CHAPTER VII: AFTERMATH OF THE SCHISM WARS - CONFLICTS IN THE EAST (1055 - 1060)
The new scenario resulting from the Great Schism Wars proved to be unstable and thus the fights soon resumed in several fronts. Karl Cnut and his fellowmen considered that the KFSA had resulted strengthened from the aftermath of the last wars and this led them to decide to be more firmly involved in the new confrontations.
The first conflict broke out in 1057 when the Patriarch of Cologne warned Karl Cnut about the alliances set between the minor Saxon states in the East. The Germanic Church was still far from being fully consolidated and the Patriarch feared of the upsurge of an alternate Catholic-Germanic power in the East. The minor Saxon states had a religious-mixed population, with many Catholic Slavs, and now they were very exposed to the Polish influence, posing a threat for the situation of the Germanic Church there.
When that same year Poland intervened in a dynastic dispute in Lusatia, the KFSA asked the Danes for intermediation with Poland, as Denmark had better relations with Poland. However, the KFSA petitions were refused by Polish King Casimir I, who aimed to expand his realm to the West. After another Polish intervention, now in Havelland, the KFSA declared war to Poland. Denmark tried to stay neutral, but Karl Cnut pressed his half-brother Svein to team up with him against the Poles.
Casimir I, King of Poland.
However, the war was a disaster for the Danes, as the Polish armies successfully occupied most of Pomerania and the Billungsmark, with the Danish forces retreating to Rügen and other coastal strongholds. The KFSA was not helpful to the Danes as they focused on occupying Wendland and fighting the Poles in the Havelland. Thus, part of the Danish noblemen accused Svein of rendering Denmark to his half-brother’s profit without any advantage for the Danish interests. Svein ceded and abandoned the conflict in 1058, but the Poles retained the control over Pomerania anyway. The Danish fiasco would have serious consequences for Svein in the future.
The KFSA-Polish war finished in mid-1059 with the repartition of the former minor Saxon states between the two powers: the KFSA incorporated Wendland and New Saxony, while Thuringia joined the Kingdom as a client state like Bavaria. Poland occupied Lusatia and the Havelland, as well as the former Danish territories in the coast (Pomerania, Billungsmark) excepting Rügen. The county of Schwerin, under previous Danish control, was ceded by Poland to the KFSA, who did not return it to Denmark, causing an even major conflict of interests between the two Germanic powers. Only Bohemia remained independent.
Meanwhile, in the South, the Kingdom of the Danube invaded Carinthia (fall of 1058), after the Carinthian Catholic Church had officially rejected the authority of the Archbishop of Wien. The Danubians had just purged the pro-Germanic clergy in Moravia and feared of the advance of the pro-Germanic side in Carinthia, who had successfully pressed the Catholics to refuse any religious authority from abroad. The strong Danubian forces did not only crush Carinthia but also invaded the North Adriatic ERE lands, which were badly defended since the end of the Schism Wars. The city of Venice, which had been really functioning as a city state since decades ago, kept its virtual independence though.
The Kingdom of the Danube, after all these successful campaigns, tried to advance into the client state of Bavaria in 1060. Even if the KFSA managed to stop them without much difficulty, the Danubians occupied the eastern half of Bavaria. After the division, the KFSA had the perfect opportunity to scrap the statehood of the western half they controlled and incorporated it as part of the reformed Duchy of Alamannia and West Bavaria.
In the late 1060, Karl Cnut proposed to the new enlarged Diet established in Hamburg a new territorial division which would fit the new reality of the KFSA, after the great reduction of the territory under the direct authority of the Patriarchy of Cologne (following the Treaty of Essen) as well as the incorporation of new territories.
The territories not controlled by the Patriarchy were divided into eight duchies: Alamannia & West Bavaria, Burgundy, Flanders, Franconia (only Mainfranken), Frisia, Neustria, North Albingia & North Saxony and Thuringia & South Saxony. Karl Cnut’s two sons, princes Cnut Harold (10 y.o.) and Karl Egbert (6 y.o.), retained their titles as Dukes of Neustria and North Albingia & North Saxony respectively, even if two delegates of the King actually ruled these duchies in the princes' names.