Babenberg feud

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The Babenberg feud was a dispute at the beginning of the 10th century between the families of the (older, or Franconian) Babenbergs or Popponen and the Konradines for power in the central Main area . The result of the feud - fueled and controlled by the crown - was for the Babenbergs the loss of power in Franconia , for the Konradines indirectly the gain of the East Franconian royal throne.

The opponents

On one side stood the Franconian Babenbergs, who in the late 9th century belonged to the party members of King Charlemagne , who had entrusted the margraviate of Thuringia to one of them, Poppo , in 880 . The main actors on the Babenberg side were the sons of Poppo's brother Heinrich , who in the last years of his life was called marchio ( margrave ) and dux ( duke ) and who died in 886 at the siege of Paris in battle against the Normans :

The Saxon Duke Otto the Illustrious from the Liudolfinger family , whose wife Hadwig was the sister of the three brothers, was one of her allies .

On the other side were the Konradines, four brothers, probably sons of Count Udo in Lahngau , whose eldest, Konrad , is referred to as the nepos of the East Franconian King Arnulf of Carinthia . They were evidently close, if not closest, relatives of Arnulf, who had relied heavily on them in his fight against Karl the Dicken and thus also against the Babenbergers and, in this context, in addition to their power base in Hesse, gave them a supremacy in Thuringia (where they However, they could not assert themselves against the Liudolfinger) and provided Mainfranken . After Arnulf's death in 899, the Konradines, the only relatives of the new King Ludwig, were the predominant clan in the empire:

The beginning of the feud

After taking office in 887, Arnulf of Carinthia gradually took their counties from the Babenbergs and tried to weaken the supporters of his predecessor Karl wherever he could. At the same time he preferred his Konradin relatives, who from the beginning had the mission and goal to finally break the Babenberg position of power.

The confrontation reached its first climax in 892, when Arnulf replaced the Babenberger Poppo in Thuringia with the Konradiner Konrad, and Konrad's brother Rudolf made Bishop of Würzburg. However, it probably took until 897 before the situation escalated, and another five years (Arnulf had died in 899 and his son Ludwig was the new king) before the first big argument.

The siege of the Babenburg

In the year 902 the Konradiner and the Babenbergs met for the first time in a battle, probably in connection with the siege of the Babenburg (around which today's Bamberg developed). This battle, which the Konradines won, meant death for three of the seven main participants: Heinrich fell, Eberhard was badly wounded and died a few days later, Adalhard lost his left eye through a blow in the face, was captured and then by Gebhard beheaded.

At a Reich assembly in Forchheim in June 903, the majority of the great people of the Reich who were present stood behind the Conradines. The property of Adalhard and Heinrich was confiscated, King Ludwig gave parts to Rudolf von Würzburg, but also parts to Konrad and the Fulda Monastery .

Adalbert continued its struggle continues, captured with an ally, Count Egino in Badanachgau , Würzburg , expelled the bishop and the city was able to end the feud claim. He also drove away the widow and children of Eberhard, so that the eastern Franconia was in Adalbert's hands despite Forchheim's decisions at that time. A reaction of the king to Adalbert's actions is not known from the year 904. It was not until 905, according to the Annales Alemannici , that the crown appeared to have developed activities against Adalbert, but these could not have been decisive.

The battle at Fritzlar

Gebhard had been appointed governor and duke in Lorraine by the king in 903. He was also able to assert himself there, although he did not reside in Lorraine , but was almost always near the king. When an uprising broke out against him in 906, he entrusted his nephew Konrad the Younger to fight it , as the feud with the Babenbergers entered its decisive phase at the same time and his presence in Franconia was required.

Perhaps as a reaction to the attacks of 905, but perhaps also as a reaction to years of royal inactivity, possibly in consultation and not just coincidentally at the same time with the Lorraine people, Adalbert invaded the Hessian possessions of Konrad and Gebhard at the beginning of the year. There was a battle near Fritzlar on February 27th, which Regino von Prüm describes as follows:

Dum haec in regno Lotharii aguntur, Cuonradus senior in Hessia in loco, qui dicitur Frideslar, cum multa turba peditum et equitum residebat, crebras incursiones Adalberti suspectas habens; frater vero eius Gebehardus in Wedereiva cum omnibus, quos sibi adsociare poterat, eiusdem Adalberti prestolabatur repentinam inruptionem. Nec eos fefellit per omnia rerum eventus; liquidem Adalbertus vires adversariorum extenuatas esse sentiens, eo quod in tribus partibus essent divisi, oportunum et diu exoptatum tempus advenisse gaudens congregatis sociis mox arma corripit; et primo quidem simulat se contra Gebehardum copias transferre velle, ut et illum bello perterreret et fratrem securiorem redderet; deinde, quanta potuit celeritate, aciem adversus Cuonradum dirigit. Quod aum Cuonradus sero cognovisset, divisis sociis in tribus turmis ei incunctanter occcrrit; et commissa pugna duae turmae, una peditum et altera Saxonum, statim terga verterunt. Quos cum Cuonradus clamore ingenti frustra hortaretur, ut nullatenus hostibus cederent, sed pro coniugum ac liberorum salute et defensione patria totis viribus decertarent, ipse cum terti turma animatis sociis super adversarios irruit, sed mox in ipso primo impetu multis vulneribusus confossus. Adalbertus victoria potitus cum sociis fugientes insecutus est et innumeram multitudinem, maxime peditum, gladio prostravit. Tribus itaque continuis diebus totam illam regionem perlustrans cedibus ac rapinis cuncta demolitus est. His patratis, honeratis sociis spoliis ac ingenti preda, ad Babenberh castrum reversus est. Peracta est autem haec cedes III. Cal. Mart .; <Edition p. 151/152> venientes filii cum matre levaverunt corpus Cuonradi et sepelierunt in castello, quod Wilineburah vocatur. Eodem anno circa Iulio mense Ludowicus rex conventum generalem celebravit apud Triburias villa regia, ubi adesse mandavit saepe dictum Adalbertum, ut in presentia optimatum regni pro se rationem redderet et pacis conditionem, quam hactenus exosam habuerat, tandem aliquando tireta rapa rap caedibus et incendiis saltim vel sero quiesceret.
While this was happening in Lothar's empire, the elder Konrad had his camp in Fritzlar in Hesse with a large group on foot and on horseback, suspecting frequent attacks by Adalbert; but his brother Gebehard and everyone he had been able to pull to himself awaited the sudden break-in of that very Adalbert in the Wetterau. Indeed, the outcome proved them to be quite right; for when Adalbert noticed that the power of his opponents had been weakened because they had been divided into three places, he gathered his companions, glad that the favorable and long-awaited time had come, and immediately took up arms and gave himself up at first it appeared as if he wanted to lead his troops against Gebehard, so that he might both make him fear war and make his brother safe; thereupon he directed his army against Konrad with as great speed as he could. When Konrad recognized this too late, he divides his companions into three piles and approaches him without hesitation; and when the meeting began, two groups, one from the infantry and the other from the Saxons, immediately turned to flee. Since Konrad admonished them in vain with loud shouts that they by no means want to give way to the enemy, but rather fight for the salvation of their wives and children and to defend the fatherland with all their might, he rushed himself with the third group, cheering on his comrades, on the adversaries , but at the first attack he was covered with many wounds and died. Adalbert was victorious, pursued the fleeing people with his companions, and cut down a countless crowd, mainly those on foot, with the sword. By roaming the whole landscape for three days in a row, he destroyed everything through murder and pillage. When this was done, he returned to the fortress of Bamberg with his comrades, who were laden with spoils of war and immeasurable loot. This bloodbath occurred on February 27th. The sons and their mother picked up Konrad's corpse and buried them in Weilburg. In the same year around July, King Ludwig held a general meeting at the royal court of Tribur, to which he also ordered the often-mentioned Adalbert to appear so that he could account for himself in the presence of the greats of the empire, the state of peace that had prevailed until then had been hated, finally accepting his cruel tyranny and giving up the robbery, killing and burning at least after such a long time .

Adalbert refused, despite summons, to answer himself before the king and entrenched himself in his castle Theres (today Obertheres near Haßfurt ), which he opposed the royal army with Ludwig at the head and Hatto I , the Archbishop of Mainz as commander, could also defend successfully for a while. When his ally Count Egino changed sides, he entered into negotiations and finally surrendered against the promise of safe conduct. However, he was arrested, according to Regino, because he was accused by his own people of feigning surrender, but according to other sources after he was lured into a trap by Archbishop Hatto. He was convicted of treason and beheaded on September 9, 906.

Further process

Bishop Rudolf von Würzburg fell on August 3, 908 in Thuringia, Gebhard in June 910 against the Hungarians near Augsburg . Konrad the Younger was the only surviving Konradiner to become Duke of Franconia in 910 and King of the East Franconian Empire as Konrad I in November 911. The Babenbergs lost all possessions and offices in Franconia and were eliminated - presumably only for the time being, as Adalbert's son Heinrich is likely to be the progenitor of the Schweinfurt counts .

literature

  • Thilo Offergeld: Reges pueri. The royalty of minors in the early Middle Ages (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica . Schriften. Vol. 50). Hahn, Hannover 2001, ISBN 3-7752-5450-1 (At the same time: Bonn, Universität, Dissertation, 1999/2000: The Kingship of Minors in the Franconian-German Middle Ages. Offergeld's paper contains a differentiated analysis of the power politics of the Conradinians against the Babenbergers, notes on the role of Hatto, Duke Otto of Saxony and others, as well as the partiality of Regino's descriptions).
  • Wilhelm Störmer : The Konradin-Babenberg feud around 900. Causes, cause, consequences. In: Hans-Werner Goetz (Ed.): Konrad I. On the way to the “German Reich”? Winkler, Bochum 2006, ISBN 3-89911-065-X , pp. 169–183, (Störmer's article contains a summary of the current research results on the subject as well as a self-analysis of the circumstances of the Babenberg feud).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Saxon Duke Otto, who was Adalbert's brother-in-law and also the father-in-law of Matfrieden Gerhard, one of the leaders of the uprising in Lorraine, comes into question as the interface between the two groups
  2. ↑ Source: Friedrich Kurz (Ed.): Reginonis abbatis Prumiensis Chronicon cum continuatione Treverensi (= Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum. ). Hahn, Hanover 1890, p. 151 f. , (several reprints).
  3. ^ Translation: Yearbooks of Fulda, Regino Chronik, Notker Taten Karls. = Annales Fuldenses, Reginonis chronica, Notkeri gesta Karoli (= sources on the Carolingian history of the empire. Tl. 3 = selected sources on German history in the Middle Ages. Freiherr vom Stein commemorative edition. Vol. 7, ISSN  0067-0650 ). Newly edited by Reinhold Rau. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1960, p. 317, (several reprints).