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Rh under the Margrave Dietrich, the Archbishop of Magdeburg and the Bishop of Halberstadt succeeded in checking the advance in a battle fought at Belkesheim, just west of the Elbe, but they failed to re-establish German influence or Christianity among the heathen tribes. The work of Otto the Great, carried on so successfully in the earlier years of his son's reign, received a blow from which it did not recover for more than a century.

It only remains to notice the complete reversal of German policy which is marked by the diet held at Verona in June 983. The death of Otto, Duke of Swabia and Bavaria, at Lucca on his way back to Germany necessitated a new arrangement for the southern duchies. His death, combined with the disasters in Germany and Italy, involved the ruin of the party represented by the descendants of Otto the Great's first marriage, the two Duke Ottos, and the ascendancy of what we may call the Adelaide party. The Emperor was not strong enough to stand against the powerful influences of his mother. Not only did he make her regent in Italy, but further he deposed Otto of Carinthia from his duchy which, reunited with Bavaria, he gave to Henry the Younger. The unfortunate Otto was therefore kept from his duchy through no fault of his own, until Otto III, taking advantage of another vacancy in 995, reinstated him in his former dignity. Swabia was granted to Conrad of the Franconian family. At the same diet the infant son of the Emperor was chosen as the successor to the throne.

Misfortune and the Italian climate combined to ruin the Emperor's health. After a short illness he died at Rome on 7 December 983 in his twenty-eighth year and was buried in the church of St. Peter.

Otto III, then three years old, was being crowned at the Christmas festival at Aix-la-Chapelle when news arrived of his father's death at Rome. The question of the regency at once arose. It would, according to German practice, fall to Henry the Wrangler, the deposed and imprisoned Duke of Bavaria, but Byzantine custom favoured the Empress Mother and it was not likely that Theophano would allow her claim to be lightly passed over. Henry, who was immediately set at liberty by the Bishop of Utrecht, took prompt action. Moreover, it soon became evident that he was aiming not at the regency but at the crown. He hurried to Cologne and before his opponents had time to consider the situation, he had taken the young Otto out of the hands of Archbishop Willigis of Mayence. Though he won the support of the powerful Archbishops of Cologue, Trèves and Magdeburg and the Bishop of Metz, yet a strong party in Lorraine collected to withstand him. The strength of this party lay in the influential family of Godfrey, the Count of Hainault and Verdun. His son Adalbero was Bishop of Verdun, his brother, also Adalbero, was Archbishop of Rheims. With the archbishop worked the most remarkable man of the tenth century, Gerbert of Aurillac. In 983 Otto II had made him abbot of the Lombard