The Story of Brussels - Ernest Gilliat-Smith

Nor was the result disproportionate to the Emperor's expectations—the bishops of Lotharingia became their most faithful and devoted servants. 'If the Emperor were to pluck out my right eye,' cried Bishop Wazon of Liége (1042-1048) in an outburst of enthusiastic loyalty, 'I would still use the left in his honour and service.'[3] That was the spirit which animated all of them, and for a hundred and fifty years they were able to keep the wolf at bay.

The man on whose head Otho now placed the ducal crown was his brother Bruno, a clerk in holy orders, on whom he also conferred the metropolitan See of Cologne, which included among its suffragans Utrecht, Liége and Cambrai, thus making him supreme alike in Church and State (953). The success of Otho's policy in Lotharingia was in great measure, if not entirely, due to the energy, the perseverance, the courage, and, above all, to the consummate tact and the marvellous administrative capacity of this great man. His work was essentially a constructive one, out of chaos he brought order, and his success as an organiser and administrator was only equalled by his success as an educator. 'His schools at Cologne,' says M. Pirenne, 'were frequented not only by clerks who aspired to ecclesiastical dignities, but also by young nobles—for many of the feudal lords confided their sons to his care—and all of them returned reconciled to the Empire and entirely subjugated by the charm of the Archbishop-Duke.'[4] In the twelve years during which he governed Lotharingia—he died in 965—he succeeded not only in pacifying that rebellious province, but, if we may trust his biographer, in working a marvellous change in the lives and morals of its inhabitants: 'he found them,' says Ruotger, 'rugged and fierce, and he left them gentle and tame'; and though the conversion of the vast majority was sufficiently short-lived—when the benign influence of Bruno was withdrawn they soon relapsed into their old blood-thirsty and lawless ways—the grandeur of his work is sufficiently appreciable when we compare such ruffians as Régnier au Long Col, for instance, or his slippery son Giselbert, with one who came immediately under Bruno's influence, whose character, indeed, he formed—his friend and disciple Ansfried, Count of Louvain, who, after having been for long years a faithful and devoted servant of the Emperor, at last took orders, became Bishop of Utrecht, and died in the odour of sanctity; or to men like Godfrey of Verdun, the most perfect type of those nobles whom Bruno had reconciled to the imperial cause, a man who had no more sympathy for feudal aspirations than had Bruno himself, and whose staunch loyalty may be gauged from the message he sent to his wife when he was a captive in a French prison, and which has been preserved for us in the Memoirs of Gerbert—who afterwards became Pope Sylvester II. (997-1003)—whom he charged to deliver it:—'Remain staunch in your fidelity to the ever august Empress and her son. Make no truce with the French; hold your forts firm against their king, and let not the hope of restoring your husband and your son to liberty diminish the energy of your resistance.'[5]

I.—Genealogical Table of the House of Long-Col

Between Régnier of Hainault, that half-tamed leader of rebels, and the gentle scholar and polished gentleman, Saint Bruno of Cologne—men whose dispositions were so different and whose interests and ideals were so diametrically opposed, the one the incarnation of feudal chaos and feudal license, and the other the representative of imperial liberty and imperial law, each of them endowed with unflagging perseverance, and an indomitable will—no treaty of peace would have been possible, even if Régnier had not believed that the Emperor had ungratefully bestowed on Bruno the inheritance which was lawfully his, and from the first they were at daggers drawn.

As was natural, the man who had been rejected did all in his power to thwart his successful rival and to frustrate his projects of reform. For three years the conflict continued and then Bruno was able to pluck the thorn from his side. Fortune delivered his tormentor into his hands and he forthwith banished him to Bohemia and detained him there until he went the way of all flesh. But the house of Long Col was not extinguished by the death of its chief—the old count had two sons, Régnier and Lambert, who, when their father was captured and his estates confiscated, found an asylum in France at the Court of King Lothaire. The French monarchs, as direct heirs of Charlemagne, had always regarded Lotharingia as their own inheritance, and Lothaire himself and his brother Charles were the sons of Duke Giselbert's widow Gerberge by her second husband, Louis d'Outremer.

Thus ties of kindred and a common grievance disposed the French king to befriend the children of Régnier of Hainault, and at his Court they remained for fifteen years nourishing their enmity against Bruno and the Emperor, and praying for an opportunity of vengeance. At last the day of reckoning came. The strong and gentle hand of Bruno had been removed by death in 965, and Otho the Great was gathered to his fathers in 973.

Taking advantage of the confusion incident on this last event Charles of France now claimed his mother's dowry, and Régnier and Lambert their father's estates, and presently they invaded Lotharingia to make good their demands at the sword's point.