Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/503

Rh GERMANY emperor’s idea was tl1at, as church lands and offices could not be hereditary, their holders would necessarily favour the crown. But he forgot that the church had a head beyond Germany, and that tl1e passion for the rights of an 485 siblc Otto placed himself at the head of a great army, and 973- marched to Paris. The approach of winter compelled him Invasi to return without taking the city, which was well fortiﬁed; Of but soon afterwards Lothair gave up all claim to Lorraine, Franc‘ SAXON EMpEaons.] Otto II. Civil wars. - vassal. order may be not less intense than that for the rights of a family. While the empire was at peace with the popes, the prelates did strongly uphold it, and their inﬂuence was unquestionably, on the whole, higher than that of rude secular nobles. But with the empire and the papacy in conflict, they could not but abide, as a rule, by the autho- rity which had the most_ sacred claims to their loyalty. From all these circumstances it curiously happened that the sovereign who did more than almost any other to raise the royal power, was also the sovereign who, more than any other, wrought its decay. Otto II. (973-983) had been crowned king and co- imperator in his father’s lifetime. His troubles began within a year in Bavaria, which was now a very great duchy, not only including the valley of the Inn, but reaching 111) along the western frontier of Bohemia and the eastern frontiers of Swabia and Franconia as far as the Bohemian Forest. Henry, the brother of Otto I., had died soon after the battle of the Lechfeld, and had been suc- ceeded by a young son, who, as he grew up, showed himself of so contentious adisposition that he was known as Henry the Wrangler. This young duke’s sister had married the aged duke of Swabia, over whom she had absolute control, so that the younger branch of the house of Saxony had acquired an importance which the emperor could not affect to ignore. Taking offence at some action of Otto’s, Henry the Vrangler conspired against him and rebelled. This first rebellion was easily put down, b11t Henry soon escaped from the imprisonment to which he was condemned, and then Bavaria was the scene of a war which gave occasion to great bloodshed. When at last Henry was overcome, his duchy was taken from him and granted to one of the emperor’s cousins, a son of Ludolf, who had caused so much anxiety to Otto I. As this prince had already received Swabia, Otto was able, without seeming to be harsh, to deprive Bavaria of some of its importance. The southern part, Carinthia, which had hitherto been a march, was separated from it and made a duchy; and the eastern march, Austria, was also taken away, and formally made over to Liutpold, of the Babenberg family, who had already ruled it for some time, and had proved himself a faithful Another member of the same house was invested with the Nordgau, a part of Bavaria _to the north of the Danube, which formed a sort of wedge between Bohemia on the one hand and Franconia and Swabia on the other. Having arrived at this settlement, Otto went to chastise the unruly Bohemians; but while he was away war was begun behind him by the new duke of Carinthia, who, forgetful of the beneﬁts he had just received, rose to avenge the wrongs of his friend Duke Henry. The emperor hastily concluded peace with Bohemia, the duke of which did him homage; and the rising was quickly p11t down. Henry was made over to the keeping of the bishop of Utrecht, and Carinthia received another duke. In his anxiety to obtain southern Italy, Otto I. had secured, as wife for his successor, Theophano, daughter of the Byzantine emperor, to whom southern Italy belonged. Otto II., having all his father’s ambition with much of his strength and haughtiness, and being in the full ﬂush of youth, longed to get away from Germany and to claim these remote possessions. But he was detained for some time by a sudden and unscrupulous invasion of Lower Lorraine in 978 by Lothair, king of France. So stealthily did the Invader advance that the emperor and empress, who hap- pened at the time to be at Aix-la-Chapelle, had just time to escape before the town was seized. As quickly as pos- and peace was restored. At this time Lower Lorraine, which Otto I. had added to the crown lands, was held as a ﬁef of the German sovereign by King Lothair’s brother Charles, the last of the Carolings, whose claims to the French'thr'one were afterwards put aside in favour of Hugh the Great. At last Otto was able to fulfil the wish of his heart, and he did not again see Germany. His claims to southern Italy were vehemently opposed; and in 982 he suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Greek emperor’s sub- Dc-fca jects and their allies, the Saracens of Sicily,—saving his life 0tt0_i The tidings of this crushing blow It by a romantic adventure. cast gloom over Germany, and in the north and east the Danes and Slavs, as if the spell by which the ﬁrst Otto had held them was broken, attacked the Germans with an audacity and a determination they had never before dis- played. With the Danes the Saxons were able to cope; but the Slavs, who vehemently detested the German yoke, fought with such desperate courage that much of the work effected by Margraves Billung and Gero was altogether undone. They had seemed to be decisively conquered, but two centuries passed before they were beaten back to the position to which they had been reduced in the previous reign. Such were the ﬁrst fruits of the assumption of the imperial title. About a year before his sudden death in Rome, Otto held a diet in Verona which was attended by the German princes. They would not help him in his Italian enterprise, which was extremely unpopular; b11t they consented to recognize his infant son Otto as his successor. This child they took back with them to Germany, and after the emperor’s death he was crowned in Aix—la—Chapelle. Henry the Wrangler, as his near relative, was released fron1 conﬁnement and made his guardian ; but as this restless prince soon showed an inclina- tion to secure the crown for himself, the infant king was taken from him and placed under the charge of his mother Theophano. Afterwards, when she died, he lived with his grandmother, the empress Adelaide. ladies acted, one after the other, as regent, the chief func- tions of government were discharged by Willigis, archbishop of Mainz, a vigorous prelate who had risen from a humble rank to the highest position in the German Church. He was aided by the princes of the state, each of whom claimed to have a voice in the supreme administration. Under these conditions vigorous rule was impossible ; so that during the minority of Otto the royal authority was greatly weak- ened. In Bavaria, after the death of Henry the Wrangler, the higher vassals, without waiting for the appointment of a duke, returned to the ancient German custom, and elected Heury’s son. A similar election took place in Thuringia, the head of which, although not a duke, ranked with the chief aristocracy. And along the coasts of Friesland was formed a virtually free state, which was at a later time the scene of a long-contin11ed contest between the Frieslanders and the powerful co11nts of Holland. At the age of ﬁfteen Otto III. (983-1002) was declared to have reached his majority. He had been so carefully trained in all the léa"rn- ing of the age that he was called “ the wonder of the wo'rld_,” and a certain fascination still attaches to his imaginative, although somewhat fantastic, nature. His mother having imbued him with the extravagant conceptions of the Byzantine emperors, he introduced into his court an amount of splendour and ceremonial that had hitherto been unknown in western Europe. While these two- aly. Otto Most of his time he spent in Hollie, S.-hen and here he cherished a vast scheme by which he was ti) 'do’°f Oi‘ much more than recall the empire of Charles the Great in‘ its whole extent. As the heir of the Western emperors, and