Henry V, scion of the Frankish Salian …

Years: 1113 - 1113
March

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.

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