Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans.

Episode 7, A New Caesar.

Last week we talked about the Battle of the Lechfeld in 955 AD.

It was Otto's greatest achievement and the reason why history calls him Otto the Great,

the only Holy Roman Emperor apart from Charlemagne to receive his accolade.

He did beat the pagan Hungarians so comprehensively that they would never again threaten Western Europe.

Historical comparison is always hard, but his success is on par with ECHI's victory over the

Huns in 451, Charles Martel's repulsion of the Muslims at Poitiers and King John

Sobies relief of Vienna from the Ottoman siege in 1683.

Had the Hungarians destroyed Otto's army and created a permanent base in Augsburg,

German and overall Western European history would likely have taken a very different turn.

The significance of events is often not clear to contemporaries, but in the case of the

Lechfeld it clearly was. Even if his soldiers

had not hailed him Caesar on the battlefield as Vidokin claimed, there was no doubt that from then

on he was the reference point for all of the old empire of Charlemagne. On his return to Saxony,

Otto held a great assembly where emissaries from all over Europe,

from the Pope, from the Byzantine Emperor, and from the Caliph of Cordoba, came to offer

gifts of glass and ivory vessels, rucks, balsam, every kind of dye, and they even brought animals, including lions, camels, apes and ostriches,

things never seen before so far north.

As always with Otto, success in battle was further augmented by a heavy dose of luck.

We talked about the close shave he had with the Aboudretas last week,

the consequence of which

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