VICTORY OVER THE MAGYARS AND WENDS
But the Hungarians were still unsubdued, and in the year 955 they made a vast and final test of the strength of the new kingdom.a A powerful party in Bavaria, headed by the count Werner, brother to the fallen Arnulf, were induced by the hatred they bore to Henry to have recourse to the Hungarians, whom they invited into the country. Confident of success on account of their enormous numerical strength, the arrogant barbarians boasted that their horses should drain every river in Germany. Augsburg, whose supposed treasures attracted their cupidity, was besieged by them, but made a brave defence under the command of Burkhard of Swabia. Their king, Pulzko, was encamped at Günsburg. Otto instantly assembled the arrière-ban of the entire empire; the Bohemians united their forces with his; the Saxons, at that time engaged in opposing the Slavs, alone failed. The two armies came within sight of each other on the Lech, near Augsburg. Before the battle commenced, Otto addressed his troops, as his father had done on a similar occasion, and vowed, when referring to the victory won by Henry, to found a bishopric at Meresburg, if God granted him success.
It was the 10th of August, 955. The sun poured with intense heat upon the plain. The Hungarians rapidly crossed the Lech, fell upon the rear of the German army, dispersed the Bohemians, and were pressing hard upon the Swabians, when the fortune of the day was again turned by Conrad, who, anxious to retrieve his fault and to regain the confidence of his master, performed miracles of valour at the head of the Franconians. The emperor struggled sword in hand in the thickest of the fight. A vast number of the enemy were drowned in attempting to escape across the river. Conrad was mortally wounded in the neck by an arrow aimed at him by one of the fugitives, when in the act of raising his helmet in order to breathe more freely. A hundred thousand Hungarians are said to have fallen on this occasion.[145] Two of their princes, Lehel and Bulcs, were by the emperor’s command hanged on the gates of Augsburg. According to some writers, King Pulzko and four of the war-chiefs were hanged before the gates of Ratisbon. Werner was killed by the enraged Hungarians, but few of whom escaped to their country, almost the whole of the fugitives being slain or hunted down like wild beasts by the Bavarian peasants. The adherents of the adverse party were mercilessly punished by Henry of Bavaria, who caused them to be buried alive, or burned in beds of quicklime. Herold, bishop of Salzburg, was by his orders deprived of sight, and the patriarch Lupus of Aquileia met with a still more wretched fate. This was the last inroad attempted by the Hungarians, who for the future remained within their frontier, on their side equally undisturbed by the Germans. The booty was so enormous that a peasant is said to have had a silver plough made out of his share. The innumerable Hungarian horses taken on this occasion also gave rise to the establishment of the Keferloher horse fair.d
THE REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
[936-962 A.D.]
For a quarter of a century Otto (936-962) ruled with no higher title than king of the Franks. It was not till the winter of 962 that this successor of Charlemagne received the imperial crown, and proclaimed once more to the world the fact of that union of Roman and Teuton, upon which the structure of modern society was to rest. We have now to trace the story of what Bryce regards as the real foundation of the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages.
German Peasant of the Tenth Century
The one portion of the Carlovingian monarchy which suffered most in the dark age of dissolution was Italy. The heroic efforts on its behalf of Louis II, the last worthy descendant of Charles, were rendered fruitless by his early death without a son to succeed. Then Italy was a prize for uncles and cousins, like Charles the Bald and Charles the Fat. After their time there was a feudal anarchy in which the most noteworthy leaders were the dukes of Friuli in the north, of Spoleto in the centre, and of Capua and Benevento in the south, with marquises of Ivrea and Tuscany and proud Roman counts, like those of the family of Crescentius, to prevent consolidation or peace. At Rome itself the conditions were at the worst. Popes were elected by clergy and populace, but mob violence forced the elections amid riot and outrage.
[950-962 A.D.]
Above this world of ruin and disorder there still hung the shadow of an imperial crown. From the year 900 it had been alternately the prize of Lombard and Provençal (or Burgundian) princes.[146]
In the year 950 Lothair of Burgundy died suddenly, leaving his young, witty, and beautiful widow Adelheid (Adelaide) to face the craft and strength of Berengar II. Berengar determined to marry her to his son, and upon her refusal imprisoned her in a fortress on the Lake of Como. From this she escaped to the castle of Canossa.
Legend tells us that her deliverance was due to a priest who bored through her prison wall, and that in her flight she was so closely pursued as to be compelled to conceal herself in a field of standing corn. Her flight at Canossa gave the excuse for the interference of the German ally, Ludolf of Swabia, Otto’s eldest son. Ludolf at once descended the Alps; his uncle Henry of Bavaria was at his heels to share in the plunder, and laid claim to most of Venetia, although formerly Berengar’s ally. But the prize was for neither of them. In 951 Otto himself came down, and in Pavia, the old royal city of the Lombards, he signalised his double triumph by assuming the title “king of the Lombards” and by marrying the fair Adelaide. Henceforth the only obstacle to the assumption of the empire was the formality of coronation.
Nine years elapsed, however, before Otto took the final step. His son had withdrawn to Germany to lead a formidable rebellion against the father who had foiled his plans. Conrad the red, duke of Lotharingia, joined hands with him, and the civil wars broke out anew. It was then that the great Hungarian invasion came to restore allegiance to the one prince who could make headway against it. The rebels submitted and fought loyally for their king. The battle of Lechfeld left Otto unquestioned master in Germany. Fresh aggressions of Berengar, whom he had left as under-king in Italy, now led him to take the final step.a
Berengar aimed at the independent sovereignty of Italy, in which he was upheld by the majority of the people, whose national pride ill brooked the despotic rule of either the clergy or the Germans. The Lombard bishops, enraged at the restriction imposed upon them by Berengar, sought the protection of the pope, who applied for aid to the emperor. The family disputes that had so lately troubled Otto’s domestic peace, the struggle with the Hungarians and the Slavs, had at this juncture been brought to a favourable termination, and the reincorporation of Italy with the empire again became the object of his ambition. Accordingly, after causing his son, Otto II, to be crowned king of Germany at Aachen, and entrusting the government of the empire to his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, and to his illegitimate son Wilhelm, who had succeeded Frederick in the archbishopric of Mainz, he crossed the Alps (961 A.D.), expelled Berengar, and for the first time entered Rome, where the pope, John XII (a son of Alberic), was compelled to crown him emperor.d