When this great king died in July 936 every land inhabited by a German population formed part of the German kingdom, and none of the duchies were at war either with him or among themselves. Along the northern and eastern frontier were tributary races, and the country was for the time rid of an enemy The growth of towns. which, for nearly a generation, had kept it in perpetual fear. Great as were these results, perhaps Henry did even greater service in beginning the growth of towns throughout north Germany. Not content with merely making them places of defence, he decreed that they should be centres for the administration of justice, and that in them should be held all public festivities and ceremonies; he also instituted markets, and encouraged traders to take advantage of the opportunities provided for them. A strong check was thus imposed upon the tendency of freemen to become the vassals of great lords. This movement had become so powerful by the troubles of the epoch that, had no other current of influence set in, the entire class of freemen must soon have disappeared. As they now knew that they could find protection without looking to a superior, they had less temptation to give up their independence, and many of them settled in the towns where they could be safe and free. Besides maintaining a manly spirit in the population, the towns rapidly added to their importance by the stimulus they gave to all kinds of industry and trade.
Before his death Henry obtained the promise of the nobles at a national assembly, or diet, at Erfurt to recognize his son Otto as his successor, and the promise was kept, Otto being chosen German king in July 936. Otto I. the Otto the Great. Great began his reign under the most favourable circumstances. He was twenty-four years of age, and at the coronation festival, which was held at Aix-la-Chapelle, the dukes performed for the first time the nominally menial offices known as the arch-offices of the German kingdom. But these peaceful relations soon came to an end. Reversing his father’s policy, Otto resolved that the dukes should act in the strictest sense as his vassals, or lose their dignities. At the time of his coronation Germany was virtually a federal state; he wished to transform it into a firm and compact monarchy. This policy speedily led to a formidable rebellion, headed by Thankmar, the king’s half-brother, a fierce warrior, who fancied that he had a prior claim to the crown, and who secured a number of followers in Saxony. He was joined by Eberhard, duke of Franconia, and it was only by the aid of the duke of Swabia, whom the duke of Franconia had offended, that the rising was put down. This happened in 938, and in 939 a second rebellion, led by Otto’s brother Henry, was supported by the duke of Franconia and by Giselbert, duke of Lorraine. Otto again triumphed, and derived immense advantages from his success. The duchy of Franconia he kept in his own hands, and in 944 he granted Lorraine to Conrad the Red, an energetic and honourable count, whom he still further attached to himself by giving him his daughter for his wife. Bavaria, on the death of its duke in 947, was placed under his brother Henry, who, having been pardoned, had become a loyal subject. The duchy of Swabia was also brought into Otto’s family by the marriage of his son Ludolf with Duke Hermann’s daughter, and by these means Otto made himself master of the kingdom. For the time, feudalism in truth meant that lands and offices were held on condition of service; the king was the genuine ruler, not only of freemen, but of the highest vassals in the nation.
In the midst of these internal troubles Otto was attacked by the French king, Louis IV., who sought to regain Lorraine. However, the German king was soon able to turn his arms against his new enemy; he marched into France Otto’s wars with France and with the Slavs. and made peace with Louis in 942. Otto’s subsequent interventions in the affairs of France were mainly directed towards making peace between Louis and his powerful and rebellious vassal, Hugh the Great, duke of the Franks, both of whom were married to sisters of the German king. Much more important than Otto’s doings in France were his wars with his northern and eastern neighbours. The duke of Bohemia, after a long struggle, was brought to submission in 950. Among the Slavs between the Elbe and the Oder the king was represented by Margrave Gero, a warrior well fitted for the rough work he had to do, loyal to his sovereign, but capable of any treachery towards his enemies, who conquered much of the country north of Bohemia between the Oder and the upper and middle Elbe. Margrave Billung, who looked after the Abotrites on the lower Elbe, was less fortunate, mainly because of the neighbourhood of the Danes, who, after the death of King Henry, often attacked the hated Germans, but some progress was made in bringing this district under German influence. Otto, having profound faith in the power of the church to reconcile conquered peoples to his rule, provided for the benefit of the Danes the bishoprics of Schleswig, Ripen and Aarhus; and among those which he established for the Slavs were the important bishoprics of Brandenburg and Havelberg. In his later years he set up the archbishopric of Magdeburg, which took in the sees of Meissen, Zeitz and Merseburg.
Having secured peace in Germany and begun the real conquest of the border races, Otto was by far the greatest sovereign in Europe; and, had he refused to go beyond the limits within which he had hitherto acted, it is probable Otto in Italy. that he would have established a united monarchy. But a decision to which he soon came deprived posterity of the results which might have sprung from the policy of his earlier years. About 951 Adelaide, widow of Lothair, son of Hugh, king of Italy, having refused to marry the son of Berengar, margrave of Ivrea, was cast into prison and cruelly treated. She appealed to Otto; other reasons called him in the same direction, and in 951 he crossed the Alps and descended into Lombardy. He displaced Berengar, and was so fascinated by Queen Adelaide that within a few weeks he was married to her at Pavia. But Otto’s son, Ludolf, who had received a promise of the German crown, saw his rights threatened by this marriage. He went to an old enemy of his father, Frederick, archbishop of Mainz, and the two plotted together against the king, who, hearing of their proceedings, returned to Germany in 952, leaving Duke Conrad of Lorraine as his representative in Italy. Otto, who did not suspect how deep were the designs of the conspirators, paid a visit to Mainz, where he was seized and was compelled to take certain solemn pledges which, after his escape, he repudiated.
War broke out in 953, and the struggle was the most serious in which he had been engaged. In Lorraine, of which duchy Otto made his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, administrator, his cause was triumphant; but everywhere The civil war. else dark clouds gathered over his head. Conrad the Red hurried from Italy and joined the rebels; in Swabia, in Bavaria, in Franconia and even in Saxony, the native land of the king, many sided with them. It is extremely remarkable that this movement acquired so quickly such force and volume. The explanation, according to some historians, is that the people looked forward with alarm to the union of Germany with Italy. There were still traditions of the hardships inflicted upon the common folk by the expeditions of Charlemagne, and it is supposed that they anticipated similar evils in the event of his empire being restored. Whether or not this be the true explanation, the power of Otto was shaken to its foundations. At last he was saved by the presence of an immense external peril. The Magyars were as usual stimulated to action by the disunion of their enemies; and Conrad and Ludolf made the blunder of inviting their help, a proceeding which disgusted the Germans, many of whom fell away from their side and rallied to the head and protector of the nation. In a very short time Conrad and the archbishop of Mainz submitted, and although Ludolf held out a little longer he soon asked for pardon. Lorraine was given to Bruno; but Conrad, its former duke, although thus punished, was not disgraced, for Otto needed his services Defeat of Magyars. in the war with the Magyars. The great battle against these foes was fought on the 10th of August 955 on the Lechfeld near Augsburg. After a fierce and obstinate fight, in which Conrad and many other nobles fell, the Germans were victorious; the Magyars were even more thoroughly scourged than in the battles in which Otto’s father had given them their first real check. The deliverance of Germany was complete, and from this time, notwithstanding certain wild raids towards the east, the Magyars began to settle in the land they still occupy, and to adapt themselves to the conditions of civilized life.
Entreated by Pope John XII., who needed a helper against Berengar, Otto went a second time to Italy, in 961; and on this occasion he received from the pope at Rome the imperial Otto crowned emperor. crown. In 966 he was again in Italy, where he remained six years, exercising to the full his imperial rights in regard to the papacy, but occupied mainly in an attempt to make himself master of the southern, as well as of the northern half of the peninsula.
By far the most important act of Otto’s eventful life was his assumption of the Lombard and the imperial crowns. His successors steadily followed his example, and the sovereign crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle claimed as his right coronation by the pope in Rome. Thus grew Connexion of Germany with the Empire. up the Holy Roman Empire, that strange state which, directly descending through the empire of Charlemagne from the empire of the Caesars, contained so many elements foreign to ancient life. We are here concerned with it only as it affected Germany. Germany itself never until our own day became an empire. It is true that at last the Holy Roman Empire was in reality confined to Germany; but in theory it was something quite different. Like France, Germany was a kingdom, but it differed from France in this, that its king was also king in Italy and Roman emperor. As the latter title made him nominally the secular lord of the world, it might have been expected to excite the pride of his German subjects; and doubtless, after a time, they did learn to think highly of themselves as the imperial race. But the evidence tends to show that at first at least they had no wish for this honour, and would have preferred their ruler to devote himself entirely to his own people.
There are signs that during Otto’s reign they began to have a distinct consciousness of national life, their use of the word “deutsch” to indicate the whole people being one of these symptoms. Their common sufferings, struggles and triumphs, however, account far more readily for this feeling than the supposition that they were elated by their king undertaking obligations which took him for years together away from his native land. So solemn were the associations of the imperial title that, after acquiring it, Otto probably looked for more intimate obedience from his subjects. They were willing enough to admit the abstract claims of the Empire; but in the world of feudalism there was a multitude of established customs and rights which rudely conflicted with these claims, and in action, remote and abstract considerations gave way before concrete and present realities. Instead of strengthening the allegiance of the Germans towards their sovereign, the imperial title was the means of steadily undermining it. To the connexion of their kingdom with the Empire they owe the fact that for centuries they were the most divided of European nations, and that they have only recently begun to create a genuinely united state. France was made up of a number of loosely connected lands, each with its own lord, when Germany, under Otto, was to a large extent moved by a single will, well organized and strong. But the attention of the French kings was concentrated on their immediate interests, and in course of time they brought their unruly vassals to order. The German kings, as emperors, had duties which often took them away for long periods from Germany. This alone would have shaken their authority, for, during their absence, the great vassals seized rights which were afterwards difficult to recover. But the emperors were not merely absent, they had to engage in struggles in which they exhausted the energies necessary to enforce obedience at home; and, in order to obtain help, they were sometimes glad to concede advantages to which, under other conditions, they would have tenaciously clung. Moreover, the greatest of all their struggles was with the papacy; so that a power outside their kingdom, but exercising immense influence within it, was in the end always prepared to weaken them by exciting dissension among their people. Thus the imperial crown was the most fatal gift that could have been offered to the German kings; apparently giving them all things, it deprived them of nearly everything. And in doing this it inflicted on many generations incalculable and needless suffering.
By the policy of his later years Otto did much to prepare the way for the process of disintegration which he rendered inevitable by restoring the Empire. With the kingdom divided into five great duchies, the sovereign could Otto and the duchies. always have maintained at least so much unity as Henry the Fowler secured; and, as the experience of Otto himself showed, there would have been chances of much greater centralization. Yet he threw away this advantage. Lorraine was divided into two duchies, Upper Lorraine and Lower Lorraine. In each duchy of the kingdom he appointed a count palatine, whose duty was to maintain the royal rights; and after Margrave Gero died in 965 his territory was divided into three marches, and placed under margraves, each with the same powers as Gero. Otto gave up the practice of retaining the duchies either in his own hands or in those of relatives. Even Saxony, his native duchy and the chief source of his strength, was given to Margrave Billung, whose family kept it for many years. To combat the power of the princes, Otto, especially after he became emperor and looked upon himself as the protector of the church, immensely increased the importance of the prelates. They received great gifts of land, were endowed with jurisdiction in criminal as well as civil cases, and obtained several other valuable sovereign rights. The emperor’s idea was that, as church lands and offices could not be hereditary, their holders would necessarily favour the crown. But he forgot that the church had a head outside Germany, and that the passion for the rights of an order may be not less intense than that for the rights of a family. While the Empire was at peace with the popes the prelates did strongly uphold it, and their influence was unquestionably, on the whole, higher than that of rude secular nobles. But with the Empire and the Papacy in conflict, they could not but abide, as a rule, by the authority which had the most sacred claims to their loyalty. From all these circumstances it curiously happened that the sovereign who did more than almost any other to raise the royal power, was also the sovereign who, more than any other, wrought its decay.
Otto II. had been crowned German king at Aix-la-Chapelle and emperor at Rome during his father’s lifetime. Becoming sole ruler in May 973, his troubles began in Lorraine, but were more serious in Bavaria, which was now a Otto II. very important duchy. Its duke, Henry, the brother of Otto I., had died in 955 and had been succeeded by a young son, Henry, whose turbulent career subsequently induced the Bavarian historian Aventinus to describe him as rixosus, or the Quarrelsome. In 973 Burchard II., duke of Swabia, died, and the new emperor refused to give this duchy to Henry, further irritating this duke by bestowing it upon his enemy, Otto, a grandson of the emperor Otto I. Having collected allies Henry rebelled, and in 976 the emperor himself marched against him and drove him into Bohemia. Bavaria was taken from him and given to Otto of Swabia, but it was deprived of some of its importance. The southern part, Carinthia, which had hitherto been a march district, was separated from it and made into a duchy, and the church in Bavaria was made dependent upon the king and not upon the duke. Having arrived at this settlement Otto marched against the Bohemians, but while he was away from Germany war was begun against him by Henry, the new duke of Carinthia, who, forgetting the benefits he had just received, rose to avenge the wrongs of his friend, the deposed duke Henry of Bavaria. The emperor made peace with the Bohemians and quickly put down the rising. Henry of Bavaria was handed over to the keeping of the bishop of Utrecht and Carinthia received another duke.