The result of the Battle of Haestingas didn’t have any immediate political impact in the Holy Roman Empire, yet it set off a ripple effect that soon washed over the Reich. The failure of the Papal expedition was welcomed with hardly restrained glee by the young Emperor Henry IV. Henry, who had only recently taken control of the Imperial state after throwing out his mentor and regent, Adalbert of Hamburg, had begrudgingly joined a Papal expedition earlier in 1066 to fight some Italo-Normans who were threatening Rome; but he had been beaten to the punch. Now, however, with this blow to Papal prestige, and with Northern France in some turmoil, Henry decided that the time had come to expand the power of the Reich.
His top priority was an expedition against the Lutici and the Obodrites, Slavic tribes that lived in the Northwest regions of Saxony. Roughly a month after Haestingas, a Bishop of the holy Church, John, was offered as sacrifice to the pagan gods, and Henry felt obligated to avenge himself. This would also give him the chance to expand the Empire. The First Wendish War, as they would later be known, lasted roughly from early 1067-1072; while the earlier campaigns were conducted by the Emperor personally, the later campaigns were conducted by individual German nobility after Imperial interests were drawn elsewhere. These wars were violent, with atrocities committed by both sides, but by the time hostilities petered out in 1072, the Saxon Line (or line of German control) had been pushed to Bay of Wismar, though local Slavic resistance would continue to plague the new German landholders for decades to come.
Henry broke off from active participation in the Wendish campaigns in 1069, his attention drawn by revolts against his rule in Germany proper. While he was able to put most of them down with relative ease, one nobleman continued to be a thorn in his side and his ambitions- Otto of Nordheim, Duke of Bavaria. Once friends with the young Emperor, the two had broken after Otto sought to add more to his possessions outside of Bavaria than the Emperor thought he ought. After this break between the two, Otto continuously stirred up his fellow nobility against the Emperor, seeking to weaken Henry’s position and increase his own.
In 1073, things came to a head between Otto and Henry, and the Emperor declared that he was secretly planning to assassinate him. Otto refuted the claims, and demanded trial by combat. The arrangements were made, and in August of 1073, the older, but robust, Otto and the young Henry met in formal feudal battle. Though Otto acquitted himself well, scarring the Emperor, the energy of the younger man would carry the day, and Otto would eventually fall to his blade. This sent shockwaves through the ranks of opposition to the Emperor- Otto had been their main organizer and leader. Without his influence, the anti-Imperia coalition quickly devolved into various squabbling factions, giving Henry some breathing room at home.
This freed up the Emperor as well to continue his disputes with the Pope. The death of Hildebrand in 1071 had hit the reform elements of the Catholic Church hard; without his charisma and his political, as well as theological, acumen, they found it hard to project power. The Italo-Normans, who Hildebrand had convinced to come to the Papal side, had drifted out of the Papal sphere. News of Danish and French support through the 1070s did not worry Henry IV; he believed that the two would not actually come to the aid fo the Holy Father. But to be on the safe side, Henry decided he would wait until the death of Alexander to take any more overtly aggressive moves against the Papacy- after all, he reasoned, their alliance was with this particular Pope, and not the next man to hold the Throne of St. Peter. Instead, he played the political game.
The reform movement among the Papacy had resulted in the Holy Father making a variety of enemies closer to home. Rome’s secular nobility felt that Alexander and his fellow reformers were too restrictive on what they viewed as their particular rights; the cardinal-priests and cardinal-deacons were still angered after the Papal decision in 1059 to deprive them of the right to participate in Papal elections. Henry was able to find a willing audience for his schemes, building a coalition of rivals close to the seat of Papal power itself.
As the decade turned and 1080 dawned, Henry could feel confident in his power and authority. He had broken the resistance to his rule at home; the French were still recovering somewhat from the Aquitanian War; the Danes were quiet, as various landholders squabbled as the King looked on; Poland was too embroiled in conflict in the East to be of any major concern; and the Pope was elderly, weak, and sickly. Henry IV could feel the dawn of a new era of Imperial might, and he knew that he would be the one to bring it to pass.
Yet Emperor’s cannot predict the future, and Henry had yet to see the violence that lay in store in the coming years…
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