Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/374

Rh 352 SAXONY [HISTORY. a considerable amount of freedom by their sagacious con- queror. The first Capitulare Sajconicum, issued at Fader- born in 788, while very strict in maintaining Christianity and in punishing all rebellion, confirmed a great number of Saxon customs and laws. After 803 the laws were made milder, and no tribute except tithes was demanded. The people lived according to their former laws, 1 under grafs appointed by Charlemagne ; various bishoprics were founded, of which Osnabriick (783), Verden (786), and Bremen (787) are the earliest ; and tranquillity was still further secured by transplanting colonies of Saxons to other parts of the kingdom, and introducing Frankish colonies to take their place in Saxony. The land now gradually became an integral portion of the kingdom of the Franks. 2 Under Louis the German, to whom Saxony had fallen at the treaty of Verdun in 843, it was harassed by the inroads of the Normans and Slavs on either side, and, in order to cope with these, herzogs or dukes were appointed about 850 to keep the Saxon Mark, a narrow territory in Nordalbingia, on the west bank of the Elbe. These herzogs, remembering their predecessors or their ancestors (Ludolf, the first duke of Saxony, is said to have been a descendant of Wittekind), rapidly extended their power beyond the mark over the rest of Saxony, and thus founded the powerful duchy of Saxony. Otto the Illus- trious, who succeeded his brother Bruno as duke in 880, added Thuringia to the duchy, and attained such a pitch of power that he was offered the crown of Germany in 911. He refused the honour on the score of old age, but his son Henry the Fowler accepted it in 919, and founded the line of Saxon emperors which expired with Henry II. the Pious in 1024. Otto the Great, son of Henry I., bestowed the duchy of Saxony upon Hermann Billing or Billung, in whose family it remained till 1106. The power and in- fluence of Saxony during this period depended partly on the favour of the emperors, but chiefly on the sagacity and energy of the successive dukes. The Saxons were hostile to the Franconian emperors who succeeded the Saxon house, and in 1073 they rose in revolt against Henry IV. They were at first successful, but in 1075, at the battle of Langensalza, they were defeated by the emperor. The rebels were severely punished, though Otto of Nordheim, one of their leaders, was made administrator of the duchy. Taking advantage of Henry IV. 's troubles with the pope, they again rebelled and espoused the cause of Rudolf of .Swabia ; but in 1087, on the resignation of Hermann of Luxemburg, whom they had chosen king, they made peace once more with the emperor. Magnus was the last duke of the Billing line. The emperor Henry V. now (1106) presented the lapsed duchy to Lothair, count of Supplin- burg, who rapidly became the most powerful prince in Germany, and in 1125 was placed on the imperial throne by the influence of the papal party. Two years after his elevation he assigned the duchy of Saxony to his power- ful son-in-law Henry the Proud, who was already duke of Bavaria and had inherited the private possessions of the Billings in Saxony, in right of his mother, who was a daughter of Magnus. Henry had aspired to be emperor in 1138, and his successful rival Conrad III., wishing to reduce his power, alleged that it was unlawful for one prince to hold two duchies, and ordered him to resign Saxony. On his refusal, the emperor immediately de- clared both duchies to be forfeited. Henry died before the ensuing war was ended, and Conrad compromised 1 The Lex Saxonum, 19 titles of which have survived, was reduced to writing under Charlemagne. See under SALIC LAW. 2 The Heliand (Saviour), a religious poem ascribed to an unknown Saxon poet of the 9th century, is often cited as a proof of the rapid Christianization of the Saxons. It is also almost the only relic of their dialect matters by appointing his opponent's young son, after- wards known as Henry the Lion, to the duchy of Saxony, compensating Albert the Bear, the former imperial candi- date, with the independence of the North Mark of Saxony, afterwards called Brandenburg (see PRUSSIA, vol. xx. p. 2). In 1155 Henry received Bavaria from his cousin and per- sonal friend the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and thus became second only to the emperor in power. He added considerably to the extent of Saxony by conquest among the Wends, east of the Elbe, where the boundary had always been a fluctuating one. But Henry was not only powerful, he was also arrogant, and incurred the jealousy of the other princes, so that, when he quarrelled with the emperor and his lands were declared forfeited in 1180, he had no allies to assist him in his resistance. Westphalia, the principal part of Saxony, went to the archbishop of Cologne, the Saxon Palatinate to the landgrave of Thur- ingia, and other portions to other princes. A small district round Lauenburg, north of the Elbe, was assigned with the title of duke of Saxony to Bernhard of Ascania, son of Albert the Bear: Henry was reduced to submission in 1181 ; but his duchies could not be restored, and he was forced to content himself with Brunswick and Liine- burg. The duchy of Saxony was never restored in the old sense, in which it had been one of the four principal duchies of the empire, and embraced the territories now occupied by Westphalia, Oldenburg, Hanover, the Harz, and parts of Mecklenburg and Holstein. The new creation never rose to any importance. Bernhard of Ascania (1181-1212), before his accession as duke of Saxony, had held Anhalt and Wittenberg, to the south- east of Saxony, and separated from it by the Mark of Brandenburg; and when his grandsons John and Albert II. divided their inheritance in 1260 the latter placed hie seat at Wittenberg, and two tiny duchies arose Saxe- Lauenburg and Saxe-Wittenberg. Saxe-Lauenburg was now the only part of the great duchy which retained the name ; while Saxe-Wittenberg, the nucleus of the later electorate, transferred the name to entirely new soil. Both duchies claimed the electoral privileges, including the office of grand marshal (Erzmarschall), which had belonged to the original duke of Saxony, but the Golden Bull of 1356 confirmed the claims of Wittenberg. Rudolph IL (about 1370) is the first duke who formally styles himself elector (princeps elector). The small electorate was made still smaller in 1411 by the formation of Anhalt into a separate principality. In 1422 the Ascanian line became extinct with Albert III., and in 1423 the emperor Sigismund conferred their lands and titles upon Frederick, margrave of Meissen, and landgrave of Thur- ingia, to whom he was deeply indebted both for money and assistance in the Hussite wars. The new and more honourable style of elector of Saxony superseded Frede- rick's other titles, and the term Saxony gradually spread over all his other possessions, which included the country now known under that name. The early history of the electorate and kingdom of Saxony is thus the early history of the Mark of Meissen, the name of which now lingers only in a solitary town on the Elbe. 8 3 A different and considerably later use of the name Saxony may be conveniently mentioned here, for, though not based upon any political or ethnographical considerations, it is frequently referred to in German history. When Maximilian (1493-1519) fanned the ten great im- perial administrative circles, that part of the empire to the east of the Weser and north of the Erzgebirge was divided between the circles of Lower and Upper Saxony. The former, occupying the north-west of this territory, included the Harz principalities, Magdeburg, Brunswick, Mecklenburg, Bremen, and Holstein; the latter, besides Thuringia, the electorate of Saxony and Brandenburg, embraced the conquered Slavonic lands to the east and north, including Lusatia and Pome- rania. The lands which still preserve the name of Saxony are thus all within the limits of these circles.