“THE future of the realm”, Conrad is said to have declared with his dying words, “lies with the Saxons”, and he bade his brother Everard to bear the royal insignia to Henry, the Saxon Duke, as the one man capable of restoring the glory of the German name. The union of Frank and Saxon had given the throne to Conrad on the death of Louis the Child; the same alliance was responsible for the ascendancy of the Saxon dynasty in 9191. Everard carried out the last injunctions of the late king, waived his own claim, and caused Henry the Saxon to assume the royal dignity. The election was a purely secular function; for, either from a genuine feeling of his unworthiness or from his dislike of the higher clergy and their secular influence, a dislike which he undoubtedly possessed in the earlier years of his reign, he dispensed with the solemn ceremonials of anointing and coronation offered him by Archbishop Heriger of Mayence. It took place at Fritzlar on the borders of Franconia and Saxony in May 919…