Henry the Lion
Henry the Lion held Saxony and Bavaria together, founded Munich and made Lübeck, colonised the Slav lands east of the Elbe, refused to march to Italy for his cousin the emperor, and lost both duchies for the refusal. He was born in 1129, the son of Henry the Proud, the Welf duke of both Saxony and Bavaria, whom the Emperor Conrad III stripped of both in 1138; the boy got Saxony back in 1142 and spent the next fourteen years fighting for Bavaria. His cousin Frederick Barbarossa, elected in 1152 with Welf votes, paid the debt at Regensburg in 1156: the Babenbergs gave up Bavaria and were compensated with the new duchy of Austria, and Henry had what his father had held. He used it like a king. In Bavaria he moved the salt-road bridge over the Isar from the bishop's town to a village of monks in 1158 and Munich began; in the north he refounded Lübeck the same year, planted German towns and bishoprics across the Wendish lands to the Baltic in the crusade of 1147 and the wars after it, married Matilda, the daughter of Henry II of England, and built at Brunswick a palace, a cathedral and a bronze lion. His neighbours hated him and appealed to the emperor, who protected him for twenty years. In 1176 Barbarossa, short of men before the Lombard campaign, met him at Chiavenna and is said to have knelt to ask for his knights; Henry asked for the imperial town of Goslar in return, was refused, and went home, and Barbarossa lost Legnano. The emperor's revenge took four years of legal process. In 1180 the princes declared Henry's fiefs forfeit for contumacy, Saxony was divided and Bavaria given to the Wittelsbachs, who kept it until 1918, and Henry went into exile at his father-in-law's court in England. He came back, fought, was exiled again, and died at Brunswick in 1195, an old man with Brunswick and Lüneburg left. His grandson Otto IV became emperor and his descendants include the kings of Hanover and of Britain.
- Lived: 1129 CE – 1195 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: duke, general
