Page:Cambridge Medieval History Volume 3.pdf/232

Rh entered into a secret compact with Henry by which they should, when the opportunity offered, combine against Otto. The crown was to be Henry's reward. Early in the year 939 everything was in readiness. The arrangements were made at a gathering of malcontents at Saalfeld. Gilbert of Lorraine had been drawn into the ranks of the disaffected dukes. All the three leaders, Henry, Everard, and Gilbert, according to Liudprand, Bishop of Cremona, had designs on the throne, trusting perhaps to the fortunes of war to bring one or the other of them to the uppermost. Hostilities broke out in Lorraine. Otto hastened to the scene of action, while the enemy were advancing towards the Rhine near Xanten. The paucity of boats enabled but a small portion of the royalist troops to cross the river before their adversaries came in sight. While the king, with the main body of his army, watched from the opposite bank, this small detachment, perhaps no more than a hundred men, by strategy, by cunning, and by a vigorous attack in front and rear, won a victory on the field of Birthen. It was little short of a miracle, a miracle attributed by the legend to the Holy Lance which Otto held in his hand. This success relieved Otto from all immediate danger. The opposition broke down in Saxony and Thuringia. Dortmund, one of Henry's fortresses, had submitted to the king as he marched towards the Rhine; after the fight at Birthen, in which it was rumoured that Henry had fallen, Merseburg and Scheidungen on the Unstrut alone held out. To the former of these Henry fled after his defeat with but nine followers. After a siege of two months the garrison capitulated and Henry was granted a truce of thirty days to quit Saxony. By the beginning of June the first campaign was over and, says the Saxon historian, "there was rest from civil war for a few days."

The second campaign of the year 939 had a different and more alarming aspect. It received the support of Louis IV (d'Outremer), son of Charles the Simple, who on the death of Raoul of Burgundy had been summoned from his place of refuge at the court of his uncle King Aethelstan and set on the throne of France by Hugh the Great, the powerful Count of Paris. The latter had expected to have things his own way under a king of his own choosing, but soon found he was mistaken. Louis had no intention of being a puppet in the hands of the great duke and at once asserted his independence of action. Within a year of his accession he had alienated from himself all the powerful nobility of France. When, therefore, Louis, in the hope of attaching Lorraine once more to the West Frankish dominions, joined forces with Duke Gilbert, Otto found abundant assistance ready at hand among the discontented feudatories of France. In September he actually entered into some sort of compact with Louis' chief antagonists Hugh the Great, Herbert, Count of Vermandois, William, Duke of Normandy, and Arnulf, Count of Flanders. Henry, the king's brother, liberated from Merseburg, hastened to join Gilbert in Lorraine. Otto, following in hot pursuit,