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 right to appoint the bishops, to coin money and to issue laws. A similar conflict took place between Arnulf’s son and successor Eberhard and Otto the Great; but Eberhard was less successful than his father, for in 938 he was driven from Bavaria, which was given by Otto with reduced privileges to the late duke’s uncle, Bertold; and a count palatine in the person of Eberhard’s brother Arnulf was appointed to watch the royal interests. When Bertold died in 947 Otto conferred the duchy upon his own brother Henry, who had married Judith, a daughter of Duke Arnulf. Henry was disliked by the Bavarians and his short reign was spent mainly in disputes with his people. The ravages of the Hungarians ceased after their defeat on the Lechfeld in 955, and the area of the duchy was temporarily increased by the addition of certain adjacent districts in Italy. In 955 Henry was succeeded by his young son Henry, surnamed the Quarrelsome, who in 974 was implicated in a conspiracy against King Otto II. The reason for this rising was that the king had granted the duchy of Swabia to Henry’s enemy, Otto, a grandson of the emperor Otto the Great, and had given the new Bavarian East Mark, afterwards known as Austria, to Leopold I., count of Babenberg. The revolt was, however, soon suppressed; but Henry, who on his escape from prison renewed his plots, was formally deposed in 976 when Bavaria was given to Otto, duke of Swabia. At the same time Carinthia was made into a separate duchy, the office of count palatine was restored, and the church was made dependent on the king instead of on the duke. Restored in 985, Henry proved himself a capable ruler by establishing internal order, issuing important laws and taking measures to reform the monasteries. His son and successor, who was chosen German king as Henry II. in 1002, gave Bavaria to his brother-in-law Henry of Luxemburg; after whose death in 1026 it passed successively to Henry, afterwards the emperor Henry III., and to another member of the family of Luxemburg, as Duke Henry VII. In 1061 the empress Agnes, mother of and regent for the German king Henry IV., entrusted the duchy to Otto of Nordheim, who was deposed by the king in 1070, when the duchy was granted to Count Welf, a member of an influential Bavarian family. In consequence of his support of Pope Greegory VII. in his quarrel with Henry, Welf lost but subsequently regained Bavaria; and was followed successively by his sons, Welf II. in 1101, and Henry IX. in 1120, both of whom exercised considerable influence among the German princes. Henry was succeeded in 1126 by his son Henry X., called the Proud, who obtained the duchy of Saxony in 1137. Alarmed at this prince’s power, King Conrad III. refused to allow two duchies to remain in the same hands; and, having declared Henry deposed, he bestowed Bavaria upon Leopold IV., margrave of Austria. When Leopold died in 1141, the king retained the duchy himself; but it continued to be the scene of considerable disorder, and in 1143 he entrusted it to Henry II., surnamed Jasomirgott, margrave of Austria. The struggle for its possession continued until 1156, when King Frederick I. in his desire to restore peace to Germany persuaded Henry to give up Bavaria to Henry the Lion, a son of Duke Henry the Proud.

A new era of government set in when, in consequence of Henry being placed under the imperial ban in 1180, the duchy was given by Frederick I. to Otto, a member of the old Bavarian family of (q.v.), and a descendant of the counts of Scheyern. During the years following the destruction of the Carolingian empire the borders of Bavaria were continually changing, and for a lengthened period after 955 this process was one of expansion. To the west the Lech still divided Bavaria from Swabia, but on three other sides the opportunities for extension had been taken advantage of, and the duchy embraced an area of considerable dimensions north of the Danube. During the later years of the rule of the Welfs, however, a contrary tendency had operated, and the extent of Bavaria had been reduced. The immense energies of Duke Henry the Lion had been devoted to his northern rather than his southern duchy, and when the dispute over the Bavarian succession was settled in 1156 the district between the Enns and the Inn had been transferred to Austria. The increasing importance of the mark of Styria, erected into a duchy in 1180, and the county of Tirol, had diminished both the actual and the relative strength of Bavaria, which was now deprived on almost all sides of opportunities for expansion. The neighbouring duchy of Carinthia, the great temporal possessions of the archbishop of Salzburg, as well as a general tendency to independence on the part of both clerical and lay nobles, were additional forces of similar influence.

When Otto of Wittelsbach was invested with Bavaria at Altenburg in September 1180 the duchy was bounded by the Böhmerwald, the Inn, the Alps and the Lech; and the power of the duke was practically confined to his extensive private domains around Wittelsbach, Kelheim and Straubing. Otto only enjoyed his new dignity for three years, and was succeeded in 1183 by his son Louis I., who took a leading part in German affairs during the earlier years of the reign of the emperor Frederick II., and was assassinated at Kelheim in September 1231. His son Otto II., called the Illustrious, was the next duke, and his loyalty to the Hohenstaufen caused him to be placed under the papal ban, and Bavaria to be laid under an interdict. Like his father, Otto increased the area of his lands by purchases; and he had considerably strengthened his hold upon the duchy before he died in November 1253. The efforts of the dukes to increase their power and to give unity to the duchy had met with a fair measure of success; but they were soon vitiated by partitions among different members of the family which for 250 years made the history of Bavaria little more than a jejune chronicle of territorial divisions bringing war and weakness in their train. The first of these divisions was made in 1255 between Louis II. and Henry I., the sons of Duke Otto II., who for two years after their father’s death had ruled Bavaria jointly; and by it Louis obtained the western part of the duchy, afterwards called Upper Bavaria, and Henry secured eastern or Lower Bavaria. In the course of a long reign Louis, who was called the Stern, became the most powerful prince in southern Germany. He was the uncle and guardian of Conradin of Hohenstaufen, and when this prince was put to death in Italy in 1268, Louis and his brother Henry inherited the domains of the Hohenstaufen in Swabia and elsewhere. He supported Rudolph, count of Habsburg, in his efforts to secure the German throne in 1273, married the new king’s daughter Mechtild, and aided him in campaigns in Bohemia and elsewhere. For some years after Louis’ death in 1294 his sons Rudolph I. and Louis, afterwards the emperor Louis IV., ruled their duchy in common; but as their relations were never harmonious a division of Upper Bavaria was made in 1310, by which Rudolph received the land east of the Isar together with the town of Munich, and Louis the district between the Isar and the Lech. It was not long, however, before this arrangement led to war between the brothers, the outcome of which was that in 1317, three years after he had been chosen German king, Louis compelled Rudolph to abdicate, and for twelve years ruled alone over the whole of Upper Bavaria. But in 1329 a series of events induced him to conclude the treaty of Pavia with Rudolph’s sons, Rudolph and Rupert, to whom he transferred the Palatinate of the Rhine, which had been in the possession of the Wittelsbach family since 1214, and also a portion of Upper Bavaria north of the Danube, which was afterwards called the Upper Palatinate. At the same time it was decided that the electoral vote should be exercised by the two lines alternately, and that in the event of either branch of the family becoming extinct the surviving branch should inherit its possessions.

Henry I. of Lower Bavaria spent most of his time in quarrels with his brother, with Ottakar II. of Bohemia and with various ecclesiastics. When he died in February 1200 Lower Bavaria was ruled by his three sons, Otto III., Louis III. and Stephen I. Louis died childless in 1296; Stephen left two sons at his death in 1310, namely, Henry II. and Otto IV., and Otto, who was king of Hungary from 1305 to