Before Henry could pursue his more elevated projects, the assent of the southern Germans, who had not acknowledged their choice of their northern compatriots, had to be gained. Burkhard of Swabia, who had asserted his independence, and who was at that time carrying on a bitter feud with Rudolf, king of Burgundy, whom he had defeated (919 A.D.) in a bloody engagement near Winterthur, was the first against whom he directed the united forces of the empire, in whose name he, at the same time, offered him peace and pardon. Burkhard, seeing himself constrained to yield, took the oath of fealty to the newly elected king at Worms, but continued to act with almost his former unlimited authority in Swabia, and even undertook an expedition into Italy in favour of Rudolf, with whom he had become reconciled. The Italians, enraged at the wantonness with which he mocked them, assassinated him. Henry bestowed the dukedom of Swabia on Hermann, one of his relations, to whom he gave Burkhard’s widow in marriage. He also bestowed a portion of the south of Alamannia on King Rudolf, in order to win him over, and in return received from him the holy lance, with which the side of the Saviour had been pierced as he hung on the cross. Finding it no longer possible to dissolve the dukedoms and great fiefs, Henry, in order to strengthen the unity of the empire, introduced the novel policy of bestowing the dukedoms, as they fell vacant, on his relations and personal adherents, and of allying the rest of the dukes with himself by intermarriage, thus uniting the different powerful houses in the state into one family.
Bavaria still remained in an unsettled state. Arnulf the Bad, leagued with the Hungarians, against whom Henry had great designs, had still much in his power, and Henry, resolved at any price to dissolve this dangerous alliance, not only concluded peace with this traitor on that condition, but also married his son Henry to Judith, Arnulf’s daughter (921 A.D.). Arnulf deprived the rich churches of great part of their treasures, and was consequently abhorred by the clergy, the chroniclers of those times, who, chiefly on that account, depicted his character in such unfavourable colours.[e]
With wonderful acuteness of perception Henry comprehended the situation and recognised in what way alone a union of the German tribes was possible; how, in other words, the existence of the east-Frankish, i.e., of the German kingdom, could alone be preserved. He took care not to follow the wrong lead of King Conrad; he struck out new paths for himself with ingenious and undaunted spirit. He did not wish to establish the authority of the state by the subjection of the single stems under one ruling one, as the Merovingians and after them the Carlovingians had done, nor to establish Saxon dominion according to Frankish rule; he did not plan to rule and administer the lands from one centre with the aid of the officials who were dependent on him alone, as had been the way of the Frankish kings. Only through a more liberal organisation of the realm, as Henry saw, could a union of the German people be maintained at the time. The ideal which presented itself to his mind was something as follows: each stem was to stand by itself as far as its own affairs was concerned, and was to rule itself according to old rights and tradition; it was to be ruled and led in times of war and peace by a duke to whom the counts and lords of the land owed military attendance and obedience. This duke was to settle the disputes among the lords of the land at his diets, was to preserve peace and protect his boundaries from the inroads of the enemy; but just as the dukes governed the single stems in the realm, so the king was to rule over all the lands of the empire; he was to be the highest judge and general of the whole people. So it was to be, and so it was.
In the idea which Henry conceived, the kingdom appeared almost as only an alliance of German stems under the leadership of a king jointly elected by them. And yet they were far from willingly recognising this leadership. Bavaria and Swabia had separated themselves from the kingdom for the moment: in the former Arnulf ruled, in the latter Burkhard, with wholly independent power; and Lorraine had been allied with the west-Frankish kingdom for years. Franconia and Saxony alone formed the kingdom at first; for the moment Henry’s power did not go beyond them. And although he as king was raised above Eberhard, still the latter as a duke stood practically on a level beside him. Just as Henry reserved for himself the full ducal power as he had always possessed it, so also in the Frankish lands it was preserved for Eberhard in the same way; the position which his family had won and established under Conrad’s rule was in no wise lessened. Never again did any disagreement break out between Henry and Eberhard; they remained allies until Henry’s death and the growing state was founded chiefly upon their accord. Henry’s thoughts, however, were not limited to Saxony and Franconia; from the very beginning they had been directed to the union of all the German tribes, and hence he made it his first business to bring all the stems which had once belonged to the east-Frankish kingdom to a recognition of his supremacy.
In the sixth year of his reign King Henry had accomplished the immense task of uniting all the German lands and tribes; he had succeeded in doing that for which King Conrad had striven so obstinately and yet so unsuccessfully. Not with haste and impatience, not with terror and the sound of arms, had he done it; but through a quiet, clear perception of the true position of things and that lauded pacific disposition which would not let him shed German blood against Germans for no purpose. Thus a bond of unity was woven around the German stems, which became more and more close in time and surrounded by which the Germans first came to a clear consciousness of their own nationality. The kingdom as it now stood appears almost like an alliance of states; but out of it grew quickly enough a powerful, united state under as strong a monarchy as those times could produce. Henry had reached the goal which the pope and bishops at the council of Altheim had set themselves and had not been able to reach—the unification of Germany; but he reached this goal by a wholly different road than the one those bishops had taken. Thus it was not they who laid the cornerstone of the German Empire, but the man who had refused to accept the crown from the hand of a priest.
Everything was accomplished almost in silence; a new order of things for centuries to come was established with ease—by magic, one feels inclined to say; endless confusion was seen to be solved in the simplest fashion. It was as when an unknown terror breaks upon a large number of people in the darkness of night—everything is thrown into a confusion which increases from moment to moment, until the sun shines out in the morning and its beams gild the fields: the confused masses then easily assort themselves, quiet returns, and the world beams again in clear sunshine. Henry’s clear spirit was the sun which turned the night of the German lands into day.
WARS AGAINST OUTER ENEMIES
[924 A.D.]
But of what use was all this building and creating if he could not succeed in enduringly protecting the empire against its outer enemies and above all against the Hungarians? However, in spite of the discouragement caused by repeated defeats, Henry did not lose faith in the strength of his people, and fortune favoured the courageous man. For it was fortune that led the Hungarians just at that time to spare the German lands of the hither Rhine for a longer space of time and to direct their attacks chiefly against Italy, the west-Frankish kingdom, and Lorraine. But in the year 924 they appeared again and turned towards Saxony. Everything whither they came was laid desolate. The castles and strongholds, the cloisters and churches, the dwellings of the poor peasants, were all reduced to ashes; old and young, men and women, were slaughtered; again by the clouds of smoke and the appearance of fire in the sky could the path be followed which was taken by the terrible enemy; again the people took refuge in the forests, on the tops of mountains, and in hidden caves. “It is better to be silent on this subject,” says Wittekind [the historian], “than to increase suffering by words.”