Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

German kings, in consequence of this external menace, had to rely for the defence of their frontiers upon the military power of their great vassals. They were even forced to create large estates called ‘Marks’ (march-lands) upon their northern and eastern borders to act as national bulwarks. Over these ruled ‘Margraves’ (‘grafs’ or Counts of the Mark) with a large measure of independence. Modern Prussia was once the Mark of Brandenburg, a war state created against the Slav; Austria the Mark placed in the east between Bavaria and the Hungarians; Schleswig the Mark established to hold back the Danes.

Yet another cause told for disruption: the fact that when the Carolingian line came to an end in Germany early in the tenth century the practice sprang up of electing kings from among the chief princes and dukes. Though this plan worked well if the electors made an honest choice, yet it gave the feudal baronage a weapon, on the other hand, if they wished to strike a bargain with a would-be ruler or to appoint a weakling whose authority they could undermine.

Henry ‘the Fowler’

The first of the elected kings of Germany was Conrad of Franconia, during whose reign the feudal system took strong root, and who ruled rather through his barons than in opposition to their wishes. On his death-bed he showed his honest desire for the welfare of Germany. ‘I know,’ he declared, ‘that no man is worthier to sit on my throne than my enemy Henry of Saxony.... When I am dead, take him the crown and the sacred lance, the golden armlet, the sword, and the purple mantle of the old kings.’ The princes, who followed his advice, found their new ruler out hawking on the mountain side, and under the nickname Henry ‘the Fowler’ he became their king and one of Germany’s national heroes.

In his untiring struggle against invaders Henry I recalls the Anglo-Saxon Alfred ‘the Great’, and like Alfred he was at first forced to fly before his enemies. To the disgust of the great dukes he bought a nine years’ peace from the Hungarians by paying tribute; but when the enemy went away he at once began to build castles or ‘burgs’, and filled them with soldiers under the command of ‘burgraves’. These castles were placed all along the frontiers, and gradually villages and towns gathered round them for safety.

In the tenth year the Hungarians came as usual to ask for the tribute money, but Henry ordered a dead dog to be thrown at their messenger’s feet.

‘In future this is all your master will get from us,’ he exclaimed, and the answer, as he expected, provoked an immediate invasion. Instead of being able to lay waste the countryside as of old, however, the Hungarians now found ‘burgs’ well fortified and provisioned that they could neither take nor leave with safety in their rear. When at last they met Henry in pitched battle, they broke and fled before his onslaught, declaring that the golden banner of St. Michael, carried at the head of his troops, had by some wizardry contrived their ruin.

Besides repulsing invaders, Henry the Fowler imposed his will to a considerable extent over his rebellious baronage. In another chapter[10] we have noticed how he instituted ‘the order of knighthood’ as a way of harnessing to his service the restless energy of the younger sons of the nobles: he also tried to strengthen the middle classes as a counterpoise to the baronage by encouraging the construction of walled towns for the protection of merchants, while he would hold his councils rather in towns than in the woods like his predecessors, in order to attract people to settle there. Many of the Marks owe their origin to Henry’s policy of strengthening the border provinces; and in this and in his determination to subdue the Hungarians he found an able successor in his son Otto I.

Otto ‘the Great’

Otto’s reign might from one aspect be called a history of wars. First there were foreign wars—the subjugation of Denmark, whose king became a German vassal; the reconquest and conversion of Bohemia; and also a series of campaigns against the Hungarians, resulting at last in 955 in a victory at Augsburg so complete that never again the hated invaders dared to cross the border save in marauding bands.