Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/315

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 293 lords usurped the fragments of the falHng empire ; and some preference was shewn to the female or illegitimate blood of Charlemagne. Of the greater part the title and possession were alike doubtful, and the merit was adequate to the con- tracted scale of their dominions. Those who could appear with an army at the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in the Vatican ; but their modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of kings of Italy ; and the whole term of seventy-four years may be deemed a vacancy, from the abdi- cation of Charles the Fat to the establishment of Otho the [Ottoj First. Otho 1-^ was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony ; and, othown^oi if he truly descended from Witikind, the adversary and pi'ose- reatoresand 1 . r /-ii 1 .1 . ■. r • 1 i 1 appiopnatea lyte oi Charlemagne, the posterity or a vanquished people was the western exalted to reign over their conquerors. His father Henry the b62 [Jan. aij Fowler was elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save and institute tlie kingdom of (xermany. Its limits ^-^'^ were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. A portion of Gaul to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood and language it has been tinged since the time of Ca?sar and Tacitus. Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of Otho acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of Burgundy and Aries. i- In the north, Christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho, the concjueror and apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder ; the marches of Brandenburg and Sleswick were fortified with Ger- man colonies ; and the king of Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia, confessed themselves his tinbutary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the pope, and for ever fixed the ^'^ He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in whose favour the duchy of Saxony had been instituted, A.D. 858. Ruotgerus, the biographer of a St. Bruno [brother of Otto the Great] (Bibliot. Bunavianns Catalog, torn. iii. vol. ii. p. 679), gives a splendid character of his family, .'tavorum atavi usque ad hominum memoriam omnes nobilissimi ; nullus in eoruni stirpe ignotus, nullus degener facile reperitur (apud Struviuni, Corp. Hist. German, p, 216). [The Vit. Brunonis is edited separately by Pertz in the Scr. rcr. Germ., 1841.] Yet Gundling (in Henrico Aucupe) is not satisfied of his descent hom Witikind. 1- See the treatise of Conringius (de Finibus Imperii Germanici Francofurt, 1680. in 4to) : he rejects the extravagant and improper scale of the Roman and Carlovingian empires, and discusses, with moderation, the rights of Germany, her vassals, and her neighbours. )2B [The kingdom of Aries, or Lower Burgundy, was founded in 879 by Boso of Vienna ; the kingdom of Upper Burgundy (between Jura and the Pennine Alps) in 888 by Count Rudolf, the Guelf. The two kingdoms were united in 933, and this kingdom of .Aries was annexed to the Empire under Conrad II. a hundred years later (1033).]