ng empire; and some preference was shown to the female or
illegitimate blood of Charlemagne. Of the greater part, the title
and possession were alike doubtful, and the merit was adequate to the
contracted scale of their dominions. Those who could appear with an army
at the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in the Vatican; but their
modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of kings of
Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years may be deemed a vacancy,
from the abdication of Charles the Fat to the establishment of Otho the
First.

[Footnote 116: Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this coronation:
and Baronius has honestly transcribed it, (A.D. 813, No. 13, &c. See
Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 506, 507, 508,) howsoever adverse to the claims
of the popes. For the series of the Carlovingians, see the historians of
France, Italy, and Germany; Pfeffel, Schmidt, Velly, Muratori, and even
Voltaire, whose pictures are sometimes just, and always pleasing.]

Otho [117] was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and if he truly
descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte of Charlemagne,
the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted to reign over their
conquerors. His father, Henry the Fowler, was elected, by the suffrage
of the nation, to save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits
[118] were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of
the Othos. A portion of Gaul, to the west of the Rhine, along the banks
of the Meuse and the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose
blood and language it has been tinged since the time of Caesar and
Tacitus.

Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of Otho
acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of Burgundy and
Arles. In the North, Christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho,
the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder:
the marches of Brandenburgh and Sleswick were fortified with German
colonies; and the king of Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia,
confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious
army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the
pope, and forever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation of
Germany. From that memorable aera, two maxims of public jurisprudence
were introduced by force and ratified by time. I. That the prince, who
was elected in the German diet, acquired, from that instant, the subje