The Medieval Empire

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IX. THE EXPANSION OF GERMANY IN THE SOUTH-EAST. The progress of German colonization in the south-east is almost wholly connected during this period with the fortunes of a single family, the Babenbergers. Geographical causes serve to explain why the histor)' of this region is more simple and more...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IX. THE EXPANSION OF GERMANY IN THE SOUTH-EAST. The progress of German colonization in the south-east is almost wholly connected during this period with the fortunes of a single family, the Babenbergers. Geographical causes serve to explain why the histor)' of this region is more simple and more continuous than the history of the north-east. The valley of the Danube piercing through difficult forest-clad hill country provided a solitary but a narrow outlet into the plains of Hungary. There was no large frontier to defend; flank attacks from Bohemia were rendered infrequent by a screen of forest and mountain, and no Magyar forces cared to push through the Styrian highlands of the south. The German met his foeman face to face, and geography forbade a dispersion of his energies. Thus it is that a single family posted in a confined strategical position is enabled to dominate the politics of the Middle Danube for two hundred and seventy years. It is not necessary to enter into the elaborate archaeological discussions which centre round the origin of the Babenbergers. Two modern authors derive them from Bavaria, others from Swabia, others from Franconia.1 The factis that in the Middle Ages there was little knowledge professed upon this subject. The Babenbergers have no good biographer or family historian. A short history of the first Babenbergers written in Melk in the second half of the twelfth century, a short biography of Margrave Henry, a history of Leopold III. and his children written in Kloster Neuburg, a few jejune monastic annals make up the tale of literary evidence. The historian of Melk, the ducal monastery, writing a history of the dynasty by special ducal request reveals little but his own entire ignorance. The best writers fly at higher game?the ecclesiastical...