Crowned as a Child, Kidnapped on the Rhine
Henry was born on 11 November 1050, the son of the emperor Henry III and Agnes of Poitou. His father had him crowned king of Germany at the age of three and died in 1056, leaving a five-year-old heir and a regency under his mother. Henry III had treated kingship as a sacred office over church and realm alike: he had deposed rival popes at Sutri in 1046 and placed German reformers on the throne of Peter. His son inherited that conviction along with the crown.
The regency was weak. In 1062 Archbishop Anno of Cologne and other great lords seized power in the Coup of Kaiserswerth, luring the eleven-year-old king onto a boat on the Rhine and casting off. Henry leapt into the river and was pulled out. Bishops and princes then governed in his name, enriching themselves from the royal lands, until he came of age in 1065. He set out to recover what had been lost, and his new castles and officials in Saxony provoked a great revolt, which he crushed in 1075.
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