The Historians' History of the World 07

King Henry did not dare to meet the superior forces of the enemy in an open battle. He had learned to know what war with them meant at an early date, and he did not believe his army was able to face them. It is true that every free Saxon who had completed his thirteenth year was bound to service, and had to take up arms against an approaching enemy; the old military provisions of the Frankish kingdom were also in force according to the letter of the law, and according to them every free man who owned at least five hides of land had to serve personally in the militia, and the smaller landowners had to equip a fighter in common. But these provisions had fallen into disuse; hard times had decreased the number of freemen; the militia, seldom assembled, was formed of men knowing nothing of war.

Moreover, the Hungarians had to be met with cavalry, and although the Frankish feudal army consisted almost entirely of mounted knights, yet in Saxony cavalry service was still new and not widespread; the greatest part of the nobility here kept only poorly armed dependents who performed their military service on foot. Henry avoided a battle, therefore, and shut himself up with his faithful followers in his fortified castle Werla at the foot of the Harz, not far from Goslar. The favour of fortune again did not desert him. A prominent Hungarian was captured by the king’s men and brought before him. The captive stood in high favour with his people, and consequently ambassadors were sent at once to free him from the bonds of the enemy. Gold and silver were offered for him in large measure, but that was not what Henry sought. He wanted peace, only peace, and he even offered, if he should be granted a truce of nine years, not only to give back the captive but also to pay the Hungarians a yearly tribute. On these conditions the Hungarians, swearing to observe a truce of nine years, withdrew to their homes.

Larger fortified towns were at that time still unknown in Saxony and Thuringia; only on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, and beyond these rivers where the Romans had once lived, were there on German soil populous towns with fortified walls and towers, which, however, since the expeditions of the Normans and the Hungarian wars, lay mostly in heaps and ruins. The Saxons according to ancient custom still lived in single houses standing alone in the midst of their fields and meadows, or else they assembled in open villages. Only here and there arose royal palaces and castles of the nobles, only here and there were the enclosed seats of bishops, priests, and monks, the first gathering-places of a more active intercourse. The boundaries were also poorly protected; the strongholds which Charlemagne had once laid out had been mostly destroyed in the wars against the Danes and Wends. The land thus, without being able to offer any resistance, lay open to the inroads of the enemy, which could not be checked in the interior either, on account of the scattered settlements. The first necessity, therefore, seemed to Henry to be to enlarge the existing forts and fortify them more strongly, to lay out new strongholds so as to be able to assemble larger forces in secure places. This was especially imperative on the frontiers in order to repulse the enemy on the very threshold.

Henry had already succeeded in destroying the Serbs on the Saale, and at the same time the Wendian tribes which had forced their way across the middle Elbe had been driven back across the river. In these frontier regions, which had fallen to him as the victor, Henry had settled large numbers of his dependents and bound them to military service in return for larger or smaller fiefs. He had thus at the same time established military colonies on the conquered territory, and here, where everything was on a military footing, and in the neighbouring districts which stood mostly under the same leadership with the marks he had free hand to carry out his plans. In the same way King Edward of England had a few years before restored or newly built a long line of frontier forts, and thus secured his realm against the inroads of the enemy; perhaps Henry in his undertakings had the example of the Anglo-Saxons in mind.