THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III (1039 A.D.)
[1039-1043 A.D.]
Among the merits of Conrad II, a high place must be given to the care he bestowed upon the education of his son and successor. Henry III was adorned with all the qualities which constitute the basis of true greatness; for not only did his admirable intellectual endowments render him capable of acquiring skill as a statesman and a commander, but his firmness and courage provided him with means of applying what he learned to practical affairs. With acute intelligence and energy he combined a high degree of moral earnestness, manifested in honourable endeavours after improvement; and as the natural bias of his mind inclined him strongly to benevolence and justice, nothing but a wise education was needed to make Henry one of the noblest of his race.[148]
Fortunately the development of his character was well cared for. His mother, Gisela, a woman of strong intellect and great nobility of soul, highly educated for her time, had a beneficent influence on him in childhood, and when the boy had thriven and grown strong under her care he was transferred altogether to the charge of the learned bishop Bruno of Augsburg, who initiated his pupil, by years of systematic teaching, into all the knowledge of the age. Then followed instruction in political affairs from Bishop Eigelbert of Freisingen, by which Henry profited so greatly that from his nineteenth year onwards his father was able to employ him in such matters. At the same time, he was thoroughly trained in all knightly accomplishments, and early sent into the field.
The twenty-two-year-old king saw clearly the path he had to follow. Even in his father’s lifetime he had realised where the strength and the weakness of the empire lay; where he should continue to act in his father’s spirit, and where he must strike out on a totally different path. Henry III, like his predecessor, desired the aggrandisement of his own house; like him he endeavoured to make the royal dignity hereditary in his family, but he scorned to stoop to unworthy means. Being convinced that his endeavours were conducive to the interests of the nation rather than subversive of them, he felt his conscience clear and thought himself justified in carrying out his designs by honourable methods. He was thus constrained to avoid much in which Conrad II would have indulged himself, and the first token of this difference was Henry’s firm resolve to raise the standard of public morals by steadfastly refusing to accept gifts in return for ecclesiastical preferment.
HENRY’S EFFORTS FOR PEACE
Even during the lifetime of Conrad II, Bretislaw, duke of Bohemia, a son of Othelric, had invaded Poland and perpetrated hideous ravages in the country. The German king—either appealed to by the inhabitants in their distress, or apprehensive for his own sake of the spread of the power of Bohemia—despatched two armies in the year 1039 to attack Bretislaw in Bohemia itself, an enterprise which ended in disaster to the Germans. In order to restore his impaired credit, Henry was obliged to undertake a fresh expedition against the Bohemian duke in the following year. This he conducted with great energy, himself leading one of the two armies he had equipped. This time victory waited upon the German arms, Prague was invested and Bretislaw compelled to submit. The latter vowed allegiance and fealty to the head of the German Empire, undertook to pay tribute, and gave hostages as a guarantee of his good faith. For all that Henry was not yet free to devote his energies to the domestic affairs of the empire, for disturbances began to be rife in Burgundy and fresh dangers loomed in the Hungarian quarter. Peter, king of Hungary, had been driven out of his country, and appealed for assistance to Henry at Ratisbon; Ovo, the new king, pursued him with an army and the enemies plundered freely in Bavaria.
In consequence Henry marched to Hungary with an army in August, 1042, to demand satisfaction for the outrage. He advanced victoriously through the country, took several fortified towns, and received the oath of allegiance or fealty from the inhabitants; but he could not induce them to take back their banished king. He therefore installed another sovereign and returned at once to Germany. In the winter immediately following (1042) he hurried to Burgundy, where he tranquillised the country by his firm and clement administration of justice. Thus he quickly reduced the refractory nobles to obedience; but on the other hand fresh troubles arose in Hungary, where the people drove out the new sovereign whom Henry had installed as soon as the latter had withdrawn from the country. Ovo made repeated incursions into Bavaria and laid waste the country on both sides of the Danube. The German king, who was consequently constrained to undertake a second campaign against the Hungarians, soon put an end to the evil, and compelled the enemy not only to make reparation but to give ampler security for his good behaviour in future.
[1043-1046 A.D.]
Then at length Henry resolved to devote all his attention to internal politics. One of the greatest evils of the times was the abuse of the right of self-help, which gave birth to a rude system of government by force under which the nation was lapsing into savagery. The weaker suffered under the heaviest oppressions, and the wise king was therefore deeply concerned to remedy first of all this aspect of public affairs. To pave the way for the establishment of a system of law he convened a diet of the empire at Constance, when he returned from his second Hungarian campaign. This took place in the year 1043, and many temporal lords, as well as bishops, appeared at it. Henry III was always present at its deliberations; he fired all who were there by his own enthusiasm for peace and justice, and brought them to a unanimous decision that thenceforth legal order should be maintained in Germany. The king issued a decree to this effect with the sanction of the diet, and thus established a peace hitherto unknown in the country. To ensure a result so happy Henry had set a noble example by magnanimously pardoning all his enemies.
From Constance, Henry proceeded to Goslar, where in the winter of 1043 he was visited by embassies from several nations desirous of testifying their respect for the head of the German Empire. So great was the esteem in which he was held that a Russian embassy solemnly offered the young king, who was already a widower, the hand of the czar’s daughter. Henry, however, haughtily rejected any such alliance, and the Russians departed sorrowfully from his court. In the same year the king married Agnes, daughter of the count of Poitiers, and at this ceremony one of the admirable traits of his character was clearly shown. Great distress prevailed in the land in consequence of the failure of the crops and an outbreak of cattle-plague; and instead of admitting jugglers and musicians to his nuptial festivities and bestowing rich presents upon them, he distributed the money among the poor, to alleviate their distress. Other events soon occurred to augment the troubles of the time, for the Hungarians a third time broke their oath of allegiance, while symptoms of rebellion declared themselves in Lorraine, Duke Gottfried trying to seize for his own the portion of the country which his father, with the king’s consent, had assigned to Gozelo, his second son. Under these circumstances Henry had only a small force to employ against the Hungarians, but once more his daring and courage compensated for the paucity of material resources.