GERMANY FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD

 

SECOND PERIOD - THE MIDDLE AGES

 

PART VIII

THE CAROLINGIANS

 

CXXVI. Louis the Pious and his Sons

 

The Middle Ages commenced with the German empire. The struggle between paganism and Christianity ceased, and the church of the new era, which, for seven succeeding centuries, has imposed its mysteries upon the nations of Germany, was triumphantly raised by the newly-acquired power of the emperor and the pope.

The period immediately subsequent to the reign of Charlemagne was troubled and gloomy. The sceptre wielded by the Carolingian monarchs, who had ever proved themselves the greatest men of their times, was now held by the feeble hand of Louis, the youngest, the most incapable, and the only surviving son of the great emperor, who long and deeply deplored the loss of Charles and Pipin. Pipin left a son, named Bernhard, to whom Charlemagne intrusted the government of Italy, and in whose favour, as successor to the imperial crown, a strong party was formed at court by the most influential among the nobility, headed by Wala, a descendant of Charles Martell; but Charlemagne, equally unbiased by their wishes as he was unmoved by his own inclination, declared his son, Louis, his heir. This emperor no sooner mounted the throne than he revenged himself on Bernhard's party, confined Wala in a monastery, caused Odoin the Brave, his sister's lover, to be assassinated, and replaced his father's gay and witty courtiers with devotees, by whom he was led to favour the interests of the pope. The guiltless Bernhard, perceiving the danger with which he was momentarily threatened, at first showed a disposition to rebel, but instantly submitted on receiving through the Empress Irmingarde an assurance of pardon, and a safe conduct from Louis, and came unarmed to Chalons in order to do homage to the faithless emperor, who caused his eyes to be torn from their sockets in so barbarous a manner that he expired within a few days. No sooner, however, had Louis thus glutted his revenge than, struck with remorse for his crime, rendered doubly poignant by grief for the death of Irmingarde, AD 818, he evinced a desire to abdicate his throne, and to seclude himself within a cloister, but was dissuaded by the priests. The pope, Stephen, who had instigated him against Bernhard, presented him with a crown, in return for which he thrice humbly prostrated himself at the feet of the pontiff, whose successor. Paschal, encouraged by this act of humility, caused himself to be elected without receiving the ratification of a sovereign before whom both he and the clergy deemed it no longer necessary to cringe, and who, bending deferentially before them, implicitly yielded to their tyranny and imposed penances, from a su­perstitious belief that the salvation of his soul depended on an unconditional submission, and on unlimited grants to the church. Wala said that the emperor took too deep a concern in spiritual, and the pope, in temporal, matters.

Louis resembled his father in the gigantic size of his person, and in his skill in warlike sports and exercises, but the narrowness of his mind and his pusillanimity contrasted strikingly with the genius of his great progenitor. Hence arose the aversion manifested toward him by the laity, and the arrogance of the clergy. Devoid of intellect, irresolute, his weakness was ever swayed by passion or prejudice to do the wrong he dreaded, which was ever followed by remorse, whose stings he sought to allay by a mean submission to his spiritual advisers, who, far from favouring his desire for seclusion, surrounded him with the most beautiful of the daughters of the nobility, and at length induced him to wed the Bavarian, Jutta, of the race of the Welfi, 819, who, by her skill and beauty, gained unbounded influence over him, and whose policy being to render herself universally beloved, conciliated Bernhard's adherents, and recalled Wala, who, meanwhile, had been chosen abbot of Corvey, to court, Louis, on his part, performing a solemn penance at Altigny, AD 833, and making a public protestation of repentance for the murder of his relative, before the assembled Diet.

A trait, strongly characteristic of the times, recorded by the Saxon annalist, strikingly demonstrates the objection prevailing among the upholders of ancient German liberty to the imposition of the new feudal system. Ethico, the Alemann, the father of Jutta, forbade his son Henry to hold any lands in fee from the Frankish monarch; but Henry allowing himself to be persuaded by his sister to hold as much land in fee as he could drive over with a golden plow during the emperor's sleep, the old man's an­cestral pride and love of the ancient rights of his family were so deeply wounded that he concealed himself for the remainder of his life in the Schwarzwald.

While these events were taking place at court, the rebellious Bretons and Basques, the Norsemen, Obotrites, the Croatian Slavi, and Bulgarians, were successfully driven from the frontiers. Harald, the Danish king, came to the court of Louis and was baptized. He was afterward expelled by his subjects. St. Anscar, regardless of danger and opposition, continued to carry on the work of conversion in the North, and became the first bishop of Hamburg, AD 834.

In Spain, the Moors made unopposed an inroad into the French territory; and Graf Bonifacius of Corsica undertook an expedition against Africa, whence, after fighting five battles near Carthage, he returned, crowned with glory.

Louis traveled through the empire, in order to visit the churches. It was on this occasion that he founded the bishopric of Hildesheim. Several new monasteries were also founded during his reign, the most noted of which were those of Corvey, AD. 822, Hervorden, Murhard, Schwarzach, Hirsau, Gandersheim, Quedlinbarg, etc. At a synod held at Paris he also reintroduced the worship of images and pictures, AD 825, which had been prohibited by Charlemagne.

Louis had three sons by Irmingarde, Lothar, Pipin, and Louis, between whom he divided his empire, before his sec­ond marriage, in the manner they were to possess it after his death. Lothar was to be invested with the imperial dignity, and to possess Italy and the Rhine country as far as the sea, while Pipin was to reign to the westward over France, and Louis to the east over Germany. Jutta, however, bore a fourth son, Charles, surnamed the Bald, who became the favourite of the old emperor, and a new division of the empire, AD 829, by which the eldest sons were wronged, was made in his favour. An unnatural spectacle, that of the sons rebelling against their father, was now beheld by the people, who, although horror-struck at the cause of the war, willingly lent their aid against a sovereign they despised. Temporal power decayed, and the popes took advantage of the uni­versal confusion to increase their influence and to extend their dominion over the minds of the people.

Wala, who resided with Lothar in Italy, equally opposed the worthless old emperor and the division of the empire. The union of the empire under one energetic sovereign was his most ardent wish, and he sought to rouse Lothar to emu­late the great deeds of his grandsire; but this prince, although fond of power, was too spiritless for any undertaking demanding intellect and energy, and Wala's grand plan degenerated to wretched intrigues. The three brethren leagued together, took their father prisoner at Compiegne, and accused their stepmother, Jutta, of adultery with the Markgraf Bernhard of Barcelona, and of having blinded the emperor by her magical arts, AD 830, Pipin and Louis, however, quickly deserted Lothar, who grasped at sole sovereignty, and leagued with their father against him, AD 831. A negotiation took place between the contending parties at Aix-la-Chapelle, at which Lothar had the weakness to sue for pardon, and the perfidy to condemn his friends and his faithful adviser, Wala, to death, with his own mouth. Wala escaped with his life, but was dragged by the emperor, who feared his talents, from one cloistered prison to another. Jutta was solemnly declared innocent, and Graf Bernhard was compelled to quit the court.

No sooner had Jutta gained this victory than she attempted to secure the chief part of the immense inheritance to her son Charles, a project which again induced Pipin and Louis to league with Lothar for the exclusion of their half-brother. The pope, Gregory IV, foreseeing that the life of the emperor was drawing to its close, and that it was to the interest of the church to favour the stronger party, became their ally. Pipin was the first to quarrel with his father, who deprived him of Aquitania, which he bestowed upon Charles, and the three brethren marched against their parent at the head of a powerful army, which encamped on the Sigwaldsberg, near Colmar. The emperor was at Worms. Long negotiations took place, and even the pope hesitated to give the signal for attack, when Wala arrived on the scene of action and decided the affair. The pope was sent to the emperor to demand his submission, while the allegi­ance of the imperial army was attempted to be shaken; and before Louis had come to a decision, his followers deserted him to a man, during the night of the 29th of June, 833, and he was obliged to yield himself prisoner to his sons. The field where this took place was known until a very late period as the Field of Lies (Lugenfeld). Public opinion condemned both father and sons, but the clergy and the great vassals found (as at an earlier period under the Merovingians) these family dissensions profitable, and on that account encouraged and augmented the discord that pre­vailed.

The emperor was carried to a monastery at Soissons, where Lothar caused him to do penance, kneeling on a hair cloth, and in that position to read a paper in which he accused himself of perjury, murder, and theft, of having been deceived by Jutta's witchcraft, etc. He was also deprived of his arms, in order to render him unworthy of bearing the imperial dignity, but in spite of every threat he could not be induced to take the vow that separated him from the world, from a secret hope of a second release, which did not long tarry: the jealousy of Pipin and Louis was again roused by Lothar's superior power, and they once more leagued against him, under the pretext that they could not countenance the ill-treatment of their father, whom Lothar was forced to restore to liberty and to the throne, AD 834. The released emperor now divided the empire between Pipin, Louis, and Charles, to the exclusion of Lothar. The Normans attacked Friesland with fire and sword, and the Moors crossed the Spanish frontier, while a Moorish fleet landed in Provence and plundered Marseilles; occurrences by which the emperor, whose thoughts were solely occupied in providing an inheritance for his favourite son, by a new division, remained unmoved. For this purpose he attempted to bribe the Germans by a gift, deemed in those times of inestimable value, the relics of St. Vitus, which he caused to be borne, in 836, in a solemn procession from Paris to the monastery of Corvey, founded by St. Anscar, in 826, in Westphalia. Countless multitudes accompanied the procession in its progress through the empire; the Parisians wept at the departure of the sacred bones, while the Saxons hailed their arrival with festive joy. The sons of Louis, however, were not disturbed in their plans by this occurrence. Lothar, who had withdrawn to Italy, and whose adviser, Wala, was dead, had an interview at Trent with his brother Louis (surnamed the German, or the Bavarian, in order to distinguish him from his father), probably with the design of warning him against Jutta's fresh projects. Jutta instantly accused Louis of conspiring with Lothar, and established an alliance between Pipin and Charles, who agreed to divide the empire into two equal parts, and to force Lothar and Louis to submit. Shortly after this, Pipin died, and Jutta, perceiving her inability to support the claims she had arrogated for her son, entered into a negotiation with Lothar, who, with characteristic perfidy, consented to divide the empire with Charles to the exclusion of Louis, and of his nephew Pipin, the son of his deceased brother. While these wretched intrigues were being carried on, the emperor expired, AD 840, on an island in the Rhine, near Ingelheim, shouting with his latest breath, like the huntsmen, "Hutz! Hutz!" in order to scare the devil from his bedside.

Louis was no sooner dead than Charles discovered that Lothar, instead of placing him on an equal footing, would merely tolerate him as an inferior; he accordingly deserted him, and entered into a compact with Louis the German, with whom he thought more easily to divide the empire, as Louis laid no claim to the title of emperor. The new confederates now took up arms against Lothar and young Pipin, who were defeated in a great battle that took place on the 25th of June, 841, near Fontenay, in Burgundy. One hundred thousand men fell in this worthless cause, and the nobility was so thinned that for long after it was deemed necessary when a freeman wedded a noble lady to raise him to her rank in order to repair the loss.

Lothar fled to Aix-la-Chapelle, turned the great silver tables of Charlemagne into coin, and proclaimed throughout Saxony that all the Edelings should be deprived of their lands, and that the Frilings and Lazzi, who since the time of Charlemagne had been subordinate to them, should be restored to their ancient privileges. The Saxons rose in crowds, formed the Stellinga (restorers) confederacy, and expelled not only the Edelings, but also the priests, paganism being still rife among the commonalty. Victory, nevertheless, still favoured the arms of Louis and Charles, who on the 14th of February, 842, took a federative oath at Strassburg, which was loudly repeated by their respective armies; by that of Louis the German, on the right bank of the Rhine, in the German language, and by that of Charles, on the left bank, in the Roman tongue. At the same time, the two confederates had the cunning to call a synod of bishops, before which they accused their brother Lothar of protecting paganism; and, as the Stellinga was naturally held in abomi­nation by all the temporal lords, who feared lest the example of the Saxon peasantry might influence their vassals and endanger the feudal system, they flocked in crowds beneath the standard of the two brothers; and Lothar, finding himself solely upheld by the Saxons, deserted them with his usual perfidy, and made his treacherous betrayal of them a means of reconciliation with his brothers. While he was carrying on this negotiation with them in France, Louis suddenly marched into Saxony, and after defeating the confederates, treated the chiefs of the Stellinga with unexampled cruelty, causing fourteen of them to be hanged, one hundred and forty to be beheaded, and innumerable others to have their hands chopped off. Thus terminated the first great struggle of one class against the others, of the nobility against the peasantry.

The treaty of Verdun, AD 843, concluded between the three brethren, rewarded Lothar's treachery with the imperial crown, and an extensive territory, including the Netherlands, the Rhine country, Burgundy, and Italy, which received the name of Lothringia (Lotharingien, Lotharii regnum). Louis the German received, as his portion, all the country lying to the right of the new empire, and the title of a German king; and Charles the Bald was created king of France.

While these negotiations and the war with Saxony were being carried on, the Norsemen reappeared and plundered the coasts of the Baltic; at the same time, the Moors landed in the south and sacked the town of Arles; the Bretons also again rebelled. Bernard, Markgraf of Barcelona, was seized and executed by order of Charles the Bald, under pretext of disloyalty, but more probably on account of his former intercourse with the empress Jutta.

According to another account, Charles is said to have stabbed him with his own hand, and to have spurned the corpse with his foot, although they resembled each other so strongly that everyone believed them to be father and son.

Lothar died in 855, and divided Lothringia among his three sons, who did not long survive him. The only one of any importance was the second son, Lothar II, who, by divorcing his wife Thietberga, and wedding the beautiful Walrade, afforded an opportunity to the pope, Nicholas I, to exert his authority. The marriage with Walrade was, by his influence, annulled by the council at Metz, AD 863, and Hugo the son of Walrade was declared incapable of succeeding to the crown. Lothar, upon this, divorced Walrade, but shortly afterward remarried her. His brother, Louis II, protected Benevento (which at that time was divided into the three little dukedoms of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, and had greatly sunk in importance) against the Moors, who had taken possession of Rome, and had converted the church of St. Peter into a stable.

Louis the German was, meanwhile, fully occupied in repelling the attacks of the Slavi, who took advantage of the internal dissensions in the empire to rise en masse on all sides. The Obotrites set the example in the North. Louis put their prince, Gozzomvil, to death in 844, and placed an able man, named Tachulf, as Markgraf in Thuringia. This brave man long waged war with the Slavi, and it is related of him that once, although desperately wounded, he gave audience to the Slavian embassadors, seated on his war-horse, without betraying a symptom of the pain he suffered. The Germans, mistrusting him on account of his attempts to conciliate the neighbouring Sorbi, AD 849, ventured a battle without him, and were defeated. The flying Thuringians are said to have been welcomed by their wives with blows. So intense was the hatred between the two nations that when Chiztibor, the prince of the Sorbi, wished to make terms with the Germans, he was murdered by his subjects in 858. Tabamzivil, prince of the Obotrites, submitted, AD 862.

In the South, the Bulgarians attained considerable power after the complete destruction of the kingdom of the Avari, and advanced into the mountains of Croatia. The Markgraf, Berthold, was defeated by them in 818; the Markgraf, Rathod, succeeded in expelling them, but afterward rebelling, was deprived of his government. The Slavian Maharanen, or Moravians, also rose under their prince, Rastiz, and began to spread over their confines; they and their allies, the Bohemians, were, however, so bravely resisted by the Markgraf Ernst, who completely routed them, that Carlmann, the son of Louis the German, wedded his daughter Luitswinda. In 858, Carlmann had conceived the project of a nearer alliance between the Slavi and the Germans, for which a good foundation had been laid in the mountains by Graf Gerold and the bishop Virgilius, and for this reason attempted to render himself independent of his father, who overcame him, and removed the Markgraf Ernst, AD 863; upon this, Carlmaim allied himself with Rastiz of Moravia, but was again defeated by his father, who nominated Gunthachar Markgraf of Austria; but this Markgraf making common cause with Rastiz, Carlmann sought to make amends for his former derelictions by marching against them on his father's behalf. He was victorious, killed Gunthachar, and caused Rastiz, who was betrayed into his hands by his nephew, Suatopluk, to be deprived of sight, AD 870. Suatopluk was kept in honourable confinement at Ratisbon, where he lived in luxury and appeared to be perfectly resigned to his fate. Meanwhile, the German Markgrafs, Wilhelm and Engelschalk, treated the Moravians so arbitrarily that they rebelled, and Suatopluk, under pretext of appeasing them, went among them, but no sooner found himself once more among his countrymen, than, loading the Germans with imprecations, he caused his escort to be assassinated. Two Bavarian armies, sent into Moravia, were defeated, and Suatopluk not only preserved, but also extended his dominion, AD 872.

In the meantime, Louis the Younger, the second son of Louis the German, formed an alliance in Saxony and Thuringia, with Rathulf, the son of Tachulf, similar to that between Carlmann and Ernst, and kept the Sorbi and Bohemians in check on this side of the empire. On one occasion he surprised the Bohemians when engaged in a great wedding procession, and carried off the bride; whence arose the saying, ''No one knows who may lead home the bride.'' The Bohemians again rose, during a fresh incursion of the Norsemen into Germany, but were repulsed by Poppo, Rathulf's successor. Louis the German died in 876, leaving three sons, Carlmann, who inherited Bavaria and Carinthia, Louis the Younger, who succeeded to the throne of Saxony and Thuringia, and Charles the Thick, who reigned over Swabia. Carlmann died in 880, and left an illegitimate son, named Arnulf, who became Markgraf of Carinthia.

The race of Lothar no sooner became extinct than a quar­rel arose for the Lothringian inheritance, between Charles the Bald of France and Louis the Younger of Germany, and a bloody engagement took place near Andernach on the Rhine, which proved disastrous to Charles, who died during the following year, 876, leaving an only son, Louis the Stammerer, who died in 879, and left three sons, of whom the youngest, Charles the Simple, ere long only remained.

The natural result of these repeated and manifold divisions, was that the Norsemen and Arabians redoubled their daring attacks upon the empire; that in the East a powerful Slavian kingdom, unopposed by Germany, arose; and that, in the interior of the empire, the power of the pope on the one hand, and that of the great vassals on the other, steadily and surely increased, to the detriment of the imperial prerogative.

 

CXXVII.  The Incursions of the Norsemen

 

The bold Norse pirates continued to disturb the empire; their insolence surpassed all belief, for not content with plundering the coasts, they advanced in their small vessels up the rivers, and suddenly appeared far up the country before an alarm could be given. Their path was marked by heaps of dead and ruins. They unhesitatingly attacked even fortified cities, of which they took and destroyed several in France, and many a hard contest was fought by them against armies greatly their superiors in number. They always fought on foot, and with such extraordinary activity as easily to overcome the heavy cavalry of the French. If defeated, or in danger of being so, they hurried to their ships, which they rowed with such rapidity as to render pursuit impossible. So greatly and universally were they feared that prayers were read in the churches for deliverance from them.

In 841, headed by Ascar, they burned Rouen. In 843 they advanced up the Loire, but were repulsed in their attempt upon Tours. Undeterred by this check, they continued their depredations under their savage leader. Hasting, along the northern coasts of France, after which they ventured up the Garonne in order to plunder the south, and defeated Totila, duke of Gascony, but were surprised at Tarbes by the peasantry of Bigorre, and for the most part slain. Notwithstanding this disaster, a Norse fleet ventured further south in the following year, plundered Lisbon, advanced up the Guadalquivir into Andalusia, took Seville, and returned laden with booty. The Moors believed them to be evil wizards. Emboldened by this success, they reappeared in the Seine, and their leader, Regnar, took possession of Paris, whence Charles the Bald bribed him to depart on payment of seven thousand pounds of silver, AD 845. The Norsemen then turned eastward toward Germany, and devastated Friesland. The emperor, Lothar, had the folly again to give up Rustringerland, together with the fortress of Dorstad, to Rorich, a son of Harald, who had formerly held them, on condition of his guarding the country against the inroads of his countrymen. The treaty was speedily broken. Gottfried, Rorich's brother, again plundered Friesland, and advanced up the Loire as far as Tours, followed by the dreaded Hasting, who once more took Paris, marched into Burgundy, laid waste the whole country, and finally took possession of Tours, AD 853, where much treasure had been carried for safety, and which had formerly been the aim of those pirate hordes. No energetic opposition was made to his advance, and his departure was purchased by Charles the Bald with 685 pounds of gold, and 3,250 pounds of silver. Rome, ever clothed in fabled splendour by the imaginative pagans, now became the aim of the enterprising Hasting, who sailed with a hundred ships through the Straits of Gibraltar and plundered the coasts of Spain and Africa. On arriving in the harbour of Lucca, at that period a city of considerable importance and strongly fortified, which he mistook for Rome, he found the inhabitants engaged in the celebration of the Christmas festival, and sending a deputation of his followers into the city, under pretext of demanding an honourable burial-place for their chieftain, whom they as­serted to be dead, the unsuspecting Lombards permitted him to be carried in solemn procession to the church, where, springing from his coffin, he stabbed the officiating bishop to the heart, and at the head of his supposed mourners, all well-armed freebooters, sacked the city and retreated to his ships, heavily laden with booty and accompanied by a crowd of prisoners, consisting of the most beautiful of the women and maidens, whom he afterward had the barbarity to throw into the sea, together with the plunder, in order to lighten his vessels during a storm, a loss he repaired shortly after by sailing up the Rhone, and laying the country waste on both sides. Other Norse hordes also continually devastated the north of France, and forced Charles the Bald to purchase their departure with 3,000 pounds of gold, AD 860. In the year 860, Hasting consented to be baptized, and to swear allegiance to Charles on condition of receiving the title of Count of Chartres.

Two German warriors who undertook to guard the coasts are particularly remarkable. Baldwin, Count of Flanders, with the iron arm, seduced Judith, the youthful daughter of Charles the Bald, who, nevertheless, was the widow of two of the monarchs of England, of the father of Ethelwolf, and of his son Ethelbold. The discovery of their intercourse at first greatly enraged the French king, who was, however, finally induced to accept him as his son-in-law, and to place all the other minor Grafs in his neighbourhood beneath his jurisdiction. Robert, surnamed the Strong, a native of Saxony, who had become Count of Maine, equally distinguished himself against the Norsemen. He was the ancestor of Hugh Capet, who gave a dynasty to France. He fell in a bloody engagement in which the Norsemen were worsted, not far from Anvers, in 866. For some time after this the country remained undisturbed, the pirates having turned their attention to England, where Alfred, the wise king of that island, anxious for their departure from his coasts, at length found means to persuade their leader Hrolf (Hollo) to re-embark for Germany, where, after defeating Count Reinbold of Friesland, and taking Count Reichard of Hennegau prisoner, in 876, he laid the French territory waste, until bribed by Charles to depart with a gift of 5,000 pounds of silver, AD 878. Another Norman horde under Gottfried settled at Ghent and took possession of the castle of Haslau. Gott­fried formed an alliance with Hugo, the bastard of Lothringen, the son of Walrade, and married his sister Gisela. Hugo had, until now, vainly aspired to the possession of Lothringen, and had dwelt like a robber in the forests. The Slavi appear to have been also drawn into the plot. Some time before this, Ludolf had been nominated Graf of Saxony in order the better to defend the coasts against the Norsemen; his brother, Bruno, the founder of Braunschweig, Brunswick, marched at the head of the Saxon arrier-ban against Gottfried, but suffered a bloody defeat near Ebbekesdorf, in which he fell, together with two bishops and twelve Grafs. This battle was followed by several others, in which the Germans were victorious. Adam von Bremen relates that the Frisii, incited by their bishop, Rembert, fell upon the victorious Norsemen and slew upward of 10,000 of them. According to the account of the monk Regino, the German emperor, Louis the Younger, gained a great victory at Thimiun (Thuin on the Sambre), AD 879, but did not follow up his advantage, owing to his anxiety if possible to save the life of his illegitimate son, Hugo, whom he believed a prisoner, but who was afterward discovered among the slain. According to other chroniclers, this battle took place in 880, and the victor mentioned is Louis of France, the son of Louis the Stammerer. Both of these monarchs died in 882. The Slavian nations, the Sorbi, Daleminzii, and Bohemians, who, after the battle of Ebbekesdorf, had risen en masse and had made an inroad into Germany, were successfully repulsed by Poppo, duke of Thuringia. Unable to settle in Germany, the Norsemen, whom tyranny at home, as has already been mentioned, had driven from their native land, visited other countries, where they founded colonies and new kingdoms.

 

CXXVIII. Rise of the great Vassals and of the Popes

 

Charlemagne had arbitrarily removed the great dukes from office, while he favoured the lower orders of the nobility, but under the weak rule of Louis the Pious, and during the subsequent partition of the empire among his descendants, their favourites took advantage of the discord that prevailed among them to revive the title of Duke, and to arrogate to themselves such exorbitant power that the kings were forced to purchase the fidelity of their vassals by valuable gifts. The dukes and Markgrafs, moreover, who defended the fron­tiers against the Norsemen, the Moors, and the Slavi, attained considerable power by their military achievements.

The dukes of Lombardy were almost independent of the emperor. The national hatred of the Italians, and the ambition of the popes, supported them against Germany. They had, however, to endure many desperate encounters with the Moors. The dukes of Saxony and Thuringia became powerful and insolent as soon as they bad rendered them­selves necessary to the emperor by their exploits against the Norsemen and the Slavi. Ludolf, duke of Saxony, pronounced his dignity hereditary, and was succeeded in it by his son Otto. Thuringia also retained its dukes, although they were not all of the same race. Not long before this, Count Baldwin, with the iron arm, had firmly rooted his family in Flanders, where, then as now, the language was half Gallic (Walloon, Neustrian) and half German, although the country was a Neustrian or French fief. In Swabia, the house of the Welfs had already attained considerable importance, although they enjoyed no dignity under the empire. In Bavaria, Count Arbo aspired to independence, and entered into an alliance, AD 884, with the Moravian Suatopluk (also named Zwentibold), who, greatly extended his territory. He was, however, forced to submit. Burgundy, now possessed by the Lothringians, now by the French Carlovingians, asserted her independence after the death of Louis the Stammerer, and raised one of the native Grafs, Boso (who had seduced Innengarde, the daughter of Louis II, by whom he was invited to aspire to that dignity), at Montaille to the throne. His popularity with his countrymen rendered the attempts of the weak Carolingians to dispossess him of his crown unavailing, and he was succeeded by bis son Louis. He was also upheld by the clergy, whose unity was strengthened by each division of the power of the temporal rulers.

Vice and unbounded insolence already marked the first triumphs of the church. The history of the infamous Pope Joan belongs to this epoch. She is said to have been a German, named Jutta, Gerberta (several other names are also ascribed to her), who was born at Ingelheim, and received an excellent education from her father, a man of deep learning. Becoming enamoured of a monk at Fulda, she disguised herself in male attire, took the oath of celibacy, and joined her lover in his monastery. They subsequently travelled together as far as Greece, and Jutta appeared at Athens in the character of a public teacher. Here her lover died. She, however, gradually rose from one dignity to another, and was finally elected pope, when she took another lover. Dur­ing her pregnancy, according to the legend, an angel promised her forgiveness for her crime if she would consent to publish her shame before the assembled people, and she was accordingly delivered during a great and solemn procession. She was named Pope John VIII.

Nicolas I, who filled the papal chair in 858, greatly ex­tended the already firmly-rooted power of the church. His annulment of the marriage of Lothar II and Walrade, and his declaration of the illegitimacy of their son, proved the superiority of the authority of the pope over that of the emperor. As a means of placing the papal power on a firmer basis, he either fabricated or sanctioned the fabrication of the false decretals which issued from Mayence, a city which, since the time of St. Bonifacius, had remained in close alliance with Rome. It was one of the principal repositories of theological learning, and it was hence that the German deacon, Benedictus Levita, promulgated a collection of church ordinances or decretals, which declared the pope the absolute sovereign of the church, set him above the councils, made the nomination of all the bishops to depend upon him alone, reserved to him the decision in all clerical matters, and even in all trivial affairs left the appeal open to him. In order to furnish these decretals with a respectable antiquity, and to give them the validity of laws more venerable than the imperial dignity, their original composition was falsely ascribed to St. Isidorus, a Spaniard, who lived in the seventh century, and their authenticity was asserted by Nicolas, who founded upon them the universal dominion of the papal tiara. He died in 867, and was succeeded by Hadrian, who pursued the policy of his predecessor. The popes, his successors, were weak and licentious.

There were, besides Benedictus Levita and his popish party, several other German theologians, far more distinguished for learning, who were not all subservient to Rome. The school founded by Alcuin had the reputation of being free in its opinions and spirit. His disciples taught at Mayence, Fulda, Corvey, St. Gall, Reichenau, Prum, Weissenburg, etc., and in the monastic academies, and a dispute arose between those most noted among them, which may be regarded as the germ whence sprang the controversy of later times between Catholicism, Lutherism, and Calvinism. Paschasius Radbert, for instance, a monk of Corvey, an enthusiastic and imaginative man, defended the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, the worship of the Virgin Mary, and that of images and pictures, in a word, all that influ­enced the senses in the worship of God; his doctrine became the prevailing one in the Middle Ages; he it was who first aroused that romantic enthusiasm which rendered the mother of the Saviour the ideal of beauty, the mystic deity of every heart. Rhabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mayence, the most famous and the most learned of Alcuin's disciples, sought, on the contrary, to develop the minds of his followers instead of exciting their imaginations, and demanded, like Luther, not only free inquiry, and the free use of reason and philosophy, but also the introduction of the German language into the church service. Gottschalk, finally, a monk of Fulda, asserted, like Calvin, the predestination of each individual to salvation or damnation, and completely denied the existence of free-will and of meritorious deeds. Rhabanus opposed both sectarians, but only succeeded in overcoming Gottschalk. This poor monk, a native of Saxony, with an imagination still fired by enthusiastic feelings, roused by his late conversion to Christianity, obstinately adhered to a doctrine for which he pined twenty-one years in prison. Radbert's poetical belief, on the other hand, gained, in union with the false decretals, the, victory over the free-spirited efforts of Rhabanus, and although several distinguished disciples of the latter continued to assert the right of free in­quiry, and to demand the introduction of the German language into the church service, they were unable to stem the popular current, or to oppose the increasing power of the popes, who alone tolerated a blind belief and the use of the Latin tongue.

Among the last champions of mental freedom, Walafried Strabo, abbot of Reichenau, distinguished himself, like his master, Rhabanus, by a glossary in the German language, and by manuals on general knowledge; Atfried of Weissenburg, by the composition of an evangelical harmony in German, the History of Christ in verse, which however does not possess the poetical merit of "der Heliand", "the Saviour", a poem that not long ago became known; Notker Labec of St. Gall, by his German Psalms, and Willeram, abbot of Ebersberg, by a Paraphrase of the Song of Solomon. Rhegino, abbot of Prum, wrote a universal chronicle, and besides Eginhart, who has already been mentioned, an unknown monk from St. Gall, and the so-called Saxon poet (poeta Saxo), recorded the deeds of Charlemagne. Theganus, bishop of Treves, was the biographer of Louis the Pious, and the dissensions of his sons were chronicled by Nithard, the grandson of Charlemagne. The Annals of Fulda are also a celebrated German historical work of the ninth century. There are, moreover, several biographies of different saints and churchmen; for instance, that of Wala.

It was at this period that the prophetess, Theoda of Con­stance, who announced the near coming of Christ, was sentenced by the council of Mayence to be beaten as an impostor with stripes; while the hermit Meinhard, who was murdered by robbers' "in the dark forest," was canonized by the church, and the celebrated monastery of Einsiedeln in Switzerland was raised over his tomb.

 

CXXIX. Charles the Thick and Arnulf

 

Charles the Thick, the youngest of the sons of Louis the German, inherited in 882, on the death of his childless brother, Louis the Younger, all the German and Lothringian territory, with the exception of Burgundy; and in 884, also France, properly the inheritance of Charles the Simple, whose two elder brothers were dead, but who, being the issue of a marriage pronounced illegal by the pope, and, on account of his imbecility, being recognized by the French themselves as incapable of succeeding to the throne, Charles the Thick easily took possession of the country, and before long reunited France with Germany, in which he was greatly assisted by the pope, to whom he secretly made great concessions, in order to be acknowledged by him as legitimate heir to the crown.

Charles the Thick was good-natured and indolent. His favourite project, the restoration of the empire as it stood under Charlemagne, he sought to realize by means of bribes and promises, treaties of peace and other transactions, perfectly in conformity with his character, in which he ever unhesitatingly sacrificed honour to interest. The same means that had succeeded with the pope he imagined would prove equally successful in treating with the Norsemen, who, after the death of Louis the Younger, renewed their depredations under Gottfried, and laid the Rhine country waste. The palace of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle was converted by them into a stable. Bishop Wala fell bravely fighting at the head of an unequal force before the gates of Metz. The cities on the banks of the Rhine were burned to the ground, and the whole country between Liege, Cologne and Mayence laid desolate. At length Siegfried, the brother of Gottfried, was induced to withdraw his ravaging hordes by the gift of 2,000 pounds of gold, and for the additional sum of 12,000 pounds of silver (to defray which Charles the Thick seized all the treasures of the churches) consented to a truce of twelve years. Gottfried was, moreover, formally invested with Friesland as a fief of the empire. The Norsemen, how­ever, notwithstanding these stipulations, continued their depredations, advanced as far as the Moselle, and destroyed the city of Treves, but were suddenly attacked in the forest of Ardennes, by the charcoal men and peasants, and 10,000 of them cut to pieces, AD 883. Charles now became anxious to free himself from his troublesome vassal in Friesland, and the Markgraf Henry, who guarded the frontier at Grabfeld against the Sorbi, brother to Poppo, duke of Thuringia, the confidant of the emperor, invited Gottfried to a meeting, at which he caused him to be treacherously murdered. Gottfried's brother-in-law, the bastard Hugo, was also taken prisoner and deprived of sight. These acts of violence and treason were no sooner perpetrated than the Norsemen, glowing with revenge, rushed like a torrent over the country and laid it waste on every side, forcing their way in immense hordes up the Rhine, the Maese, and the Seine. On the Rhine they were opposed by Adalbert, of the race of Babenberg (Bamberg). The horde, meanwhile, that had advanced up the Seine, quickly reached Paris, encamped upon Montmartre, and besieged the city for a year and a half, when Charles at length marched to its relief at the head of a numerous army, but, instead of trying the issue of a battle, agreed to a most shameful treaty of peace, paid the Norsemen a large sum of money, granted to them free entry into Paris and the navigation of the Seine, besides confirming them in the possession of Friesland, AD 887. In the east, he also allowed the Slavi to gain ground, and neglected to support his nephew Arnulf, who could with difficulty defend himself against Suatopluk, who continued to extend his dominions; at the same time, the sons of the old Markgrafs Engelschalk and Wilhelm declared war against each other, and Aribo, a son of the former, went over to the Moravians. Suatopluk was victorious on the Danube, and laid the country waste, until Charles appeared in person to beg for peace, which was included in 884 on the Tulnerfeld. This monarch proved himself as weak and despicable in his private as in his public character, by carrying on a scandalous suit against his wife Ricardis, whom he accused of an adulterous connection with his chancellor, Bishop Luitward, and who proved her innocence by ordeal, by passing unharmed through fire in a waxen dress.

The great vassals of the empire, some of whom beheld in the fall of a sovereign they justly despised that of the Carolingian dynasty and their own aggrandizement, while others were influenced by their dislike of the treaties entered into with foreign powers, the pope and the Norsemen, and by an anxiety to make reparation for the loss of their national honour, convoked a great diet at Tribur in the valley of the Rhine, near Oppenheim, and deprived Charles of his crown, AD 887, a degradation he survived but one year.

The Anti-Carolingian party was partly successful. The French made choice of Odo, Count of Paris, as successor to the crown, while the Lower Burgundians in the Nether-Rhoneland (Arelat) elected Baso, the son of Louis, and the Upper Burgundians in the Western Alps, Count Rudolf, a descendant of the Welfs. In Italy the Dukes Guido of Spoleto and Berengar of Friuli made themselves so independent that they even set themselves up as competitors, through the favour of the pope, for the imperial crown. The Germans alone remained faithful to the Carolingian house, and elected, to the exclusion of Charles the Simple, who was still alive, Arnulf, the young and energetic, but illegitimate son of Carlmann, a brother of Charles the Thick, who had greatly distinguished himself as duke of Bavaria against the Slavi. The consideration in which he was held was so great that Odo came to Worms to do homage to him as emperor, a ceremony with which Arnulf contented himself, the Norsemen and Slavi affording him no opportunity for recalling his rebellious subjects to their allegiance.

Fresh hostilities instantly broke out on the part of the Norsemen, who made an irruption into Lothringia, and after a bloody engagement defeated the Germans' near Maestricht, where the archbishop of Mayence, who had marched against them at the head of his vassals, fell. Arnulf now took the field in person, and a dreadful battle ensued near Louvain, where the Normans had encamped, in which Arnulf, perceiving that the German cavalry were unable to cope with the norman foot-soldiers, who fought with unexampled dexterity, was the first to spring from his saddle; all the nobles of the arrier-ban followed his example, and the contest became a thick fray, in which the combatants strove hand to hand. Victory sided with the Germans. Siegfried and Gottfried fell on the field of battle, with several thousands of their followers, whose bodies also choked up the course of the Dyle, across which they had attempted to escape. Arnulf, in gratitude for this deliverance, made a great pilgrimage, and ordained that this day, St. Gilgentag, the 1st of September, should be kept as an annual festival. The Norsemen, panicstruck by this fearful catastrophe, henceforward avoided the Rhine, but made much more frequent inroads into the west of France.

Arnulf had also fresh struggles to sustain against the Slavi; the Obotrites crossed the frontiers and laid the country waste. The loyalty of Poppo and of the house of Babenberg, who had been in such close alliance with Charles the Thick, and who now found themselves neglected, became more than doubtful, and Arnulf was constrained to remove the former from his government. Engelschalk the Younger also proved faithless, seduced one of Arnulf's daughters, and then took refuge in Moravia. He was subsequently pardoned, and appointed to guard the Austrian frontier.

As a means of securing the eastern frontier of his empire, Arnulf made peace and entered into an alliance with Suatopluk, prince of Moravia, who was a Christian, in the hope that the foundation of a great Christian Slavian kingdom might eventually prove an effectual bulwark against the irruptions of their heathen brethren in that quarter. The Slavian Maharanen or Moravians had been converted to Christianity by St. Cyril and St. Methodius, who had visited them from Greece. Borzivoi, prince of Bohemia, being also induced to receive baptism by Suatopluk, his pagan subjects drove him from the throne, and he placed himself (with his wife, St. Ludmilla) under the protection of Suatopluk and Arnulf. Arnulf now gave Suatopluk Bohemia to hold in fee and unlimited command on the eastern frontier. As a proof of their amity, Suatopluk became sponsor to Arnulf's son, to whom he gave his name, Suatopluk, or Zwentibold; their friendship proved, nevertheless, of but short duration. The Moravian, perceiving that he could not retain his authority over the Slavi so long as he preserved his amicable relations with Germany, yielded to the national hatred, while at the same time he gave fresh assurances of amity to the emperor, AD 892. He was also supported in his projects by a great conspiracy among the Germans. The thankless Engelschalk again plotted treason, in which he was upheld by Hildegarde, the maiden daughter of Louis the German, the last of the legitimate descendants of Charlemagne, while the Italians, who dreaded Arnulf's threatened presence in their country, were not slow in their endeavours to incite the Moravian to open rebellion. Arnulf, however, discovered the conspiracy, caused Engelschalk to be deprived of sight, and imprisoned Hildegarde at Chiemsee, but afterward restored her to liberty.

An unexpected ally now came to Arnulf's assistance against Suatopluk. At that period there appeared in ancient Pannonia, first peopled by the Longobardi, and at a later date by the Avari, a nation named in their own language Magyars, or Hungarians (strangers), from whom the country derived its name, or Huns, as they were at that time termed by the Germans, who imagined that they again be­held in them the Huns of former times. They were pagans, wild and savage in their habits, and extraordinary riders. Leo, the Grecian emperor, had called them to his assistance against the Bulgarians, and they at first settled under seven leaders (among whom the most distinguished was one named Arpad), each of whom erected a fort or Burg, in the country known from that circumstance as Siebenburgen, but not long after turned westward and threatened Moravia. Arnulf formed an alliance with them, but never, as he has been accused, invited them into Germany, and Suatopluk, perceiving himself pressed on both sides, gladly remained at peace, AD 894.

In Italy, Guido of Spoleto was victorious over Berengar of Friuli, and in 891 was crowned emperor by the pope, Stephen V. He died in 894, and his son, Lambert, also received the imperial crown from Pope Formosus. Arnulf had been acknowledged emperor throughout the North, but not having been anointed or crowned by the pope, his right was liable to be disputed by Guido, and being entreated by both Berengar and Formosus, the latter of whom was held in derision by the insolent Spoletan, he resolved to march at the head of a powerful force into Italy. He has been blamed for quitting Germany, at that period not entirely tranquilized, and exposing himself and his army to the hot climate and diseases of Italy, and to the treachery of the inhabitants, which might easily have been turned upon themselves, and never could have endangered him on this side of the Alps. Arnulf's visit to Italy, the first so termed pilgrimage to Rome, which was undertaken with the double aim of having the ceremony of an imperial coronation performed and of receiving the oath of fealty from his rebellious vas­sals, has been regarded as a misfortune, because visits to Rome became from this period customary, and ever proved disastrous to the empire. But judgment ought to be given according to the difference of times and circumstances. The union between the people of Lombardy and of Rome was not so close at that time as it became at a later period; no Italian national interest had as yet sprung up in opposition to that of Germany: the Italians were uninfluenced by a desire of separating themselves from the empire, as in later times, but were rather inclined to assert their right over it. Guido, who was connected with the Carolingians, attempted to turn the separation that had taken place between the northern nations to advantage, and appropriated to himself the title of emperor; and, as far as these circumstances are concerned, Arnulf's visit to Italy appears to be justified. The visits undertaken at a later period to Rome were, on the other hand, unjustifiable in every respect, by their imposing, as will hereafter be seen, a foreign ruler on Lombardy and Rome, whose union had become gradually stronger, and whose erection into an independent state, to which they were entitled by their geographical position and by their similar­ity in language and manners, was ever prevented by fresh invasions.

Arnulf crossed the Alps, AD 894. Ambrosius, Graf of Lombardy, closing the gates of Bergamo against him, he took the city by storm and banged his faithless vassal at the gate. His further progress was impeded by the treachery of Odo, the French king, who took advantage of his absence to arm against him, while Rudolf of Upper Burgundy actually marched to the assistance of the Spoletans, and Arnulf was thus reluctantly forced to retrace his steps. He undertook a second expedition across the Alps in 896, and advanced into Tuscany, where he was amicably received by Adalbert, the faithless Markgraf, and by Berengar, who no sooner found themselves deceived in their expectation of making him subservient to their own interest and of easily outwitting him, than they assumed a threatening attitude. Arnulf, undismayed by the dangers with which he was surrounded, instantly marched upon Rome, whose gates were closed against him by the Spoletans, who successfully repelled every attack on the walls, and the emperor was on the point of retreating, when his soldiers, enraged at the sarcasms of the Italians who manned the walls, rushed furiously to the attack, and carried the city by storm. Lambert's adherents fled, and the rescued pope placed the imperial crown on Arnulf's head. A mode of vengeance to which the Italians have in every age had recourse was now but too successfully attempted against the life of the German hero; slow poison was administered, and he expired at Oettingen, on his way back to Germany. He was buried at Ratisbon.

On Arnulf's death, Lambert regained the sovereignty of Italy, and again reduced Berengar and Adalbert to submission. He was assassinated in 898, and his adherents invited Louis, the son of Boso, into Italy. This prince was a Carolingian, and grandson to Louis II, and at that time reigned over Burgundy. Bertha, the ambitious wife of Adalbert, who was residing at Lucca, and whose pride could not brook the idea that her son Hugo was merely Count of Arles and Louis's vassal, plotted his destruction. In order to lull his suspicions, she gave him a friendly reception, but no sooner beheld him entirely in her power than she betrayed him to Berengar, who caused him to be deprived of sight, AD 905. Hugo then made himself master of Lower Burgundy (Arelat), and after the assassination of Berengar, 925, was placed by his mother on the throne of Italy. This country seemed destined to be governed by women; after the death of Ber­tha, a wealthy Roman, named Theodora, seized the reins of government, revived the ancient spirit of paganism, and drew all in her licentious train. One of her lovers she caused to be elected pope, as John X. Her daughter Marozia, who surpassed her mother in, lewdness, married successively two of the sons of Bertha, first Guido, and then King Hugo, with whom she lived in the most profligate manner. She kept lovers, and he a harem of mistresses, to whom he gave the names of different heathen goddesses. Her son, Octavian, who became pope, as John XI, died suddenly, and Hugo was driven from his throne, AD 947, by his stepson, Alberich, the son of Guido and Marozia, who made Rome his seat of government, while a grandson of Berengar, Berengar II, reigned in Upper Italy. Hugo's former inheritance, and the Arelat or Lower Burgundy, were united with Upper Burgundy under Rudolf II, and even his Italian kingdom seemed forever lost to his remaining son, Lothar, whose wife, the beautiful Adelheid, was destined to decide the fate of Italy.

 

CXXX. The Babenberg Feud—The Hungarians

 

Arnulp had, during his lifetime, placed his son, Zwentibold, on the throne of Lothringia, in order to guard the frontiers of the empire against the Norsemen. This young prince entered into alliance with Odo of Paris, whose daughter he married, and by his insolence drew upon himself the dislike of the clergy. His ill-treatment of Rathod, archbishop of Treves, also rendered him unpopular with the commonalty. A rebellion broke out in Lothringia, and he lost both his crown and his life in a battle that took place on the Maese, AD 900. Odo's reign in France was also of short duration. Charles the Simple was replaced on the throne by the bishops and the vassals, who found their ad­vantage in the imbecility of their monarch. Charles created Regingar duke of Lothringia, and was forced to acknowledge Rollo, duke of Normandy.

In Germany, the great vassals, and the bishops also, usurped the direction of affairs. Louis, the second son of Arnulf, surnamed the Child, on account of his being at that time only in his seventh year, was, by the intrigues of Otto, duke of Saxony, and of Hatto, archbishop of Mayence, who sought to reign under his name, placed upon the imperial throne. The power of the bishops had become exorbitant without the aid of the popes, whose licentious conduct threatened at this period to endanger the church. Hatto, a man of daring courage and deep cunning, unprincipled and cruel, bore unlimited sway in France and in southern Germany, in which he was upheld by Otto, who sought to strengthen himself in Saxony, and to aggrandize his house by the aid of the church. Adalbert, the opponent of the Norsemen, Henry and Adelhart, the sons of Henry of Babenberg, finding themselves neglected, and pressed from the north by the Saxons, from the west by the bishops, set themselves up in opposition. Rudolf, bishop of Wurzburg, who was supported by Hatto, having obtained a considerable fief for his family by the abuse of his spiritual authority, Adalbert had recourse to arms, upon which Hatto, probably favoured by the ancient hatred of the rest of the vassals to the house of Babenberg, succeeded in having him put out of the ban of the empire. Henry was killed, and Adelhart was taken prisoner and executed. Adalbert, meanwhile, made a vigorous resistance, and slew Graf Conrad, Bishop Rudolf's brother, but was, ere long, closely besieged in his fortress of Bamberg. Hatto, finding other means unavailing, treacherously offered his mediation, and promised him a free and safe return to his fortress, if he would present himself before the assembled diet. Trusting to the word of the wily priest, the Graf issued from his fort, at whose foot he was met by Hatto, who, in the most friendly manner, proposed their breakfasting together within the fortress before setting off on their journey. The Graf assented, and returned with him to the fort; he then accompanied him to the diet, where Hatto declared himself exempted from his promise by his having restored the Graf unharmed to his fortress for the purpose of taking his breakfast, and that he now was free to act as he deemed proper. The assembled vassals, upon this, unanimously sentenced Adalbert to death, and he was beheaded. Conrad, Bishop Rudolf's nephew, was created duke of Franconia. This family of the Wurzburg bishop was surnamed the Rotenburgers, from Rotenburg on the Tauber; their descendants acquired, at a later period, far greater celebrity under the name of the Saliers.

The treacherous policy of Bishop Hatto, however, made a deep impression upon the minds of the commonalty, among whom loyalty was still held in higher honour than the sacred head of the churchman, and historians relate that, while the dukes overlooked the conduct of the bishop and yielded to the outbreak of the popular dissatisfaction, Hatto's name and the memory of his infamy were execrated and derided in popular ballads throughout Germany. His name represented the idea of hierarchical lust of power and avarice, and hence arose the legend that records his miserable death. It is said that, during a famine, a number of peasants who came to the bishop and begged for bread were by his order shut up in a great barn and burned to death. From the ruins there issued myriads of mice, which ceaselessly pursued the wretched bishop, who vainly attempted to elude them, and who at length, driven to despair, fled for safety to a strong tower standing in the middle of the Rhine near Bingen, but here also the mice continued their pursuit, swam across the water, and devoured him. The tower is still standing, and is known at the present day as the Mausethurm or mouse-tower. This example is a manifest proof that the popular fictions were founded upon fact, and clearly express the spirit of those times.

Salomon, bishop of Constance, who made a similar attempt to gain possession of an extensive feudal territory, was abbot of twelve rich monasteries, and equalled a prince in the number of his feudal retainers; he fell into a feud with the most powerful of the temporal lords of Swabia, Erchanger and Berthold, who then exercised the ducal authority as Kammerboten, or financial officers, which proved as deadly as that carried on by the bishop of Wurzburg against the house of Babenberg. In the Netherlands, Graf Baldwin of Flanders being opposed by Falko, the powerful archbishop of Rheims, he caused him to be assassinated.

The wild Magyars maintained possession of Hungary. After the death of Suatopluk, the kingdom of Moravia completely fell; the Bohemians again severed themselves from the German empire and divided the possessions of Suatopluk with the Hungarians, who, although governed after the death of Arpad by a boy thirteen years of age, their king, Zoldan, continually made fresh conquests along the Danube under their numerous and valiant leaders. Suatopluk the Younger fell in battle; his brother Moymir fled for protection to Duke Luitpold, the stanch defender of the German frontiers. Cussal, the leader of the Hungarians, was defeated in two great battles on the Enns and near to Vienna, and was left on the field, AD 900. Undismayed by these disasters, the Hungarians attacked the Carinthian Alps, while the Obotrites under Crito made an inroad into Saxony; but being again repulsed, they made an incursion into Italy and laid that country waste, AD 902. For a third time they appeared in such force that Luitpold, the son of Ernst, the former Markgraf, and the brother of Aribo, was defeated and killed near Presburg, and Louis, who was present in this battle, narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. They next invaded Thuringia, 907, where the new Markgraf, Burkhard, after making a valiant defense, also fell. The following year, 909, they entered Franconia, where the Markgraf Gebhard vainly attempted to stem their progress, and was killed. The death of these leaders at once proves the obstinate resistance made by the Germans, and the numerical superiority of the enemy. The Hungarian was irresistible in the fury of his onset, invincible in battle by his contempt of death, untiring in pursuit, or secured from it by the rapidity of his horse. His bloodthirstiness, his inhuman treatment of the unarmed and helpless, his destructive and predatory habits, astonished and terrified the milder German, who regarded him in the light of an evil spirit, as the Goth had formerly regarded the Hun, until he became habituated to him. The suddenness with which these mounted hordes appeared in the heart of the country and again vanished, greatly strengthened the belief in their su­pernatural powers. They also acted with a sort of religious fanaticism, from a belief that every enemy they slew would be their vassal in a future state. They were so bloodthirsty, that they would make use of the corpses of their opponents as tables during their savage feasts. They bound the captured women and maidens with their own long hair, and drove them in flocks to Hungary.

Louis the Child, dismayed by these repeated disasters, concluded a treaty of peace with these people, and consented to pay them a ten years' tribute. The Enns was declared the boundary of Hungary, and the wild Arpads erected their royal castle on the beautiful mountain on the Danube on which the splendid monastery of Molk now stands. The Germans were deeply sensible of the dishonour incurred by this ignominious tribute, of the danger of their internal dissensions, and of the misfortune of being governed by so imbecile a monarch. It was even publicly preached from the pulpit, "Woe to the land, whose king is a child!" The youthful monarch died, AD 911, before he had even reigned, and with him ended the race of Charlemagne in Germany.

 

CXXXI. Conrad the First

 

The extinction of the Carolingian line did not sever the bond of union that existed between the different nations of Germany, although a contention arose between them concerning the election of the new emperor, each claiming that privilege for itself; and as the increase of the ducal power had naturally led to a wider distinction between them, the diet convoked for the purpose represented nations instead of classes. There were consequently four nations and four votes: the Franks under Duke Conrad, whose authority nevertheless could not compete with that of the now venerable Hatto, archbishop of Mayence, who may be said to have been, at that period, the pope in Germany; the Saxons, Frieslanders, Thuringians, and some of the subdued Slavi, under Duke Otto; the Swabians, with Switzerland and Alsace, under different Grafs, who, as the immediate officers of the crown, were named Kammerboten, in order to distinguish them from the Grafs nominated by the dukes; the Bavarians, with the Tyrolese and some of the subdued eastern Slavi, under Duke Arnulf the Bad, the son of the brave Duke Luitpold. The Lothringians formed a fifth nation, under their duke Regingar, but were at that period incorporated with France.

The first impulse of the diet was to bestow the crown on the most powerful among the different competitors, and it was accordingly offered to Otto of Saxony, who not only possessed the most extensive territory and the most warlike subjects, but whose authority, having descended to him from his father and grandfather, was also the most firmly secured. But both Otto and his ancient ally, the bishop Hatto, had found the system they had hitherto pursued, of reigning in the name of an imbecile monarch, so greatly conducive to their interest that they were disinclined to abandon it. Otto was a man who mistook the prudence inculcated by private interest for wisdom, and his mind, narrow as the limits of his dukedom, and solely intent upon the interests of his family, was incapable of the comprehensive views requisite in a German emperor, and indifferent to the welfare of the great body of the nation. The examples of Boso, of Odo, of Rudolf of Upper Burgundy, and of Berengar, who, favoured by the difference in descent of the people they governed, had all succeeded in severing themselves from the empire, were ever present to his imagination, and he believed that as, on the other side of the Rhine, the Frank, the Burgundian, and the Lombard, severally obeyed an independent sovereign, the East Frank, the Saxon, the Swabian, and the Bavarian, on this side of the Rhine, were also desirous of asserting a similar independence, and that it would be easier and less hazardous to found a hereditary dukedom in a powerful and separate state than to maintain the imperial dignity, undermined as it was by universal hostility.

The influence of Hatto and the consent of Otto placed Conrad, duke of Franconia, on the imperial throne. Sprung from a newly-risen family, a mere creature of the bishop, his nobility as a feudal lord only dating from the period of the Babenberg feud, he was regarded by the church as a pliable tool, and by the dukes as little to be feared. His weakness was quickly demonstrated by his inability to retain the rich allods of the Carolingian dynasty as heir to the imperial crown, and his being constrained to share them with the rest of the dukes; he was, nevertheless, more fully sensible of the dignity and of the duties of his station than those to whom he owed his election probably expected. His first step was to recall Regingar of Lothringia, who was oppressed by France, to his allegiance as vassal of the empire.

Otto died in 912, and his son Henry, a high-spirited youth, who had greatly distinguished himself against the Slavi, ere long quarrelled with the aged Bishop Hatto. According to the legendary account, the bishop sent him a golden chain, so skilfully contrived as to strangle its wearer. The truth is that the ancient family feud between the house of Conrad and that of Otto, which was connected with the Babenbergers, again broke out, and that the emperor attempted again to separate Thuringia, which Otto had governed since the death of Burkhard, from Saxony, in order to hinder the over preponderance of that ducal house. Hatto, it is probable, counselled this step, as a considerable portion of Thuringia belonged to the diocese of Mayence, and a collision between him and the duke was therefore unavoidable. Henry flew to arms, and expelled the adherents of the bishop from Thuringia, which forced the emperor to take the field in the name of the empire against his haughty vassal. This unfortunate civil war was a signal for a fresh irruption of the Slavi and Hungarians. During this year the Bohemians and Sorbi also made an inroad into Thuringia and Bavaria, and in 913 the Hungarians advanced as far as Swabia, but being surprised near Oetting by the Bavarians under Arnulf, who on this occasion bloodily avenged his father's death, and by the Swabians under the Kammerboten, Erchanger and Berthold, they were all, with the exception of thirty of their number, cut to pieces. Arnulf subsequently embraced a contrary line of policy, married the daughter of Geisa, king of Hungary, and entered into a confederacy with the Hungarian and the Swabian Kammerboten, for the purpose of founding an independent state in the south of Germany, where he had already strengthened himself by the appointment of several Markgrafs, Rudiger of Pechlarn in Austria, Rathold in Carinthia, and Berthold in the Tyrol. He then instigated all the enemies of the empire simultaneously to attack the Franks and Saxons, at that crisis at war with each other, A.D. 915, and while the Danes under Gorm the Old, and the Obotrites, destroyed Hamburg, immense hordes of Hungarians, Bohemians and Sorbi laid the country waste as far as Bremen.

The emperor was, meanwhile, engaged with the Saxons. On one occasion, Henry narrowly escaped being taken prisoner, being merely saved by the stratagem of his faithful servant, Thiatmar, who caused the emperor to retreat by falsely announcing to him the arrival of a body of auxiliaries. At length a pitched battle was fought near Merseburg between Henry and Eberhard, AD 915, the emperor's brother, in which the Franks were defeated, and the superiority of the Saxons remained, henceforward, unquestioned for more than a century. The emperor was forced to negotiate with the victor, whom he induced to protect the northern frontiers of the empire while he applied himself in person to the re-establishment of order in the south.

In Swabia, Salomon, bishop of Constance, who was sup­ported by the commonalty, adhered to the imperial cause, while the Kammerboten were unable to palliate their treason, and were gradually driven to extremities. Erchanger, relying upon aid from Arnulf and the Hungarians, usurped the ducal crown and took the bishop prisoner. Salomon's extreme popularity filled him with such rage that he caused the feet of some shepherds, who threw themselves on their knees as the captured prelate passed by, to be chopped off. His wife. Bertha, terror-stricken at the rashness of her husband and foreseeing his destruction, received the prisoner with every demonstration of humility, and secretly aided his escape. He no sooner reappeared than the people flocked in thousands around him: "Heil Herro! Heil Liebo!" ("Hail, master! Hail, beloved one!") they shouted, and in their zeal attacked and defeated the traitors and their adherents. Berthold vainly defended himself in his mountain stronghold of Hohentwiel. The people so urgently demanded the death of these traitors to their country that the emperor convoked a general assembly at Albingen in Swabia, sentenced Erchanger and Berthold to be publicly beheaded and nominated Burkhard, AD 917, whose father and uncle had been assassinated by order of Erchanger, as successor to the ducal throne.—Arnulf withdrew to his fortress at Salzburg, and quietly awaited more favourable times. His name was branded with infamy by the people, who henceforth affixed to it the epithet of "The Bad," and the Nibelungenlied has perpetuated his detested memory.

Conrad died, in 918, without issue. On his death-bed, mindful only of the welfare of the empire, he proved himself deserving even by his latest act of the crown he had so worthily worn, by charging his brother Eberhard to forget the ancient feud between their houses, and to deliver the crown with his own hands to his enemy, the free-spirited Henry, whom he judged alone capable of meeting all the exigencies of the state. Eberhard obeyed his brother's injunctions, and the princes respected the will of their dying sovereign.