Conrad III of Germany

Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, whom Ladislaus I had supported against Pope Urban II in his last years, writes a letter to Duke Álmos after Coloman's victories over the marauding crusaders.

The emperor states that Coloman had "neglected" imperial "interests because of his own necessities" and asks the duke to intervene on his behalf at Coloman.

However, Coloman—a former bishop—does not continue his predecessor's foreign policy and joins the pope's camp.

Coloman marries Felicia, a daughter of Roger I of Sicily—a close ally of the Holy See—in 1097.

Her sister Constance had married Conrad, the elder son of Emperor Henry IV, in 1095, after he rebelled against his father and joined the pope's camp.

Henry V, crowned King of Germany in 1099 by his father, Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, in place of his older brother, the rebellious Conrad, is a poor military leader who favors subtler, sometimes underhanded means of persuasion.

He had promised to take no part in the business of the Empire during his father's lifetime, but had been induced by his father's enemies to revolt in 1104, and some of the princes did homage to him at Mainz in January 1105.

Despite the initial setbacks of the rebels, Henry IV had been forced to abdicate and had died soon after.

Order had soon been restored in Germany, the citizens of Cologne had been punished with a fine, and an expedition against Robert II, Count of Flanders, had brought this rebel to his knees.

After a long-term rivalry within the ruling Piast dynasty, Boleslaw III in 1107 had finally expelled his elder half-brother and co-ruler Duke Zbigniew from Poland.

Zbigniew had fled to the Holy Roman Empire, where he shad ought help from King Henry V. The king, however, has taken no action, as he is embroiled in an inner-Hungarian rivalry, supporting the Árpád prince Álmos against his elder brother King Coloman, and has started an armed expedition to Bratislava (Pozsony) to restore Borivoj II in Bohemia, which had been only partially successful.

Svatopluk has joined Henry’s expedition in Hungary, but has to return to Bohemia, where Borivoj has made an attack with the support of Boleslaw III Wrymouth of Poland, an ally of Coloman.

Henry fails to seize Pressburg and Coloman is free to devastate Moravia (part of the lands of the Bohemian Crown).

Left alone, King Henry is forced to abandon his Hungarian campaign.

Borivoj is not able to succeed Svatopluk; instead, the ducal dignity passes to his younger brother Vladislaus.

Henry V, scion of the Frankish Salian dynasty and uncontested King of the Romans since 1106, had inherited both the Investiture Controversy and the Saxon conflict from his father Henry IV.

Upon becoming the new German monarch, Henry V had granted his associate Lothair, son of Gebhard, count of Supplinburg, the Duchy of Saxony in 1106.

In 1110 he had moved to Italy and, after negotiation failed, had captured Pope Paschal II and several cardinals to enforce his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor.

On his return from Rome, he had been immediately excommunicated by the papal legate in Germany, Cuno of Praeneste, and again by Archbishop Guy de Vienne, the later Pope Callixtus II, which encouraged the Imperial princes in their rising against the emperor—most of all the Saxon Duke Lothair of Supplinburg and Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz, Henry's longtime supporter, who after his investiture had deserted him.

Henry had entrusted the Saxon affairs to his field marshal Count Henry of Mansfeld, a Saxon noble himself.

However, though he had had Adalbert imprisoned at Trifels Castle and forced Lothair to submit himself after a court hearing at the Imperial Palace of Goslar, the smoldering Saxon conflict had broken out again in March 1113 over the succession in the Thuringian territories left by late Count Ulric II of Weimar and Orlamünde.

In order to create his own power basis, Henry had made attempts to confiscate the county as a ceased fief but had met with obstinate resistance by Ulric's heir, the Count Palatine of the Rhine Siegfried, son of the Ascanian count Adalbert II of Ballenstedt.

The insurgents gather under the lead of the Osterland count Wiprecht of Groitzsch and the Thuringian count Louis the Springer, but are repulsed by Henry's troops under Mansfeld in a battle at Warnstedt near Thale.

Wiprecht, captured and at first sentenced to death for high treason, is later reprieved, imprisoned at Trifels and divested of his possessions, which pass to the House of Mansfeld.

Duke Lothair has to attend Henry's wedding with Matilda of England in a hairshirt.

Subdued though not deposed, he has continued intriguing against Henry, who sees himself confronted with the increasing opposition of the Imperial princes.

Tthe conflict again culminates in violence in October 1114 when Rhenish insurgents led by Archbishop Frederick I of Cologne attack the Imperial troop at Andernach.

Emperor Henry's ruthless extension of his power in Germany has produced opposition and revolt, led from 1114 by Adalbert of Mainz and Lothair, duke of Saxony, his former ally.

Lothair had risen in arms against Henry in 1112, but had been easily quelled.

A quarrel in 1113 over the succession to the counties of Weimar and Orlamünde, however, had given occasion for a fresh outbreak on the part of Lothair, whose troops had been defeated at the Battle of Warnstadt, though the duke was soon pardoned.

Having been married at Mainz on January 7, 1114 to the twelve-year-old Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, to whom he has been betrothed for four years, the twenty-seven-year-old emperor is confronted with a further rising, initiated by the citizens of Cologne, who are soon joined by the Saxons and others.

Henry fails to take Cologne, and his forces had been defeated on February 11, 1115, at the Battle of Welfesholz, denying Henry the power to rule Saxony.

Several nobles, including the deposed Duke Henry of Lower Lorraine and the Saxon bishop Reinhard of Halberstadt, disgusted by Henry's haughty behavior, have joined the insurgents.

Among them is Otto, the eldest son of Adalbert II, Count of Ballenstedt and Adelheid, daughter of Otto I, Margrave of Meissen.

After the death of his father-in-law, Magnus, Duke of Saxony, in 1106, Otto had inherited a significant part of Magnus' properties, and had hoped to succeed him as duke.

However, Lothar of Supplinburg had been named duke in his stead.

In 1112, after Lothar had been banned, Otto had been appointed duke of Saxony by Emperor Henry V; but in the same year, he had come into a dispute with the emperor and had been stripped of his ducal title.

He now allies himself with Lothar to help defeat Hoyer I, Count of Mansfeld, who the Emperor has named duke of Saxony.

According to the chronicles of Pegau Abbey, on February 10, 1115, the Imperial forces gathered at the Kaiserpfalz of Wallhausen and moved about forty kilometers (twenty-five miles) towards Welfesholz (today part of Gerbstedt in Saxony-Anhalt) to meet the united Saxon troops led by Duke Lothair, with first skirmish occurring already on the same evening.

The next day, Henry's commander, Hoyer of Mansfeld, launches an offensive whereby he is killed in a sword combat by the young robber knight Wiprecht II, son of the arrested Count Wiprecht of Groitzsch.

The incident decides the battle: the Saxon armies of Lothair are victorious, forcing Henry's troops to take flight.

In his twelfth-century Chronica Slavorum the Saxon chronicler Helmold describes the battle as "the largest encounter in our time".

The emperor's power to rule Saxony is denied; the Bishop of Halberstadt even refuses a Christian burial of the slain imperial troops.

In November, the Mainz citizens enforce the release of Archbishop Adalbert.

However, Henry can still rely on the loyal support of his Hohenstaufen nephews, Duke Frederick II of Swabia and his brother Conrad III.

When the emperor again moves to Italy for the inheritance of Countess Matilda of Tuscany the next year, Duke Frederick will be appointed regent, which lays the grounds for the rise of the Hohenstaufen dynasty.

Conrad, of the Conradine dynasty, had succeeded sometime around 906 in establishing his ducal hegemony over Franconia, one of the five original "younger" stem duchies that had grown up in the Holy Roman Empire in the late ninth and early tenth centuries.

The tribal nature of region consisted in that it contained the Frankish territories east of the Rhine.

At the failure of the direct Carolingian male line in 911, Conrad had been acclaimed King of the Germans, largely because of his weak position in his own duchy.

Like Alamannia, Franconia was not as united as Saxony or Bavaria and the position of duke has often been disputed between the chief families.

Franconia in the High Middle Ages has come to be divided into two distinct regions, though these regions are not coherent territories with distinct governments.

Rather, they are culturally different regions that have come to be dominated by different political and religious forces and thus have come under the de facto "rule" of different bodies.

Rhenish Franconia (Rheinfranken), the western half of Franconia, immediately east of the Rhine, is the heartland of the Salian dynasty, which has provided four emperors in the eleventh and twelfth centuries: Conrad II, Henry III, Henry IV, and Henry V.

Rhenish Franconia contains the ancient cities of Mainz, Speyer, and Worms, the latter two being countships within the hands of the descendants of Conrad the Red (the Salians).

These counts are sometimes referred to informally, on account of the great power in the region, as dukes of Franconia.

Rhenish Franconia is actually governed, however, as a constellation of small states, like the free cities (Frankfurt and Worms), the bishoprics (Mainz, Speyer, and Worms), and the Landgraviate of Hesse.

Alongside these powerful entities are many smaller, petty states.

The Salian Franconian territories had in 1093 been granted as a fief to the Count Palatine of Aachen, a territory that will evolve into the important German principality of the Rhenish Palatinate.

Rhenish Franconia has in this way been divided and extinguished.

Emperor Henry had in 1115 awarded the territory of Eastern Franconia (Ostfranken) to his nephew Conrad of Hohenstaufen, the product of his daughter of Agnes and Frederick, Duke of Swabia.

Conrad, using the title "Duke of Franconia” in 1116, acts as regent for Germany, together with his elder brother, Frederick II of Swabia.

Franconia will remain a Hohenstaufen power base until 1168, when the Bishop of Würzburg will be formally ceded the ducal rights in Eastern Franconia.

The name "Franconia" will fall out of usage, but the bishop will revive it in his own favor in 1442 and hold it until the reforms of Napoleon Bonaparte abolish it.

It should be noted that the Bishop of Würzburg during this time is the Duke in Franconia—Herzog in Franken—rather than the Duke of Franconia—Herzog von Franken.