The Historians' History of the World 07

Day and night people were now at work building in the frontier districts. House had to adjoin house, and court, court; everything was surrounded with walls and ramparts. The work went on without a moment’s pause. Henry encouraged the people to unaccustomed efforts, because he wished them to become hardened in times of peace, so that they would be better able to endure the privations of war. Thus there grew up in those districts settlements surrounded with walls and ramparts: smaller places were enlarged, destroyed fortifications restored; often large numbers of human habitations suddenly sprang up, where before only a simple hut had stood. At that time, Quedlinburg in the Harz was wholly rebuilt; Merseburg, which was always a place dear to the king, was enlarged and surrounded by a stone wall.

Henry at the same time opened at Merseburg an asylum for criminals; this was done in order to populate the town and make it capable of defending itself against the enemy. These suspicious characters lived in a suburb of Merseburg, whereas the citadel itself was occupied by more reliable dependents. These criminals were called the Merseburgans, and formed a troop of soldiery which Henry seems often to have used in especially dangerous enterprises. “It was,” says Wittekindf [the historian], “a band composed of robbers; for the king, who liked to be mild towards his subjects, exempted even thieves or robbers, when they were brave and warlike men, from their deserved punishment and caused them to settle in the suburb of Merseburg. He gave them fields and arms and ordered them to keep the peace with their countrymen; against the Wends, however, he let them make plundering expeditions as often as they pleased.” So strong was this Merseburg troop that a few years later it furnished 1,000 men for the war with Bohemia.

But also in other ways Henry tried to increase the population of the fortified towns. He commanded all diets, popular gatherings, and festivities to be held within the walls of the citadel; as often as the Saxons came together they were to assemble in the strongholds so that they might gradually become accustomed to life in enclosed places, which they still regarded as imprisonment. Here also he perhaps was following the example of King Edward, who in the same way ordered all commercial dealings to be conducted within the gates of the citadel. But the fortified places of Saxony and Thuringia were not only to provide the possibility of offering a strong resistance to a fresh attack of the enemy; they were at the same time to provide refuge and safety to all the inhabitants of the frontier regions. Consequently every ninth man had to move into the town to erect a dwelling for himself and his eight companions, and also to provide granaries and storehouses, since the third part of all the fruits of the field which were produced had to be delivered in the citadel and were there stored. The eight, however, who remained outside cultivated the field of the one within, sowed it and harvested it, and brought the harvest into his granaries. Without the citadel there could be no buildings, or only worthless ones, since these were destroyed at the first attack of the enemy.

His military provisions, so far as can be seen from the scanty records, dealt with feudal service in Saxony, which he compelled from now on to be rendered in horses and mounted soldiers. Henry remodelled the organization of the army and the conduct of war, and brought them into new lines which were followed by the Germans for a long time afterward.

[924-929 A.D.]

Henry was occupied four years with the ordering of all these things. “My tongue,” says Wittekind,f “cannot tell with what precaution and watchfulness he did everything at that time which could help to protect the fatherland.” As soon, however, as Henry knew that his army was in fighting trim, he used it to attack the Wend tribes (928). They were the nearest enemies of the empire and of Saxony, and at the same time less dangerous than the Hungarians; so that the war against them was considered the best school to prepare for the stronger enemy. The first attack was upon the Hevelli, a Wend tribe, which dwelt on both sides of the Havel and on the lower Spree. Several times they fought, and Henry conquered each time, penetrating finally to the chief stronghold of the tribe, the present Brandenburg. The city, at that time called Brennaburg, lay surrounded by the Havel. It was midwinter when Henry laid siege to it, and he pitched his camp on the ice. Ice, iron, and famine,—the three brought about the fall of Brennaburg, and with it the whole of the land of the Hevelli fell into the hands of the conqueror.