e62 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE summed up his reign in the sentence, "While Arnulf was The East frittering away his time, many petty kingdoms Frankish arose." The brief reign of the six-year-old Louis Kingdom (899-911) was filled with feuds between the nobles, and it seemed as if the great tribal Duchies of Saxony, Franconia, Lotharingia, Thuringia, Suabia (formerly Ala- mannia), and Bavaria would become independent states. With the death of Louis the Carolingian house ceased to rule among the East Franks. Conrad of Franconia (911- 918) had to fight all the other duchies to secure recognition as king. Henry of Saxony (919-936) seldom left his own domain lands and had to deed away many of his regalian rights in Bavaria, although he was able to force the Dukes of Suabia and Bavaria to recognize him as king. He also, as we have seen, checked the inroads of the Slavs and finally won a victory over the Magyars. At the coronation of Henry's son, Otto I (936-973), all the dukes did homage, and those of Lorraine, Franconia, Suabia, and Bavaria served him in the court offices of chamberlain, steward, cup-bearer, and marshal respectively; but w T ithin the next five years three of them and also his own brother and half- brother revolted against his rule, and later there were other rebellions. Otto gained prestige by repelling the invaders of German territory, and in 962 he went to Rome and was crowned The Holy emperor, reviving on a smaller scale the empire Roman Q f Charlemagne. Henceforth the German duch- Empire . . . e T . .... ies and portions of Italy were united in a loose and weak union known as the Holy Roman or Medieval Empire. In theory the emperors claimed a wider jurisdic- tion than this, regarding themselves, on the one hand, as successors of the old Roman emperors and, on the other hand, as feudal suzerains of the kings of other European countries, just as these were the overlords of their great vas- sals. But the emperors were unable to develop this feudal overlordship and imperial ideal into actual sovereignty, as some kings finally were to succeed in doing. One reason for their failure was that the popes, too, were soon to assert their
