in Swabia and executed a few weeks later with his brother Berthold (21 January 917). But one of the rebels, Count Burchard, succeeded in maintaining possession of Swabia. Conrad was hardly more successful with regard to his other great vassals. One of the most powerful, Henry of Saxony, gave signs from the very beginning of the reign of a hostile temper[1] towards the new sovereign which manifested itself in 915 by an open rebellion, marked by the defeat of the expeditions led against the rebel by the Margrave Everard, brother of Conrad, and by the king himself. In Bavaria, Duke Arnulf had also revolted in 914. Temporarily worsted, and obliged to take refuge with his former foes, the Hungarians, he had re-appeared next year in his duchy. He was forced to submit and to surrender Ratisbon, but he took up the struggle afresh a little later (917) and again became master of the whole of Bavaria.
Conrad and the magnates both lay and ecclesiastical who had remained loyal to him held a great assembly at Hohen Altheim in 916 "to strengthen the royal power," when the severest penalties were threatened against any who should "conspire against the life of the king, take part with his adversaries or attempt to deprive him of the government of the kingdom." When Conrad ended his short reign (23 December 918), recommending the magnates to choose as his successor his former enemy, Henry of Saxony, he was in a position to testify that the magnates had seldom done anything else than transgress the precepts laid down at Hohen Altheim. To split up the realm into great feudal principalities, handed down from father to son and owning little or no obedience to a sovereign always in theory elective, – this was the constantly increasing evil from which Germany was to suffer throughout the whole of the Middle Ages.
The appearance of tribal dukes was not a mere outburst of disorder. Local leaders undertook the defence neglected by the central power, and so duchies, founded upon common race and memories, appeared and grew apart in reaction against Frankish hegemony. In Saxony, left to itself, the Liudolfing Bruno headed from 880 the warfare against Danes and Wends. Bavaria, troubled by Hungarians, found a Duke in Arnulf c. 907. Franconia, less harassed and more loyal to the Carolingians, lacked traditions of unity, but in Conrad, the future king, Conradins of the west triumphed over Babenberger rivals in the east. In Lorraine, the Carolingian homeland, even less united, Reginar (a grandson of the Emperor Lothar I) became Duke. Swabia found, under King Conrad I, a Duke in Burchard. Thus everywhere, as local unity met local needs, ducal dynasties arose.
- ↑ The chroniclers of a later period explain this by relating that Conrad had owed his crown only to its refusal by Otto, father of Henry, but the fact is doubtful.
