[Illustration: GERMANY under the Saxon and Swabian Emperors] CHAPTER II THE SAXON KINGS OF THE GERMANS, AND REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE BY OTTO I. (919–973)[1] The Transference of the German Kingship from the Franks to the Saxons—The Reign of Henry the Fowler—The Defence of the Frontiers and the Beginnings of the Marks—Otto I.’s Rule as German King—The Feudal Opposition and its Failure—The First and Second Civil Wars—The Reorganisation of the Duchies—The Marks established—Battle on the Lechfeld—Otto’s Ecclesiastical Policy—His Intervention in Italy and its Causes—Italy in the Tenth Century—Degradation of the Papacy—Theodora and Marozia—Alberic and John XII.—Otto’s Second Intervention in Italy—His Coronation as Emperor—His later Italian Policy—His Imperial Position and Death. [Sidenote: Election of Henry the Fowler, 919.] The death of Conrad I., in December 918 (see Period I. pp. 475–7), ended the Franconian dynasty. In April 919 the Franconian and Saxon magnates met at Fritzlar to elect a new king. On the proposal of Eberhard, Duke of Franconia, and brother of the dead king Conrad, Henry, Duke of the Saxons, called Henry the Fowler, was elevated to the vacant throne. Henry had been already marked out for this dignity, both by the great position of his house and nation, and by the wish of the last king. Yet the voluntary abdication of the Franconian and the transference of the monarchy to the Saxon forms one of the great turning-points in the history of the German nation. The existence of a separate German state had been already secured by the work of Louis the German and Arnulf of Carinthia. Yet so long as the sceptre remained in the Carolingian hands, the traditions of a mighty past overpowered the necessities of the present. Down to the death of Conrad, the Franks were still the ruling nation, and the German realm was East Frankish rather than German. The accession of the Saxon gave the best chance for a more general development on national lines. [Sidenote: The Saxon nation.] For of all the five nations of Germany, the Saxons were the least affected by the Carolingian tradition. Christianity was still less than a century old with them, and formal heathenism still lingered on in the wilder moors and marshes of the north. Roman civilisation was still but a sickly exotic; and, free from its enervating influences, the Saxons still retained the fierce barbaric prowess of the old Teutonic stock, while the primitive Teutonic institutions, which were fast disappearing in the south before the march of feudalism, still retained a strong hold amidst the rude inhabitants of northern Germany. In the south the mass of the peasantry were settling down as spiritless and peaceful farmers, leaving the fighting to be done by a limited number of half-professional soldiers. But among the Saxons every freeman was still a warrior, and