Henry the Fowler
Henry the Fowler was the first Saxon king of the East Franks, refused to be anointed, bought nine years of peace from the Magyars and used them to build the fortresses and the cavalry that beat them, and handed his son Otto a kingdom that could become an empire. He was born in 876, the son of the Saxon duke Otto the Illustrious, and became duke in 912; the story that the messengers bringing him the crown found him at his bird-nets is from a twelfth-century chronicle and gave him the name. The dying king Conrad I, a Franconian who had fought him and lost, is said to have sent him the royal insignia as the only man who could hold the kingdom. The Franks and Saxons elected him at Fritzlar in May 919. He would not let the archbishop anoint him, saying he was not worthy, which kept the church at a distance and the dukes closer, and he brought Swabia and Bavaria under him by negotiation rather than war, leaving them their own laws. In 924 the Magyars burned through Saxony and he captured one of their princes; the price of the man was a truce and nine years of tribute. He spent them ordering every ninth man of the peasantry into fortified burgs with a third of the harvest stored inside, and training his Saxons to fight on horseback in armour. He took Lotharingia from the West Franks in 925, took the Slav fortress of Brandenburg across the frozen Havel in 929 and the Bohemian duke's homage the same year, and when the tribute stopped and the Magyars came in 933 he met them at Riade on the Unstrut with the new cavalry and they ran. He had already settled the succession on Otto alone, against Frankish custom, and died at Memleben in July 936; he is buried at Quedlinburg, which he had founded. Otto was crowned at Aachen the same year with everything his father had refused, and Lechfeld in 955 finished what Riade began.
- Lived: 876 CE – 936 CE
- Nationality: Saxon
- Roles: king, monarch
