Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (38 page)

Piast-imperial cooperation peaked with Otto III’s long pilgrimage in 999–1000 to Poland, which had complex motives but included a desire to cement alliances with Slav princes. Mieszko and his son and successor Boleslav I Chrobry had backed Otto’s punitive expeditions against the Wends during the 990s. Otto now recognized Gniezno as an archbishopric, securing Poland’s ecclesiastical autonomy, as well as establishing a suffragan bishop in Breslau (Wroclaw) for Silesia, which was within imperial jurisdiction but held by the Piasts from 990 to 1353. These measures also advanced Otto’s Christianizing agenda, because the new archbishop of Gniezno was better placed to promote missionary activity than his counterpart way to the west in Mainz, who had lost influence during the 983 Slav rising. Otto recognized Boleslav as the Empire’s ‘brother and helper’ (
fratrem et cooperatorem imperii  
) and, according to some accounts, placed a crown on his head.
⁴⁸

Otto III certainly sent another crown to Stephen, who thereby became king of Hungary in 1001. Christianity gained ground amongst the Magyars following the shock of their defeat at Lechfeld to Otto I in 955, which suggested easier riches lay in adopting a settled existence. Although Byzantine influence remained potent, the Ottonians offered military aid and recognition from the 970s, backing the Arpad family against those Magyars who wanted to continue the traditional life as nomadic raiders. Prince Vaik adopted the Christian name Stephen (Istvan) at his conversion in 985, soon importing western political ideas like the Empire’s administrative structure of counties under sheriffs, and converting the enslaved population into freer, but still dependent
serfs. Hungary’s elevation to a kingdom in 1001 was underpinned by a new ecclesiastical structure with two archbishops and ten bishops. This process was slow, and twelfth-century travellers reported the Hungarians still lived in tents during the summer and autumn months.
⁴⁹

Otto III was subsequently criticized for converting tribute-paying princelings into independent kings. It is more likely that Boleslav and Istvan considered themselves the emperor’s primary allies, while Otto regarded himself as king of kings. The relationship remained fluid because of internal changes in the Empire, Poland and Hungary. Boleslav’s successors were not crowned kings, and his son Mieszko II returned the royal insignia to the Empire in 1031. A royal title could mark temporary ascendency over domestic foes, while submission to the Empire was a favoured tactic of weaker rulers seeking external backing. In practice, Poland remained a tributary of the Empire from the 960s until the late twelfth century without this infringing its internal autonomy or requiring its ruler to participate in German politics. In this sense, it remained more distinct than Bohemia, which was clearly an imperial fief by 1002.
⁵⁰

The emperor retained two additional forms of influence. Istvan’s marriage to Gisela, daughter of the duke of Bavaria, associated him with the Ottonian elite and was a significant factor in his conversion. Boleslav was related by marriage to the Ekkehardiner of Meissen and to the Billung family, who were dukes of Saxony. The Piasts continued to marry into the Empire’s elite for the next fifty years, but from the mid-eleventh century their choice of brides became more international, reflecting their desire for wider recognition.

The second option of military intervention remained possible into the twelfth century, but proved increasingly difficult. Boleslav seized Meissen following Otto III’s death in 1002 in what was both a land grab and a blow against Henry II, who was less willing to recognize him as king and demanded a resumption of tribute.
⁵¹
A three-way fight developed between the emperor and the Polish and Bohemian dukes after 1003, joined by the Hungarians in 1030. Multiple issues were at stake. Each sought to assert prestige relative to the others, while the Polish, Bohemian and Hungarian rulers faced internal challenges, including from those unwilling to accept Christianity or embrace new socio-economic arrangements. Meanwhile, imperial intervention depended on cooperation from Bavaria and the eastern march lords like the Ekkehardiner
who had their own regional interests. Conrad II’s difficulties in Burgundy and Italy were an added distraction between 1024 and 1033. The Veleti used the chance to launch a series of increasingly destructive raids over the Elbe from 1033 to 1066. The Premyslids removed the relics of the martyred Ottonian missionary Vojtech from Gniezno in 1039 to promote Prague’s elevation to an archdiocese independent from Mainz and secure ecclesiastical autonomy similar to that already enjoyed by Poland and Hungary.

Nonetheless, Conrad’s successor Henry III skilfully reasserted imperial pre-eminence in a series of campaigns culminating in a great victory in support of the Arpads over Hungarian rebels at Menfö in 1044. The problems that confronted his son Henry IV hindered further intervention after 1073, while the Arpads and Piasts reasserted a more independent royal status by supporting the Gregorian reform papacy during the Investiture Dispute. With his customary ingenuity, Gregory VII reinterpreted Henry III’s earlier gift of insignia captured at Menfö to argue that Hungary was subordinate to the papacy, not the Empire. The last serious efforts to enforce imperial suzerainty over Hungary and Poland failed by 1109, but infighting amongst the Piasts ensured some tribute was paid until 1184.

Bohemia

The Premyslids chose the opposite course of securing elevation as kings by backing the Salians. Henry IV granted Wratislav II a personal royal title in 1085 as thanks for defeating his German enemies at Mailberg three years earlier. This elevation underscores the significance of the imperial title, since Henry delayed the reward until after his own coronation as emperor in 1084, thereby maintaining his superior status. Only an emperor (or more controversially, a pope) could make a king. Kings could not make other kings, nor could royal titles simply be assumed: those attempting this failed to secure recognition from existing monarchs. As with the earlier example of the Piasts, the Premyslids’ own infighting prevented them from making their royalty permanent. Vladislav II received another personal title from Frederick I in 1158. Ottokar I secured confirmation of this as hereditary by trading his support for the Staufers during the Empire’s civil war after 1198. Frederick II’s subsequent problems obliged him to confirm this in 1212 and 1231,
as well as recognize Prague’s autonomy from the imperial church. The ‘lands of the Bohemian crown’ (
corona regni Bohemiae  
) were increasingly accepted as a distinct unit separate from the German kingdom. Frederick II issued a charter in 1212, agreeing to accept whoever the Bohemians chose as their king.

In future, each new Bohemian king automatically succeeded to the ‘lands of the Bohemian crown’, but his political rights in the Empire depended on being enfeoffed with the new title of Arch Cup Bearer (
Erzmundschenk
), created in 1212, which entitled him to participate in German royal elections. These changes consolidated Bohemia’s autonomy, but it would be wrong to interpret them simply as a ‘decline’ in imperial authority, since they reflected a new understanding of feudal vassalage developed by the Staufers to ease management of the Empire.
⁵²

German lords periodically criticized this arrangement, which placed Bohemia outside their king’s jurisdiction, yet still allowed it to help elect their king. The famous thirteenth-century legal treatise the
Sachsenspiegel
added ethnic arguments by claiming the Bohemians were a different people. Such criticism generally only surfaced in moments of tension and many Germans regarded Bohemians positively. Perhaps one in six of Bohemia’s inhabitants were German-speaking by the late Middle Ages, following large-scale immigration encouraged by Bohemia’s kings who valued Germans for their skills and labour. Although outside the imperial church, Bohemia was still involved in the major monastic movements like the Cistercians and Premonstratensians, while Bohemian lords built German-style stone castles like their Polish and Hungarian counterparts.
⁵³

The Premyslids made serious bids to secure election in Germany from the 1270s, only to be blocked by their Habsburg rivals in Austria. The struggle thwarted Rudolf I’s efforts to reverse the 1212 arrangement and reduce Bohemia to the status of an immediate fief again. In an entirely unpredictable sequence of events, the Luxembourg family, previously based in north-western Europe, inherited Bohemia in 1310 after the Premyslids’ extinction. They expanded the Bohemian crown lands by acquiring Silesia in stages between 1327 and 1353 through marriage with the local dukes, as well as the Sorb region of Lusatia by 1370 – in both cases at the Piasts’ expense. Various junior Piast branches survived as Bohemian vassals in Silesia until 1653.
⁵⁴
Where the Premyslids had failed, the Luxembourgs succeeded in using Bohemia as a base from
which to rule the Empire, between 1346 and 1438. Bohemia now became ‘king’s country’ as its autonomy was consolidated to secure it as a large territorial base from which to govern the Empire (see
pp. 389–96
).

Prussia

The Salians’ efforts to assert suzerainty over Poland and Hungary failed just as demographic and economic growth in the Empire gathered momentum, prompting a resumption of eastward expansion suspended since the 980s. The subsequent Wendish Crusade after 1147 involved Bohemians, Danes and Poles, but is associated in the popular memory primarily with the Teutonic Order. This was a self-consciously Germanic organization, but was highly unusual in the much wider process of migration and in fact did not require its knights to be born Germans and made little effort to Germanize its multi-ethnic subjects ‘beyond enforcing the most perfunctory Christianization’.
⁵⁵

The Order kept its relationship to the Empire deliberately ambiguous. Grand Master Hermann von Salza negotiated purposely contradictory agreements with Emperor Frederick II, Pope Gregory IX and the Piast Prince Conrad of Masovia in return for agreeing to assist the northern crusading effort in 1226. His agreement with Frederick secured the emperor’s sanction and protection, whilst guaranteeing the Order’s independence as only the Empire’s ‘associate’ rather than vassal.
⁵⁶
Utterly ruthless, the Order continued its aggressive expansion long after achieving its original goal of defeating the pagan Prussians. It exploited Poland’s internal divisions into the 1320s to expand at the expense of fellow Christians, including capturing Gdansk in 1308, as well as buying Estonia in 1345 from Denmark, which had conquered it during the 1220s. Suzerainty was extended over the archbishopric of Riga in 1395, reducing the parallel Livonian Order to a subordinate branch (
Map 21
).

Thereafter the Order contracted in the face of a resurgent Poland, which inflicted a crushing defeat at Tannenberg in 1410 and by 1466 had captured western Prussia, including Gdansk. The prolonged conflicts with the Order after 1409 encouraged Polish intellectuals to embrace the western concept of monarchical sovereignty and argue their kingdom was fully independent. This was symbolized by Polish monarchs’ adoption of a closed ‘imperial’ crown rather than the open
diadems worn previously.
⁵⁷
Renewed war with Poland after 1519 precipitated the Order’s collapse. Seeking to escape total defeat, Grand Master Albrecht von Hohenzollern secularized the remaining, eastern, half of Prussia as a hereditary duchy under Polish suzerainty in 1525, parting ways with the rest of the Order that remained based in southern Germany.

The Livonian Order refused to follow suit and emancipated itself as an independent military order still controlling 113,000 square kilometres inhabited by a million people.
⁵⁸
Still beset by enemies, the Livonian Order reinterpreted its thirteenth-century charter to claim its grand master was an imperial prince entitled to the Empire’s protection. The Habsburgs had more pressing matters in western Europe, obliging Grand Master Gottfried Kettler to follow the Teutonic example and secularize his remaining territory as the duchy of Courland under Polish suzerainty in 1561. The Reichstag continued to debate Livonia’s and Prussia’s relationship to the Empire into the 1570s before accepting that both lay outside its frontiers. Courland remained an autonomous part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until falling to Russia in the third and final Polish partition in 1795.

Ducal Prussia remained more closely connected to the Empire, having been inherited in 1618 by the main Hohenzollern line ruling Brandenburg since 1415. The Teutonic connection persisted in the Hohenzollerns’ use of black and white as two of their heraldic colours, as well as the Order’s iron cross that first appeared on Prussian battle flags after 1701. Ducal Prussia remained underpopulated and strategically vulnerable, often more of a liability than an asset to Brandenburg’s rulers who were yoked through it as Polish vassals until 1660. Adroit intervention in the Swedish–Polish war of 1655–60 secured international recognition of ducal Prussia as a sovereign possession. The Hohenzollerns thereby joined the Habsburgs as the only German dynasties ruling sovereign land beyond imperial frontiers. Hohenzollern Prussia was raised to a kingdom by Emperor Leopold I in November 1700 to buy military support for the impending War of the Spanish Succession. The lavish coronation in Königsberg (Kaliningrad) in January 1701 was intended simply to win international recognition and was never repeated – Prussian kings assumed authority like Austrian emperors after 1804 without coronations. Poland-Lithuania only recognized Prussia’s royal status in 1764, while the Teutonic Order always refused.
Later pro-Prussian historians dismissed these protests as irrelevant, yet Hohenzollern monarchs remained extraordinarily touchy about their new status and felt obliged to assert it through aggressive policies later in the eighteenth century.
⁵⁹