ditions. Despite these opportunities and achievements he also faced periods of very great danger. His stepbrother and younger brother regarded themselves as alternative candidates for the throne and in turn revolted; so too did other dukes, including his son, Duke Liudolf of Swabia, when he feared that Otto's marriage to Adelaide of Italy would preclude him from the succession. What set the seal upon Otto's achievements was fortune; at the time of the most serious of the revolts, Liudolf's, fresh Magyar hosts burst upon the scene. King and rebels united against this threat and at the Lechfeld, near Augsburg, gained one of the most decisive battles in the course of history (955).
Otto's victory established him as the leading monarch of the day; immediately afterwards he was hailed as emperor, though his actual coronation had to await the convenience of the papacy. For the time being there was no question of the disintegration of the kingdom he had forged. For the next two centuries such disputes as arose over the succession concerned the kingdom as a whole and did not envisage its partibility, and the disputes which arose between kings and princes were largely over questions of inheritance and of the respective royal and princely rights within their lands, not over the principle of royal overlordship. Outside Germany its greatest effect was probably in the east. It encouraged Otto to press for the creation of his great missionary archbishopric at Magdeburg and to send missions as far afield as Kiev, and it helped to accelerate the pace of conquest from the Slavs. At the same time, however, it removed a major threat from the emergent duchies of Poland and Bohemia, and encouraged the Magyars to settle and eventually create a formidable state in what became the kingdom of Hungary. Disputes between and within the three countries enabled the German kings to secure an almost permanent overlordship of Bohemia and a sporadic one over Hungary, and it also brought tribute from Poland for territories conquered from the Slavs, but the bonds were loose, continually had to be restored by force, and brought only Bohemia into the ambit of the German kingdom. The longterm significance of these developments was immense; if
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