King Henry did not dare to meet the superior forces of the enemy in an open battle. He had learned to know what war with them meant at an early date, and he did not believe his army was able to face them. It is true that every free Saxon who had completed his thirteenth year was bound to service, and had to take up arms against an approaching enemy; the old military provisions of the Frankish kingdom were also in force according to the letter of the law, and according to them every free man who owned at least five hides of land had to serve personally in the militia, and the smaller landowners had to equip a fighter in common. But these provisions had fallen into disuse; hard times had decreased the number of freemen; the militia, seldom assembled, was formed of men knowing nothing of war.
Moreover, the Hungarians had to be met with cavalry, and although the Frankish feudal army consisted almost entirely of mounted knights, yet in Saxony cavalry service was still new and not widespread; the greatest part of the nobility here kept only poorly armed dependents who performed their military service on foot. Henry avoided a battle, therefore, and shut himself up with his faithful followers in his fortified castle Werla at the foot of the Harz, not far from Goslar. The favour of fortune again did not desert him. A prominent Hungarian was captured by the king’s men and brought before him. The captive stood in high favour with his people, and consequently ambassadors were sent at once to free him from the bonds of the enemy. Gold and silver were offered for him in large measure, but that was not what Henry sought. He wanted peace, only peace, and he even offered, if he should be granted a truce of nine years, not only to give back the captive but also to pay the Hungarians a yearly tribute. On these conditions the Hungarians, swearing to observe a truce of nine years, withdrew to their homes.
Larger fortified towns were at that time still unknown in Saxony and Thuringia; only on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, and beyond these rivers where the Romans had once lived, were there on German soil populous towns with fortified walls and towers, which, however, since the expeditions of the Normans and the Hungarian wars, lay mostly in heaps and ruins. The Saxons according to ancient custom still lived in single houses standing alone in the midst of their fields and meadows, or else they assembled in open villages. Only here and there arose royal palaces and castles of the nobles, only here and there were the enclosed seats of bishops, priests, and monks, the first gathering-places of a more active intercourse. The boundaries were also poorly protected; the strongholds which Charlemagne had once laid out had been mostly destroyed in the wars against the Danes and Wends. The land thus, without being able to offer any resistance, lay open to the inroads of the enemy, which could not be checked in the interior either, on account of the scattered settlements. The first necessity, therefore, seemed to Henry to be to enlarge the existing forts and fortify them more strongly, to lay out new strongholds so as to be able to assemble larger forces in secure places. This was especially imperative on the frontiers in order to repulse the enemy on the very threshold.
Henry had already succeeded in destroying the Serbs on the Saale, and at the same time the Wendian tribes which had forced their way across the middle Elbe had been driven back across the river. In these frontier regions, which had fallen to him as the victor, Henry had settled large numbers of his dependents and bound them to military service in return for larger or smaller fiefs. He had thus at the same time established military colonies on the conquered territory, and here, where everything was on a military footing, and in the neighbouring districts which stood mostly under the same leadership with the marks he had free hand to carry out his plans. In the same way King Edward of England had a few years before restored or newly built a long line of frontier forts, and thus secured his realm against the inroads of the enemy; perhaps Henry in his undertakings had the example of the Anglo-Saxons in mind.
Day and night people were now at work building in the frontier districts. House had to adjoin house, and court, court; everything was surrounded with walls and ramparts. The work went on without a moment’s pause. Henry encouraged the people to unaccustomed efforts, because he wished them to become hardened in times of peace, so that they would be better able to endure the privations of war. Thus there grew up in those districts settlements surrounded with walls and ramparts: smaller places were enlarged, destroyed fortifications restored; often large numbers of human habitations suddenly sprang up, where before only a simple hut had stood. At that time, Quedlinburg in the Harz was wholly rebuilt; Merseburg, which was always a place dear to the king, was enlarged and surrounded by a stone wall.
Henry at the same time opened at Merseburg an asylum for criminals; this was done in order to populate the town and make it capable of defending itself against the enemy. These suspicious characters lived in a suburb of Merseburg, whereas the citadel itself was occupied by more reliable dependents. These criminals were called the Merseburgans, and formed a troop of soldiery which Henry seems often to have used in especially dangerous enterprises. “It was,” says Wittekind[f] [the historian], “a band composed of robbers; for the king, who liked to be mild towards his subjects, exempted even thieves or robbers, when they were brave and warlike men, from their deserved punishment and caused them to settle in the suburb of Merseburg. He gave them fields and arms and ordered them to keep the peace with their countrymen; against the Wends, however, he let them make plundering expeditions as often as they pleased.” So strong was this Merseburg troop that a few years later it furnished 1,000 men for the war with Bohemia.
But also in other ways Henry tried to increase the population of the fortified towns. He commanded all diets, popular gatherings, and festivities to be held within the walls of the citadel; as often as the Saxons came together they were to assemble in the strongholds so that they might gradually become accustomed to life in enclosed places, which they still regarded as imprisonment. Here also he perhaps was following the example of King Edward, who in the same way ordered all commercial dealings to be conducted within the gates of the citadel. But the fortified places of Saxony and Thuringia were not only to provide the possibility of offering a strong resistance to a fresh attack of the enemy; they were at the same time to provide refuge and safety to all the inhabitants of the frontier regions. Consequently every ninth man had to move into the town to erect a dwelling for himself and his eight companions, and also to provide granaries and storehouses, since the third part of all the fruits of the field which were produced had to be delivered in the citadel and were there stored. The eight, however, who remained outside cultivated the field of the one within, sowed it and harvested it, and brought the harvest into his granaries. Without the citadel there could be no buildings, or only worthless ones, since these were destroyed at the first attack of the enemy.
His military provisions, so far as can be seen from the scanty records, dealt with feudal service in Saxony, which he compelled from now on to be rendered in horses and mounted soldiers. Henry remodelled the organization of the army and the conduct of war, and brought them into new lines which were followed by the Germans for a long time afterward.
[924-929 A.D.]
Henry was occupied four years with the ordering of all these things. “My tongue,” says Wittekind,[f] “cannot tell with what precaution and watchfulness he did everything at that time which could help to protect the fatherland.” As soon, however, as Henry knew that his army was in fighting trim, he used it to attack the Wend tribes (928). They were the nearest enemies of the empire and of Saxony, and at the same time less dangerous than the Hungarians; so that the war against them was considered the best school to prepare for the stronger enemy. The first attack was upon the Hevelli, a Wend tribe, which dwelt on both sides of the Havel and on the lower Spree. Several times they fought, and Henry conquered each time, penetrating finally to the chief stronghold of the tribe, the present Brandenburg. The city, at that time called Brennaburg, lay surrounded by the Havel. It was midwinter when Henry laid siege to it, and he pitched his camp on the ice. Ice, iron, and famine,—the three brought about the fall of Brennaburg, and with it the whole of the land of the Hevelli fell into the hands of the conqueror.