Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/504

Rh 486 GERMANY [n1s'roRY. )00-24. the grandson of an Eastern emperor, he fancied that he was as little prosperous as in his government at home. might unite the entire known world under lus rule. Rome lolcslaus, who was now a powerful sovereign, had con- was to be its centre, and Germany but a province. In this quered Bohenna and Lusatia ; and so anxious was Henry be practical step he did take, but it was in a direction contrary posed this choice ; but their objections were overborne, and C°m"“l ’010S- to that desired by his subjects. The Poles, of whom we hear Conrad II. (1024-39) seemed to have no reason to dread ' ﬁrst during the reign of Otto I., and who inhabited the internal enemies. Very soon, however, he had to battle country immediately to the east of tlie Oder, had since his with a formidable conspiracy, and during nearly his whole time owed a vague allegiance to the Germans. They were reign he .was exposed to dangers of this kind ; for he was a now ruled by Boleslaus, a chief of an aggressive and deter- masterful king, looked with extreme jealousy on the rights mined spirit, who by ostentatious loyalty gained the good- the princes had acquired, and wished his crown to be the will of Otto III. The latter commissioned him to conquer symbol of a genuine central authority. He was remarkably the Pomeranians, a duty which he gladly and effectually successful in contending with rebellion; and the chief cause discharged, adding to the Pomeranians the Prussians and of his success was that he allied himself with a powerful some of the Bohemians. The large state thus formed the force, the signiﬁcance of which had not been detected by emperor made independent of Germany, probably in the previous sovereigns. Hitherto the vassals of great lords—— Mediate hope that it might form the centre for a province of his the mediate nobles——had been very much at the mercy of 11013195- future empire. Its Christian missions were severed from their superiors. Conrad, seeing that he and they had the church of Germany and formed into a new Polish 8. common danger, made them more independent. It was church; and the emperor himself founded the head see at not until nearly the end of his reign that he issued his Gnesen, where his friend Adalbert had met a martyr-’s famous edict in Italy, decreeing that no ﬁef-holder should death. This was done with the sanction of Pope Silvester, be deprived of his ﬁef without judgment of his peers ; but who at the same time established an independent national he carried out this policy from the beginning in Germany, church in Hungary, and encouraged Stephen to become the and even from the judgment of a ﬁef-holder’s peers there ﬁrst Magyar king, by sending him from Rome a golden was a right of appeal to the royal tribunals. The result crown. of this policy was that the inferior ﬁef-holders were unwill- Otto’s magniﬁcent plans received a fatal shock from ing to follow their lords against the king. Thus when Duke the insubordination of the Romans, for whose city he Ernest of Swabia, his stepson, rose against him,and appealed designed so much honour. When he died, perhaps by to his men, as in old times, to make his cause their own, poison, there was no representative of the elder branch of they refused, urging that the sovereign was the supreme the Saxon family, and several candidates came forward for protector of their liberties. Conrad soon revealed that em-yII. the throne. Henry II. (1002—1024), son and successor of his object was the same as that which Otto I. long pur- vague design he was warmly encouraged by Gerbert, the greatest scholar of the day, whom, as Silvester II., he raised to the papal see. Silvester saw that in such an empire, with such an emperor, it would not be diﬂicult for the papacy to become the real source of influence. .leanwhile Germany suffered severely from internal disorder and from the inroads of her rude neighbours; and when, in the year 1000—a year which Otto, with many others, feared might see the end of the world——he visited his northern kingdom, there were eager hopes that he would smite the national enemies with something of the vigour of his predecessors. But the imperial dreamer found it more interesting to go to Aix—la-Chapelle, and to descend iuto the tomb of the mighty Charles, beside whose gorgeously arrayed body, as it sat on its marble throne, he gave free scope to his fancy,—ap- parently under the strange impression that his was a spirit akin to that of the worldly and resolute conqueror. One Henry the Wrangler, and therefore the great-grandson of King Henry I. by a younger line, managed to" reach Aix-la- Chapelle before his chief rival, the duke of Swabia, and was there crowned. As he had not been elected, he was obliged to humble himself by going about among the princes and entreating their allegiance. His shattered health, querulous temper, and abject submission to priestly inﬂuence unﬁtted him for the great position to which he had raised himself, and his reign was an unfortunate one for Germany. For ten years civil war raged in Lorraine; in Saxony, too, torrents of blood were shed in petty quarrels. Hitherto it had been the right of the crown, when a duke or other prince died, to appoint his successor ; and obviously no royal right was of greater importance. In lIenry’s time the principle of to win back these lands that, notwithstanding his Christian zeal, he obtained the alliance of certain Slavonic tribes by undertaking that their religion should not be interfered with. Bohemia and Lusatia were for a time detached from the Polish kingdom, but they were reconquered, and after a war of fourteen years the Pole was a greater ruler than ever. Henry went three times to Italy, and was crowned Lombard king and emperor. Before he became emperor, in order to assert his right of sovereignty over Rome, he called himself king of the Romans ; and this was the designation borne by his successors 11ntil they received the higher title from the pope. Up to this time a sovereign crowned in Aix-la—Chapelle was simply “ king of the East Franks ” or “ king of the Franks and Saxons.” The great nobles now met at Oppenheim, and elected to Fran- The dukes of Collin“ Upper and Lower Lorraine, with a number of prelates, op- ‘l3'““-*3" the throne Conrad, a count of Franconia. sued,—not to do away with the duchies, but to get them, if possible, under his immediate control. The principle of inheritance he extended to the throne; and in his case it was recognized, his son Henry being crowned as his successor soon after he himself became king. To youug King Henry he granted Bavaria in ﬁef, when the reign- ing duke, by rising against him, forfeited his title; and afterwards, despite the bitter opposition of the nobles, be invested the same prince with Swabia, the ducal family of which died out. Carinthia, being vacant, was given to Conrad’s nephew. As Frauconia ever since thetime of Otto had remained in the hands of the sovereign, Saxony, Thur- ingia, and the two Lorraines were the only duchies of which Conrad was not more or less master. inheritance was virtually established in favour of the im- When Conrad mounted the throne, the safety of Germany Neigh- mediate vassals of the sovereign. He the more willingly was endangered from three different points. On the north b):::':;‘3 _l ' 5. made this concession because of his extravagant generosity to the church, in which, like Otto I., he looked for his main support. He had his reward in the attachment of the papacy, by which he was ultimately canonizcd; but he succeeded no better than his predecessors in counterbalancing the secular by the spiritual princes. In his foreign wars he Denmark was ruled by Canute, the great English sovereigu, on the cast was the wide Polish state, whose sovereign Bolcslaus crowned himself king, and still had possession of Bohemia and Lusatia ; to the south-east was Hungary, which, under Stephen I. , was rapidly becoming an organized and formidable power. Courad was prudeut enough to ask