Having thus spent the early months of 1045, from Christmas onwards, in local measures against Godfrey and his allies, Henry after a short visit to Saxony prepared to spend Pentecost with Peter of Hungary. On his way he narrowly escaped death through the collapse of the floor of a banqueting room, when his cousin Bishop Bruno of Würzburg was killed. Henry, notwithstanding this calamity, arrived punctually in Hungary, and on Whitsunday in Stühlweissenburg, in the banqueting-hall of the palace, Peter surrendered the golden lance which was the symbol of the sovereignty of Hungary. The kingdom was restored to him for his lifetime, on his taking an oath of fidelity to Henry and to his heirs. This was confirmed by an oath of fidelity in the very same terms taken by the Hungarian nobles present. After the termination of the banquet, Peter presented to Henry a great weight of gold, which the king immediately distributed to those knights who had shared with him in the great victory of the preceding year.
How far was this scene spontaneous, and how far prepared? The oath taken by the Hungarian nobles, without a dissentient, points to its being prepared; and if prepared, then most certainly not without the co-operation, most probably on the initiative, of Henry. This is what Wipo has in mind when he says that Henry, having first conquered Hungary in a great and noble victory, later, with exceeding wisdom, confirmed it to himself and his successors. But Henry's victory, on which so much was grounded, was a success snatched by a brilliant chance; it could furnish no stable foundations for foreign sovereignty over a free nation.
More than ever Henry appeared as an all-conquering king; and in the West even Godfrey "despairing of rebellion" determined to submit. During July, either at Cologne or at Aix-la-Chapelle or at Maestricht, he appeared humbly before the king, and in spite of his submission was sent in captivity to Gibichenstein, the German "Tower," a castle-fortress in the dreary land by Magdeburg beyond the Saale, very different from his own homeland of Lorraine. "And so the realm for a short time had quiet and peace."
Godfrey was perhaps taken to his prison in the train of Henry himself. For while he had been schooling himself to the idea of peace, the further Slavs, growing restive, had troubled the borders of these Saxon marches on the Middle Elbe. Godfrey's submission perhaps decided theirs; and when Henry with an armed force entered Saxony from Lorraine, they too sent envoys, and promised the tribute which Conrad had imposed on them.
Henry spent the peaceful late summer and early autumn of 1045 in Saxony. For October he had summoned the princes of the Empire to a colloquy at Tribur. The princes had begun to assemble, and Henry himself had reached Frankfort, when he fell ill of one of those mysterious and frequent illnesses which in the end proved fatal. As his weakness
