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Rh and vassals, the peace which suspended, rather than closed, the Saracen war was no more conclusive than the fighting. When a celebrated general Nicephorus Phocas became Emperor in 963 his vigorous effort to succour the last semi-autonomous Greeks of Sicily ended in disaster, and an ignominious peace. Now he found himself on the defensive against the aggression of the new Romano-Germanic Empire and the Latin West. John XIII was trying to revive the decadent Latin Church in south Italy by carving out new archbishoprics for Capua and Benevento from his own Roman province; Otto the Great was acquiring Capua-Benevento as a vassal state. At first it seemed as if an arrangement were possible, for Otto asked for a Byzantine bride, Theophano, daughter of Romanus II, for his son Otto II, whom at Christmas 967 he had caused the Pope to crown co-regent Emperor; and his Venetian envoy promised that Otto would respect the Byzantine dominions in Italy. But in 968 the German monarch made a surprise attack on Apulia and, only after failing to take Bari, did he send Liudprand of Cremona to Constantinople to conclude the marriage-treaty. Otto must have thought it easier to fix the frontier with the territory he claimed already in his possession. The natural effect on the rude and soldierly Nicephorus was to make him badger Liudprand and prepare an expedition. The war was indecisive. The exiled King Adalbert, Nicephorus's Italian ally, could do nothing and eventually fled to French Burgundy where in 975 he died, while his brother Conrad submitted to Otto and received the march of Ivrea. Otto on his side when he warred in person could take no Apulian town and Paldolf Ironhead was captured by the Greeks, who yet were soon defeated again. It was the murder of Nicephorus in December 969 which brought a solution. The new Byzantine Emperor, John Tzimisces, had his hands full in the East; Otto saw the design of conquering Greek Italy was hopeless. By the intervention of Paldolf, released for the purpose, they came to terms, and in April 972 Theophano was married at Rome to Otto II. Events make it clear that Otto kept the suzerainty of Capua-Benevento and abandoned further schemes. Paldolf Ironhead's wide central Italian dominion after all formed a convenient buffer-state for both Empires, no matter to which he was a vassal.

Otto the Great did not long survive the settlement with Eastern Rome, as he died in Thuringia on 7 May 973. His character belongs to German history, but his work affected all Europe. He had created the Holy Roman Empire and in so doing had revived the conception of Charlemagne which moulded the thought and the development of Western Europe. The union of Germany and north Italy was his doing and the fate of both for centuries derives from the bias he gave their history. So, too, in immediate results he closes one era and begins another, for the times of anarchy and moral collapse following the wreck of Charlemagne's Empire come to an end, and a period of revival in government, in commerce and in civilisation is ushered in by the com-