Page:Cambridge Medieval History Volume 3.pdf/346

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Casimir of Poland
303

tribute to Bohemia. The dukes departed "reconciled." In the following January Břatislav died, having apparently again temporarily seized Silesia. Peace was eventually ratified between Poland and Bohemia by the marriage of Casimir's only daughter to Břatislav's successor.

In spite of the wanderings of his youth, and the long years spent in conflict, Casimir was a scholar (he is said to have addressed his troops in Latin verse!) and a friend of monks among whom he had been trained. That he was himself a monk at Cluny is a later legend. His last years were spent in the peaceful consolidation through Church and State of what he had so hardly won. He died soon after Henry, in 1058.

The affairs of Hungary in the years 1040-1045 group themselves around King Peter, driven from his realm by the Magyar nobles and restored, but in vain, by Henry. His aid to Břatislav in the first years of Henry's reign had been prompted more by youthful insolence than by any fixed anti-German feeling. He was a Venetian on his father's side and on succeeding his uncle St Stephen in 1039, had promised him to maintain his widow Gisela, sister of Henry II, in her possessions, but after a year or so he broke his faith and she fell into poverty. This marks the time when, along with Břatislav, he began his raids into Germany.

Two such raids, in 1039 and 1040, had been successful, when a rebellion drove him from his realm into Germany. The new government was anti-German and inclined towards paganism, while the new king, Obo, was chosen from among the Magyar chiefs. Peter came, as we have seen, to Henry as a suppliant in August 1041. But Burgundian troubles forced Henry to put Hungary aside and Obo himself began hostilities. "Never before did Hungary carry off so great a booty" from the duchy of Bavaria as now, although a gallant resistance was offered by the Margrave Adalbert of Babenberg, founder of the Austrian house, and his warlike son Leopold. At Easter 1042 Obo was crowned as king.

The puppet-king set up by Henry in his first counter-expedition (1042) was at once expelled, but in 1043, as we saw, Henry obtained solid gain; the land from the Austrian territory to the Leitha and March was by far the most lasting result of all his Hungarian campaigns. The boundary thus fixed remained, but the Hungarian crown could not be brought into any real dependence. A third expedition (1044) restored Peter as a vassal, but by autumn 1046 he had fallen, to disappear in prison amid the depths of Hungary. His cousin Andrew, an Arpad, took his throne. He dexterously used the renascent Paganismn, although it was covered over with a veneer of Christianity, and he did not wish for permanent warfare with his greater neighbour. Apologetic envoys gave Henry an excuse for delay and for two years Hungary was left alone. Then the peace was disturbed by Henry's restless uncle, Gebhard of Ratisbon, who (1049) made a raid into Hungary.