https://history-of-the-germans.captivate.fm/episode/a-new-beginning/

Transcript:

We are starting in the year 919 AD. Things are not going well. The mighty empire of Charlemagne has fallen apart. What we have instead are a multitude of puny kingdoms. Their feeble rulers are being pushed around by formidable barons. The frontiers are breached. In the north the Vikings and Danes are ransacking towns and villages along the coasts and even deep inland. In the east the Slavs are burning Hamburg. And in the south the most terrifying of them all, the Magyars, a steppe tribe like the Huns and the Mongols, are marauding all the way from Bavaria to Northern Spain.

One of those crumbling kingdoms was East Francia covering most of what is today West Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Its ruler, Konrad, was the last king who traced his claim back to Charlemagne himself, though it was by adoption only. After 8 years of fruitless civil and foreign wars, Conrad, exhausted and disillusioned, gave up and died. For six months the throne remained vacant.

By rights, the crown should have gone to the West Francian King Charles the Simple as the most senior member of the Carolingian family. However, the four German dukes of Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, and Saxony agreed on one thing and one thing only, that Charles should not be king.

Ruling Charles out left only three credible contenders, Eberhard of Franconia, brother of the deceased king Konrad, Arnulf of Bavaria, and Henry of Saxony. Burkhard of Swabia was otherwise occupied in his own little civil war.

Eberhard held the greatest of the four duchies and was the closest blood relative of the last ruler, so by all accounts he ought to succeed him.

According to the chronicles, Konrad on his deathbed beseeched his brother Eberhard not to take the reign but to offer it to Henry, duke of Saxony. And it says that Eberhard dutifully travelled to Henry’s castle at Quedlinburg to present him with the crown. There he found Henry more interested in his favourite pastime, catching songbirds – hence his nickname “the Fowler”- rather than in pursuing power.

That story is in equal measure cute as it is made up. Note, there were six months between Konrad’s death and Eberhard’s visit. Even though roads in 10th century Germany were pretty awful he could have made that journey in a lot less than six months. It is more likely that used this time to think through the implications of taking up his brother’s mantle. Objectively the kingdom of East Francia was a hospital pass. The king was expected to use up all his resources, including his private property, to defend the realm. At the same time, the rapacious nobles were constantly grabbing more and more of the royal domain making it ever harder to keep the ship of state afloat. His brother, despite being the richest of the dukes had failed in his attempt to unify the kingdom and became a lot poorer in the process. There was no indication that Eberhard would fare any better. So, in all likelihood Eberhard decided that it was better to pass the buck to another duke, kick back and see what advantages he could gain under the new regime.

Whether it was respect for the last wishes of a dying king or a cold-hearted weighing of options, in May 919 at the royal palace of Fritzlar, the nobles of Saxony and Franconia elected Henry, duke of Saxony to be king of East Francia. Note that it was only the Saxons and Franconians who elected Henry, the other half of the country, namely the Bavarians and Swabians stayed away from the election. Instead the bavarians elected their own duke Arnulf to be king.

Henry’s coronation also differed vastly from Konrad’s. Konrad had insisted on the full pageantry of a Carolingian royal investiture including being anointed and consecrated, which raised him from a humble human being to a representative of Christ on earth. Henry on the other hand decided to forego any major ceremony and certainly did not want to be anointed and consecrated as king.

Rarely has a king acceded to the throne with so little legitimacy.

· He was no close blood relative of any previous king,

· He was elected by only half of his kingdom’s barons, and

· He wasn’t even consecrated as king by the church.

Behind the low-key coronation and that story with the songbirds may have been a very clever calculation. Conrad, despite his adoption and all that Frankincense and Myrrh could not bend the dukes and bishops to his will. Henry may have more resources having pooled with Eberhard, but success was by no means guaranteed. So, by foregoing the claims to absolute dominion awarded by the church and pretending not to be really interested in the crown in the first place, he opens up the possibility of bringing the other dukes into a new political system where the king is only a First amongst Equals rather than an all-mighty ruler.

And man, did this new model and this new king do well!

Henry will achieve in 7 simple steps what all his predecessors since Charlemagne have failed so dismally at – creating a unified, lasting kingdom safe from external threats.

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I thought I better stop here. the whole transcript is available on the website. The podcast is available here:

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