Bruno, Bishop of Augsburg, had been the first tutor of the future Holy Roman Emperor Henry III.

On Bruno's death in 1029, Egilbert, Bishop of Freising, had been appointed to take his place.

Henry had come of age in 1033 at the age of sixteen and Egilbert had been compensated for his services.

Emperor Conrad II, Henry’s father, had in 1035 deposed Adalbero, Duke of Carinthia, but Egilbert had persuaded Henry to refuse this injustice and the princes of Germany, having legally elected Henry, would not recognize the deposition unless their king did also.

Henry, in accordance with his promise to Egilbert, had not consented to his father's act and Conrad, stupefied, fell unconscious after many attempts to turn Henry.

Upon recovering, Conrad knelt before his son and exacted the desired consent.

The emperor had penalized Egilbert dearly.

Henry had been married in 1036 o Gunhilda of Denmark, a daughter of Cnut the Great, King of Denmark, England, and Norway, by his wife Emma of Normandy.

Early on, Henry's father had arranged with Cnut to have him rule over some parts of northern Germany (Kiel) and in turn to have their children married.

The marriage had taken place in Nijmegen at the earliest legal age.

Henry had been called to aid his father in Italy in 1038, and Gunhilda had died on the Adriatic Coast during the return trip (from the same epidemic in which Herman IV of Swabia died).

His father in 1039 also dies, and Henry becomes sole ruler and imperator in spe.

Henry spends his first year in power on a tour of his domains.

He visits the Low Countries to receive the homage of Gothelo I, Duke of Upper and Lower Lorraine.

He is joined in Cologne by Herman II, Archbishop of Cologne, who accompanied him and his mother to Saxony, where hewill build the town of Goslar up from obscurity to stately imperial grandeur.

Henry has an armed force when he enters Thuringia to meet with Eckard II, Margrave of Meissen, whose advice and counsel he desires on the recent successes of Duke Bretislaus I of Bohemia in Poland.

Only a Bohemian embassy bearing hostages appeases Henry; he disbands his army and continues his tour in the direction of Bavaria.

Henry III entertains several embassies at Goslar, his intended capital, after Christmas 1042: Bretislaus comes in person, a Kievan embassy is rejected because Henry is not seeking a Rus' bride, and the ambassadors of Casimir I of Poland are likewise rejected because the duke had not come in person.

…Goslar, where he gives the duchy of Swabia to Otto, Count Palatine of Lorraine.

Henry also gives the margrave of Antwerp to Baldwin, the son of Baldwin V of Flanders.

Emperor Henry III, presiding over his empire from his castle at Goslar in Germany, has overawed the restive Saxon nobles and, through war and diplomacy, has induced the rulers of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary to do homage.

He enlists reformers from Cluny, Peter Damian, and other churchmen to serve him as councilors and friends.

In an attempt to restrict private warfare, Henry has promulgated the Peace of God.

He has also endowed monasteries, and has participated in reformist councils, as well as retaining traditional controls over ecclesiastics and their institutions.

Henry has given Bavaria to one Cuno (Conrad) and, at Ulm in January 1048, Swabia to Otto of Schweinfurt, called the White, after a brief vacancy following the death of Otto II.

Henry meets Henry of France, probably at Ivois again, in October and at Christmas, envoys from Rome come to seek a new pope, Damasus having died.

Henry's most enduring papal selection is Bruno of Toul, who takes office as Leo IX, and under whom the Church will be divided between East and West.

Henry's final appointment of this long spate is a successor to Adalbert in Lorraine.

For this, he appoints the young Gerard of Chatenoy, a relative of Adalbert and Henry himself.

Henry returns to Goslar, the city where his son had been born and which he has raised to imperial and ecclesiastic grandeur with his palace and church reforms.

He passes Christmas there and appoints Gebhard of Eichstädt as the next holder of the Petrine see, with the name Victor II.

He is the last of Henry's four German popes.

Godfrey, once in Germany again, makes his final peace, and Henry goes to the northeast to deal with a Slav uprising after the death of William of Meissen.

He falls ill on the way and takes to bed.

He frees Beatrice and Matilda and has those with him swear allegiance to the young Henry, whom he commends the pope, present.

Henry, not yet forty, dies on October 5 at Bodfeld, the imperial hunting lodge in the Harz Mountains.

His heart goes to Goslar, his body to Speyer, to lie next to his father's in the family vault in the cathedral of Speyer.

He has been one of the most powerful of the Holy Roman Emperors: his authority as king in Burgundy, Germany, and Italy had only rarely been questioned, his power over the church is at the root of what the reformers had sponsored will later fight against in his son, and his achievement in binding to the empire her tributaries is clear.

Nevertheless, his reign is often pronounced a failure in that he apparently left problems far beyond the capacities of his successors to handle.

The Investiture Controversy is largely the result of his church politics, though his popemaking had given the Roman diocese to the reform party.

He had united all the great duchies save Saxony to himself at one point or another but gave them all away.

His most enduring and concrete monument may be the impressive palace (kaiserpfalz) at Goslar.

Duke Otto becomes an enemy of King Henry IV and forfeits his duchy, but his son-in-law Welf remains loyal to the king.

In compliance with Henry's commands, he repudiates and divorces his duchess, Ethelinde, and soon thereafter is rewarded for his fidelity by being appointed Duke of Bavaria in Otto's stead.

This event takes place at Goslar in 1070, when the States of Bavaria submit quietly to the newly made duke, who is the representative of one of the most ancient families in the province.

His repudiation of the duchess, which could be considered an act of injustice, does not seem to have been held against him.

King Henry IV, forcibly prosecuting his policy of recovering imperial estates lost in north central Germany during his minority, exacerbates the normal tension between king and vassals.

Like his father, Emperor Henry III, Henry desires to set Goslar as the fixed capital of the German Kingdom.

Undercurrents of discord between the Salian royal family and the Saxons had already existed under Henry's father.

This may have been primarily due to his Rhenish Franconian origin as well as his numerous stays in the Imperial Palace of Goslar, which were associated with a disproportionately high economic burden on the surrounding population.

With the accession of Henry IV in 1065 this conflict has intensified, as Henry makes demands on numerous Imperial domains (Reichsgüter) in the center of the Saxon heartland around the Harz mountains—especially the silver mines of Rammelsberg.

To secure these estates, he has initiated a castle building program, erecting numerous fortresses along the range, the most prominent being the Harzburg.

This is perceived as a threat by the Saxons.

In addition, these castles are staffed with ministeriales of Swabian origin, who frequently plunder the Saxon population to make up for their lack of income.

Attempts to restore the rights over the Harz forests are not received well by the Saxon freedmen, and efforts to extend the crownlands in general as well as the increased demands laid upon the fisc are opposed.

The Saxon count Otto of Nordheim, Duke of Bavaria since 1061, had been accused in 1070 by the ministerialis Egeno I of Konradsburg of planning an assault on the king's life.

Otto had been deposed and banned, but had nevertheless gained support from the son of the Billung duke Ordulf of Saxony, the young Magnus.

King Henry IV had both captured and arrested.

While Otto has been pardoned, Magnus remains in custody at the Harzburg and is not released even after his father's death in 1072, as he shows no intention to renounce the Saxon ducal dignity.

This heightens tensions between the Imperial court and the Saxons; Magnus' subsequent release in exchange for seventy Swabians captured in Lüneburg does little to encourage a thaw in relations.

In anger, the king has rejected several Saxon petitions for redress.

According to the chronicler Lambert of Hersfeld, the Saxon princes had come to the Imperial Palace of Goslar on June 29, 1073 in order to point to these abuses and demand improvements.

Henry IV refuses to enter discussions and several bishops and princes organize a resistance.

Several castles are besieged, and Henry, along with the imperial insignia, flees from the large, advancing Saxon army to …