The Historians' History of the World 07

Disaffection was rife among the nobles throughout the empire, for Henry, like his father, had endeavoured to secure the dukedoms for his own family, or to confer them on men of no consequence who should be dependent upon himself. The Saxons, whose ancient pride could ill brook the rule of a Franconian, bore him the bitterest ill-will of all, and, of the Saxons, the ducal house of Billing most keenly resented the wrongs which, like many other great Saxon families, it believed it had suffered at the hands of the emperor and his friends. The expenses of the court, which the emperor usually held at Goslar to keep the Saxons in check, also weighed heavily upon the province. The nobility were in a ferment throughout the empire; the emperor held them down with iron hand, but his position was in truth even such as one of his faithful councillors and friends saw in a dream: “The emperor stood before his throne, sword in hand, and cried with a terrible countenance that he would yet smite down all his enemies.” But he was snatched from the empire in the flower of his age, when its need of a strong ruler was sorest. The pope was on a visit to him, and his nobles were gathered about him in his palace at Bodfeld in the Harz, where he had gone for a few days to enjoy the pleasures of the chase. There he was met by the news of a defeat inflicted on Saxon levies by the Wend tribes at Prizlava, in the angle between the upper Havel and the Elbe. The evil tidings were soon followed by the death of the great monarch, and his empire was left to a child six years old, helpless in the face of the evil days to come.

HENRY IV (1056-1106 A.D.)

[1056-1066 A.D.]

The first two emperors of the house of Franconia had drawn in the reins of government so tightly that the German princes seemed to have fallen once more upon the times of Charles and Otto the Great. But the old intractability which prevented complete union was still active in the German races, and this instinct was now reinforced by the private interest of the great nobles who found the authority of the empire irksome when too vigorously wielded, and whose sovereign privileges had been greatly reduced under Conrad II and Henry III. The moment was therefore propitious to all who hated a strong and united empire, for a child king now succeeded the strongest and sternest ruler the empire had ever known. The empress Agnes was to undertake the regency for the youthful monarch, Henry IV, as Theophano had done for Otto III. She did so with Bishop Henry of Augsburg for her adviser. But envy, selfishness, and perfidy were already at work undermining the power of the crown. Under the first Franconian monarchs times and manners had been rude and hard, but now all restraint was flung aside and every consideration of right and fealty seemed to have departed from the empire.