. Bavaria was a nation before it came a part of the Frank empire ; Wessex not only was not a nation but the West Saxons were only a division of a larger nation, other divisions of which colonised the country about them. 2. Different System of Development. — Secondly, Ger many was conquered and civilised by the arms of the Franks, but England was civilised before it was united under the sway of Wessex. Germany was conquered before it was Christianised. England was Christianised before it was consolidated. Germany became Christian because it was united, and it was Christianised by union ; England was united by Christianity. In England the Church framework preceded the union of the empire ; in Germany it followed it. 3. No Roman Element in England. — In the third place, Germany was from the beginning leavened with a Roman element from which England was free, and NO ROMAN ELEMENT IN ENGLAND 137 which of course assumed far greater proportions after the Imperial dignity was sealed to Germany, first under Charles the Great and secondly under Otto. The Rhine provinces of Germany had been under Roman laws for centuries ; Alemannia had formed the Agri Decumates of the Roman empire ; the south of Bavaria had been included in a Roman province ; it is only of Saxony that we can distinctly say that the Romans had had no direct hand in the making it what it was. The Franks them selves were the most Romanised of the German nations ; before the time of Clovis they had fought on the side of the Romans. Clovis was proud to be regarded as a Roman officer. Brunechild and her family were in close alliance with Rome, and had very Roman ideas of government. Charles the Great, although too wise a man to dream of applying the principles of Imperial despotism, was not averse to adopting the pomp and style of Imperial Rome, and the shadows of old realities into which a bold hand might yet put life. The con junction of this aggregate of Roman influences with the substratum of German institutions common to the whole race, was the origin of feudalism ; but under Charles the Great the feudal system as a system of government was still a long way off, and the perfecting of it as a system of land tenure belongs to the reign of Conrad the Salic. But the most efficacious influence of Roman Imperialism was imported by the incorporat ing of the claims upon Italy with the imperial character of the German king, and the constant association sub sisting thenceforth between two countries in other respects so much divided. 4. No Difficulty in England in Conciliating various Races under one King. — Fourthly, the reason of disunion and disaffection in England proceeded not from the im- 138 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES possibility of conciliating hostile races under the sway of one king, nor from the power of hereditary dynasts building a dynastic insubordination or independence on the combination between national antipathies and hereditary ambitions ; for in England there was no such national or tribal antipathy, and there was as yet no hereditary chieftainship approaching the character of a German duchy or a French county. For we must compare England with both. In France the provincial rulers had become ipso facto hereditary ; in Germany they were from time to time bestowed on the son in succession to the father, but with nothing more than a presumption of right ; the gift by the emperor was a new gift to each new possessor. In England the ealdormanships were not so near the hereditary type as that, although, as in Germany, as a matter of grace or convenience, the son might often succeed the father. Doubtless the same tendency was observable in England, and it did come to the same point under the preponderating influence of the two great houses of Leofric and Godwin, and so opened the way to the Norman Conquest. Still, even if the likeness in this respect were really greater than it seems to me to have been, the divisions of the provinces being based on no radical distinction of nationality, or on such as were long ago obsolete, prevented the disruption of England into petty states such as Germany was in constant risk of breaking up into. Lastly, it is impossible to doubt, however highly you may estimate the progress towards a feudal tenure of land which had been made in England before the Norman Conquest by the practice of commendation, by the division of great estates and by the dis tribution of the public lands, supposing that to have THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 139 taken place, that the system had made much greater progress in Germany than in England, as it had made more in France than in Germany. We ascribed the growth of the system in France, as compared with its growth in Germany, to the earlier civilisation and to the measure of admixture of Frank Lords with native tenants. In Germany we did not see the same pre dominance of Frank nobles, the native nobles being left in their old allodial position. Still the close alliance with the Franks, the fact that they were so long the leading if not throughout the dominant race, and the natural working towards centralisation under Frank imperialism, quickened the growth and spread the system far more than anything that can be shown to have existed in England. With a feudal land-tenure there is a strong impulse towards a feudal provincial government, that is towards ultimate disruption. Thus feudal government in England and Germany was based upon two different principles. With so much by way of preface we are prepared for the conclusion. The Development of Feudalism in England, France, and Germany. — There are stages in the life of a country when feudalism is a source of strength, and others when it is a source of weakness ; much depends on the character of the central government, much on the character of the feudalism itself. At this point the feudalism of France was the cause of its impotency ; that of Germany the cause or expression of its strength. In England the case was entirely different. The Norman Conquest was a solution of the continuous development of the feudal principle in England, how ever we might have been advancing towards it ; the system that followed the Norman Conquest did not grow out of the system that prevailed before it, it 140 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES came in per saltum, and we can never say to what the elder system, left to itself, might or might not have brought us. Most of the points already alluded to will be seen illustrated in the epoch on which we \have now to enter, that of the Franconian Empire, Which extends from the election of Conrad the Salic in 1024 to the death of Henry V. in 11 25 — a period a»f history which contains the point of greatest exalta tion, and also of the greatest humiliation, experienced By the German emperors before the fall of Frederick II. The flourishing period of the empire may be divided according to the nationality of the province which gave the dynasty, a nationality often not the same as that of the dynasty itself, but strong enough in all the cases to give some colour to the politics of it. Thus we get first the Saxon, then the Fran conian, and finally the Alemannian or Swabian period ; they run into one another by a succession but little removed from hereditary, but still the fact that the imperial connections and influence lay in different nations gives a warrant for the political as well as the mere memorial usefulness of the division. The Bavarian nation struggles continuously through the first and third of the dynasties ; through the Ottos, under the Quarrelsome Henrys, and through the Hohenstaufens, in the person of the Welfic Henrys. But Bavaria never gets a firm hold on the imperial crown, and indeed the Welfic interest lay rather in Saxony than in Bavaria itself. The house of Austria, however, which comes in so much later, and the bulk of whose German possessions lie within the ancient Bavaria, may be considered as taking the Bavarian turn. Conrad the Salic, 1024-1039. — Henry II. on his death bed recommended as his successor Conrad the Salic. CONRAD THE SALIC 141 Conrad was the male representative of that Conrad the Wise, Duke of Franconia, to whom Otto the Great gave his daughter Luitgarde. He was thus descended from our English Alfred, and is the first of the emperors who is so. He was the son of Henry, the son of Otto, the son of Conrad and Luitgarde. His father died during Duke Otto's lifetime, and so, although he was of age at his grandfather's death, he was not allowed to succeed to the duchy, but it was given to his uncle Conrad, on whose death his own son Conrad succeeded him ; so that our Conrad, called the Salic by way of distinction, although the elder of the two, and repre senting the elder branch, was not Duke of Franconia. This then is the first case of an emperor being chosen who was not either the heir-apparent or in possession of one of the great national duchies. Conrad was chosen by the Germans on the strength of his cousin's recommendation, about six weeks after his death, in a diet at Kamb, between Mainz and Worms, attended by representatives of all the nations, and was crowned at Mainz on the 14th of September 1024. The life of Conrad is extant, written by his chaplain Wippo in a very excellent and workmanlike book. He begins with an account of the dramatis persona, and the names of the bishops and dukes. Of the latter he names eight : the four of the great nations, Conrad of Fran conia, Henry of Bavaria, Ernest of Alemannia, and Bernard Billung of Saxony ; the two of Lorraine, Frederick of Lower and Gozelo of Upper or Ripuarian Lorraine ; Adalbero, Duke of Istria, and Ulric, Duke of Bohemia. Istria had been held sometimes with Fran conia and sometimes with Bavaria ; just now and for a short time it was a separate duchy. The Count Palatine does not yet come out as a prince ; his position 142 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES was greatly enhanced by the abeyance of the duchy of Franconia which took place under this dynasty. After a long description of the election and coronation of Conrad, Wippo tells us about the Empress Gisela, who was sister of Duke Ernest of Alemannia, and ought to have kept her brother and husband at peace. She was not a popular lady although worthy, rather interfering, we may conclude, and her coronation was impeded for some days, taking place at Cologne on the 21st of September. Conrad visits Italy. — This done, Conrad, in accordance with ancient precedent, made a tour of his dominions, going first to Aix-la-Chapelle and through the Ripuarian duchy ; then into Saxony, where he confirmed the strict Saxon laws ; so to Bavaria, then to Franconia, and ending the circuit in Alemannia. Having thus visited Germany, he went into Italy in the next spring, and there reconciled the Italians, who had as usual broken out at the news of Henry's death and burned the palace of Pavia;1 receiving the submission of the Lombards at Milan but rejecting the apology of Pavia, and waiting for an opportunity of exacting severe punishment. He returned by way of Swabia to Zurich and Basel, where he exercised the right of appointing a bishop, although it was in the kingdom of Burgundy, not without a stain of simony, of which he lived to repent. The next year, having designated i his son Henry, now quite a child, as his successor and entrusted him to the care of Bishop Bruno of Augsburg, Conrad marched into Italy, partly with a view of punishing the people of Pavia and partly intending to demand the imperial crown. Already some discontent was showing itself in Germany. Duke Ernest 1 They had tried to join in electing the King of France or William of Aquitaine. CORONATION AT ROME 143 of Alemannia, Conrad of Franconia, and Frederick of Lorraine were, according to the tradition of their ancestors, preparing for a rebellion. Conrad, however, thought light of them and carried off Ernest with him in his army to Italy, when he redeemed his fault for the time by his generalship. Pavia had to pay heavily for the offence of last year, and Italy, or Lombardy generally, experienced the severe justice of Conrad. From the language in which Wippo describes these measures we may conclude that the country about Pavia was entirely desolated, churches and castles de molished, commerce forbidden, and entire submission enforced by the grinding discipline of two years of punishment. Conrad spent nearly a year in Italy, staying at Ravenna in the winter and going to the Apennines in the hot weather. Coronation at Rome, 1027. — At last, on Easter day 1027, he was crowned with his wife at Rome in the presence of Rudolph of Burgundy and Canute, King of England, who attended him on the occasion to his chamber. Rudolph, of course, held his kingdom of the empire, but if there were anything of the nature of serjeanty implied in this attendance by Canute it must have been in consideration of the kingdom of Denmark, which had been commended to the emperor, or of some other fief ; for the territory of Schleswig was not yet, nor until the year 1036, bestowed on the King of Denmark as a fief. It is not uninteresting to observe how early this question of Schleswig emerges, which has given occasion to one of the greatest revolutions of modern times within our own recollection ; nor is it less interesting to observe that at this very moment the Bavarian Welf s are rising into importance, destined to place themselves amongst the most prominent princes 144 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES of Europe, a position retained by them through many changes of fortune down to the time of the Prussian usurpation of Hanover in 1866. The Later Years of Conrad 's Reign. — It is curious to observe the smallness of the armies with which these long expeditions of the German sovereigns were made ; neither Otto III. nor Henry II., nor again Conrad the Salic, seems to have led an army sufficiently large to keep order in Ravenna or Rome. Regularly, after the coronation of the emperor, a riot seems to have taken place in Rome, the result of which is scarcely creditable to the imperial power of keeping order. But it would seem that the state of the country was such that the Italians had no spirit for pertinacious resistance. The townspeople had spirit enough for riot, which their cruelty and passion generally made bloody ; but, as for the country, it must be concluded either that the Germans with all their severity were welcome as bring ing a moment's security and law with them, or else that the people had been too long disused to arms to resist them. From Rome Conrad went into Apulia, where he destroyed the power of Thasselgard, a great brigand leader, and hanged him. There also he gave authority to the Normans to colonise, and laid the foundations of the principality which was to rescue the Pope from imperial influence. He was, however, now recalled into Germany by the revival of the conspiracy of Ernest, Conrad, and Frederick, and by a private war between Count Welf of Altdorf and Bishop Bruno of Augsburg. The war as usual collapsed at the emperor's appearance. Rudolf of Burgundy checked the ravages of Ernest, and his own followers deserted him. Adalbero, Duke of Carinthia, was deprived and exiled, and Conrad of Fran conia, receiving that dukedom in addition to his own, CONRAD'S CHARACTER 145 repented of his treason and continued ever after faithful to his cousin. Peace being restored, Henry, the son of Conrad, now eleven years old, was crowned at Aix-la- Chapelle by the Archbishop of Cologne. The remaining events of the reign of Conrad, as Wippo relates them, are few : the release, renewed rebellion, and final for feiture of Duke Ernest in the year 1030, and the gift of his duchy to his brother Hermann ; the falling in of the kingdom of Burgundy on Rudolfs death in 1032 ; the contest for it with Odo of Champagne, and the subsequent bestowal of it (together with the duchy of Alemannia on the death of Hermann) by Conrad on his son Henry ; the death of Bishop Bruno, the last of the Saxon family ; the marriage of Henry with Gun- hilda, the daughter of Canute ; and some few tumults in Italy which called the emperor again into that country in 1036. On this occasion he visited Milan, where he published his famous enunciation of the feudal law, and Rome, where he restored Pope Benedict IX. After Christmas 1037, which he spent at Parma, he punished a revolt or riot of the inhabitants by burning the city ; and he also enforced peace in Apulia with the strong hand. Wars with the Poles and Slavs make up the history of the reign. He died in 1039 at Utrecht, where he had been keeping Whitsuntide with great pomp. He was buried at Speyer, where he was build ing a cathedral which he destined for the burial-place of his family, and where his son, grandson, and great- grandson, the three Franconian Henrys, were buried. Conrad's Character. — The character of Conrad is clearly that of a strong-handed, severe, and ready man. Much of his power was doubtless inherited from Henry II.; and in general he may be said to have succeeded to a sceptre very considerably strengthened by the 146 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES sway of the Saxon emperors. The power which Henry the Fowler had founded, and Otto I. consolidated, suffered no diminution before it reached him ; but it is very much to his own personal qualities that we are to attribute the facility with which he worked it, and the equable pressure which he exercised by it, not only through Germany but through the length and breadth of Italy also. He was a strong man, if less brilliant than Otto I. or Henry III. The Edict making Fiefs Hereditary, 1037. — In another point of view we get a glimpse of Conrad's powers which makes us inclined to compare him with our own Edward I., viz. in his enunciation of the feudal law in the edict published by him on the Roman expedition in the year 1037 at Milan. This edict has been held to entitle him to be termed the first who reduced the feudal law, strictly so called, to writing. The essence of the feudal law had been hitherto, and indeed its procedure always was, very much regulated by custom ; but in this edict certain rules are laid down which, by their soundness and universal applica tion, gaining authority from the dignity of the pro mulgator, claimed and received universal acceptance. Although in their immediate application they belonged to Lombardy, we may be sure, from the words of Wippo, (1) that, by approving the perpetuity of fiefs, he gained the affection of his soldiers, (2) that they were principles upon which in Germany also he acted in the same matter. Hallam remarks that they show the full maturity of the system and the last stage of its progress.1 By the system he means only the land tenure of feudalism, for the governmental system and most of the political phenomena which we usually 1 See Hallam, " History of the Middle Ages," vol. i. p. 166. RULES LAID DOWN IN THE EDICT 147 associate under the name of the feudal system, were yet in an incipient stage in Germany. The Rules laid Down in the Edict. — By the first of these he orders that no man shall be deprived of a fief whether held of the emperor or of a mesne lord, but by the laws of the empire and the judgment of his peers — an expression which is copied in our own Magna Carta, and which proves at once that the system of hereditary fiefs was now the customary rule, and that any infringement of it, however legitimate, on the original theory of feudalism, was now come to be regarded as unjust. Applying this to the dis tribution and continuance in one family of the great jurisdictions of the duchies, we see a reason for the patience and lenity with which the emperors treat their rebellious vassals. To have broken through such a custom, to have hastily exercised the right of con fiscation or to have resumed a duchy at the death of its last holder, without regard to the rights of the heirs, would have set the whole body of feudatories in arms against him. The second article gives the immediate vassal or tenant-in-chief the right of appeal to the sovereign against the judgment of his peers. The third orders that fiefs shall be inherited by the sons and their children or, in their failure, by brothers, provided they were feuda paterna such as had de scended from the father. By the fourth, it is ordered that the lord shall not alienate a fief without the consent of his vassal ; that he shall not transfer his own lordship over the fief without the consent of his tenant. The minutiae of the question should be worked up by a careful reading of at least Hallam and Blackstone, and it may be added that in the reign of Otto the Great the right of representation had been 148 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES allowed to grandchildren in the inheritance of their grandfathers ; the question was tried by wager of battle and was so decided. But by this time the feudal law was hardly in such a state as to be affected by such a decision, most of the property heritable being still allodial ; and the succession to the great fiefs was not regulated by it, as was seen in the case of Conrad himself, who otherwise would have been Duke of Franconia. Changes in the Great Duchies in Conrad s Days. — The changes in the great duchies during the reign of Conrad the Salic were, with the exception of those which have been already noted, not very important. Saxony con tinued to be held by Bernard Billung, who governed it in all fifty-two years ; Bavaria was governed by Henry of Luxemburg, a nephew of Queen Cunigunda, who was faithful all his life; Franconia we have ac counted for under the history of Conrad ; he died in 1039, anc* the duchy was given to the heir-apparent, Henry, who became king the same year. Lorraine was reunited in 1033 under Gothelo I., Duke of Lower Lorraine ; and Alemannia, on the death of Hermann and Conrad, was given, like Franconia, to the young Henry, who was thus during his father's life put in possession of a compact territory comprising the kingdom of Aries and two of the great duchies of Germany. The year of the death of Conrad was marked, as Wippo tells us in his poem on the subject, by the loss to Germany of the Queen Gunhilda, wife of the young Henry, Conrad of Franconia, and many others. From this point a period of history is entered upon which has been written almost exclusively from an ecclesiastical standpoint ; one way or the other all the writers on the Franconian empire have regarded HENRY III. 149 it in its relations to the Papacy rather than in its relations to Germany. Henry III., 1039-1056. — With regard to Henry III. there is no lack of interest from any point of view ; he was one of the ablest, brightest, and strongest politicians of the Middle Ages ; under him Germany reached its acme of consolidation and the empire its highest pitch of power. By way of preparation for the next chapter the principal dates of the reign and of Henry's life will now be given. Henry was born in the year 1017, and received Bavaria in 1026 ; crowned King of Germany in 1028 ; made Duke of Alemannia and Franconia and King of Aries in 1038 ; married first to Gunhilda, the daughter of Canute, King of England, who died in 1039, and secondly, to Agnes, daughter of William V., Duke of Aquitaine, in the year 1043 ; the latter was mother of the unfortunate King Henry IV. Henry III. reigned seventeen years and died in 1056. Lambert of Hersfeld, the historian of the next reign, gives a few dates and particulars of interest for this also. The early years of the reign were spent in Germany. His first visit to Italy was in 1046, when he deposed three popes, Benedict, Sylvester, and Gregory, and nominated a fourth, Clement II., before called Swidger, Bishop of Bamberg, who, on the day of his own coronation, bestowed the imperial crown on Henry and Agnes, Christmas day 1046. After visiting the South of Italy he returned to Germany. In 1047, on the death of Clement, he appointed, at the request of the Romans, Poppo, Bishop of Brixen, Pope under the title of Damasus II., and in 1048 he made in the same way Bruno, Bishop of Toul, Pope as Leo IX.; and in 1054, Gebhard of Eichstadt as Victor II. In 1055 he made his second Italian expedition to take 150 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES measures for the humiliation of Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine, who had married the Countess Beatrice, widow of Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany, and mother by Boniface of the famous Countess Matilda. On this occasion he held a famous diet at Roncaglia, the plain on which the old Kings of Lombardy and Italy were elected and held their national assemblies, and at which all the princes of Italy attended. He spent a year in Italy on this occasion, returning to Germany in time to keep Easter 1056 at Paderborn. This year he held his interview with the King of France at Yvoi, in the Luxemburg country, in which the possession of Lorraine was so fiercely disputed that Henry III. offered to decide the right by single combat between the two principals. Henry of France did not expect so lively a retort and fled away by night. Characteristics of the English, German, and French Nations. — This was almost the last important event of his life, and it exemplifies what more than once has been alluded to, the prowess of the German princes as distinguished from the reserve, if we call it no worse name, the cautious self-preservation so carefully main tained by the French. It is by no means a singular case that the French prince saves himself by cunning or flight where he ought to fight. Especially this is the case with Lewis VII., of whom, as the rival of our Henry II., so much is known. He possessed some good points, although not enough to give him the title of a good king ; and almost the same may be said of his son, Philip Augustus. To find a German or an English king at this era who would have failed his knightly word in such a matter as Lewis did, or have absconded from the prospect of a fair struggle, would be quite impossible. It is an indication how far more IMPORTANT DATES 151 the chivalrous spirit is German or Teutonic rather than French ; and that the people who were ruled by such kings had not yet earned the name of a brave nation. The English kings and the German, as in the time of Tacitus, kept their hold on the popular imagina tion by a character for deeds of arms, and were still the leaders of their armies and 7roi/iiveno-niah.s Cr? -i>n ,.*¦ f>., Zondo?i . New^~i'rk.J'J07Tn.>dr&ijalciLtta. CONDITION OF ITALY 195 position held as yet only by the most ancient mon archies. Condition of Italy. — In Italy, however, the German king found himself opposed not by the scattered Lombard principalities in Apulia, or by the officers of the antiquated empire in Calabria, powers which were hardly worth conquering and wholly insignifi cant in their hostility, but by a compact and well organised feudal state, in possession of all that the strength of the north and the skill of the south could combine to give. By the assistance of a power like the Normans, the Papacy could make head against the emperor in person. Nay, without the assistance of the Normans, Gregory VII. had reduced the king of Germany to the condition of a suppliant vassal ; and the court of Rome never yet formally withdrew a single claim that she had made to secular dominion. For the best part of a century the relation of the two powers had been changed. Instead of the emperor acting as a patron of the Church, the Church was becoming the patron of the empire ; instead of the emperor being the reformer of the Church, the Church was attempting to reform the empire. Claims had been made and admitted, and favours had been asked and granted, that made the restoration of the old status virtually an impossibility. Even in the north of Italy, the country on which the yoke of German empire had always sat most uneasily, matters were more advanced towards a perpetual and successful resistance. The Lombard and Tuscan towns were quickly raising a fabric of republican independence on the basis of their old imperial municipalities. They were seeking strength by federation, and by mutual assistance insuring one another against the 196 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES damages of an unsuccessful quarrel. In the alliance of the Papacy, or of the Norman king of Sicily, or of any German prince who was disaffected towards the reigning house, or by the subsidies of any European prince who wanted a good word with the Pope, these cities were acquiring internal strength and at the same time political experience and a recognition in the family of states. It is now clear that the term of imperial dominion beyond the Alps was becoming shorter ; and that there were obstacles which had grown up since the time of Henry III. which it would have taxed his power as it did that of his descendant to cope with. The Political Situation in Germany. — Germany was different. In the first place her frontier was more defined, and her neighbours more dependent. The claims of the French upon Lorraine had ceased ; and the whole of the old Lotharingian kingdom ac knowledged the supremacy of the empire. On the north the Danes were subservient, and the Obotrites, Slavs, Wends, and Bohemians, Poles and Hungarians, were content to accept a vassal relation compatible with peace. Christianity and civilisation were gaining hold faster and faster upon them, and the King of Bohemia was become a prince of the German kingdom. In Germany itself there was a lull of dynastic quarrels, which is refreshing or the contrary, as the reader takes pleasure or not, in unravelling the petty complications of the interior of the kingdom. The concentration of fiefs in the hands of one or two great princes has the effect of simplifying these, and sometimes of extinguish ing them after a time or altogether. Conrad III. left Germany not indeed united but in a condition to become so ; and, as regards strength, not so much CHARACTER OF FREDERICK'S REIGN 197 absolutely powerful as contingently so, on the absence and cessation of old causes of weakness. The Welf and Franconian parties were now all that were left to divide Germany. Frederick stood in exactly the same relation to both : his mother was sister to Duke Henry the Proud ; his father was brother to the Emperor Conrad. Conrad perhaps saw, or thought he saw, in Frederick one who would make the best and wisest use of the influence to which he was born, and one who might unite for ever North and South Germany in the bonds of friendship and political sympathy. On his deathbed he preferred his nephew Frederick as his successor to his own son ; and the choice was ratified by the opinion of Germany, the young Duke of Swabia being already known as a warrior, a statesman, and a Crusader. He was also popular and bound in the closest terms of affection and companionship with the hereditary representative of the Welfs, and he had no hereditary feuds of his own to cultivate. Character of the Reign of Frederick Barbarossa. — The long reign of Frederick Barbarossa justified the choice. He made and kept a strong German kingdom, and, with the empire, he did the best that could be done. If he had devoted himself entirely to Germany he might have averted the fate of his family, and altered the face of Europe. This he did not do, and the pernicious hold upon Italy involved the breaking up, after his death, of all that he had effected. But although that is so, he certainly governed Germany more completely than it had been governed before ; and though unable to substitute the despotic for the feudal form of im perialism — unable, that is, to undo the work of the last century altogether — he was still able to substitute feudal order for feudal disorder, and by his own authority 198 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES and good faith to keep his vassals, even the greatest of them, in their places. As it will be impossible with any minuteness to go into details in chronological order for this reign, it will be advisable first to clear the way by enumerating Frederick's Italian expeditions in which, as Hallam says, there is, for the general reader, the greatest part of the interest of the reign ; then to trace the progress of the Welf and Waib lingen, Saxon and Swabian — the North and South German chronic quarrel — and around that group the chief German transactions of this very important reign. The Position of Frederick Barbarossa on his Accession. — Frederick Barbarossa, then, was the son of Frederick the one-eyed Duke of Swabia, by Judith, the sister of Henry the Proud. His grandmother on the father's side was Agnes of Swabia, daughter of Henry IV. ; his great-grandmother on the mother's side was Judith of Flanders, the widow of Tostig, sister-in-law of both Harold and William the Conqueror, and the line by which unmistakably the blood of both Charles the Great and the English Alfred runs through the veins of the royal houses of Europe. Agnes of Swabia had married, after her first husband's death, and her large family by Leopold, Margrave of Austria, were the most faithful adherents of the Swabian family. There was thus no great prince in Germany who was not closely allied with Frederick, and this alliance had been strengthened for the most part by their common parti cipation in the miseries and glories of the second Crusade. By Conrad's advice Frederick was elected King of Germany on the 5th of March 1152 at Frankfort, unanimously : he was crowned at Aix- la-Chapelle on mid-Lent Sunday. He then travelled FIRST AND SECOND EXPEDITIONS 199 though Saxony and Bavaria, where he was crowned a second time at Regensburg, and sent to Rome to demand the imperial crown. His first exercise of authority was to settle peacefully the claims of three competitors to the crown of Denmark, and to appease the dissension between Henry the Lion and his rivals both in Saxony and in Bavaria. In these matters his two first years were spent, and in 1154 he made his first expedition into Italy. His First and Second Expeditions to Italy, 1154-55, and 1158-62 — The Diet at Roncaglia, 1155. — The memor able points of this expedition, are, first, the great diet held on the plain of Roncaglia, in which he reviewed the whole feudal and military force of the empire ; his ravaging of the Milanese territory ; his coronation at Pavia; his rejection of the claim of the Roman re public and refusal of money to the people; the con demnation and execution of Arnold of Brescia; his armed occupation of Rome, and coronation by Pope Hadrian IV., with the battle that took place on the coronation day, June 18, and the sack and plunder of Spoleto. Frederick returned to Germany by way of Trent and Bavaria in the autumn of 1155. A Polish war, troubles in Germany, the establishment of the duchy of Austria, and Henry's marriage with the heiress of Burgundy were the chief events between the first expedition and the second, which took place in 1 1 58. This was provoked by the indefatigable perseverance of the* Milanese, who had not only re covered from their losses, but resumed their tyrannical position with regard to the neighbour cities, which they had lost in 1154. This time he again ravaged the Milanese lands, and ordered the demolition of the city of Crema, although he spared Milan itself. He 200 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES was then crowned at Monza, and held another diet at Roncaglia of the whole empire, the character of which was legal rather than military, as that of 1154 had been. He insisted on the vassals of Lombardy, both bishops and cities, surrendering their rights of regalia (Hallam, i. 372), and ordered the institution of an imperial magistrate or podesta to join with the elective consuls in the administration of the towns. He next collected the estates and rights of the Countess Matilda on behalf of his uncle Welf. This was followed by a quarrel with Pope Hadrian IV., who insisted on the restoration of the Countess Matilda's estates, the absolute dominion of Rome, and on other diminutions of the imperial rights. The Pope was fortifying himself by a close alliance with the Normans and the Lombard towns, and the great quarrel with Milan followed. Then ensued the death of Hadrian IV., and the double election of Alexander III. and the Cardinal Octavian as Victor IV., the emperor re cognising the latter. Contemporaneous with these events was the war in Lombardy, which had for one result the utter destruction of Milan in 1162, after a resistance lasting for three years. Frederick then returned to Germany after an absence of four years, and attempted to strengthen there and in Europe generally the party of the anti-Pope. Frederick's Third (1163), Fourth (1167), and Fifth (1174) Italian Expeditions — The Lombard League, 11 67. — Frederick's third Italian expedition was in 1163, and was tolerably pacific ; the emperor saw doubtless that the Lombard cities were recovering themselves, and perhaps anticipated the struggle which was so shortly renewed. In 1167 he made his fourth Italian expedi tion, reduced Lombardy again to a state of exhaustion, THE LOMBARD LEAGUE 201 and placed the anti-Pope, Paschal III., on the papal throne. The result of this expedition was bad ; for not only did the rival Pope, Alexander III. (1159-81), excommunicate him and release his subjects from their allegiance, but the Milanese and their confederates harassed his army, greatly diminished by disease, to such a degree that he was pursued from city to city, obliged to make peace and had to make his escape over the Alps with a small band of attendants. Five years intervened before, in 1174, he again entered Italy. The Lombard league, formed in 1167 under papal pro tection, had now become too strong for him. Till April 1 175 he besieged Alessandria, the capital or representative city of the new league, which had been founded in 1168 and frightened the Lombards into negotiations for peace. This Peace of Montebello did not last long ; the incurable faithlessness of the Italians provoked the emperor to the last pitch ; he collected the force of the empire — only his cousin Henry the Lion refused to accompany him. He fought without him and was thoroughly beaten at Legnano in 1 176 — that was enough. Negotiations for peace were opened with the Pope on the death of the anti-Pope Calixtus and with the Lombards and Sicilians. These were effectual, and the whole of the parties were formally reconciled at Venice in July 1177. There the emperor and Pope met and exchanged compliments. The peace was more lasting and the reconciliation more sincere than such things generally are. Frederick and Alexander continued friends until the death of the latter. But a desultory private warfare was carried on among the nobles. Still Frederick kept his peace with the cities, and although he had several quarrels with the Popes, he only once again entered 202 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Italy.1 In 1186, he held a diet at Milan, and a council with the Pope at Verona, and married his son Henry to the heiress of Sicily. For all the details of these things the reader must consult Sismondi, Milman, and Hallam. Henry the Lion. — During the whole of these trans actions down to 1 1 76 Henry the Lion, the Duke of Saxony, had been the most intimate companion and energetic assistant of the emperor. They were attached by close personal friendship. Frederick had shown himself a good friend to the Welfs. He immediately recognised Henry as Duke of Saxony and as having hereditary claims on Bavaria ; as early as 1154 he had shown his determination to do him justice, and summoned Henry of Austria, his stepfather, to plead his cause before the diet of the empire. Failing his appearance on the third or fourth summons, the diet at Goslar adjudged Bavaria to Henry the Lion ; Frederick compromised matters, however, by dividing the march of Austria from the duchy of Bavaria permanently, restoring the latter to Henry the Lion, and creating the other an independent dukedom. Before this, as early as 1 153, he provided for his uncle Welf by enforcing his rights on Tuscany, and investing him himself with the fief of that marquisate. Welf still had considerable estates in Tuscany and Lombardy, derived from his ancestors of the house of Este, of which he was recog nised in Italy as the head. He had a son Welf, who gained the affections of his Italian vassals and ruled in his stead until 1167. For seven years Henry the Lion grew in power and character ; he conquered, and that 1 The Peace of Venice, 1177, with the Pope was, in 1183, followed by the Peace of Constance with the Lombard republics, which now became self- governing states. HENRYS QUARREL WITH EMPEROR 203 permanently, the Slav population on the Elbe and south-west shores of the Baltic ; he built cities ; he founded bishoprics and churches ; he joined in the imperial expeditions ; he accepted, contrary to the policy of his Saxon forefathers, the emperor's side in the disputes with the Papacy. In 1156 he saved Frederick's life at Rome, was betrothed by his influence to Matilda of England in 1 165, and was married in 1168. In 1 172 he went on a magnificent pilgrimage to Jerusalem and spent his wealth, power, and statesmanlike skill in the civilisation and embellishment of Saxony, and espe cially of his allods of Brunswick. There is no doubt that his faithfulness to Frederick was sincere, and was a great cause of the emperor's strength and prosperity during these years. In 1160, when Frederick thought it wise to nominate a successor, he named after his own son, then a child, Henry the Lion as the most worthy. Henry the Lion's Quarrel with the Emperor, 11 80. — From the year 1167, which was the year of the death of the younger Welf, these relations became less friendly. Even whilst Henry the Lion was on his pilgrimage, the emperor it was said tampered with the Saxon lords ; but this he might easily do, without evil intention, for Henry had no children as yet, and his return from such an expedition was somewhat doubtful. Still the know ledge of these intrigues and the excommunication of Frederick and his allies by Alexander III., 1168, may have had some effect upon the duke on his return from his pilgrimage, for Henry was both religious himself and the representative of a religious school or party in Germany. But it can scarcely be doubted that the succession to the estates of Duke Welf produced the final coolness. Although this troublesome old man 204 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES lived until 1195, he did not care to govern his Tuscan estates, and the regency went with the succession. He made his will first in favour of Henry the Lion, but either offended by him or persuaded by Frederick, who had now a young family to provide for, he changed his mind and gave the succession to him. This was perhaps the crowning offence with Henry. He would not waste his Saxon and Bavarian troops in winning in Italy the inheritance that he thought ought to have been his own, for the children of his cousin. Frederick had collected his forces for Italy in 1175 for the final humiliation of the Pope and of the Lombard towns. The only defaulter was his old friend and companion. Henry refused to join in the expedition. The emperor invited him to meet him at Chiavenna on the Lake of Como, and Henry met him. According to one account Henry insisted on receiving Goslar, one of the most important imperial towns in Saxony, as a fief, before he would stir ; this Frederick refused. Henry then offered to show all obedience to his cousin, but refused to join him in person. Then it is said that Frederick had recourse to entreaty, and even fell on his knees to pray him to consent. But Henry was obdurate, and did not even offer to raise up the suppliant emperor. For this he was never forgiven. Disgrace of Henry the Lion, 1180. — Frederick went to Italy and was defeated at Legnano, and obliged subse quently to make peace and a truce with the cities, the Pope, and the Normans. Almost as soon as the breach was known, Henry became an object of persecution, especially by the imperialist bishops. The Archbishop of Cologne ravaged his Bavarian estates, and the Bishop of Halberstadt kept Saxony in an uproar. Afraid of exasperating the emperor, Henry contented himself DISGRACE OF HENRY THE LION 205 with the simplest measures of defence and with com plaints to Frederick of the unauthorised hostilities of his neighbours. In 1179 he met him at Speyer, and Frederick fixed the day of arbitration at Worms ; but he showed such anger against his cousin on this occa sion, reproaching him so violently and accusing him of complicity with the Italians, that Henry did not venture to attend. He was then summoned to Magde burg, where many new accusations were brought against him in his absence. After an interview at Hadesleben, in which the emperor begged him to satisfy his enemies by submitting to a fine of 5000 marks, he was for the third time ordered to appear before the' diet at Goslar. Here he was adjudged to have forfeited all his fiefs and honours by default. In a fourth assembly, held at Wiirzburg early in 1180, he was deprived, and shortly after at mid-Lent in that year, in a diet at Gelenhausen, the estates of which he was stripped were divided amongst the bitterest of his foes. This division was indeed a new partition of Germany, and caused a change in the face of the country which was never obliterated. Henry, it will be remembered, possessed Saxony and Bavaria as fiefs, and Brunswick and Liineburg with a great part of the middle of Saxony allodially ; on these allodial domains, of course, the dower of his wife Matilda was settled. Saxony was henceforth divided, Westphalia and Angria, the western third, were given to Philip of Heinsberg, Henry's most inveterate persecutor, as a fief to be joined to the archbishopric of Cologne. The eastern third, with the office of Duke of Saxony, was given to Bernard of Ascania, son of his father's enemy Albert the Bear, Margrave of Brandenburg, and ancestor of the existing reigning house of Anhalt. Bavaria also was divided in a council at Ratisbon. 206 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES The part which contains modern Bavaria from the Lech to the Austrian border was given with the title of duke to Otto of Wittelsbach, ancestor of the reigning house of Bavaria. The southern limb, the Tyrol, was erected into a duchy, called the duchy of Meran, for Count Berthold of Andechs, from whom the house of Austria descends by females ; this duke held also Istria and Dalmatia and several important estates in the south of Germany, which were known as the Vogtland, Terra Advocati — the origin of which is not clear. The old Welfic estates the emperor took into his own hands. The End of the Quarrel. — Henry did not yield without a struggle. Lit beck was only surrendered to the emperor in person, and dates from this event (1181) its existence as an imperial city. Brunswick held out against the emperor so long and manfully that he was obliged to retire from it. By earnest pleading and making the most of his legal position, Henry was saved from entire ruin. His allodial estates and Welfic property were restored to him, and he was banished for three years. This alleviation of the first sentence is said by the English historians to have been won by intercession of his father-in-law, Henry II. of England, into whose dominions he retired to spend his exile. He returned in 1185, and immediately attempted to recover his authority over Saxony. In this he failed, and his presence in Germany continued to be irksome to the emperor. At last on the arrangements made in 1187 for departure on the Crusade, Frederick offered him a choice of three things : either to accept his restoration under some very stringent restrictions, or to join in the pilgrimage, or to go again into exile. He preferred the latter alternative, and remained in exile until he RESULTS OF HENRY'S OVERTHROW 207 heard of the departure of Frederick. The rest of his history belongs to another reign, but it may be added here that after a short struggle with Henry VI., he sub mitted to him and died in 1195. The Results of the Overthrow of Henry the Lion — His Death, 1195. — One of Henry the Lion's sons was made Count Palatine of the Rhine by Henry VI. ; another, Otto, was emperor as Otto IV. ; another, William of Winchester, preserved Brunswick and Liineburg in the Welfic line and these were constituted a duchy by the Emperor Frederick II. in 1227. The im portance of the catastrophe of Henry the Lion to German history can hardly be exaggerated ; it pro duced a greater change on the map than the extinction of the house of Hohenstaufen itself did. More than a third of Germany was subdivided, and a great number of nobles who had been subject feudally to the dukes became immediate tenants of the empire. Another result was the bringing into prominence of a class of nobles which had hitherto stood in the back ground. The dukes of the five nations no longer engrossed the highest title. There were dukes of Zahringen, Meran, Austria, and Carinthia. The old duchies were diminished in size and in prerogative. Some of them were disappearing. Saxony was now little more than a margravate. The margraves of Brandenburg were coming into prominence and the landgraves of Hesse and Thuringia, relieved from the overshadowing might of the Saxon dukes, were acting as chief feudatories. The County Palatine of the Rhine, however, was not yet constituted as a hereditary office, and the domains of the emperor or king were of considerable extent. The imperial cities as imperial cities continue to rise, the over- 208 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES shadowing power of the provincial governments being less than before. The Power of Frederick Barbarossa. — The fall of Henry the Lion is interesting as a proof of the com pleteness of the rule which Frederick Barbarossa was by his strength, justice, and policy enabled to exercise on the country which so many of his pre decessors had been content to rule merely as umpires. It was not as if Henry the Lion were without friends. He was the most influential man in Germany after the emperor, and he was the traditional head of a political party. Yet his friends made no effort to avert the sentence that was passed against him ; the only resistance to the carrying out of it was offered on his own allodial lands. The reign of law under Frederick was shown to be complete ; and the feudal system shown to be advanced to that stage in which every vassal is compelled to acknowledge the authority of the suzerain and to discharge his own lawful liabilities. Nor is it much less interesting as a matter of character. It is one of those cases in which we can take a fair enough judgment without acquitting or condemning either party. Frederick had been a great benefactor to Henry, and Henry had been a most faithful friend and servant of Frederick. But the favours which Frederick had shown him were of such sort as would seem to Henry merely acts of justice ; he had restored to him what had been the authority and estates of his father and mother. Henry's service to Frederick would seem just as much to the emperor a matter of rightful obedience in a vassal to his lord. Henry might easily demand a new guerdon for a new service. Frederick might easily expect the same new service to be done as a FREDERICK'S MARRIAGE 209 piece of the long-due and long-tried gratitude. But the breach once made could never be repaired. The enemies of Henry were too earnest to relax their hold on the imperial mind, and, if Frederick had wished to pardon, too large a number of princes were interested in the final crushing of the great Saxon dominion. Frederick's Marriage with Beatrice of Burgundy, 11 56. — The remaining acts of Frederick's long reign which seem interesting or important to Germany must now be noticed. The wife of Frederick Barbarossa, to whom (after being divorced from Adelheid of Vohburg, on the ground of consanguinity) he was married in 1 156, was Beatrice, the daughter of Reinhold, Count of Burgundy. On the death of Reinhold, the in heritance fell to Beatrice, and Frederick took occasion by it to recover his authority not only in the free county, but in the rest of the kingdom of Burgundy, which had been placed by Lothair under the rule of the Duke of Zahringen as a part of the empire. Frederick resumed this territory, leaving to the duke that portion only which is embraced in modern Switzerland, and out of which, on the extinction of the family in 1218, were formed the estates noble, municipal, and ecclesiastical from which the Swiss republics sprang. Frederick was not, however, crowned King of Aries until 1178, when that ceremony was gone through, Beatrice being also crowned Queen of Burgundy at Vienne. From this marriage sprang several sons ; Henry, afterwards king and emperor ; Frederick, Duke of Swabia, who died soon after his father on the Crusade ; Conrad, Duke of Franconia, who succeeded his brother in Swabia and died soon after; Philip of Swabia, the competitor of Otto IV. O 210 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES for the empire, who was murdered by Otto of Wittels bach at Bamberg ; and Otto, to whom the free county of Burgundy, his mother's estate, went. Frederick did no more, in providing for these, than retain for them the hereditary duchies which had been long vested in the family, Franconia and Swabia, the latter of which he himself had held, and the former of which, having been held by Frederick of Rothen- burg, son of the Emperor Conrad, fell in in 1167. He had also possessed Swabia from the time of the emperor's accession. The younger children, it will be observed, were not provided for out of the forfeiture of Henry the Lion, although some colour might have been found for the proceeding in their descents from the Welfs. His Policy to the Slavs — The Great Council at Mainz, 1 184. — The obscurest parts of the reign of Frederick are those, of course, which are not illustrated by the Italian or Welfic quarrels ; and they extend from 1168 to 1173. In 1169 he had his eldest son Henry, then five years old, crowned king at Aix-la-Chapelle, but his whole efforts were probably being concen trated during these years on preparing for a new attack upon Italy, and few particulars of other interest are recorded. The years 1 181-85 are ^so a mu< > in 1181 he admitted the princes of the Slavs to a place in the number of German princes, thus leading to the formation of the duchy of Pomerania, although many years intervened before the Saxons and Slavs were content to be dependent on the same rulers. In 1 184 a great court was held at Mainz from which the appointment of the great offices of the empire is understood to date. At this court the King of Bohemia acted as cupbearer, the Duke of Saxony as FREDERICK'S EASTERN EXPEDITION 211 marshal, the Count Palatine as steward, and the Mar grave of Brandenburg as archchamberlain. These offices remain finally in the hands of these princes ; why Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria were excluded does not appear. The Count Palatine at the time was Conrad, the emperor's brother, the Dukes of Fran conia and Swabia were his sons. The assembly on this occasion included all the important princes and representatives of the kingdoms of Europe, and the period may be regarded as the culmination of the personal power and influence of Frederick. Fredericks Eastern Expedition, 1189-90, and Death, 1 190. — In 1 188 Frederick took the Cross and involved in that fatal measure his son Frederick and a vast number of the princes and prelates of the empire. The expedition started from Regensburg on the feast of St. George, 1189. Frederick opened the expedition by sending a formal defiance to Saladin to meet him in the following November in the field of Zoan. In this Frederick writes as emperor and representative of all that is great in Roman, all that is varied and famous in his own national, history and dominion. Saladin's answer, or one made for him, is also pre served. Frederick pursued the old route of the Crusaders through Hungary and Thrace to Constanti nople ; at Philippopolis he wintered and learned, as he had done forty years before, the irreconcilable enmity and incurable perfidy of the Greeks of Byzantium. In the spring he moved down carefully through Asia Minor, defeated the Seljuk Sultan of Iconium, and took his city. Going on thence, he was drowned in the Calycadnus or Salef, in which he was, according to one account, swimming, according to another, crossing on horseback. His son Frederick 212 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES led the Crusaders as far as Antioch and there died. Frederick himself was buried partly at Antioch, the bones at Tyre ; and I believe they were never removed. There he lies still, it may be, in an unknown grave, the best and bravest and mightiest of the German Cassars. But his people long looked for him to come again, and would not believe him lost. Still, according to popular German romance, in which it is hard to tell how much is tradition and how much genuine imagination, how little false sentiment, he sits in a cave either in the Harz, or in the Salzburg mountains, his beard grown through the stone table, but not dying, only awaiting the time when Germany shall be in her deadliest need, when he will rise with an earthquake and set his people again as in his own days. It is to be feared that if the need of a deliverer were the test of the truth of the story, it must go for no more than the same belief about the British Arthur. Frederick's Character. — To one who comes to work at the original historians there is something lovable as well as admirable about Frederick Barbarossa ; something that there is in the great Charles without the full admiration that Frederick inspires. We get the full beauty of the German character in its strength, its purity, its kindness and patience, its gentleness and good faith, coupled with the lion-like strength and valour, the magnificence, the civilised and humanised, knightly deportment of the medieval cavalier. He was eloquent and skilled in languages, a brave soldier, an experienced warrior, a just judge, a sound and temperate politician, and had all the strong attach ments and a dash of the romance of boyhood. There is something very grand, but not after the grandeur of the nineteenth century, in the spectacle of the old FREDERICK'S CHARACTER 213 lion, having made peace at home and bound all quarrel some people to it by oath, going forth into a strange land on the Lord's battles. We almost feel glad that he died before he suffered defeat, or saw as he must in all probability have seen had he lived, the ruin of the Frank kingdom, the destruction of his German soldiers, the imminent risk of all Christendom, the sad shame, and disease and disappointment of the Third Crusade. IMPORTANT DATES Frederick I. (Barbarossa), 11 52-1 190. Frederick in Italy. Diet of Roncaglia, 11 54. Coronation of Frederick in Rome, 1 155. Diet at Besancon, 1157. Frederick again in Italy, 11 58-1 162. Destruction of Milan, 1162. Frederick in Italy, 1163. Diet at Wiirzburg, 1165. Frederick at Rome. Formation of the Lombard League, 1167. Frederick besieges Alessandria, 1174-1175. Battle of Legnano, 1176. Peace of Venice, 1177. Quarrel with Henry the Lion, 1179-1181. Peace of Constance, 1183. The Great Council at Mainz, 1184. Frederick starts on the Third Crusade, 1189. His death, 1190. CHAPTER XII The reign of Henry VI., 1190-97 — His marriage, 1195 — The attempt to make the imperial dignity hereditary — Philip of Swabia crowned king — Otto of Saxony also crowned king as Otto IV. — Death of Philip, 1208 — Otto IV. emperor — Frederick II. crowned king, 1215 — His death, 1250 — The geographical and national divisions of Germany — The connection between England and Germany — The government of Germany — -The German duke doms — Growth of the hereditary idea — Gradual extinction of the dukedoms — The outlines of modern Germany to be seen in the Middle Ages — The relations of Germany and Italy. This chapter will contain (1) an extremely brief sketch of the course of events in the reigns of Henry VI., Otto IV., and Frederick II., and (2) a mere general view of the progress that has been made, in the development of German national life since the days of Charles the Great. The Reign of Henry VI., 1190-97. — Frederick Bar barossa had taken measures, before he left Germany, for making the empire hereditary in his own house, and the measures were so far successful that Henry VI. saw himself on his father's death without a rival. After a short struggle with Henry the Lion, the result of which was the submission and restoration of the latter to his allodial estates, the rest of the life of Henry VI. was devoted to Italy, with short and not very im portant exceptions. There he had by his marriage with Constance, the aunt of King William the Good, obtained a right, although not an undisputed one, to the Norman kingdom ; to secure this right he sacrificed the reign of henry vi. 215 the interests of Germany, and transmitted it to his son — a fatal inheritance. After the submission of Henry the Lion, Henry VI. proceeded to Italy, where, after being crowned emperor by Celestine III. at Easter 1 191, he marched against Tancred, his Sicilian com petitor ; he lost his forces by pestilence, and his wife, Queen Constantia, was taken prisoner. Whilst he was engaged in the pacification of Germany and securing the imperial crown, Richard I. of England had wintered in Sicily on his way to Palestine, and after a sharp quarrel had concluded a close alliance with Tancred. It was soon after Richard's departure that Henry VI. 's unfortunate expedition took place. Henry could not forgive Richard for treating with his rival, and took advantage of his capture by Duke Leopold in December 1 192 to have his revenge of him. The same year Tancred died, and the death of his son, either shortly before or immediately afterwards, left Sicily open to Henry's claims. After spending some time in Germany treating with Richard, bestowing on him the kingdom of Aries, and, according to a rumour, extorting from him the homage of a vassal for the crown of England, he released him. He then descended into Sicily, and was crowned with Queen Constantia at Palermo in December 1195. The several campaigns by which he completed his conquest and the cruel measures he took to keep it, need not be described. It is a matter for regret that it was by German blood that they were won and with German servants that the conquests were held. After several severe struggles Henry had suc ceeded in making himself the master, when he died in 1 197, leaving only the little child Frederick, now three years old. All that is known of Henry VI. leads to the conclusion that he was the degenerate son of a 216 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES noble father : he was cruel, arbitrary, and faithless, avaricious and tyrannical. Still under him Germany had good peace ; he chose to be conciliatory rather than severe with the Saxons and with the Welf family ; one son of Henry the Lion he made Count Palatine of the Rhine ; but the inheritance of Duke Welf of Tuscany, which fell in in 1195, he bestowed on his brother Philip, whom soon after he made Duke of Swabia. The Imperial Dignity to be Hereditary. — His other measures are of little consequence, with one notable exception : he enacted, how or when is not exactly known, but doubtless in a diet which he had pro pitiated by establishing the hereditary descent of all fiefs for the future, that the imperial dignity itself should be hereditary, not bestowed by election, but devolving upon the nearest male heir of the last emperor. As a consequence of this enactment Henry annexed his wife's dominions, Naples and Sicily, to the empire. The consent of the bishops to this was purchased by other concessions ; and the act was allowed by fifty-two princes. But the Saxon nation refused consent, and Henry was obliged to content himself with the election of his son Frederick as King of the Romans. There is no doubt that Henry VI. had the full idea of the imperial character as world governing, and was ambitious of securing the reality in Europe at least. Such was the motive of his dealings with Richard ; and the exercise of his supreme pre rogative may be seen in his appointment of Amalric of Lusignan to the kingdom of Cyprus.1 Contemporary historians tell us that Henry VI. took some steps towards acquiring the imperial crown of Byzantium, an object 1 Frederick Barbarossa had already raised the Prince of Armenia to the status of royalty. PHILIP OF SWABIA CROWNED KING 217 of either ambition or avarice to his Sicilian prede cessors ; but the shortness of his reign prevents us from either realising his ideas or of estimating the ability he possessed of carrying them out. His great act, of making the empire hereditary, was entirely futile ; it was rejected by the Saxons and annulled by the Pope as infringing or limiting the right of the successors of St. Peter to recognise the emperor by consecration and coronation. Philip of Swabia crowned King, 1 198. — The result of the attempt and of the coincident minority of Frederick, was to produce in Germany such a struggle for the supremacy as had not been seen since the days of the Karlings, either for length or vehemence. Philip of Swabia (the brother of Henry VI.) was the guardian of the young Frederick, named by his father before his death, and Philip naturally determined to take the course most adapted to secure the permanent union of the dominions of his brother ; he procured the re cognition of Frederick by the princes and of himself as guardian or defender of the empire. This, however, displeased the Pope, Innocent III., under whose influence the bishops of Germany, assisted by those of the princes who were hereditarily opposed to the Hohenstaufen, offered the imperial crown first to Duke Berthold of Zahringen. Berthold refused, being bribed it was said by Philip ; and the princes of the Waibling or Hohen staufen party, who had hitherto supported Frederick, offered the empire to Philip himself. He was crowned king at Mainz on the Sunday after Easter. Otto of Saxony crowned King as Otto I V. — The Pope at once refused to recognise Philip's coronation ; the Archbishops of Cologne and Treves, bought with English money by Richard I., and encouraged by the adhesion 218 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES of the Pope, in conjunction with the Count Palatine Henry, son of Henry the Lion, who belonged to the Welf party, at last elected Otto of Saxony, brother of the Palatine and nephew of the English king. This the Pope confirmed, Otto was crowned king July 4, 1 198, at Aix-la-Chapelle. Again the Church and the secular princes are opposed to one another ; North Germany to South, Saxony to Swabia. Neither of the competitors was in possession of great resources, and the struggle though long was desultory. Otto sup ported himself by the aid of his English uncles and his hereditary estates ; Philip by the alliance with France, always the supporter of the Hohenstaufen, as England was of the Saxon interest, by his marriage with the Byzantine Irene, and by the waste of the hereditary property and ducal authority in Swabia. The subsequent liberties, immunities, and peculiar tenures of the Swabian nobles date from this epoch of Philip's extravagance, although their immediate relation to the empire dates from the extinction of the family. Death of Philip, 1208, Otto IV. Emperor, 1208. — Philip had very nearly reduced Otto to submission, 'or at least to a compromise when in 1208 he was murdered at Bamberg for a private grudge. His character is pleasanter far than that of Henry VI., but he had only the good qualities of his brother without the great ones. His death opened the way for Otto's advancement ; this time he was unanimously chosen by the princes at Halberstadt. At Frankfort at Martinmas he received the imperial insignia, and betrothed himself to Beatrice, the daughter of Philip, whose death he next year avenged by the forfeiture of all the possessions of the murderer. Otto of Wittelsbach was killed by Henry FREDERICK ELECTED KING 219 of Pappenheim, the marshal of the imperial court. The Pope, of course, was glad enough to confirm the title of Otto, who went into Italy and was crowned by Innocent III. in October 1209. The friendship did not bear the test of acquaintance. Otto as emperor adopted measures for the recovery of all the imperial rights in Italy ; the inheritance of the Countess Matilda was taken in hand ; nay the investiture of bishops was claimed and exercised. Innocent, who at this very time was contending with John in England on the same point, was not likely to yield it to Otto without struggling. But for a time Otto was all powerful ; the Swabian line was extinct, all but the child Frederick, and he was safe for some years. Otto even reduced Apulia and entered into negotiation with the Sicilians. But this Innocent III. would not endure ; he deter mined not to be beaten by a man whom he had, so to speak, placed on the throne; in Holy Week, 1211, he excommunicated him. Otto had no ability as a ruler ; he had offended the Germans by his absence from Germany, he offended the Italians by his op pressive measures, the nobles by taxation, the bishops by humiliation. The excommunication as usual was followed by a reaction in Germany. Frederick of Hohenstaufen Elected King of Germany, 1211. — The prelates on Ascension Day, 1211, met at Niiremburg, and in conjunction with the Swabians determined to offer the throne to the young Frederick. After some resistance the Pope confirmed the election. Frederick, now seventeen, but a married man and a father, the ablest man of the age, " Stupor mundi," as his predecessor Otto III. had been " Mirabilia mundi," accepted the offer against the advice of his friends at home. He started like a knight-errant ; by August he 220 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES was in Swabia ; in December he was elected at Frank fort. Otto was again only King of the Saxons. The struggle lasted three or four years. The battle of Bouvines in 1214 wrecked Otto; England could give him no more help. Philip Augustus was the firm supporter of Frederick, who in 1215 was crowned king at Aix-la-Chapelle. Making the best of a bad matter the emperor retired to Brunswick, where he maintained himself little molested by Frederick until his death in 12 17. Summary of Frederick II' s Reign, 1 215-1250. — Of the early glories, the errors, misfortunes, crimes of Frederick II. much has been written. Of his treatment by Honorius III. and Gregory IX. it is impossible to write with patience ; all know the story of the Crusade — how the emperor was excommunicated first for not going, then for going ; then disgraced for the peace he had made with the Saracens ; forced into war with the Pope, made a subject of a crusade by the Papacy ; excommunicated again by Alexander IV.; deposed in the Council of Lyons in 1245. Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia, the Pfaffen-konig, for a year only made head against him ; William of Holland as Anti-Caesar had no better luck. But after thirty years of strife Frederick was worn out, tired, it may well be, of life itself ; after an interval of three years of inactivity he died, only fifty-six years old, in 1250. The fortunes of his house fell with him, and the empire itself may be deemed to have collapsed at the same time. For a short time attempts were made to hold Italy for his children, but the inveterate hostility of the Popes and the pertinacious hold of Charles of Anjou, with the loss of the French influence, rendered their case hopeless, NATIONAL DIVISION OF GERMANY 221 and they were extinguished in the person of Conradin in 1268. The events that led to, and the results that flowed from, the fall of Frederick II. must now be left. The Geographical and National Division of Germany. — In previous chapters an attempt has been made to describe the geographical and national divisions of Germany ; and in the thirteenth century as well as in the tenth the division between north and south, Saxony and Swabia, or Saxon and Bavarian, is still the line of demarcation between two great parties, two national and religious parties. The Saxon or northern nationality has always been in alliance with the Church and the Papacy ; but it has always been a question whether that alliance was not rather a consequence than a cause of the jealousy between north and south. The right conclusion seems to be that, although the Saxon nobles were a religious and strongly Catholic body, they were made weapons of papal policy rather by their antagonism to the southern nations than merely by their love for the Pope. The Saxon emperors and their successors in the government of Saxony, the Billungs and the Welfs, were more strongly Saxon than the other houses were either Franconian or Swabian ; and this has been explained by going in detail into the descent of the great Saxon heritages and dwelling on their allodial, i.e. national, as opposed to a feudal, beneficial, or other wise imperial tenure. The Connection between England and Germany. — With the Saxon emperors and dukes it is that the connection of England and Germany is chiefly apparent. Otto I. married an English princess ; Henry II. the last of the Saxon line was the pro- 222 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES tector of Edmund Ironside's children ; Henry the Lion was son-in-law of Henry II. The alliance of the Franconian emperors was rather with the Normans than with the Saxons ; i.e. it was rather a dynastic than a national connection ; it is exemplified in the marriage of Henry III. with Gunhilda, the daughter of Canute, and of Henry V. with the daughter of Henry I. Under Henry II., the first national king of England, the old national alliance with Saxony recurs again ; his daughter married Henry of Saxony ; their son Otto, by English money, became king and afterwards emperor. Two of the children of John come in contact with German history : Isabella, the wife of Frederick II., and Richard, who himself was King of Germany for many years during the inter regnum in the empire. But there was no national feeling in this matter ; Richard was regarded in both lands with indignation rather than with pride. But the influence of England on the Continent was exer cised on different grounds from merely dynastic ones, from the twelfth century downwards, although it may have been considerably affected by such con nections in taking the direction that it did. The struggle of Henry II. with Alexander III. and Becket, brought him into strange alliances. At one moment he was committing himself with Frederick Barbarossa to the recognition of an anti-Pope, intriguing with the King of Sicily, and actually giving money to enable the Lombard allies to fortify themselves against Frederick, on the understanding that they should constrain or persuade the Pope to depose Becket. Besides the unity of interest between the Saxons and the Popes, eternised by the Welf and Waiblingen quarrels, the fact must not be left out of sight that, THE GOVERNMENT OF GERMANY 223 whilst the elective character of the empire made it an object with the ambitious princes of Germany to keep the kingdom of Germany, which was less dis tinctly elective, in union with the empire, it would have been very much more for the benefit of the people that the German king should stay at home and extend the borders and execute the laws and develop the resources of his own dominions. The kingdom of Italy and the empire were hateful to the best sort of Germans ; to the princes they were valuable as distracting the power and weakening the oppressive strength of their suzerain. Hence the early murmurings of the Saxons even against their Saxon kings, and the frequent rivalry of the younger branch of the family with the elder. This had vanished after the Germans became entirely re conciled to the idea of the empire as the right of their elective king. And there is no doubt that the true instinct of Germany was strongest in the north, and the instinct of imperialism stronger in the south. The Government of Germany. — Closely connected with the geographical division and territorial party questions, is that of government. The government of Germany, or rather the subordinate parts of the government, has been traced through several distinct phases. Under Charles the Great, until he becomes emperor, the several nations whom he governed retained their in dividuality, and he calls himself King of the Saxons and Lombards whom he had conquered, as well as of the Franks whom he governed by hereditary right. As emperor even he does not include all his titles to the obedience of the many nations of his subjects in any oecumenical title, but setting the imperial dignity, which was precarious, as a sort of crowning stone to 224 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES the pyramid of his honours, he retains the mention of the nations severally in his royal style. Whatever plans he or Lewis after him may have had for the consolidation of the several kingdoms under an im perial elder brother, they were thrown to the wind by the treaty of Verdun, and from that time the French kingdom was independent for ever of the empire, Italy and Lorraine being at a later period reduced to much the same relation as they had held before. Still the several nations were distinct kingdoms ; the King of Germany ruled over a sort of confedera tion of sub-kingdoms ; the sub-kingdoms were separable amongst his sons, just as the kingdoms in France had been under the Merovingians, but they had retained their boundaries and their laws, their peculiarities of manners and dialects more strongly than the divided kingdoms of France had done, which were indeed often merely arbitrary arrangements, indicating no physical or even historical distinction between the divided nations. The separability of the German kingdoms was an acknowledged fact under the sons of Lewis the German ; and it was not altogether extinct under the Saxon line of emperors, the con stant effort of both Bavaria and Alemannia being to exalt their dukes into the station of kings. The result of this long-continued separability of the nations, and of the concentration of national feeling by the same means, produced that definiteness of geographical divi sion and interest on which comment has been made. The History of the German Dukedoms. — The internal history is chiefly made up of the struggles of the four or five nations under their dukes. These dukes were the deputies of the German king, entitled to take the lead in war and to govern the judicial proceedings GROWTH OF THE HEREDITARY IDEA 225 of the nation over which they were set, subject to the visitations of the imperial or royal missus, and sub ordinating to their jurisdiction the bishops, who often were temporal as well as spiritual rulers, and the counts or grafs who were more especially judicial rulers of the several gaus, or shires as we should call them, into which the dukedoms were divided. So long as the nations were divisible, there was no thought of ap pointing hereditary dukes — to have done this would have been simply to prepare the way for the king or his posterity to be ousted, as had been the case with the Merovingians, and was also with the Karolings in France. The early dukes were simply regionary, beneficiary, or official. Growth of the Hereditary Idea. — The hereditary suc cession appears first among the counts, many of whom no doubt owed their position as counts to the posses sion of allodial estates which set them beyond rivalry or competition in their own gaus. Once become hereditary the position of count was more permanent than that of beneficial duke, and placed its owner in a relation of rivalry to his superior. It has been already noticed, for instance, how in Franconia the authority of a beneficiary duke was liable to be defied by the hereditary Counts of Bamberg ; and how in Saxony, the hereditary lords of Nordheim, Brunswick, and Luneburg were almost independent of the dukes, and struggled for the nomination in a vacancy. If, however, the hereditary power of the counts was a great draw back on the jurisdiction of the beneficiary dukes, what was the result when the dukedoms also became hereditary? It ought to have had the effect of sub ordinating the counts as hereditary vassals of the dukes, just as it was in France, or as it tended to be. 226 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES But in point of fact it was not, for the emperors hesitated to commit to dukes, when they became de facto if not de jure hereditary, the same extensive rights as representatives of the Sovereign which they had held as beneficiaries. So, although the jurisdiction of the hereditary Dukes was clearer and more wieldy, it was not so extensive nor so summary as before. The tendency of this was to break up the interior unity of the nationalities. They were less at one in themselves, although they might be equally opposed to each other. Saxony was no longer one govern ment, but the Saxons were as distinct as ever from the Swabians. This tendency has been traced in the history of the Billung dukes, and the union of Saxony again under the Welfic dukes was regarded as a return to the earlier type of national oneness, and to the more extended substantive authority of the dukes. The result, however, proved that such a re- constitution had failed; Saxony fell to pieces at the forfeiture of Henry the Lion, and Bavaria as well as Saxony was broken up by the later policy of Frederick Barbarossa. Gradual Extinction of the Dukedoms. — The subdivision of the national duchies never obliterated the old national distinctions, for a Swabian is still a Swabian, and a Bavarian a Bavarian ; and the diminution of the jurisdiction of the dukes as imperial officers opened the way for the aggrandisement of the lower orders of nobility, of the bishops, the monasteries, and the municipal estates. Imperial cities were left standing monuments of independence in the midst of hostile dukedoms. Bishops and monasteries acquired by pur chase or privilege the rights of imperial officers over their own estates ; and the counts rose in importance INDEPENDENT JURISDICTIONS 227 as the dukes approached more nearly their own level. When once a dukedom fell into abeyance, or its holder as emperor or king wasted by subdivision the rights and demesnes appurtenant to it, it became a mere honorary jurisdiction ; each count was, as the Dukes had been, all powerful on his own land : he could purchase privileges and immunities as well as the churches and towns could do ; or he might undertake the office of advocate of a monastery, or of burgrave of a town, and so subordinate all the elements of political life within his reach to his own personal and hereditary rule. In this way the royal house of Prussia rose ; beginning by being Counts of Hohenzollern, they obtained the hereditary burgraviate of Nuremberg, rose upon that to be margraves, on that to be electors, dukes, and kings. With the extinction of the dukedoms (and in the thirteenth century they became extinct by either death or subdivision), great numbers of the in ferior counts became immediately dependent on the empire and petty kings whenever the empire was vacant or the emperor weak. And this state of things continued until the defeasance of the empire under Francis II. and the repartition caused partly by Napoleon and partly by his conquerors in 1815. The measures of Napoleon had tended to the re-formation of Germany into compact kingdoms ; those of the allies broke up the kingdom he had created in the north, that of Westphalia, into its former constituents ; and leaving nothing strong enough to resist the dominion of Prussia, led not remotely to the present state of affairs in Germany. Growth of Independent Jurisdictions in Germany. — Not only was the number of independent jurisdictions in creased by the subdivision and extinction of the national dukedoms, it was for a long period constantly in- 228 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES creasing by the accretion of territory on the north and east from the Danes, the Wends, the Slavs, the Moravians, the Czechs, the Poles, the Hungarians, and the south Slavonic races or semi-Romaic in Istria and Dalmatia. For the sway of the Ottos, unpalatable as it may be to Italian nationality, extended down the east of the Adriatic for some distance. All these ac cretions were formed into marches or margraviates — those of Stade, of Saltwedel, of Brandenburg, or Lausitz, or Meissen, of Moravia, of Austria, some of which grew in time into states which have eclipsed the glory of the earlier nations. Later on were formed marches on the other border ; the Margraves of Baden governed the borders between Germany and Lotharingia or after wards France. These Margraves would be subject to the beneficiary dukes of the nation they protected, but whether they ever acknowledged more than an honorary dependence on the hereditary ones may be doubted. Witness the constant struggles between the Welfic dukes and Saxony with the Margraves of Bran denburg, and of Bavaria with the Margraves of Austria. Thuringia, Meissen, Hesse, and Alsace. — Besides these lands there were a few portions of territory lying between the separate nations which originally had been border kingdoms and should have subsided into marches, but, owing to the union of the nations under the German king, escaped that character. Such were Thuringia between Saxony and Franconia, and Meissen between Saxony and Bavaria. These territories were sometimes appurtenant to one and sometimes to another of the duchies. Franconia, which was a small duchy, was sometimes augmented with the administration of Thuringia, and, after Thuringia was attached to Saxony, with that of Carinthia and even Lorraine. Ultimately MODERN GERMANIC DIVISIONS 229 Thuringia was made an independent fief under a land grave, a sort of intermediate honour between a count and a duke, but equal in actual power to either. The Landgraviates of Hesse and Thuringia, sometimes united sometimes divided, gave many powerful ministers to Germany, and sometimes supplied a candidate for the empire. The landgraviate of Alsace, dismembered from the duchy of Alemannia, was the original dignity of Rudolf of Hapsburg, the founder of the Austrian line of emperors. The Foundation of Modern Germanic Divisions laid in the Middle Ages. — In this way, in the very heart of the early Middle Ages, was laid the foundation, and the outlines drawn, of the Germany of to-day. Historically the petty divisions and insignificant governments of Germany as they existed before 1866 were respectable and even venerable ; for they showed that they had not failed in retaining the affections of many genera tions of subjects, and that no tyranny has prevailed where so slight pressure would have forced them together. Powerless for war, they were powerful in peace, and centres of civilisation tending greatly to the cultivation of internal resources. With these ad vantages they had lost, however, much of the energy that marks well-united and consolidated states, and must have had the constant mortification of seeing themselves without influence in the councils of Europe, which their real unity of nationality claimed, but their diversity of governments failed to secure. Whether the advantages are on the side of large or of small states ; whether the advantages of a divided Germany are to be counterbalanced by those of a united one, is a problem for future time. History of Italy. — So far an attempt has been made 230 GERMANY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES to indicate pretty continuously the national and feudal history as well as the imperial relations of Germany as they concerned the interior of German administration and the Slav neighbours. The history of Italy has been avoided, and the chief parallels and illustrations have been drawn from France and England — England as the allodial or national, France as the feudal model. Italian history cannot be learned without the previous understanding of German and French history. The relations of the empire and Papacy and of the Italian republics is not the history of Italy. North Italy was for many centuries Gallic before the Roman empire condescended to recognise it as Italian at all. And it ceased to be Roman or Italian and became Teutonic or Lombard, whilst many other provinces of Rome continued Roman. North Italy must be studied in the light of German history, and South Italy in the light of French history. It is curious that, except during the zenith of Roman imperialism (and till 1870), all Italy was never Italian in the sense of unity. North Italy was Lombard when South Italy was Greek. South Italy was Norman when North Italy was wavering between German and mongrel Italian. And southern Italy was as the Norman kingdom, a fine illustration of feudality, to be compared with England as a con quered feudalised country, the feudalism being here imposed on the miscellaneous aggregate of nationalities that all the tides of all conquests have swept into the favoured home of bandits and brigands, just as in England it was imposed on the intermixed but only intertribally mixed race of Low Germans after the modification of Danish conquest. In any discussion of German history in the succeeding centuries it will be necessary to investigate more carefully than has HISTORY OF ITALY 231 been done hitherto the constitutional part of that history; and it will be necessary to elucidate more clearly the relations with France as well as with Italy. IMPORTANT DATES Henry VI., 1190-1197. Coronation at Rome, 1191. Expedition to Southern Italy, 1191. His coronation at Palermo, 1195. Diet at Wiirzburg, 1196. Sicilian rebellion suppressed, 1 197. Philip of Swabia elected Emperor (March), 1198. Otto of Brunswick elected Emperor (May), 1198. Death of Philip (June), 1208. Otto is unanimously elected Emperor (November), 1208. Frederick of Hohenstaufen (son of Henry VI.) accepts the German Crown, 1211. Otto marries Beatrice of Hohenstaufen, 1212. Battle of Bouvines (July 27), 1211. Frederick II. undisputed Emperor, 1215-1250. INDEX Adalbero, Duke of Carinthia, 144 Adalbert, Bishop of Bremen, 163-164 Adalbert, Count of Bamberg, 71, 72 and note Adalbert, Marquis of Tuscany, 102, 103 Adelheid, Empress, marriage of, with Otto I., 102 ; at the Courts of her son and brother, 107 ; acts as regent for Otto III., 1 13, 116, 117-118 Adelheid of Vohburg, 209 Adolph II., Count, 189 Agnes of Aquitaine, Empress (wife of Henry III.), 149, 157, 161, 162, 163, 164 Agnes of Swabia (dau. of Henry IV.), 198 Aistulfus of Lombardy, 24 Aix-la-Chapelle, 88, 120, 159, 188, 198 Albert, Abp. of Mainz, 183-184 Albert of Alsace, 171 Albert the Bear, Margrave of Soltz- wedel, 189 Alemanni or Swabians : Conglomerate character and dis tribution of, 10- Il Frankish conquest of, 13, 14 Alemannia (sec also Swabia and Alsace) : Church of, 22, 130 Dukes of (982-1057), 171 Franconians, under, 73> 74> 77 Henry III., presented to, 148; relinquished on succeeding to Imperial dignity, 159 Karolings, under, 22, 43, 52, 73 Name of, io-ij Alessandria, siege of (1174-1175), 201 Alexander II., Pope, 163, 164, 165 Alexander III., Pope, 200, 201 Alexander IV., Pope, 220 Alfred the Great, 141 ; his character and influence compared with that of Henry the Fowler, 87 Alsace : Duchy of, 73 Landgraviate of, 229 Amain, Pandects at, 186 Amalric of Lusignan, 216 Anacletus II., Pope, schism between Innocent II. and, 185-186 Andernach, battle of (939), 91 Anglo-Saxons : Church of, German missions of, 22 Organisation of— similarity to that of other Teutonic nations, 44 Angria, 205 Anhalt, reigning house of, 205 Ansburg, battle of, 69 Antes, the, 11 Antwerp, ancient march of, 86 Apulia : German relations of, under : Otto the Great, 104; Otto II., no il 1 ; Conrad the Salic, 144 ; Lothair II., 186 ; Otto IV., 219 Normans in, see Normans in Sicily Aquitaine : Merovingian possession of, disputed by Charles Martel, 20, 21 Wars of Pipin le Bref in, 24, 25 ; of Charles the Great, 26, 27 Aragis, Duke of Beneventum, 26 Ardoin, Marquis of Ivrea, elected King of Italy — his war with Henry II., 125-126 234 INDEX Aries, Kingdom of, 66, 81, 148 Arnold of Brescia, 191, 199 Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria, rebels against Conrad I., 74-75, 76, 77 ; swears fealty to Henry the Fowler, 81 ; is given the right of nominating to bishoprics, 83 ; his death, 91 Arnulf, Emperor, descent of, 48; suc cession of, 54, 59-60 ; disposi tion of Lorraine, 66-67 ; his reign as king and emperor (887— 899), 67-69 ; invites the Huns into Germany, 69 Augsburg : Hungarians defeated near (955), 95 Papal diet arranged at (1077), 168 Austrasia : German population of, 37 Karoling dominion in, 22, 25 Merovingian dominion in, 15, 19 Neustria: Civilisation and organisation con trasted, 19 Divided from, 15 Rivalry with, 16-17 Territory comprised in, 15 Austria : Babenberg Dukes of, 86 Duchy of, 207 Imperial house of, 140, 206, 229 March, ancient, of, 85, 86 Avars, the, war of Charles the Great with, 32-33 Azzo of Este, 159 Babenberg, House of, 86 Baden, Margraves of, 228 Baldwin, Count of Flanders, 124, 158- '59 Bamberg : Bishopric of, foundation of, 129- 130, 156 Diet at (1 138), 1S8 Franconian authority defied by hereditary counts of, 71-72, 129, 225 Bar, Count of (twelfth century), 181 Bar, Frederick, Count of (ninth cen tury), 67 Bavaria : Annexation of, by Charles the Great (788), 30-32 Church of, 22, 130 Division of, at Council of Ratisbon, 205-206 Ducal family of, reigning, 92, 206 Dukes of (1025-1052), 171 Franconian Empire, under, 157, 189-190 Frankish Empire, under, 18, 19, 23, 24> 25. 31 Hereditary principle, growth of, 75 Imperial dignity in connection with, 140 Karolings, under, 72 March of Austria divided from, 202 Saxon Empire, under, 77 ; con ciliated by Henry the Fowler, 81; allegiance to Otto I., 99; struggle for independence (973_ 978), 107-108 ; bestowed on the Duke of Carinthia, III; Henry II.'s settlement of, 124 Territory comprised in, 31 Welfs of, l43-'44> 179 Bavaria, Dukes of, service of grand serjeanty rendered by, 88, 130 Bavarians : Charles Martel, relations with, 21-22 Frankish relations of, II, 14 Migrations of, n-12 Beatrice, Marchioness (Countess of Lorraine), 150, 162, 171 Beatrice of Burgundy, Empress (wife of Frederick Barbarossa), 209 Beatrice of Saxony (wife of Philip of Swabia), 218 Belgium, 51 Belisarius, 14 Benefcium, 55 Benedict V., Pope, 103 Benedict VII., Pope, no Benedict VIII., Pope, 126, 127 Benedict IX., Pope, 145 Benevento, in, 130, 186 Berengar I. (of Friuli), King of Italy, 65-66, 67, 101-102 INDEX 235 Berengar II. , King of Italy, 102 Berenger of Tuscany, Emperor, 66 Bernard of Ascania, 205 Bernard, King of Italy (son of Pipin), 42, 46, 47, 60 Bernard Billung, Duke of Saxony and Dietrich of Lorraine, 112-113, 122-123, 141. 148, 171 Berthaire, mayor of the palace of Neustria, 17 Berthold, Count of Andechs, 206 Berthold, Duke of Carinthia, 166, 167 Berthold, Duke of Zahringen, 217 Bishops : Dukes, subordinate to, 225 Investiture of, 219 Blackstone cited, 147 Bohemia : Bavaria helped by, in the struggle for independence (975-978), 107- 108 Conversion to Christianity, 87, 95 Dioceses in, creation of, 130 German relations of — reduction to tributary state by Charles the Great, 33 ; relations with Lewis the German, 53 ; tribute paid to Henry the Fowler, 87 ; war with Otto I., 95 ; Henry III.'s war with, 158 Bohemia, King of, service of grand serjeanty rendered by, 130, 210; imperial overlordship of, 196 Boii, tribe of, 1 1 Boleslaus, Duke of Poland, 120 Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany, 150 Boso, King of Provence, 66, 81 Bothfeld, 160 Bouvines, battle of (1214), 220 Braga, Abp., antipope, 177 Brandenburg : Bishopric, suffragan, of, 96 March, ancient, of, 86 ; creation of dioceses of, 130 Margravate of, 207 Brandenburg, Margrave of, service of grand serjeanty rendered by, 130, 211 Bruno, Abp. of Cologne, Lorraine held by, as Archduke, 92 ; joins Ludolfs conspiracy against Otto, 94 Bruno, Bp. of Augsburg, 142, 144, 145 Bruno, Bp. of Toul (Pope Leo IX.), 149 Bruno, Count of Brunswick, 162 Brunswick, 205, 206 Brunswick and Ltlneburg, duchy of, constituted (1227), 207 Burchard of Swabia, 74, 8o-8l Burchard II. of Swabia, 94, 103 Burgundy : Consolidation of, with Provence under title of Aries, 81 Frankish conquest of, 1 3 and note, 14 Kingship, contest for (1032), 145 Legacy of, from Charles Martel to Pipin, 22 ; from Pipin to Charles the Great, 25 Resumption of, by Frederick Bar barossa, 209 Transjurane, kingdom of, 66 Cadalous, Bishop of Parma, 163, 164 Calabria, 104, III, 127 Calixtus, anti-pope, 201 Calixtus II., Pope (Guy of Vienne), dispute of, with the emperor as to lay investitures, 177-178 Canossa, Henry IV.'s pilgrimage to, 168 Canute, King of England, 125 ; attends Conrad the Salic on his corona tion, 143 Capet, Hugh, 117 Carinthia, Duchy of, 159, 207 Carloman (son of Charles Martel), descent of, 21 note ; his legacy of dominions, 22 ; abdication, 23 and note Carloman (son of Pipin le Bref), reigns jointly with Charles the Great (768-771), 25 Carloman, King of Bavaria, 48, 53 Carlyle's Life of Frederick the Great cited, 4 236 INDEX Cencius, 167 Charles V., Emperor, 92, 124 Charles of Anjou, 220 Charles the Bald, Emperor, descendants of, 48 note'; difficulties created by his birth, 48-50 ; France allotted to, at Division of Verdun, 51 Charles the Fat, Emperor, close of reign of, 64-65 ; his deposition and death, 54, 59, 64, 65 ; other wise mentioned, 48, 53 Charles, King of Franconia (son of Charles the Great), wars of, 33, 34 ; position in the Empire of his father, 41 ; death of, 42 ; inheritance proposed for, in Charles the Great's capitulary (806), 43 Charles the Great, Emperor : Character of, and character of his rule, 34-35 ; considered as * German, 21, 34, 35-36, 37 ; compared with Otto I., 89 ; as influenced by Roman imperial ism, 137 ; national individuality encouraged under imperial gov ernment of, 35-36, 37, 223-224 Descent of, 21 note; table of his descendants, 48 note Empire of, limits of (790), 33-34 ; constitutional condition of, 44-45 Feudal elements in settlement of kingdom by, 60 German indebtedness to, 80 Grave of, re-opened by Otto III., 120 Life and reign of — baptized by Boniface, 23 ; reigns jointly with Carloman (768-771), 25 ; con nection with Lombardy, 25, 26 ; sole king (77 1 ), 25-26 ; wars and conquests, 26-27 ; Saxon Con quest (772-804), 28-29; pacifica tion of Saxony, 29-30 ; annexes Bavaria, 30-32 ; wars with the Huns and Avars, 32-33 ; re duces Huns, Slavs, and Bohe mians to semi-independence, 33 ; grants lieutenancies to his sons, 34 ; title of Emperor conferred by the Pope (800), 39-40 ; con tinues to govern as a German, 40-41 ; proposed division of the Empire among his sons, 42-44 ; death of his two eldest sons, 41, 42 ; declares his surviving son Lewis Emperor and King after him (813), 43 ; his death (814), 43 ; unification of Germany se cured by his conquests, 59 ; West- phalian dioceses created by, 130 Otherwise mentioned, 2, 16, 17 Charles, Duke of Lorraine, 48 note Charles Martel, German origin of, overpowered in his French reputation, 20-21 ; his descen dants, 21 note; incidents of his reign, 21 - 22 ; divides his dominions between Pipin and Carloman, 22 Charles the Simple, King of France and Lorraine, 48 note, 65, 67, 68, 10 1 Chatti, the, 12 Chiavenna, 204 Childebert, 16 Childeric, deposition of, 23-24 Childeric II., King of Austrasia, 17 Christianity : Arian, Southern migration of, 8 Charles the Great, spread by, 30, 31,33 Germany, conversion of, 22-23 Church (see also Papacy) : German : Dioceses, creation of, 130 Henry II.'s relations with, 128- 130 Homage of clergy waived by Lothair II., 184 Organisation of, 96 Political power of archbishops, 131 Power of, causes of growth of, 132 Roman sees in, early, 7-8 Secular rights of archbishops, i3'-'32 INDEX 237 Church (continued) — Imperial relations of, in twelfth century, 195 Property of, secularisation of, 21 Cities, imperial, 226 Clement II., Pope (Swidger Bishop of Bamberg), 149 Clotaire III. of Neustria, 17 Clovis, victories of, 13 ; conquests checked by Theodoric the Ostrogoth, 14 ; distribution of his empire, 15 Clovis II., King of Neustria, 16 Cologne : Battle near (939), 91 See of, 7, 130 Cologne, Archbishop of (between 983-1000), 112; (1054), 159; (1 180), 204; the spiritual head of Westphalia, 130-131 ; arch chancellor of Italy, 131 Commendation, process of, 56 Conrad I. (of Franconia), Emperor, family and position of, as Duke of Franconia, 68, 71-72 ; elec tion of (911), 73; rebellion of the five nations, 73-75, 76 ; death of — recommends Henry of Saxony as his successor, 75, 76 ; feudalism under, 75-76 ; character of his rule, 80 ; Fran conia resigned to Eberhard, 155 Conrad II. (the Salic), Emperor, election and coronation of, 140, 141, 142; descent, 141; Life of, by his chaplain Wippo, 141- 142; the great Duchies under, 141, 142-143, I44-H5, h8; designates his son as successor, 142 ; makes a tour of his German and Italian dominions, 142 ; second visit to Italy, 142-143 ; coronation at Rome (1027), 143 ; visits Apulia, 144 ; settles German rebellions, 144-145 ; has his son Henry crowned, 145 ; events of his reign (1030- 1039), 145 ; his death (1039), 145 ; character, 145-146 ; edict making fiefs hereditary (1037), 146-148 ; mentioned, 66 Conrad III. (of Hohenstaufen), Em peror, elected anti-king (1123) — submits to Lothair, 185; be comes the standard-bearer of the Empire, 186 ; election of (1138), 188-189; humiliates Henry the Proud, 189; character of his rule, 190 ; leads German contingent of 2nd Crusade, 191; prepares to visit Rome — his death, 191-192 ; his character, 192 ; names Frederick of Hohen staufen his successor, 192, 197 ; situation in Germany on death of, 196-197 ; otherwise men tioned, 179, 181 Conrad (son of Henry IV.), accepted as his father's successor, 167 ; crowning of, 1 70 ; corrupted by the Countess Matilda — deserts his father, 170 ; revolt against his father, 174; his revolt con trasted with that of Henry V., 174-175 Conrad I. of Alemannia, 113, 171 Conrad II. of Alemannia, 171 Conrad of Bavaria, 171 Conrad, King of Burgundy, 91 Conrad III., Duke of Franconia, 171 Conrad IV., Duke of Franconia, 143, 144-145, J48, 171 Conrad, Duke of Franconia (son of Frederick Barbarossa), 209 Conrad of Fritzlar, Count of Fran conia, 68 Conrad, Count Palatine, 211 Conrad the Wise, General, marries daughter of Otto I., 91 note, 93 ; gift of Franconia and Lor raine to, 91-92; conspires against Otto I., 93 ; returns to his allegiance, 94 ; left as Otto's lieutenant in Italy, 102 Conradin, 221 Constance, Empress, 214, 215 238 INDEX Cotrone, Saracens defeated by Otto II. at, in Counts : German : Aggrandisement of, with dimin ished jurisdiction of Dukes, 226-227 Function of, 225 Hereditary succession among, 225 Office of, among Teutonic races, 44 Crema, demolition of, 199 Crescentian party in Italy, 117, 1 1 8, 119 Crusade, second, German contingent of, 190-191 Crusade, third, German contingent of, 211-212 Cunigunda, dau. of Count Welf, 1 59 Cunigunda, Empress, 123-124, 127 Czechs, n, 158 Dagobert I., King of the Franks, 16, 18 Dagobert IL, King of Austrasia, 17 Dagobert III., King of Neustria, 17 Dalmatia, 206 Damascus, siege of, 191 Damascus II., Pope, 149 Danes in England, 134-135 Dedo, Margrave of Lausitz, 164 Denmark : Charles the Great, relations with, 33-34 Dioceses of, created by Otto the Great, 130 Fief of the Empire, held as, 143 German conquest and Christianisa- tion of, 95 Succession in, 199 Desiderius, King of Lombardy, 25, 26-27 Detmold, battle of (783), 29 Dietrich, Count of Ringelheim, 79 Dietrich, King of the Saxons, 23, 24 Dukedoms, German : Beneficiary or official dukes, posi tion of, 44, 70-71, 224-225 Dukes of the great nations under Conrad IL, 141 Extinction, gradual, of, 226—227. Hereditary idea, growth of, 225- 226 Eadgitha, dau. of Edward the Elder, 93 Eberhard, Duke of Franconia, ex pedition of, against Henry the Fowler, 74 ; rebels against Otto I. — his death, 89-91; mentioned, 79, 80 Ebroin, mayor of the palace of Neu stria, 17 Ecclesiastical princes, growth in power of, under Henry IV. and Henry V., 178-179 Eckhard of Meissen, 113 Edmund Ironside, 125, 222 Edward the Atheling, 125 Edward the Confessor, compared with Henry II. of Germany, 128 Eginhard, cited, 26, 27, 29, 33, 34 Elicke, dau. of Magnus Billung, 179 note Elster, battle of the, 169 Empire, the, see Holy Roman Empire England : Colonisation of, by the Teutons, 1 2 Feudalism in, 55, 56 Germany and : Connection between, 221-222 Contrasts between, as to process of unification, 35-36, 137- 138; principles of government, !35-I36 ; size and diversity of nationality, 136; system of development, 136 ; Roman influence, 136-137 ; national unity, 137-138 ; development of feudalism 138-140 Historical association, 1-4 Intellectual development, mutual indebtedness as to, 3-4 Political parallel, 134-135 Saxon interest supported by England, 217-218 Hereditary principles in, 138 INDEX -M9 England (continued) — Institutions of, Teutonic origin of and influences on, 1-2 Kingship, strength of, in Anglo- Saxon times, 63-64 Language of, 3 Lorraine and Flanders, connection with, in eleventh century, 124- 125 Tribal divisions in, 135 English, national characterislics of Germans and, compared with those of the French, 150-151 Erchanger, Duke of Alemannia, 74, 76,77 Erchinoald, Mayor of the Palace of Neustria, 17 Eresburg, 90 Erfurt, Council at (936), 88 Ernest, Duke of Alemannia, rebellions prepared by, 142-143, 144, >45 Ernest I., Duke of Babenberg, 171 Ernest II., Duke of Babenberg, 171 Ethelred II. of England, 125 Eudes, Count of Paris, elected King of France, 64, 67 Europe, condition of, in middle of tenth century, 98-99 Ezzo, Count Palatine, 122 Feudalism : Commendation, spread by process of, 56 Defined, 54-55 England, in : Development of, 55, 138-140 Pre-Norman, 56 South Italy, compared with that of, 230 France, in : Evils of system seen in weakness of central authority, 56-57, 63-64 Growth of, as compared with that in England and Germany, 54-57, 138-140 Hereditary principle, growth of, 62-63 German : Alienation, law as to, 147 Allodial tenure characteristic of, 60-02 Contrasted with French, 57-5S, 63-64 Conrad I.'s reign considered as an epoch in, 75-77 Fiefs, hereditary descent of, 146-147, 216 Feudal relations exemplified in quarrel between Frederick Barbarossa and Henry the Lion, 208-209 Feudatories, great, steps towards independence of, 178 Frank influence in quickening growth of, 139 Grand serjeanty, examples of, 88, 113, 130 Hereditary principle, growth of, 62-63, 75-7", 146-147 Imperialising force, as the, 46- 48, 59 Monarchy, elective, from primi tive times, 60 Peers, appeal to judgment of, '47 Suzerainty, idea of, seen in reign of Lewis the Pious, 46- 48 Tenants in capite, 92, 147 Traces of, towards end of ninth century, 45-48 Origin of, 137 Stages in growth of, 55-56 Flanders : English connection of, in eleventh century, 125 Germany becomes tributary to, 124 Fontenai, battle of (841), 51 Forcheim, diet at (1077), 168 Formosus, Pope, 67 France : Conquests of Charles the Great in, 27 ; his division of the country among his sons, 43, 44 Feudalism in, see under Feudalism 240 INDEX France (continued) — Germany : Separation from, by Division of Verdun, 51, 224 Treaty with (1024), 128 Hereditary principle in, 138 Hohenstaufen interest supported by, 218, 220 Lorraine, struggle for, and resigna tion of (978-980), 109 Royal power in : Elective principle, 64 Strength of, in contrast to that of Germany and England, 63-64 Tenth century contentions for, 65 Francis I., Emperor, 92 Francis II., Emperor, 227 Franconia : Church of, 22, 130 Duchy of : Abeyance of, 142 Abolition of, 156 Henry III., given to, 148 ; duchy of Rhenish Franconia abolished by, 156 Dukes of (1004-1039), 171 Hereditary principle, growth of, 75 Imperial dignity in connection with, 140, 148-149 ; Norman connection of Franconian em perors, 222 Jurisdiction of, 228 Lothair II., reduced by, 184-185 Saxon Empire, under, 89-91, 99 Tenth century, unsettled state in, 71—72 and notes Twelfth century, subordinate place in, 179 Franconia, Duke of, service of grand serjeanty rendered by, 88 Franks : Character of Frankish Emperors, 77-78 Conglomerate character and dis tribution of, 9-10 Constitutional condition among, 44-45 Eastern,dominion of, see Austrasia Empire of : Foundation of, under Clovis, 13 Growth of, 14-15 Kingdoms of Neustria and Austrasia, 15-17 Inheritance by equal shares among, 41-42; National distinctions of, preserved within the Empire of Charles the Great, 40 Roman influence on, 137 Western, see Neustria and Mero vingians French, the : Fighting spirit, decadence of, 84 National characteristics as com pared with those of Germans and English, 150-15 1 Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor : Character of, 212-213 Descent and family connections of, 198 Italian expeditions of (1154-1155, 1158-1162), 199-200; (1163), 200; (1167) his support of the anti-pope and excommunication by Alexander III., 200-201 ; (1174), struggle with the Lom bard League, reconciliation with « the Pope (1177), 201, 204; (1 186), diet at Milan and Council at Verona, 202 ; marries his son to the heiress of Sicily, 202 Political situation [on his accession] of — the Empire, 194 ; Italy, 195-196; Germany, 196-197 Reign of — its character, 197-198 ; his election and crownings, 198- 199 ; friendly relations with Henry the Lion, 202-203 > their quarrel (1180), 203-209; mar riage with Beatrice of Burgundy, 209 ; crowned King of Aries ( 1 178), 209 ; his provision for his sons, 209-210 ; his son Henry crowned, 210; Slav policy, 210 ; Assembly at Mainz, 210-21 1; joins the third Crusade, 211 ; drowned in the Calycadnus, 211 INDEX 241 Frederick Barbarossa (continued) — Tradition, popular, as to, 212 otherwise mentioned, 190 Frederick I. of Hohenstaufen (brother- in-law of Henry V.), 180 Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen (nephew of Henry V.), allegiance to his uncle, 180, 181 ; elected a candidate for the Empire (1125), 183-184; submits to Lothair II. , 185 Frederick II I . of Hohenstaufen (nephew of Conrad III.), 192 Frederick II. (of Hohenstaufen), Em peror (son of Henry VI.), elec tion of, 219 ; struggle with Otto, 220 ; summary of his reign, 220-221 ; otherwise mentioned, 216, 217, 222 Frederick, Duke of Lorraine, 143, 144 Frederick of Lorraine, Pope, 162 Frederick of Luxembourg, 171 Frederick of Rothenburg, 210 Frederick, Duke of Swabia (son of Frederick Barbarossa), 209, 211- 212 Frederick the Warrior, 86 Friesland : Missions of Anglo-Saxon Church in, 22 Wars of Charles Martel in, 21, 22 Fritzlar in Hesse, 80 Friuli, state of, 27 Gebhard of Eichstadt (Pope Victor II.), 149, 160 Gelasius, Pope, 177 Gelenhausen, diet at, 205 Gerard of Alsace, 158, 171 Gerbert, see Sylvester IL, Pope Germanic confederation, 52 Germans, national characteristics of English and, compared with those of the French, 1 50-1 51 Germany : Bishops in, 225 Christianisation of, effect of, in consolidating the Empire, 22-23 Church in, see under Church Cities, imperial, of, 207-208, 226 Conquests of Charles the Great in, 27-28 ; proposed division of, 43, 44 Counts of, see that title Crusades, second and third, preaching of, in, 190-191, 211- 212 Dukedoms of, see that title Ecclesiastical organisation of the states, 130 Ecclesiastical princes, growth in power of, under Henry IV. and Henry V., 178-179 Elements, national, in, 8-13 Empire of, see Holy Roman Em pire England and, see under England Feudalism in, see under Feudalism Fighting spirit of, development of, in the Middle Ages, 84-85 Franks : Dominion of, in, 13-15 Empire of, separated from, by Partition of Verdun, 51 Geographical and national divisions of, 221 Hereditary principle in, 112, 114, 138 Histories of, English, scarcity of, 4-5 Imperialism : Growth of, in ninth century, 40-41 ; under Otto I., 91-93, 96-97 Middle Ages, as a form of government for, 154 Nationalism versus, 222—224 Indebtedness of, to her great rulers, 80 Investiture quarrel, effect of, on 178 Italian dominion of, harm wrought to Germany by, 105-106 Jurisdictions, independent, growth of, 226-228 Kingship in, see that title Language of, 5-6 Q 242 INDEX Germany (continued) — Lewis the German, territory com prised in Germany of, 5 1-52 Map of, changes produced in, by fall of Henry the Lion, 207 Marks, ancient, of, 85-86 Merovingian dominion in, 20 Modern, divisions of, foundation of, laid in Middle Ages, 229 National councils held in cities of, 84 National institutions of German races, 44-45 Nations composing (see also Ale mannia, Bavaria, Franconia, Lorraine, Saxony), identity of, preserved under imperial rule, 76-77, 223-224 Organisation of, under Henry the Fowler, 85-87 ; under Otto I. , 91-93, 96-97 Political situation in, on the acces sion of Frederick Barbarossa, 196-197 Rival kings in (1077), 168-169; (1084), 169-170 Roman element and influences in, 2-3, 7-8, 136-137 ; limits of the Roman Empire, 7 Tenth century, condition in middle of, 98-100 Towns, creation and encourage ment of, 83-84 Tribes of, migration of, 8-9 Unity of : Charles the Great, under, 27-33, 35-36, 37 Hereditary dukedoms, disturbed by, 226 Saxon and Bavarian influence, a bar to, 192 Saxon Emperors, dominion of, an aid towards, 77 Gero, Count, 90 Gertrude (wife of Henry the Proud), 188 Ghibelline party of the House of Hohen staufen, 187 Gisela, Empress, 142, 171 Giselbert of Lorraine, 81, 90-91 Glanvill, Ranulf, 84 Glismond, dau. of King Arnulf, 68 Gnesen, Otto III.'s pilgrimage to, 119- 120 Godfred, King of the Danes, 33-34 Godfrey, Count of the Ardennes, 124 Godfrey of Bouillon, 169 Godfrey I., Duke of Lower Lorraine (tenth century), 67 Godfrey the Bearded, Duke of Lower Lorraine (eleventh century), 150, 158, 162, 171 Godfrey le Bossu, Duke of Lower Lorraine (eleventh century), 171 Godfrey, Duke of Lower Lorraine (twelfth century), 180 Godfrey, Count Palatine, 181 Godwin, Earl, 179 Godwin, House of, connection of, with Flanders, 125 Gorm the Old, King of Denmark, 86 Goslar, 84, 159, 166, 167, 181, 189, 202, 204, 205 Gothelo I., Duke of Lorraine, 148, 158, 171 Gothelo II., Duke of Upper Lorraine, 171 Greek provinces (see also Apulia and Calabria), attempted German annexation of, no— in, 127 Greeks of Byzantium, 211 Gregory V., Pope, 118, 119 Gregory VII., Pope (Hildebrand), changed imperial relations under, 153-154; influences election of Nicholas IL, 162 ; abuses opposed by, 163 ; triumph of his party under Henry IV. , 163-164 ; becomes Pope as Gregory VII., 165; investiture contest (1075), 167, 169; seizure of, by Cencius, 167 ; submission of the Emperor — projected diet at Augsburg, 168; death of (1085), '69 ! otherwise men tioned, 165, 195 Gregory VIII., anti-pope, 177 Gregory IX., Pope, 220 INDEX 243 Gregory of Tours, 15-16 Grimoald, mayor of the Palace of Austrasia, 16 Grimoald, Duke, 21 Grippo, relations of, with his brothers Pipin and Carloman, 23, 24 Guastalla, Council of, 175 Guibert of Ravenna elected anti-pope, 169, 170 Gunhilda, Empress, dau. of Canute, 145, 148, 222 Guy, Abp. of Vienne, Pope, 177-178 Guy of Spoleto, Emperor, 65-101 Hadesleben, 205 Hadrian IV., Pope, 199, 200 Halberstadt, 218 Halberstadt, Bishop of, 204 Hallam, Henry, cited, 80, 146 and note, 147, 198, 200, 202 ; indict ment of Henry III., 154-155 ; criticism of his charges, 155- 158 Hanno, Abp. of Cologne, 163-164 Hanover, kingdom of, 77 Hardrad, Count, 31 Harold of Denmark (Harold Bluetooth), 95-96 Harold, King of England, 179 Hatto, Archbishop, 71 Havelberg, suffragan bishopric of, 96 Hedwige, dau. of King Arnulf, 68 Henry I. of England, 222 Henry II. of England, 206, 221-222 Henry I., Emperor (the Fowler) : Character of — "the first national sovereign," 79; his influence compared with that of English Alfred, 87 German indebtedness to, 80 Reign of— attempt to secure king ship on death of his father, 74, 76, 77 ; his marriage, 79 ; elected king of the Germans, 79-80 ; internal policy, 80-81 ; defends the Empire against the Hun garians, 81-82 ; administrative policy, 82 - 83 ; creation and encouragement of towns, 83-84 ; develops fighting spirit of Ger mans, 84-85; originates and defines the ancient marks, 85- 86 ; forces Bohemia and the Obotrites to become tributary, 87 ; his desire for Empire, 87 ; his death — recommends his suc cessor, 88 ; relations with the Church, 128; retains Saxony with his kingship, 155 otherwise mentioned, 68, 146 Henry II., Emperor: Character of, compared with that of Edward the Confessor, 128- 129 Reign of — elected and crowned, 122-123 ! duchy of Bavaria re signed on his accession, 155 ; resistance offered to him, 123; wars with the Bohemians and Poles, 123; war with Flanders, 124; Italian war (1002-1013), 125-126 ; Italian expedition (1022), 127; crowned Emperor at Rome (1014), 127 ; treaty with France, 128; relations with the Church, 128 ; nomi nates Conrad the Salic his successor, 128 ; death of, at Grun, 128 ; position of prelates confirmed and strengthened by, 132 ; power founded by, 145— 146 Henry III., Emperor : Character of, as a politician, 149 ; compared with that of Otto III., 152-153 European position of, 154 Hallam's indictment of, 154—155 I criticised, 155-158 Reign and life of — territory owned during his father's life, 148 ; principal dates of his reign and life, 149-150 ; papal relations, 149 ; resigns his duchies on becoming Emperor, 157, 159 ; his wars, 158-159; crowned Emperor, 159 note ; marriage with Gunhilda, 222 ; birth and 244 INDEX Henry III. (continued)— crowning of his son, 159; last years of his reign, 160; his death — secures the succession to his son, 160 Henry IV., Emperor : Character of, 161-162 Conrad's revolt against, contrasted with that of Henry V., 174-175 Hallam's defence of, criticised, 154-158 Reign and life of — his papal rela tions, 153, 162—163 ; causes of the discord of his reign, 158 ; his birth, recognition, and crown ing, '59 ! accession, 160-161 ; length and wretchedness of his reign, 161 ; Saxon rebellion, 162 ; rivalry of the bishops — triumph of the Hildebrandine •Party, 163-164 ; loses influence through his character and evil rule, 164-165 ; breach with the Papacy, 165 ; Saxon revoIt(l073~ 1075), 166-167; the Investiture Contest (1075), 167 ; his son Conrad accepted as his succes sor, 167 ; victory at Hohenburg, 167 ; pilgrimage to Canossa, 168 ; submits to the Pope, 168 ; his deposition, 168 ; civil war, 168-169; victory of the king, 169 ; war with Pope Gregory, 169 ; war with the Swabians — revival of the Saxon war, 169- 170 ; last years of his reign (1 092- 1 106) — death in destitute condition (1106), 170-171 otherwise mentioned, 149, 152, 182 Henry V., Emperor : Character of, 174-175 Reign and life of — importance of his reign, 173; revolt against his father, 174; dispute with the Pope as to lay investitures, 175; coronation at Rome, 175— 176; his humiliation of Pope Paschal, 1 76 ; is excommuni cated, 176-177 ; continues the struggle with Popes Gelasius and Calixtus II., 177; second visit to Italy, 177; dispute ended by Concordat at Worms, 177-178 ; weakness of central authority under, 178; changes in the Duchies under, 178-180 ; Ger man wars (nn-1116), 180- 181 ; first Italian expedition, 181 ; expedition against Louis VI. of France, 181-182 ; com mends the Empire to Matilda, 182 ; his death at Utrecht, 182 Tradition, popular, as to, 182-183 otherwise mentioned, 222 Henry VI., Emperor, crowned at Aix- la-Chapelle, 210 ; his Norman conquest, 214-215; his char acter, 215 — 216 ; establishes hereditary descent of fiefs, 216; makes imperial dignity heredi tary, 216-217; otherwise men tioned, 202, 209 Henry (son of Conrad II.), designated his father's successor, 142 ; Bur gundy and Alemannia conferred on, 145 ; crowning of, during his father's lifetime, 145 ; mar riage with the daughter of Canute, 145 Henry (son of Conrad III.), 191 Henry (son of Henry IV.), 170 Henry, Duke of Austria (half-brother of Conrad III.), 190, 191, 202 Henry, Duke of Bavaria (1025), 171 Henry the Black, Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, 179 and note Henry of Limbourg, Duke of Lower Lorraine, 180 Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, Saxony reconstituted under, 180; his interests maintained by his grandmother and uncle, 189- 190 ; relations with Frederick Barbarossa, 201, 202-203 > his rule in Saxony and Bavaria, 202- 203 ; his marriage — is nomi nated Frederick's successor, 203 ; quarrels with the Emperor INDEX -45 (I I So), 203-204 ; stripped of his possessions, 205-206 ; goes into exile, 206-207; submits to Henry VI. — his death (1195), 207, 214; importance of his overthrow to German history, 207 ; his sons, 207 ; feudal re lations exemplified in bis quarrel with Frederick, 208; otherwise mentioned, 191, 199, 222 Henry of Luxemburg, Duke of Bavaria, 141, 148 Henry, Count Palatine, 159 Henry of Pappenheim, 218-219 Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria, 185, 186, 189; extent of his dominions, 180, 187 Henry the Quarrelsome I., Duke of Bavaria, marriage of, 81, 92; succession claimed by, 88 ; con spiracy of (939), 90-91 ; gift of Lorraine to, 91-92; ducal family founded by, 92 ; death of, 99 ; account of, 1 2 1- 1 22 Henry the Quarrelsome II., Duke of Bavaria, plots to obtain inde pendence of Bavaria, 107-108, 112-113, I22; ambitions of, 122 Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia, 220 Henry of Saxony, 222 Herbert, Abp. of Cologne, 122 Hereditary principle : England, France and Germany, in, 138 Fiefs, hereditary descent of, estab lished, 146-148, 216 Growth of, in place of principle of nomination, 75-76 Imperial dignity made hereditary, 216-217 Heriger, Abp. of Maintz, 80 Hermann, Duke of Alemannia (997- 1004), 171 Hermann, Duke of Alemannia (1004- 1012), 171 Hermann IV., Duke of Alemannia (1030-1039), 171 Hermann Billung, Duke of Saxony, as royal deputy in Saxony, 03 made full Duke, 94 ; his func tions, 156 Hermann Contractus cited, 157 ; quoted, 160 Hermann, Duke of Luxemburg, 169, 170 Hermann, Duke of Swabia (953), 92. 93 Hermann, Duke of Swabia (1002), 122. 123, 124 Hesse, 207, 229 Hessians, 12 Hildebrand, see Gregory VII., Pope Hildesheim, Bishop of, tutor of Otto III., 113, 116 Hohenburg, battle of (1075), '67 Hohenzollern, Counts of, 227 Holland, 52 Holy Roman Empire : Charles the Great given title of Emperor of, 39-40 Church, changed relations with, in twelfth century, 195 Condition of, in middle of tenth century, 101 ; on death of Otto III., 121 Division of, by Lewis the Pious, 50; Division of Verdun, 50, 51 Duchies, resignation of, on acces sion to, 155-157 German kingship, association with, 41, 77 ; becomes hereditary with, 114 National limits preserved within the boundaries of, 52 Princes of, services of grand ser jeanty rendered by, 210-2H Trans-Alpine dominion of, factors tending to curtail, 195-196 Unity of, broken by excommuni cation of the Emperor (1112), 176, 181 Vacancy of (1125) — election at Mainz, 183-184 Honorius II., Pope, 185 Honorius III., Pope, 220 Hugh of Aries, Emperor, 66, 102 246 INDEX Hugo, Duke of Alsace, 73 Hugobert, Duke, 21 Hungarians (Magyars or Huns) : Character of, 69 Charles the Great's war with, 32-33 Frankish reduction of, to semi- independence, 33 German aggressions of, 68, 69-70, 75, 95 King of, crowned by the Pope (1000), 121 Saxon resistance to (924 and 933), 81-82 Vassalage, reduced to condition of, 158, 180 Hungary, creation of dioceses in, 130 Huss, John, 3 Ingelheim, general assembly of the Frankish Empire at (788), 32 Innocent II., Pope, 185-186, 190 Innocent III., Pope, 217, 219 Investiture : Bishops, of, 219 Lay, struggle between Papal and Imperial powers as to, 167-168, '73, 175-177; settlement of, by Concordat of Worms (1122), 177-178 Isabella, Empress (dau. of John of England), 222 Istria, 141, 206 Italy : Charles the Great's conquests in, 27 Condition of, in middle of tenth century, 65-66, 100-102 ; in eleventh century, 144 ; on acces sion of Frederick Barbarossa, 195-196 Conrad the Salic's treatment of, 142-143 German annexation of — its results, 105-106, 137 Henry II.'s war with (1002-1013), 125-126 Kings of (888-951), 101-102 National spirit, growth of, 126 North and South nationally dis tinct, 230 Papal wars in, 164 Revolution of Arnold of Brescia, 191 John of England, 222 John Philagathus, election of, as anti- pope and deposition, 119 John XII., Pope, 103 John XIII., Pope, 103 John XIV., Pope, in John XV., Pope, 117, 1 18 Judith (sister of Henry the Proud), 198 Judith of Flanders, 179, 198 Jurisdiction, independent, growth of— through extinction of dukedoms, 226-227 ; through accretion of territory, 227-228 Kaiserlutter, 188 Kamb, diet at, 141 Karolings : Displacement of, by Hugh Capet, 117-118 Policy of Saxon Emperor as to, 108-109 States of the, 65 Kingship, German : Elective principle in, 60, 64, 88 Fiefs, resignation of, on accession to, 155-156 Hereditary principle acknow ledged in, 112, 114 Recommendation of previous king the strongest claim to, 141 Strength of, contrasted with that of French and English, 63-64 Lambert of Spoleto, Emperor, 65, 101 Lambert of Hersfield cited, 149, 155, 161 note Laon, battle of, 17 Lausitz : March, ancient, of, 86 Margraviate of, 96 ; consolidated with Meissen, 188 Legnano, battle of, 201, 204 INDEX 247 Leo VIII., Pope, 103 Leo IX., Pope (Bruno, Bishop of Toul), 149, 159 note Leopold I., Duke of Babenberg and Margrave of Austria, 72 and note, 86 Leopold, Margrave of Austria (half- brother of Conrad III.), 198 ; elected a candidate for the Empire (1125), 183-184; Bav aria bestowed on, 1 89 Lewis, son of Charles the Great, 34 Lewis, King of Aries, 101 Lewis, King of France (939), 91 Lewis VII., King of France, national characteristics exemplified in, 150 Lewis IX., King of France, 64 Lewis, King of Franconia, 71 note Lewis, King of Germany (son of Lewis the Pious), share of, in his father's dominions, 46-47 ; his sons, 48 note ; rebels against his father, 49-50 ; Germany allotted to, by Division of Verdun, 50, 51-52 Lewis the Child, reign of, 68, 69 Lewis the German, Emperor, policy of, 52_53 ! reign and subsequent division of his kingdom, 53-54 ; unification of Germany procured by his policy, 59, 80 Lewis the Pious, Emperor, position of, in the Empire of his father, 41 ; sole inheritor of his father's do minions, 42, 43 ; his reign, 46 ; division of his dominions — growth of the idea of a central power, 46-48 ; table of his de scendants, 48 note; birth of Charles the Bald and re-division of the Empire, 48-49 ; rebellion of his sons — his deposition and reinstatement, 49-50 ; his death, 5° Lewis the Stammerer, 65 Lombardy : Charles the Great's connection with, 26-27, 39< 4° Empire of, 14-15, 18 Frankish subjugation of, under Pipin, 24 Frederick Barbarossa, reduced by, 200-201 Lombard League (1167), 201 Migration of Lombards, 8 Native aristocracy, growth of, 126 Otto II. 's settlement of, no Peace of Constance between the Emperor and , 202 note Regalia rights surrendered by vassals of, 200 Towns of, federation among, 195-196 Lorraine : Conciliation of, by Henry the Fowler, 81 Conrad forced to resign, 94 English connection of, in eleventh century, 124-125 Franco-German disputes as to, 99, 109, U3, 15° Henry IV. and Henry V., under, 180 Imperial supremacy acknowledged by, 196 Lower, 66-67, 124, 158, 171 Re-union of the Lorraines under Gothelo I., 148 Saxon policy as to, 108 Settlement of, by Otto I., 91-92 Upper, 66-67, 158, 171 Lorraine, Duke of, service of grand sergeanty rendered by, 88 Lothair I., Emperor (son of Lewis the Pious), share of, in his father's dominions, 46, 47 ; his sons, 48 note ; rebels against his father, 49-50; disputes his father's possessions, 50-51; countries allotted to, by Division of Verdun, 51, 52 Lothair II., Emperor and Count of Supplinburg, 179; Duke of Saxony, 180 ; revolt headed by, 181 and note; election of, 183- 184; coronation, 184; supports the Church and the Saxons, 248 INDEX 184; crowned Emperor (1133), 185 ; struggle for supremacy against the Hohenstaufens, 185 ; supports Innocent II., 185-186 ; relations with the Sicilian Nor mans, 1 86 ; quarrels with Inno cent, 186; his death (1137), 186 ; confers his dominions on Henry the Proud, 187 ; importance of his. reign, 187 ; his internal policy, 188 ; burial, 188 Lothair, King of France, 109, 113 Lothair, King of Italy, 102 Lotharingia, history of, in tenth cen tury, 66-67 Louis VI. of France, 182 Liibeck, becomes an imperial city (1181), 206 Ludolf, son of Otto I., 93-94, 102 Liigenfeld, battle of, 49 Luitberga, wife of Thassilo of Bavaria, 26 Luitgarde, dau. of Otto the Great, 141 Luneburg, 179, 205, 207 Lusatia, 12 Luther, Martin, 3 Lyons, Council of (1245), 220 Magdeburg, 104 ; see of, 96, 130 Magdeburg, Abp. of, 166, 167 Magnus Billung, Duke of Saxony, 166, 179 and note Magyars, see Hungarians Mainz : Diocese of, 130 Great Council at (1184), 210-21 1 Imperial election at (1 125), 183- 184 otherwise mentioned, 7, 141 Mainz, Abp. of, 80, 88, 93, 112, 113, 166, 168, 181, 183-184; Arch chancellor of the Empire, 131 Marcomanni, tribe of, 11 Marks, ancient, origination of, 85-87 Martin, mayor of the Palace of Austrasia, 17 Matilda, Countess, Conrad (son of Henry IV.) under the influence of, 170, 174; inheritance of, 177, 185-186, 200, 219; other wise mentioned, 150, 171, 179, 187 Matilda, Empress (dau. of Henry I. of Normandy), 181, 182 Matilda of England (wife of Henry the Lion), 203 Meissen : March, ancient, of, 85, 86 Margraviate of, consolidated with Lausitz, 188 See of, 96 otherwise mentioned, 12, 84, 228 Meissen, Margraves of, 86 Memleben, 88 Meran, Duchy of, 206, 207 Merovingians : Dominion of, divided between Austrasia and Neustria, 16-19 Fall of, 16-17, 18, 20-21 Franks, East, admit rule of, 14 Germany, difficulties in, 20 Merseberg : See of, 96 Sieges of, 82, 91 mentioned, 84 Miecislas, King of the Obotrites, 87 Milan : Destruction of (1162), 200 Diet at (1186), 202 Feudal Law, Enunciation of, published at (1037), 145, 146 Ravaging of territory of, by Frederick Barbarossa, 199 Milman cited, 161 note, 171, 202 Misnia, 12 Missi Dominici, 45 Montebello, Peace of, 201 Monza, 200 Moors, Charles Martel's war with, 21 Moravians, conquest of, by Arnulf, 67 Naples, annexation of, to the Empire, 216 Napoleon, German policy of, 227 Naumburg, see of, 96 Netherlands, mother church of the, 22 INDEX 249 Neustria : Austrasia : Civilisation and organisation contrasted, 19 Divided from, 15 Rivalry between, 16-17 Celtic population of, 36-37 Charles the Great, partitioned among descendants of, 22, 25 Roman influence in, 36-37 Nicholas II., Pope, 162-163 Nimwegen, burning of imperial palace at, 158 Normans : European position of (1152), 194- 195 Franconian Emperors' connection with, 222 Low Countries, driven from, 67 Normandy given to, 68-69, 7° Sicilian : Apulia, in : Colonisation, permission granted for, 144 Recognition of, formal, 127 Conquest of, by Henry VI., 214-215 Conrad III.'s proposed expedi tion against, 191-192 Lothair II., relations with, 186 Papal relations, 163, 169, 185, 190, 195 Warriors, as, 85 Northumbrian Church, missions of, 22 Nuremberg : Burgraviate, hereditary, of, 227 Council at (1211), 219 Crusade, second, starts from, 191 Obotrites, 53, 87 Octavian, Cardinal (Pope Victor IV.), 200 Odilo, Duke of Bavaria, 22, 23, 24 Odo of Champagne, 145 Oldenburg, Church of, 96 OsnabrUck, battle of (783), 29 Otto I. (the Great), Emperor : Character of, and character of his reign- — his place in history com pared with that of Charles the Great, 89 ; estimate of his work, 104-105 Description of his person, 184 Reign of — election by the four nations and crowning, 88; re tains Duchy of Saxony, 89, 155- 156 ; civil war (938-941), 89- 90; overthrows the conspiracy of Henry the Quarreller, 90-91 ; policy with regard to the great Duchies, 91-93; his Italian king ship weakens his hold on Saxony, 93 ; his English marriage, 93 ; second civil war (953), 93-94! disconnects his house from Saxony, 94 ; imperial projects, 94-95, 98 ; Bohemian war (937- 95°), 95 > victory of Augsburg (955), 95 ; conquers and Chris tianises the Danes, 95-96 ; ex tension of his Empire, 96 ; imperialising policy in Germany, 100 ; elected King of Italy (951), 102 ; Italy held as a fief, 102 ; management of the Papacy, 103; Italian expedition (967), 103- 104 ; his death (973), 104 ; re lations with the Chmch, 128, 130, 131 ; inheritance laws under, 147-148 ; settlement of Saxony, 155-156 otherwise mentioned, 60, 65, 67, 68, 146, 221 Otto II., Emperor, crowned king and emperor, 103, 106-107 ; his marriage, 103-104; German his tory of his reign, 107 ; Bavarian war (973-978), 107-108; dis pute with France as to Lorraine (978-980), 108-109 ; Italian ex pedition of, 109-111 ; his death, in; character, I n- 112 Otto III., Emperor (Mirabilia Mundi): Aspirations of, 116-117, 121 Characteristics fitting him for his high position, 120-121 ; com pared with Henry III., 152- 153 250 INDEX Otto III. (continued) — Condition of the Empire at the time of his death, 121 Education of, 113, 116 Reign of — succeeds his father at the age of three, 112; his minority, 112-114; crowned Emperor at Rome (996), 114, 118; second Italian visit (998), 118-119; pilgrimage to Gnesen, 1 19-120 ; last visit to Italy (1000), 120; his death at 21 — grief of the Empire, 120, 121 ; Romans bound by, to accept future German kings, 125 ; dioceses created by, 130 Otto IV., Emperor (Otto of Saxony), elected and crowned anti-king (1198), 217-218; becomes Em peror (1208), 218-219; character of his rule, 219 ; Imperial rights claimed by, 219; election of his rival, Frederick of Hohenstaufen , 219-220; is excommunicated, 219 ; his death, 220 ; otherwise mentioned, 207 Otto (son of Henry of Saxony), 222 Otto of Ballenstadt, 179 note Otto, Duke of Franconia, sustains warlike reputation of Germany during minority of Otto III. (983-996), 113; Lombard ex pedition of (1002), 125 Otto of Freising (historian of first half of twelfth century), 181 ; quoted, 189 Otto of Nordheim, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 169, 179 Otto, Count Palatine, 159, 171 Otto, Duke of Saxony, position of, as hereditary duke, 70_7I > is offered the throne and refuses in favour of Conrad, 73 ; his death, 73 Otto of Swabia, 107, 1 1 1 Otto III. of Schweinfurth, 171 Otto of Wittelsbach, 206, 2 10, 218 Paderborn, 29, 150 Palatine of Bavaria, Count, 141-142 Palatine of the Rhine, Count, 156, 207, 211, 216 Palgrave, Sir Francis, cited, 88 Pandects, 186 Pannonia, Hungarians in, 69 Papacy : Condition of, in middle of tenth century, 101, 102-104 Election of Popes, law regulating, 163 Exarchate of Ravenna presented to, 24 Imperial relations : Breach in, 162-165 Charles the Great, title of Emperor conferred on, 39-40 Henry III., relations with, 149 Hereditary Empire, act for, annulled, 217 Hildebrand, changes wrought by accession of, 153 Investiture, lay, struggle as to, 173, 175, 176-177; settled by Concordat of Worms, 177-178 Twelfth century, in, 195 Norman alliance of, 195 Rival popes, election of, 200 Saxony, alliance with, 165 Schism in (1130), 185-186 Strength of, increased by Hilde brandine policy, 165 Paris, Counts of, 64, 65 Paschal, Pope, investiture quarrel of, with Henry V., 175, 176; sur renders his right, 176 ; conces sion repudiated by Lateran Council, 1 76; bequest of Countess Matilda disputed with Henry, 177 ; his death (1118), 177 Paschal III., anti-pope (1167), 201 Patzmaks, 69 Pavia, insubordination and punishment of (1025-1026), 142-143 Peter, King of Hungary, 158 Philip II. , King of France, 64 Philip of Heinsberg, 205 Philip, Duke of Swabia, 209-210 ; Tuscany bestowed on, 216 ; struggle with Otto IV. as anti- INDEX 25* king, 217-218; crowned king (119S), 217; murder of — his character, 218 Philip Augustus of France, 220 ; national characteristics exempli fied in, 150 Piacenza, Council of (1095), 170 Piedmont, growth of native aristocracy of, 126 Pilsen, battle of, 108 Pipin, King of Aquitaine (son of Lewis the Pious), share of, in his father's dominions, 46 ; rebels against his father, 49-50 Pipin, King of Italy (son of Charles the Great), created King of Italy, 34 ; position in the Em pire of his father, 41 ; inheri tance proposed for him in Charles' capitulary (806), 43 ; his death (810), 42 Pipin le Bref, King of Austrasia and Neustria, parentage of, 21 note ; his legacy of dominions from Charles Martel, 22 ; reigns jointly with Carloman (741- 747), 23 ; consecrated by Boni face, 23, 24; sole king (751— 768), 23-25 Pipin of Herstal, 1 7 Pipin of Landen, House of, 16-17, 19 Placita, annual, 44 Poitiers, battle of (732), 22 Poland : Dioceses in, creation of, 130 Otto III.'s visit to (999), 119-120 mentioned, 180 Pomerania, Duchy of, 210 Poppo (eighth to ninth century), de scendants of, 72 note Poppo, Bishop of Brixen (Pope Dama- sus II.), 149 Poppo, Duke and King of the Frisians (died 733), 22 Praxedes, Queen, 174 Provence : Consolidation of, with Burgundy, under the title of Aries, 81 Pipin le Bref, left by Charles Martel to, 22 Prussia : Kingdom of, before 1866, identity of, with ancient Saxony, 12 March, ancient, corresponding to modern, 85 Royal house of, rise of, 227 otherwise mentioned, 77 Quedlinburg, 84, 113 Quedlinburg, Abbess of, Germany en trusted to (998), 119 Radbod, King of the Frisians, 21 Ratisbon ; Bavaria divided at Council of, 205- 206 Diet at (1056), 157 Siege of, 81 Ravenna, exarchate of, presented to the Papacy, 24 Ravenna, Abp. of, 112 Regensburg : Diet at (mo), 176 Third Crusade starts from (1189), 211 Reinhold, Count of Burgundy, 209 Richard I., King of England, relations of — with Henry of Germany, 215, 216 ; with Otto IV., 217 Richard, King of Germany (son of John of England), 222 Richenza, Empress (dau. of Henry the Fat), 179, 181 note, 188, 189 Ripuarians, 10 Robert, King of France, 128 Robert of Flanders, Count, 180 Roger Wiscard, made King of Sicily, 186; coronation, 190 Romans : German institutions, influence on, 2-3 Theodosian Code the probable law of, 45 Roncaglia, diets held at, by — Otto II., no; Henry III., 150; Frederick Barbarossa, 199, 200 252 INDEX Rudolf I., King of transjurane Bur gundy, 66 Rudolf II., King of Aries (Burgundy and Provence) (933), 66, 81 ; King of Italy (922-926), 102 Rudolf III., King of Burgundy, Bur gundy bequeathed to Conrad the Salic by (1032), 66, 145 ; attends Conrad's coronation at Rome (1027), 143 ; mentioned, 144 Rudolf of Hapsburg, 229 Rudolf, Duke of Swabia, Henry IV.'s rival for the Empire, 166, 167 ; elected king, 168 ; his death, 169 Saint Bernard, second crusade preached by, 190-191 Saint Boniface, 22-23, 24 Saint Gallen, Church of, 22 Saladin, 211 Salians, 10 Salzburg, Church of, 22, 130 Salzwedel, ancient mark of, 86 Saracens, Apulian relations of, Iio-m Sardinia, March of Italy corresponding to modern kingdom of, 85 Saxons, conglomerate character and distribution of, 9, 10, 12 Saxony : Ancient and modern, 12, 85 Anglo-Saxon missions in, 22 Church and Papacy, alliance with, 165, 221, 222 Decline in importance of (twelfth century), 207 Dismemberment of, on the death of Magnus Billung, 1 79 and note- 180 Division of, at the diet of Gelen- hausen, 205 Duchy reconstituted under Henry the Lion, 180 Franconian Empire, revolts against (938-941), 89-90 ; (1056-1057), 162; (1071), 164; (1073-1075), 166-167; (1084- 1092), 169- 170; (1122), 177; (1114-1126), 181 Frankish relations of, 14, 15, 19, 23, 24, 25 Hereditary principle, growth of, 75 ; hereditary Empire rejected by, 216, 217 Hungarian invasion of (923), 81-82 Imperial dominion of : Character of the Saxon rulers, 77-78 Cities built by Henry the Fowler, 84 Dioceses created by Otto the Great, 130 English connection of Saxon Emperors, 221-222 German unity, an aid to, 77 Karolings, policy as to the, 108- 109 Otto I. disconnects his house from the Empire, 94 Karolings, relations with : Charles the Great — his conquest, organisation, and Christianisa- tion, 27, 28-30, 34 Charles Martel, war with, 21 Conrad I., rebellion against, 74 Meissen, march of, corresponding to modern kingdom of, 85 Nationalism in, 220, 223 Swabian Empire, under : Reunion of Saxony in fiefs and allods of Henry the Proud, 187 Succession disputes, 189-190 Unity, interior, under hereditary dukes, 226 Saxony, Duke of, service of grand ser jeanty rendered by, 130, 210-21 1 Schleswig : Denmark, bestowed on, 143 March, ancient, of, 86 Scots, mission of, in Germany, 22 Seljuk Sultan of Iconium, 2 1 1 Serbs, 11 Sicily : Annexation of, to the Empire, 216 Foundation of kingdom of, 127 Normans of, see Normans, Sicilian Siffrid, Count, 90 Sismondi cited, 202 INDEX 253 Slavs : Churches of, 1 30 Frankish reduction of, to semi- independence, 33 German frontier, protection of, against, 120, 123 Princes of, admitted to a place among German princes, 210 otherwise mentioned, 11, 53, 67, 117 Solothurn, Pretender of (1 138), 183 Spain, conquests of Charles the Great in, 27 and note Speyer, cathedral of, 145 Spoleto : Sack and plunder of, 199 State of, 27 Stephen, apostolic king of the Hun garians, baptism of, 70 ; crown ing of (1000), 121 ; marries the sister of Henry II., 124 Stephen II., Pope, 24 Suevi, tribes of, 10 Swabia (see also Alemannia) : Duchy of, 72-73 Land tenure in — inauguration of its peculiarities, 218 Lothair II. , reduced by, 184-185 Name of, 10- 1 1 Saxon Empire, under, 93, 94, 99, 180 Swabia, Duke of, service of grand serjeanty rendered by, 88 Sweyn (Swend Otto) of Denmark, 95- 96 Swidger, Bishop of Bamberg (Pope Clement II.), 149 Switzerland : Distribution of, in ancient times, 10 Separation of, from kingdom of Burgundy, 209 Syagrius, 13 Sylvester II., Pope (Gerbert), character of, as a man and a scholar, 113, 116-117 ; Otto III. educated Dy> 1I3> n6 ; estrangement from the Imperial Court, 1 17— 118; made Pope by Otto III., 119 ; his death, 121 Tancred contests Sicily with Henry VI., 2,5 Tartaric or Turanian tribes, 1 1 Testri, battle of, 17 Teutonic nations, similarity of constitu tion among, 44 Thankmar (son of Henry the Fowler), rebellions of, against Otto I., 88, 90 Thasselgard, 144 Thassilo, King of Bavaria, placed on the throne by Pipin, 24 ; his revolt, 25 ; family connection with Charles the Great, 26 ; treason against Charles, 31-32 ; Charles forces him into a monastery and annexes his possessions, 32 Theodo the Agilolfing, 1 1 Theodo IV. of Bavaria, 18 Theodo VI. of Bavaria, 18 Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, 11, 13-14 Theodosian Code, 45 Theodwin, Cardinal, 188 Theophano, Empress (wife of Otto II.), Greek provinces claimed in right of, Iio-m ; acts as regent for Otto III., 113 Thierri, King of Neustria, 17 Thuringia : Landgraviate of, 207 Political status of, 228, 229 Princedom, hereditary, raised to, 188 otherwise mentioned, 12, 19, 22 Tostig, Earl of Northumbria, 179 Tours, battle of, 21 Towns, creation and encouragement of, by Henry the Fowler, 83-84 Tribur, 159, 168 Trier, 7, 130 Trutman, Count, 30 Tuscany : Federation among towns of, 195- 196 March of, 187 Philip of Swabia, bestowed on, 216 Tyrol, 206 254 INDEX Udo, General, 91 Ulfilas, 8 Urban IL, Pope, 170 Utrecht, Church of, 22 Vandals, 8 Venice, 201 Verden, massacre at (782), 29 Verdun : Division of (843), 51, 77, 224 Surrender of, to Henry V., 181 Verona : • Council at (1186), 202 Diet held by Otto II. at, ill Victor II. , Pope (Gebhard of Eich stadt), 149, 160, 162 Victor IV., Pope, 200 Vienne, Council of, 176, 181 Visigoths, 13, 14, 45 Vogtland ( Ten a advocati), 206 Vougle\ battle of, 13 Waiblingen party of the House of Hohenstaufen, 187 ; war cry of, 190 Wardis, usurping King of Hungary, 190 Weinsburg, 190 Welf, Count, of AHdorf, 144 Welf, Duke of Bavaria (1073), 166, 167 Welf, Duke of Bavaria (brother of Henry the Proud), 189-190, 191, 202 Welf (son of the last - named Welf), 202, 203 Welf, Duke of Bavaria (uncle of Frederick Barbarossa), 203-204, Welf V., Duke of Bavaria, 179 Welf VI., Duke of Bavaria, 179 Welf family, causes of influence of, 187-188; war cry of, 190; otherwise mentioned, 159, 170, 179, 187 Welpesholtz, battle of (1115), 181 Wends, the, 11, 12; ancient marches against, 86 Werle, election of Henry II. at, 122- 123 West Saxon missions, 22 Western Empire of the Franks, 13 Westminster Abbey, 128-129 Westphalia : Conquest of, by Charles Martel, 22 Dioceses of, creation of, 130 Struggle for, between Saxons and Franks, 28-29 otherwise mentioned, 205, 227 William the Bastard (William the Conqueror of England), 166 William of Holland, 220 William of Winchester, 207 Wippo, Life of Conrad the Salic by, cited, 141-142, 143, 145, 146, 148 Witikind, Saxon chieftain, 29, 30, 79 Witikind of Corvey, 73 Worms ^ Concordat of, terms of, 177-178 Diets at (829), 49 ; (1076), 167 Wulfad, mayor of the palace of Aus trasia, 17 Wulfhild, dau. of Magnus Billung, 179 and note Wurtemberg, 77 Wiirzburg, Church of, 22 Wiirzburg, Bishops of, title held by, 156 Wycliff, 3-4 Yvoi, meeting of the Emperor and King of France at (1056), 150 Zahringen, Dukes of, 188, 207, 209 Zulpich, battle of, 13 Zwentibold, son of Arnulf, 67 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. 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