In this rebellion, it is remarkable that the duchies invariably sided against their dukes. The Lorrainers, under the leadership of Adalbero, Bishop of Metz, and Reginar, Count of Hainault, were, almost to a man, loyal to the king and therefore in opposition to their duke, Conrad; whereas in Bavaria the king and his brother Henry met with their bitterest and most dangerous opponents. At first Conrad sought to recover his position in Lorraine; but on the banks of the Meuse, in a desperate battle lasting from noon to sunset, he was defeated, quitted his duchy, and betook himself to Mayence, which henceforth became the headquarters of the insurgents. With an army of Saxons reinforced on the march by troops from Lorraine and Franconia, Otto invested the city. He was soon joined by Henry with his Bavarians. For nearly two months the royal army tried in vain to capture the stronghold of the rebels; every device of siege warfare was employed but all to no account: engines were no sooner brought up to the walls than they were destroyed or burnt; assaults were made upon the gates only to be beaten off with loss by the defenders. At last, wearied by lack of success, Otto made overtures for an armistice and sent his cousin Ekbert as an hostage. But the negotiations came to nothing, and the king's ambassador was won over to the side of the enemy. For Otto the situation was desperate. The defection had spread to Saxony and to Bavaria; in the latter duchy Arnulf, the Count palatine, put himself at the head of a tribal revolt against the rule of Duke Henry. This was perhaps the most serious phase in the rebellion. The Bavarians, led by their duke to assist in the siege of Mayence, went over in a body to the enemy. Leaving the defence of the city in the charge of Conrad, Liudolf hastened with the Bavarian deserters to Ratisbon, seized and plundered the city, and drove Henry's family and adherents from the country. In September Otto abandoned the siege of Mayence with the object of attempting to secure Ratisbon, but in this enterprise he was also doomed to failure. Shortly before Christmas, almost at the end of his resources, he withdrew to Saxony.
Owing to the firm rule of Herman, the insurrection in Saxony had broken down, and Lorraine also remained loyal; but the greater part of Franconia and practically the whole of Swabia and Bavaria had taken up arms against him. So widespread was the disaffection that it has been sometimes regarded as an expression of a national resistance against Otto's imperial policy, as though the interests of Germany were prejudiced by his acquisition of the Italian throne[1]. It is, however, more in accordance with the facts to attribute the civil war rather to tribal than national causes: the separate tribes were rebelling against the authority
- ↑ So von Sybel, Die neueren Darstellungen der deutschen Kaiserzeit, pp. 18 f., Die deutsche Nation und das Kaiserreich, pp. 32 f., and Maurenbrecher, Die Kaiserpolitik Ottos I, Historische Zeitschrift, v. 141, and Der Ludolfinische Aufstand von 953, Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, v. 597, but see Giesebrecht, Kaiserzeit, i. 828, and Dümmler, Otto der Grosse, 212 f., for the opposite view.
