Italy, Burgundy, and England met the chiefs of the Wends, Bohemians, Danes, and Hungarians, and the emperor of Constantinople and the caliph of Cordova sent envoys with presents of honor to the great king.

Otto's marriage, 951, with the beautiful young widow of Lothaire, Adelheid, proved a most important event for Germany, and resulted in the restoration of the German imperial power in Italy. His assumption, however, of the title "king of Italy" and his departure from the country led to conspiracy and civil war, the conspirators going so far as to seek aid from the Hungarians; but Otto never yielded a whit, although his two sons Conrad and Ludolf were with the insurgents, and in the end compelled submission. The Hungarians, who had been successful in the ravagings towards the Adriatic, the river Po, and the Danube, now resolved upon a supreme effort to win back the laurels they had lost, and with one hundred thousand men swept over the country of Bavaria in 955, penetrated in compact bands into Swabia, and encamped in the plains of Lech; whilst separate bodies of horsemen made incursions as far as the Black Forest.

Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg, with a troop of bold horsemen, courageously resisted the terrible onslaught of the enemy, and defended the badly fortified town for several days against all attacks and attempts to storm. Then, at last, Otto approached at the head of the Saxon army; the Bavarians and Franks, Swabians and Bohemians, and the populations on the Rhine districts joined him, and Bishop Ulrich also advanced with his band of heroes. After the Christian army had implored the assistance of God in a day of prayer and humiliation, it advanced against the enemy on the 10th of August, the festival of St. Laurence, in the year 955, in eight divisions, each composed of a thousand horsemen, and divided according to the different tribes. In the midst was the king himself. "Before him," says a chronicler, "fluttered the lance of the holy archangel Michael, and wherever that was displayed, victory had never been wanting; round it and the king stood closely ranged a band of heroic, courageous youths, the bravest from every division of the army." 99 The leader of the fourth division was the king's son-in-law, Duke Conrad of Lorraine, the hero of the day, who burned to obliterate,

by martial deeds of fame, the remembrance of his former dishonorable rebellion against his royal master. The commencement of the battle on the Lechfield was unfavorable to the Christian army; unexpectedly attacked from behind, the rearward divisions already began to waver, when Conrad, with his heroic troops of Franks, dashed among the enemy, and put them to flight. Thereupon the king, after encouraging his soldiers by a short address, sprang on his horse, with lance and shield, and flung himself into the thickest of the fray. His example animated the whole army. In a short time the enemy's troops were scattered, and their serried masses scattered in flight in all directions. Fearfully did the German sword rage among the confused and fugitive mass. But many a brave man paid for the victory, and for the safety of his country, with his life.

Deeply did the king lament the fall of the heroes, but for none did he grieve more bitterly than for his son-in-law Conrad, who, struck by an arrow in the throat, fell dead in the midst of the victorious struggle. He met a hero's fate fighting for his fatherland, and thus expiated the heavy guilt of his earlier years by a faithful and glorious death. Bishop Ulrich's brother and nephew also purchased the brilliant victory with their blood. Otto pursued the flying enemy down the Danube, and from that time the Hungarians gave up all designs upon Germany, and settled down on the fruitful plains of the Danube.

At an Imperial Diet at Worms, Otto appointed as his successor his little son, aged seven years, whom in 961 he caused to be crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, and announced his intention of leading another expedition across the Alps. Pope John XII., hard pressed by the Romans, who had risen against him, summoned Otto to his assistance, and offered him the Imperial crown. Otto accepted with avidity, and in the autumn of 961, accompanied by his queen, and a numerous army, crossed the Alps, descended into the valley of the Adige, and kept the Christmas Day of 962 with great splendor in the city of Pavia. In February, 963, he proceeded to Rome, where he received the Imperial crown and sword from the hands of the pope, being solemnly crowned and anointed emperor in the church of St. Peter's. Otto now claimed the full rights of supremacy that Charlemagne had exercised over

Rome. Against this Pope John rebelled, and no sooner had Otto departed than he entered into conspiracy with Berengar, the ex-monarch, and also endeavored to interest the court of Constantinople and the Hungarians in the cause. Otto marched back on Rome, deposed John, and elected Leo VIII.-the peoples' choice-as head of the church. Again did John, so soon as Otto had retired from Rome, rise up in rebellion, compelling the newlychosen pope to fly, and was about to re-establish himself in the Pontificate, when a fatal fit of apoplexy settled the question, so far as he was concerned. Once again did Otto march on Rome, this time to depose a pope whom the people had elected to protect their freedom, and assert their independence. Leo was re-instated in the papal chair, and the rival pope died at Hamburg in honorable captivity. Thus was won for the German nation the Imperial dignity. Otto's ideal was the same that had once glowed in the soul of Charlemagne. "Both sought to unite the Roman-German world into one civil union of states."

Otto died in 973 in the fortress of Memleben. His son succeeded him, with the title of Otto II. In the commencement of his reign he kept the image of his great father before his eyes. In 981 he crossed the Alps to give battle to Crescentius, who had seized the supreme power, and was oppressing the pope and citizens of Rome, without regard to the German protectorate, and was surrounding the chair of St. Peter with his own creatures. Otto restored the pope to his former authority, compelled Crescentius to fly to a monastery, where he died. At the brilliant court which Otto established in Rome, the design for driving the Saracens out of Southern Italy and Sicily, and liberating Christendom from their yoke was devised, and a crusade organized. He defeated the Saracens in Lower Italy, and made himself master of Naples and Tarentium, but the Greek emperor having invited the Saracens again into Italy, Otto gave them battle; but rashly venturing too far with a small band of chosen warriors, he was unexpectedly attacked by the Arabs, who had collected a force in the mountains, and completely defeated, in an unknown spot near the sea-coast, south of Cotrone, on the 13th of July, 982. Only by what seemed a miracle did the emperor escape on board a Greek vessel, and then, unrecognized by the crew, gained the friendly coast by

swimming; but a great number of German and Italian nobles met their death at the hand of the enemy, or in the waters of the sea. Those who escaped the sword fell victims to the burning heat or to consuming thirst, or were carried off as slaves to Egypt. After this defeat, in the so-called "Battle of Basantello," Otto sorrowfully returned with the remains of his army through Capua and Salerno to Rome.

While making preparations for a fresh campaign in South Italy, the direful news of an irruption of the Danes, and the defection of the Wends, so upset him that he fell into a violent fever and died at Rome in 983, aged 28.

He was interred with great solemnity in the portico of the old church of St. Peter's. The great block of porphyry which once covered his coffin is now used in the new St. Peter's Church as a baptismal font. "The renown of German invincibility vanished when the royal sceptre was placed in the hands of a child."

Otto III. did not come to reign until the expiration of a regency of fifteen years. The young emperor, being anxious to restore the empire to its former magnificence on both sides of the Alps, crossed the Alps and was crowned at Rome by Pope Gregory V., a connection of the Saxon ruling family. Thus a German pope and a German emperor ruled in the West. John Crescentius, like his father, swore fidelity and obedience, but no sooner had Otto returned to Germany than Crescentius revolted, and placed John, bishop of Piacenza, formerly Greek tutor to the young emperor, in the papal chair. Otto for the second time marched on Rome, 998, and the gates being opened to him, John was taken prisoner, blinded and mutilated, and then paraded through the streets sitting backwards on an ass, after having been divested of his bishop's garb. Crescentius was beheaded in the castle of St. Angelo, and twelve of his companions nailed to crosses set up beside his corpse, which was hung up in contempt.

In 999 Pope Gregory died, and Otto created his scholastic friend Gherbert pontiff, under the title of Sylvester II.

Otto III. was now occupied with the magnificent scheme of restoring the ancient Roman empire in its splendor and plenitude of power, of making "golden Rome" once more the first city of the em

pire, the seat of the emperor, and the centre of the world, and of surrounding his throne with the solemn splendor of Greek imperialism. "The senate of ancient Rome with its wisdom and triumphs, and the victorious pageants of a Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, the court of Constantinople, with its halfantique, half-oriental splendor-these formed the magic circle in which the thoughts of the enthusiastic youth revolved." These fancies occupied him even in the midst of severe penances and pilgrimages. At the same time that he was filled with lofty ideas of obtaining the rule of the world,-while he surrounded himself in his palace on the Aventinus with gorgeous and wonderful court ceremonial parade, and meditated establishing the Roman law of Justinian as the imperial law for the whole of the west, he would sometimes retire to a cave near St. Clemente and at Subiaco, and live there like a hermit; or he would walk barefoot to the graves of the martyrs, and seem to scorn all earthly things. This tendency to actions of penitence, self-mortification, and expiation became more general as the year 1,000 approached; for that year was frequently regarded in Western Christendom as the end of the world, the time when the judgment would come, and the world would perish in a general "whirl of flame."

The death of his dearly loved aunt Matilda, and of his grandmother Adelheid, in the monastery founded by her at Selz, induced the young emperor to return to Germany. On this occasion he made pilgrimage to the graves of St. Adalbert and Charlemagne. Adalbert was a Bohemian nobleman, who had exchanged the archbishopric of Prague for a cloister-cell on the Aventinus, and had travelled in the year 997 to the shores of the Baltic, to preach the gospel to the heathen Prussians, a Lithuanian-Sclavonian race. The Polish duke Boleslav had purchased the corpse (for Adalbert was assassinated) with gold, and had it interred at Gnesen. Thither Otto, who had shown unusual affection for the enthusiastic, pious monk, now undertook a pilgrimage, to pray at the grave of the martyr; and then, in conjunction with the duke, laid on the sacred spot the foundation of the first archbishopric and the mother church of the Poles. From thence he proceeded to Aix-la-Chapelle, the burial-place of the mighty king of the Franks. Descending into the sepulchral vault, he viewed the corpse of the

great ruler who even in death appeared in majestic dignity and remained fascinated, as it were, on being face to face with the dead emperor. Three princes came forward on the death of Otto as candidates for the vacant imperial throne. Henry, Duke of Bavaria, the most prominent, being recognized. He, in his turn, crossed the Alps, and was crowned king of Italy at Pavia, March 15, 1004. A revolt on the night following his coronation left half the beautiful city in ruins. Henry marched into Bohemia, and released Prague from Polish supremacy.

In the year 1013, Henry II. undertook a second. expedition to Italy, restored order in Rome, which had been destroyed by party animosity and rival candidates for the popedom, and was then solemnly crowned with his wife Kunigunde in St. Peter's Church. After the ceremony was concluded, the new emperor dedicated the royal crown, which he had worn till then, to the apostolic ruler; and the golden ball of the empire, decorated with precious stones and a brilliant cross, which had been placed in his hand by the pope, as the emblem of imperial power, he presented to the monastery of Cluny. Wishing to confer special splendor on his favorite foundation, the bishopric of Bamberg, he summoned the holy Father Benedict VIII. across the Alps, when the cathedral was finished, a few years after his return, solemnly to consecrate the work, in 1020. He then placed the whole establishment under the especial protection of the chair of St. Peter. Gratitude also induced Henry to promise the pope he would undertake a new Roman expedition, to guard the possessions of the apostolic see against the encroaching Greeks, and to enlarge them; and he soon fulfilled his promise. On this third expedition to Rome, the emperor strengthened the sovereignty of the Western empire in Southern Italy, and seconded the pontiff in his efforts to purify the church, and to reform the monasteries according to the strict rule of Cluny.

Henry, in spite of his devotion to the church, ruled the German ecclesiastics with an iron hand. He also exercised the protectorate in Rome with considerable severity. On the 13th of July, 1024, Henry died at his castle at Grona, the glory of the Ottos suffering no tarnish at his hands. The holy Roman empire of the German nation continued powerful; sovereignty over Italy was maintained;

the German empire was both "the centre and the star of the Western world."

It was not until the Ottos held the sceptre that the various German-speaking races were combined. into one kingdom, universally designated as "Germans." The contrast of the people to the Italians further strengthened the feeling of nationality.

SALIC-FRANCONIAN IMPERIAL HOUSE.

The royal widow of Henry bade adieu to the world, "which imposed on her no further duties, and could yield her no further joys," and handed the insignia of the empire to Conrad II., Duke of Franconia, who was immediately crowned at Mayence. So soon as he saw his authority firmly established in Germany, he undertook an expedition to Rome, in 1026, to force the wavering Italians to return to their allegiance and fidelity to the empire; for they had concerted a plan for raising a foreign prince, William of Aquitaine, to the throne, and liberating Italy from the Germans. He marched from Verona to Milan, where he was crowned with the iron crown of the Lombards. Thenceforth he was recognized as king of Italy. He then overcame the resistance of the cities of Pavia and Ravenna, who would not at first recognize the supremacy of the Germans; took possession of the fortresses of the disobedient nobles; and in March, 1027, entered Rome. After he had here received the imperial crown amid great festivities, in which two kings took part, Rudolf of Burgundy, and Canute the Great, who was present in the city on a pilgrimage, -and had put down, with bloody severity, an insurrection of Roman citizens, he promptly marched through the southern portion of his kingdom, to strengthen his authority in the towns of Southern Italy, and then returned in May once more to Germany.

In 1028 Conrad's son, Henry, a boy of eleven years, was appointed his successor in the empire by the choice of the princes, and was crowned at Aixla-Chapelle, "the future shone forth tranquilly through the tumultuous present, as bright light clouds shine on the distant horizon during storms." This coronation was the first step towards the foundation of that hereditary empire which Conrad set before himself as the aim of his activity.

Conrad, in 1034, was fortunate in the east, compelling Mieczislav to recognize his supremacy. He

was also successful on the Jura and the Rhone. King Rudolf, surnamed "The Indolent," had on his death-bed sent his crown, the lance of Saint Moritz, and other royal insignia to Conrad, thereby declaring him the heir. He was crowned, 1034, in the cathedral of Geneva, with the royal diadem, and gained for the German Empire the territory of the Rhone, with the wealthy towns of Lyons, Vienna, Arles, Marseilles, Geneva, etc., etc., the luxuriant plains of Savoy, and the western portion of Switzerland. "A goodly haul," as the old chronicler hath it.

It was now that the beneficial "Peace of God” (Treuga Dei) was established by the influence of the bishops, whereby it was decreed "that weapons were to be laid aside, and all deeds of revenge and private war were to be intermitted, from Thursday evening until Monday morning (on all the days of the week which had been marked by great events in the life of Christ)-an institution, which, under the Franconian emperors, especially in the unsettled times of Henry IV., was of paramount importance both in Italy and Germany, and placed a beneficial restriction on plunder and warfare, through the power of religion and of holy customs." A terrible famine and plague, which for several years spread sorrow and dismay throughout the whole of Europe during this reign, was regarded as the judgment of God upon men for their wickedness, and was used by the clergy as an argument for the establishment of the holy peace which Christ had promised to the world. Eagerly did the defenceless people grasp the proffered boon, clinging to the peace as an anchor of refuge. Three years later, in 1037, Odo met his death fighting against the Lorrainers, just on the point of obtaining the upper hand in Northern Italy.

Conrad shuffled off this mortal coil on the 4th of June, 1039, and was buried in the cathedral of Spires, the superb edifice that, in 1030, he himself had commenced. Here, also, rest his successors.

Henry the Swarthy succeeded his father in 1039. He was a man of immense power of will, and under his rule Germany attained its greatest extension, and the imperial dignity its highest authority. By his victory at Raab, 1044, he compelled the Hungarians to reinstate the deposed king Peter on the throne of his uncle St. Stephen. After the death of his Danish wife Gunhilda, Henry married Agnes

of Poitiers, the beautiful and wealthy heiress of Aquitaine, in 1043. By this union he hoped to reduce the king of France to a dependant position, and to maintain the supremacy of the German empire alike in the West and East. Such was the condition of things when Henry crossed the Alps. Under his protection an assembly of the church met, which deposed three simoniacal popes, Sylvester III., Benedict IX., and Gregory VI., and conferred the papal tiara on a reluctant German bishop, Seudger of Bamberg, as Clement II. Henry and his wife were crowned in the church of St. Peter's. So great was the joy in Rome that the clergy and people voluntarily offered the emperor the right of disposing of the see of St. Peter; a decree being enacted that thenceforth no pope could be chosen and consecrated without the consent of the emperor. Resolutions against simony were passed, and a number of vacant bishoprics in Italy and Germany were filled with German ecclesiastics. By the election later on of Bishop Bruno of Toul-a blood relation of Henry's-to the papal throne, under the title of Leo IX., the papacy was brought into the closest union with the empire.

In the retinue of the new pope, who entered the holy city in the humble garb of a pilgrim and submitted to an election, was a remarkable personage, the monk Hildebrand, who had accompanied Pope Gregory as chaplain to Germany, and now returned to Rome, where he soon obtained the greatest influence. Like Leo IX. in Italy, Adalbert of Bremen in the north labored for the interests of the emperor. Proud of his successful conversions of the heathen Slavs and Wends of the countries in the north and around the Baltic, the ambitious prelate was filled with the idea of elevating the archbishopric of Bremen-Hamburg into a patriarchate for the whole of the north, and thus by means of the church extending the power and supremacy of Henry III. over the Scandinavian kingdoms.

Leo IX. died in 1054. In 1056 Henry died in his fortress of Bodfield on the summit of the Harz Mountains, aged 39. "Never did the German empire obtain such a supreme position as during his reign. In the South his sceptre was extended over Burgundy and Italy; in the West, over Lorraine and the Netherlands as far as the North Sea; in the East, the Hungarians, Bohemians, and Poles recognized the imperial supremacy; in the North,

the kings of Denmark were the faithful vassals of the emperor. France trembled before his power, and the king of the Anglo-Saxons held his fleet in readiness to protect him against rebels; even Christian Spain feared for its freedom. Around the lofty throne of the Franconian ruler the kings of the West bowed their heads."

Henry IV., the young emperor, the son of Henry III., was a talented, clever boy, for whom his mother Agnes acted as guardian and regent of the realm. The powerful restraint placed upon the temporal and spiritual princes by Henry III. being now removed, these personages at once broke out into dissension, and open violence and rebellion. Grief-stricken at the conflict that raged around the imperial throne on all sides, Agnes exchanged the imperial purple for a nun's veil. She wished to show "that she governed, not actuated by personal ambition, but influenced only by the duties of a mother, and the welfare of the empire." At the same time she created Otto von Nordheim, belonging to an old Saxon family, Duke of Bavaria, in the hope of finding a powerful supporter. Otto proved false, however, and entered into a league with Archbishop Hanno of Cologne, and Eckbert of Braunschweig, to deprive the empress of the regency.

In the year 1062 the empress was spending Easter with her son, then twelve years old, on the beautiful island of St. Swibertswerth, in the Rhine, now called Königswerth. The conspirators came to visit the empress-regent, and found means to lure the youthful Henry by stratagem away from the court on board a gaily decorated ship belonging to the archbishop, which immediately sailed away with him. The startled boy sprang into the waters of the Rhine to swim ashore, but Eckbert's strong arm snatched him from the waves, and he was borne back to the ship. He was with difficulty pacified, and taken to Cologne; but he never forgot that day. Not only Henry and his deeply injured mother were indignant at this violent proceedingmany princes and bishops were angry with the arrogant cleric who had in such high-handed fashion. usurped the guardianship of the emperor and the government of the empire. Nevertheless, Hanno maintained his position, and continued by his prudent demeanor to increase the number of his adherents. Even in Italy he found some who were favorable to him; for he assumed a conciliatory at