ntelligence. The influence
of such a monarch on the progressive development of society in Germany
could not fail of producing results fully equalling the improvements
introduced by Charlemagne.

The youthful Henry, the first of the Saxon line, was proclaimed king of
Germany at Fritzlar, in 919, by the majority of votes, and, according to
ancient custom, raised upon the shield. The Archbishop of Mayence
offered to anoint him according to the usual ceremony, but Henry
refused, alleging that he was content to owe his election to the grace
of God and to the piety of the German princes, and that he left the
ceremony of anointment to those who wished to be still more pious.

Before Henry could pursue his more elevated projects, the assent of the
southern Germans, who had not acknowledged the choice of their northern
compatriots, had to be gained. Burkhard of Swabia, who had asserted his
independence, and who was at that time carrying on a bitter feud with
Rudolph, King of Burgundy, whom he had defeated, in 919, in a bloody
engagement near Winterthur, was the first against whom he directed the
united forces of the empire, in whose name he, at the same time, offered
him peace and pardon. Burkhard, seeing himself constrained to yield,
took the oath of fealty to the new-elected King at Worms, but continued
to act with almost his former unlimited authority in Swabia, and even
undertook an expedition into Italy in favor of Rudolph, with whom he had
become reconciled. The Italians, enraged at the wantonness with which he
mocked them, assassinated him. Henry bestowed the dukedom of Swabia on
Hermann, one of his relations, to whom he gave Burkhard's widow in
marriage. He also bestowed a portion of the south of Alemannia on King
Rudolph in order to win him over, and in return received from him the
holy lance with which the side of the Saviour had been pierced as he
hung on the cross. Finding it no longer possible to dissolve the
dukedoms and great fiefs, Henry, in order to strengthen the unity of the
empire, introduced the novel policy of bestowing the dukedoms, as they
fell vacant, on his relations and personal adherents, and of allying the
rest of the dukes with himself by intermarriage, thus uniting the
different powerful houses in the State into one family.

Bavaria still remained in an unsettled state. Arnulf the Bad, leagued
with the Hungarians, against whom Henry had great designs, had still
much in his power, and Henry, resol