The Eastern Frontier.
During the years 1030-1035 Conrad was chiefly occupied with the restless state of the eastern frontier of his kingdom. It is a dreary story of rebellion, ineffective campaigns, fratricidal wars. Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, the Wendish lands to the north-east, demanded in turn the Emperor's attention. Boleslav Chrobry had, during the previous reign, been assiduously building up a strong position for himself in Poland; in the peace of Bautzen (1018) he had been the chief gainer at the expense of the Empire; on the death of Henry II he had taken a further step and boldly assumed the title of king. Conrad was neither strong enough nor at liberty to deal at once with this presumptuous duke; but while at Merseburg in February 1025, he took the wise precaution of securing the loyalty of the neighbouring Slavonic tribes of the Lyutitzi and the Obotrites.
In the summer Boleslav died; his younger son Mesco, having successfully driven his elder brother Otto Bezprim to Russia (or perhaps Hungary), assumed the kingship and the policy of his father. By 1028 his aggressions had become intolerable. The eastern parts of Saxony were raided and plundered; the bishopric of Zeitz suffered so severely that it had to be removed to the better fortified Naumberg, a town of Eckhard of Meissen, near the junction of the Unstrut and the Saale; the Lyutitzi, helplessly at the mercy of the tyrannical Mesco, pleaded for German assistance. Conrad assembled an army beyond the Elbe. But the campaign was a complete failure: the troops were scattered and worn out by long marches through forests and swamps; Bautzen was besieged, but not captured; and the Emperor, despairing of making any headway, withdrew Saxony. The only success was achieved by Conrad's ally, Břatislav, the son of the Duke of Bohemia, who managed to recover Moravia from the Poles. The death of Thietmar, Margrave of the East Mark (January 1030), was the occasion for another and more serious incursion on the part of the Polish prince, united this time with a band of disloyal Saxons. In the region between the Elbe and the Saale a hundred villages are said to have been destroyed by fire, more than 9000 men and women taken into captivity. The enemy were only beaten off by the courage and resource of Count Dietrich of Wettin.
Conrad was unable to take the matter in hand, for he was engaged in a war with Stephen of Hungary. The relations between the latter country and the Empire had been growing yearly more strained. Werner, Bishop of Strasbourg, Conrad's ambassador to Constantinople in 1027, had been denied a passage through Hungary, and was compelled to take the more hazardous route by sea. The Bavarian nobles, no doubt, gave ample provocation for this hostile attitude by their attempts to extend their possessions across the Fischa, the boundary at that time between Germany
