Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/140

Rh During the 5th and 6th centuries the country was suc- cf^sively occupied by the Boii, Vandals, Heruli, Rugii, Joths, Huns, Lombards, and Avari. About 568, after the Lombards had settled in Upper Italy, the River Enns became the boundary between the Bajuvarii, a people of German origin, and the Avari, who had come from the east. In 788 the Avari crossed the Enns and attacked Bavaria, but were subsequently driven back by Charle magne, and forced to retreat as far as the Raab, their country from the Enns to that river being then made a part of Germany. It was taken by the Hungarians in 900, but was again annexed to Germany in 955 by Otho I. In 983 the emperor appointed Leopold I., of Babenberg or Bamberg, margrave of Austria, and his dynasty ruled the country for 263 years. He died in 994, and was succeeded by his son, Henry I., who governed till 1018. In 1156 Austria received an accession of territory west of the Enns, and was raised to a duchy by the Emperor Frederick I. The first duke was Henry Jasomirgott, who took part in the second crusade. He removed the ducal residence to Vienna, and began the building of St Stephen s cathedral. His successor, Leopold V., in 1192, obtained Styria as an addition to his territory, and Frederick II. received posses sion of Carniola. Frederick, in the latter years of his life, contemplated the erection of Austria into a kingdom, but his sudden death in a battle against the Magyars, in 1246, put an end to the project, and with him the line became extinct. The Emperor Frederick II. now declared Austria and Styria to have lapsed to the imperial crown, and appointed a lieutenant to govern them on the part of the empire. But claims to the succession were brought forward by descendants of the female branch of the Babenberg line ; and after various contests Ottocar, son of the king of Bohemia, gained possession about 1252 of the duchies of Austria and Styria. In 1269 he succeeded to Carinthia, a part of Carniola and Friuli; but he lost all by refusing to acknowledge the Emperor Rudolph of Hapsburg, and eventually fell in battle in an attempt to recover them in 1278.

