Poto the Brave was a

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

count palatine A count palatine (Latin ''comes palatinus''), also count of the palace or palsgrave (from German ''Pfalzgraf''), was originally an official attached to a royal or imperial palace or household and later a nobleman of a rank above that of an ord ...

who fought famously at the

Battle of the Theben Pass The Battle of the Theben Pass, also known as the Battle of Moson, was fought in the Theben pass near Wieselburg, where the March meets the Danube, in 1060. It was a victory for the nationalist part in Hungary over that of their own pro-German kin ...

in 1060. It was there that he won his sobriquet/nickname of "the Brave." He fought from evening till morning at the Theben and did not give in until

Béla I of Hungary Béla I the Boxer or the Wisent ( hu, I. Bajnok or Bölény Béla, sk, Belo I.; – 11 September 1063) was King of Hungary from 1060 until his death. He descended from a younger branch of the Árpád dynasty. Béla's baptismal name was A ...

had promised to spare the Germans' lives. "Truly he was believed to be sprung from the giants of old," recalled Ekkehard Uraugiensis in 1104. He was remembered in songs as the ''Vita Bennonis'' noted around 1090: ''adhuc notae fabulae attestari solent et cantilenae vulgares''.

Sources

* Thompson, James Westfall. ''Feudal Germany, Volume II''. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1928. Bavarian nobility Counts Palatine of the Holy Roman Empire 11th-century German nobility {{Germany-noble-stub