Birthday Greetings #53

Happy birthday to Otto, Holy Roman Emperor.  Here we go you think, another shout out to a second rate Habsburg more interested in composing funeral masses and marrying his niece than running an empire.  Sorry to disappoint but Otto was made of sterner stuff.  Otto was emperor at a time when the precursors of the Habsburgs were two bit counts of one of the less desirable parts of Switzerland.  He was the first Holy Roman Emperor for thirty eight years.

That last sentence might require a little explanation.  So here is a little explanation.  Charlemagne, a Frankish warlord conquered the crap out of most of western Europe (and made a pretty good start on eastern Europe as well) while simultaneously kissing up to the pope and providing him protection from his many enemies.  Popes were serious guys in those days rather than the Palpatine impersonators and tree hugging hippies we've been stuck with lately.  In return for blood spattered services rendered the pope at the time crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor a title which seems to have been made up on the spur of the moment.

Certainly if territorial extent and maniacal conquest were the qualifications then nobody has been bettered qualified than Charlemagne.  Of course when he died he passed the imperial title down to one of his sons.  Unfortunately the Franks had a policy of dividing their territory up amongst their surviving sons, bastards and the occasional stranger who happened to be passing by at the time.  As a consequence the amount of territory actually controlled by the emperors tended to diminish with each generation.

By the time Otto's father came along the Carolingian inheritance was in somewhat shabby condition.  Charlemagne's empire had been chopped up into West Francia (more or less a France-ish sort of thing), East Francia (inaccurately but conveniently analogous to Germany), Burgundy (which isn't really very near Burgundy) and Italy.  The "emperor" was some pissant Italian princeling who could barely command the attention of the people in the same room as him and when the last of these died nobody bothered replacing him.

Otto's father was a Saxon, indeed he was Duke of Saxony and he must have impressed the previous King of East Francia because on his death bed that fellow persuaded his brother and heir to stand aside and appoint the Duke of Saxony as King.  Suddenly a German was ruling Germany.

Although "ruling" is not perhaps quite the right word.  Each of the mighty dukes of the realm was pretty much independent and Otto's father (his name was Henry) largely saw himself as a "first among equals" which is pretty much how the others regarded him (perhaps with a little less emphasis on the word "first").  This attitude helps to explain why Henry died of natural causes.

All that changed when Otto took the throne.  He was determined to rule and determined that the over mighty dukes would bend the knee to him.  Eventually they did.  Between his coronation and that happy event was quite a lot of bloodshed.  Otto's epithet "the Great" should give you a clue.  They didn't hand that title out because a ruler was kind to his mother and good with children.  The term "the Great" is shorthand for "anybody who might disagree with my possessing this epithet is already dead because I killed them; now, do we have a problem?"

Of course maniacal bloodshed was only part of Otto's policy.  There was also marrying his relatives into the families of said dukes and waiting for them to die.  Sometimes he helped the process along.  Something else he did was foster the use of lowborn men of talent as administrators.  The nobility weren't happy as they traditionally held those jobs themselves but Otto's policy brought a vast improvement in the quality of service, and also loyalty.  Since the entire nobility hated these lowborn jacks in office only the fact that Otto was alive and on the throne kept breath in their bodies.  As such they had a strong incentive to remain loyal.  By the end of his reign Otto had cemented his authority over the lords of Germany.  Oh yes and Italy.  He was the first German king of Italy and if he had been the last Germany would probably be better thought of in Italy today.

Italy was a bit of a mess at the time.  A statement which it occurs to me could have been made at any time since 476AD with complete accuracy.  Still even by the standards of Italy things were a bit rough.  The Kingdom of Italy had splintered into various squabbling principalities ruled by people who spent most of their life fighting, plotting, murdering and betraying each other.  It was rather like an extended season of Dallas with the added advantage of not being set in Texas.

In 950AD the current ruler of some bits of Italy attempted to shore up his rather precarious position by forcing one Adelaide (who was the surviving heir of someone who could claim to have legitimately ruled Italy if you didn't look too closely) into marrying his son.  Appalled at the prospect Adelaide cast about for the most dangerous thug she could find and offered to marry him instead.  Said thug was our boy Otto who married Adelaide (his first wife having conveniently died) and took the crown of Italy.

It wasn't that easy of course.  Otto had duties north of the Alps and he left Italy in charge of his son.  Said son had very few troops and pretty soon the murderous thug (not Otto, the other one) that Adelaide had been trying to avoid raised a powerful following.  Between a rock and a hard place the son (whose name was Luidolf) came to an arrangement whereby this character was acknowledged as king of Italy under Otto's suzerainty.  To say Otto was unimpressed was an understatement.  He cut his son dead (figuratively for a change) when the poor lad reported what he had done.  This prompted Luidolf to rise in revolt (with some assistance from not entirely subdued German dukes).  The fighting was drawn out but Otto won in the end and then stomped into Italy smacked the incumbent about the head, resumed direct control of the kingdom and, almost as an afterthought, got himself crowned Holy Roman Emperor.  Then he left again whereupon the son of the guy he removed rose in revolt so Otto had to come back again.  This time he stayed for several years and made damn sure the Italians wouldn't revolt again (for a while).

Looking at Otto's career it seems that he spent much of his time fighting to remain in control of places he nominally already ruled.  It appears to be a tedious litany of revolts, insurrections, treachery, betrayal and sedition.  Indeed it is but the point is Otto won, each time.  Eventually people stopped rebelling if only out of exhaustion.  A strong ruler was on the throne and he was taking no shit.  Along the way he married his son and heir to the daughter of the Byzantine emperor thus holding out the possibility of a union of the two "Roman" empires into a true continent wide state.  That didn't quite come off but it was a bit of a diplomatic coup at the time.

When he wasn't fighting his subjects Otto was fighting someone else.  For the last couple of generations Germany had suffered from an acute attack of Magyars.  Several acute attacks to be precise.  They poured out of their Hungarian homeland (which they stole from someone else but, whatever) on vast raiding expeditions which laid waste to the eastern portions of Germany (and Bohemia, Italy and everywhere else they could reach as well).  The German military response had been patchy at best.  There were occasional victories but basically the Magyars cleaned house.  Things hadn't been helped by the predilection of Germany's dukes (and thus military leaders) to spend at least as much time revolting as they did defending Germany. 

Again Otto changed the paradigm.  With his imperial title fresh upon him he gathered together his own forces, those of his dukes and forces from Bohemia as well and despite being outnumbered two to one smashed the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld.  This nailed down his legitimacy.  The King of East Francia and Holy Roman Emperor had led the forces of Christianity to a crushing victory over the infidels.  Things weren't entirely plain sailing of course but from this point on no one seriously disputed Otto's right to rule.

Strangely when you consider his career Otto followed in his father's footsteps by dying of natural causes at the age of 60.  It is a measure of his success that when his seventeen year old son inherited the throne absolutely no one seriously disputed it.  For the time and place Otto really was Great.  We shall not look upon his kind again, with any luck.