Fluent Essays

Read two scholarly articles and then write a 200-300 word response in which they compare and contrast both the arguments and the sources used by the two authors. ._leyser_henry_i_and_beginnings_of_the_saxon_empire.pdf ._bachrach_and_bachrach_saxon_military_revolution.pdf model_1.docx Unformatted Attachment Preview Henry I and the Beginnings of the Saxon Empire Author(s): K. Leyser Source: The English Historical Review, Vol. 83, No. 326 (Jan., 1968), pp. 1-32 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/561761 . Accessed: 10/08/2011 14:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The English Historical Review. http://www.jstor.org The English Historical Review No. CCCXXVI - January I968 HenryI andthebeginnings of theSaxonempire To understand what the tenth-century Saxons meant by empire we must consult their greatest historian, Widukind of Corvey. In his epitaph and lament for Henry, their first native king, he wrote: He left to his son a great and spacious Reich which had not been bequeathed to him by his forefathers, but he himself had won it and it was given to him by God alone.l In this passage, it has been rightly thought, Widukind tried to present a substitute for Henrys defective title to kingship. The man who had refused to be an anointed king had nonetheless enjoyed Gods grace.2 But here, as in many other places, the Corvey historian described the aspirations not only of Henry but also of his following, the principes,prefecti and milites of Saxony. The advancement and enrichment of Henrys nobles and the enforcement of a pax which secured and upheld their imperiumgained by victory in war were the very secular ideas which put fire and life into Widukinds history. They prescribed his ways of looking at and organizing his materials.3 Henry was praiseworthy to him because he sought to promote his Saxon followers and raise them to new positions of consideration and advantage, enhancing their standing in the East-Frankish kingdom and even beyond its frontiers. Widukind owed something of his secularity and his means of expressing it to Einhard and more still to Roman antiquity. He preferred his rather warlike ideas of peace and imperiumto those which he might have found in St. Augustine and the Frankish homilists of the ninth century who preached the duties of kingship in more or less Augustinian terms.4 Even when he came to describe how Otto Is comitatuslamented his death by reciting his deeds to one another, the emperors great ecclesiastical foundations and the destruction of heathen sanctuaries are mentioned after his victories des WidukindvonKorvei,i. c. 41, ed. H.-E. Lohmann and P. I. Die Sachsengeschichte Hirsch, S[criptores] R[erum] G[ermanicarum] (Hanover, I935), p. 60: magnum latumque imperium, non a patribus sibi relictum, sed per semet ipsum adquisitum et a solo Deo concessum. 2. H. Beumann, WidukindvonKorvei(Weimar, 1950), pp. 244 ff. 3. Beumann, pp. 87 ff. and 210 ff. 4. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Via Regia of the Carolingian Age, Trendsin Medieval Political Thought,ed. B. Smalley (Oxford, I965), pp. 29 ff. ? Longmans, Green & Company Limited and Contributors, I968 VOL. LXXXIII-NO. CCCXXVI A HENRY I AND THE BEGINNINGS OF January against Magyars, Saracens, Danes, Slavs and the subjection of Italy. Not all the writers of the tenth century looked upon the enterprises of the Liudolfing dynasty and its followers in this heroic, hard-faced, let alone exclusively Saxon, way. But Widukinds fellow-authors no less than he took their magnumlatumqueimperium for granted. By 973 it existed and questions were raised more about its character, purpose and future than about this fact. The author of the older life of Mathilda, Henry Is queen, Hrotsvitha in her GestaOttonisand later Brun of Querfurt in his Life of St. Adalbert, to name only a few, were thinking about a legacy and the tasks it imposed. Widukind, however, not only tried to tell his audience what the Ottonian empire was but also how it had been gained by the virtus andfortuna of his heroes, the Liudolfing house, the Saxon lords and, in the third place, their milites. It is here that we find it hardest to interpret him. His outlook and values and his literary personality have come to be understood much better, thanks to the German school of ideological analysis.2 But the events to which he applied them and for which he is all too often our only source remain obscure and this is especially true for the reign of Henry I, the first seventeen years of the Saxon arrival in the East-Frankish kingdom. There are very few strictly contemporary literary remains from this period, and archaeology, which has done so much to qualify, blur and dilute Widukinds famous description of the Saxon fortresses and their occupants, still cannot date and compare the pottery found inside them.3 We are left therefore with Widukinds eulogies and not only his alone, for most of his generation of Ottonian historiography, Liudprand of Cremona, Adalbert of St. Maximin, Ruotger and Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim celebrated Henry I as the bringer of peace and the enlarger of his kingdom.4 The conditions which gave some meaning to all this courtly praise - and Henry had his critics as well as his friends amongst the I. Widukind, iii. 75, p. 153. No armed encounter between Otto I and the Saracens is known. An expedition against Fraxinetum was planned but, as Widukind himself knew, never made. Cordovan embassies to his court and their presents which he mentioned (iii. 56, p. 135) counted however as marks of respect and superiority. 2. Besides Beumann see K. Hauck, Widukind von Korvei, Die DeutscheLiteratur des Mittelalters, Verfasserlexikon,ed. K. Langosch, (Berlin, 1953), iv. 946-5 8. 3. S. Kriiger, Einige Bemerkungen zur Werla-Forschung, DeutscheKinigspfalken, o(Ver6ffentlichungendes Max-Planck-Instituts fur Geschichte 11/2, G6ttingen, I965), ii. 235-7. 4. Liudprand, Antapodosis,iii. c. 21, LiudprandiOpera,ed. J. Becker, S.R.G. (Hanover and Leipzig, 1915), p. 82. For Adalbert see ReginonisAbbatis PrumiensisChroniconcum continuatione Treverensi,ed. F. Kurze (Hanover, I890), p. 159: Heinricus rex, precipuus pacis sectator strenuusque paganorum insecutor, post plures fortiter et viriliter actas victorias dilatatis undique sui regni terminis. .. . His emphases differ from Widukinds. For Ruotger see his Vita Brunonis,cc. 2, 3, ed. I. Ott, S.R.G., Nova Series, x (Weimar, I95 I), p. 4. Hrotsvitha, Gesta Ottonis,lines 7-2I in HrotsvithaeOpera,ed. P. Winterfeld, S.R.G. (Berlin and Zurich, I965 reprint), p. 205. I968 THE SAXON EMPIRE 3 later Ottonian historians and biographers - need not necessarily be connected with his reign at all but with that of his greater and even more famous son, Otto I. It was really his survival and victory in the prolonged feuds which divided his own and the leading Frankish, Bavarian and Lotharingian houses from 937 to 941 that created the new regime and within the next few years enabled the Liudolfings to gain a footing and acquire vast landed wealth in Franconia, the South and the West. The network of family-connections which they were then able to form made it possible for the Saxon kings to dominate the scene as long as they endured. Part of this victory Otto owed to himself, his hardness and nerve, more still perhaps to luck, battles which were won by others for him or by his own milites without him. To Liudprand and Hrotsvitha again these triumphs seemed to be the work of God and clearly showed Ottos divine election to a kingship that was bitterly contested even in his own house.2 But the kings early struggles, the almost ceaseless wars against the Slavs, and the renewed conflict with the Magyars in 938, could not have been fought and won without an effective Saxon exercitus. This was the pre-condition for all the opportunities open to the Liudolfing rulers and their closer adherents. Without a host that was superior to the East-Elbian tribes, at least equal to the forces. which the Frankish, Lotharingian and Bavarian ducescould muster and trained also to meet the Hungarian raiders, no Saxon hegemony in the Reich would have been possible. We must return to what Widukind had to say about Henry Is armies, and here at least he placed temptingly within our reach an explanation for the rising honours and the new importance of the Saxons in a still largely Frankish-thinking world. The consequences of military success in the tenth century were swift and its aura could work wonders. The: news of the Magyars rout at Riade in 933 travelled a long way: not only the Salzburg Annals, usually a source unfriendly to the Liudolfings, but also Flodoard of Reims reported it, the latter with much exaggeration.3 When Henry returned to the West his goodwill was more sought after than ever and in 934 he could send two dukes,. the Conradine Eberhard and Giselbert of Lotharingia together with a number of Lotharingian bishops, on diplomatic errands to the West-Frankish king, Rudolf, on behalf of his ally, Herbert of Vermandois.4 Widukinds regum maximus Europae and rerum I. The battles of Andernach and Birten in 939. 2. Liudprand, Antapodosis, iv. c. 29, p. I25: Vides igitur, quemadmodum super regem tribulantes Dominus manum miserit, quem in viis suis ambulasse cognovit. Hrotsvitha, lines 228-36, p. 211. 3. Annales Iuvavenses maximi, ed. H. Brsslau, M[onumenta] G[ermaniae] H[istorica} Scriptorum xxx, ii. 743 and Les Annales de Flodoard,ed. P. Lauer, Collection de Textes pour servir a letude et a lenseignement de lhistoire (Paris, I905), p. 55, subanno933. 4. Flodoard, Annales, p. 59. H. Sproemberg, Die lothringische Politik Ottos des Geschichte Grossen, in his BeitrdgegurBelgisch-Niederlandischen (Berlin, 1959), p. 140. 4 HENRY I AND THE BEGINNINGS OF January was for a to Rome in dominus ready pilgrimage 935, and perhaps more than a pilgrimage, when he suffered a stroke and was paralysed. Between 924/6 and 933, to follow the resgestae Saxonicae, Henry I accomplished something like a military revolution in his stemland.1 Having negotiated a peace with the Magyars and accepted their demand for annual tributes he set about the two tasks of strengthening and preparing urbesagainst the Hungarian raiders and of creating a force capable of meeting them in the field. In Widukinds narrative neither had Saxony viable fortresses nor could the king in the crisis of the great raids of 924 and (?) 926 rely on his host in a pitched battle against the saeva gens, the Magyars.2 Scholars have often treated these two activities, the castle-building and the creation of mobile forces, as one or at least as closely-related problems. Here only the history of the Saxon exercitusin the early tenth century is to be looked at again. Much ink has flowed over Henry Is urbes, but empires cannot be founded by defensive measures alone. The quality of the host the Ottonian kings could muster at home was even more important than their fortresses in deciding the future role of the Saxons in the Reich. The group of people whom Widukind called the principes militum, the dukes, margraves and counts of his stemland, are relatively well-known, but their subordinates are not. Who were the Saxon milites of the tenth century, from what layers of Saxon society were they recruited and how were they organized for their wars ? To throw the castles and the exercitustogether is also misleading, as will be seen, although Widukind himself is responsible for the way this has been done. It surpasses our powers to say, he wrote, with what sagacity King Henry, after he had accepted the Hungarians peace-terms for nine years, watched over the defence i. The date and scope of Henrys armistice with the Hungarians remain disputed. After G. Waitz, Jahrbuicher des DeutschenReichsunterKonigHeinrichI (Leipzig, I885 and Darmstadt, I963), pp. 77 ff. it was generally thought to have been concluded in 924 and to safeguard Saxony alone. But in 1933 M. Lintzel argued with force that the agreement belonged to the year 926 and applied to other regions of the Reichas well. Only Arnulf of Bavaria made his own terms with the Hungarians a year later. See M. Lintzel, Die Schlacht von Riade und die Anfange des deutschen Staates, Sachsenund Anhalt, ix (1933), 27-5 I and also in his Ausgewahlte Schriften (Berlin, 196 ), ii. 92-1 I . C. Erdmann, Die Burgenordnung Heinrichs I, D[eutsches]A[rchivfir Erforschungdes Mittelalters], vi (I 943), 77 ff. enlarged on Lintzels views and 926 has taken possession of the narrative in R. Holtzmann, Geschichteder sachsischen Kaisergeit(Munich, 1943), p. 84 and B. GebGeschichte(Stuttgart, 1954), i. I69. But against this see K. hardt, Handbuchder deutschen Reindel, Herzog Arnulf und das RegnumBavariae, Zeitschriftfuir bayerischeLandesgeschichte,xvii 0954), 242 reprinted in Die Entstehungdes deutschenReiches, Wege der Forschung,i (Darmstadt, 1956), 275 and also G. Baaken, Konigtum Burgen und K6nigsvi (KonstanzerArbeitskreis fur mittelalterliche Geschichte, freie, VortrageundForschungen, Konstanz, Stuttgart, n.d.), 69, For 926 speaks Henrys renewal, in March 927, of the older Herford privileges which had been burnt in a Magyar raid. Would the nuns have waited three years to have this done? However important for our understanding of Henry Is reign the date and extent of his armistice may be, the evidence is too faint to allow a firm conclusion in favour of 926. For Henrys diploma for Herford (= DH I, 13) see M.G.H., Die Urkundenderdeutschen KonigeundKaiser(Hanover, I879-84), i. 50. 2. Widukind, i. 32, p. 45. 1968 THE SAXON EMPIRE 5 of the land and the assault on the barbarian tribes (the Slavs beyond the Elbe and Saale) although it should not be passed over in complete silence. First of all he picked every ninth man from the agrarii milites and made him live in the fortresses to build shelters for his fellows (confamiliares)and to receive and store a third of all the produce there. The remaining eight were to sow and reap and collect the crops of the ninth. .. . All assemblies were to be held in these urbes and, having said this, Widukind moved on without a break to describe an expedition against the Hevelli of Brandenburg. Having accustomed the free men (he used the word cives), to this rule and practice, he suddenly fell upon the Slavs called Hevelli and wore them out in many combats.2 It is this transitional phrase which makes it possible to see in the agrarii milites the warriors whom Henry had to have trained for fighting pitched battles against the Magyars. When Widukind returned to them in the next chapter but two, he presented his readers with a very different military situation: the king now had an army iam... equestri prelio probatum and this explained why he could resolve to fight it out rather than pay any more tribute.3 In the Corvey historians account of the spring campaign of 93 3 only Saxons and Thuringians took the field and his story of the events leading up to the victory at Riade contains another useful hint about their host.4 The king who knew the Hungarians tactics was afraid that they would take to flight as soon as they saw the miles armatus- the better-armed, shielded and hauberked horsemen of his army. To forestall this he devised a deceptive manoeuvre by sending a swarm of Thuringians with only a few heavily-armed horsemen ahead to lure the enemy into battle with the mass of the miles armatus.5By contrast Widukind described these Thuringians as inermes, unarmed, yet to perform their task they too must have i. Widukind, i. 35, pp. 48 iff.: Igitur Heinricus rex, accepta pace ab Ungariis ad novem annos, quanta prudentia vigilaverit in munienda patria et in expugnando barbaras nationes, supra nostram est virtutem edicere, licet omnimodis non oporteat taceri. Et primum quidem ex agrariis militibus nonum quemque eligens in urbibus habitare fecit, ut ceteris confamiliaribus suis octo habitacula extrueret, frugum omnium tertiam partem exciperet servaretque. Caeteri vero octo seminarent et meterent frugesque colligerent nono et suis eas locis reconderent.... 2. Ibid. Tali lege ac disciplina cum cives assuefaceret, repente irruit super Sclavos qui dicuntur Hevelli, et multis eos preliis fatigans.... 3. Widukind, i. 38, p. 55: Rex autem cum iam militem haberet equestri prelio probatum, contra antiquos hostes, videlicet Ungarios, presumpsit inire certamen. 4. Flodoard thought that the Bavarians and other subject peoples took part at Riade and this might explain the mention of the battle in the Salzburg Annals (cf. above, p. 3, n. 3). But it remains doubtful whether they joined Henrys host. More than one Hungarian swarm was afield in 933 and more than one force set out to intercept them. The ceterae gentes subjectae of Flodoards, Annales (p. 55) were most probably Slavs. 5. Widukind, i. 38, p. 57: Rex vero veritus est... ut hostes viso milite armato fugae statim indulsissent; misit legionem Thuringorum cum raro milite armato, ut inermes prosequerentur et usque ad exercitum protraherentur. On Hungarian ways of fighting see K. Leyser, The Battle at the Lech, 955, History,1 (I965), II ff. 6 HENRY I AND THE BEGINNINGS OF January been mounted. From all this it is at least clear where he had seen the shortcomings of the Saxon host in 924/26. Henry could not trust his horsemen because they lacked certain skills and not enough of them were equipped as a milesarmatusshould be. The historians who have identified the castle-building agrarii milites with the well-armed and mounted warriors at whose sight the Hungarians turned and fled in 933 fall into two schools. One assumed that they were royal ministerialesfor it was thought that the king could only order his own dependants to build fortresses and not those of his nobles.2 The other, more recently, has sought to prove that they were Kdnigsfreie,royal freemen, a class of liberi who inhabited royal lands, owed rents to the king and played some part in the military and settlement policies of the Frankish conquest.3 The reality was more complex and defies such sweeping explanations. It is true that a general obligation of military service for the free and even for the liti, the half-free peasants, existed in tenthcentury Saxony, especially along her eastern frontiers, the marches against the Slavs. But there are strong grounds for clearly distinguishing Widukinds miles armatusfrom his agrarii milites and for doubting whether they were recruited from the same strata in Saxon society. We are fortunate in possessing a long run of imperial and royal mandates and diplomata for Corvey, Widukinds own house, from the second quarter of the ninth century onwards. Despite forgeries and falsifications they invite us to study the make-up of her military forces without relying too much on her great historian. Widukind could, if he cared to do so, draw on knowledge that was familiar and near at hand and it will be seen that his agrarii milites had local roots. Corvey with her vast possessions scattered across the whole of Saxony and her intimate ties with the native and Frankish nobility was not only a missionary and cultural but also a military bastion of the Carolingian new order there. The monastery however had been granted exemption from military service by Louis the Pious: I. W. Giesebrecht, Geschichteder deutschenKaiserzeit(Leipzig, x88I), i. 8ii ff. who thought however that Widukinds description of the agrariimilites only applied to the marches of Saxony. Waitz, Jahrbiicher,p. 98, n. 6; D. Schafer, Die agrarii milites des Widukind, Siftungsberichteder koniglichpreussischenAkademie der Wiss ... Purchase answer to see full attachment