MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK I.

LOTHAR II.—CONRAD III. [A.D. 1125.]

CHAPTER I.

RISE OF THE HOUSE OF THE HOHENSTAUFEN

Loyalty of Frederick of Hohenstaufen to the Emperor Henry IV.—Marriage with Princess Agnes.—Duke of Swabia.—Death. —Services of their Sons, Frederic and Conrad, to Henry V. — Fredericks claim to succeed his Uncle, Henry V.—Arts that baffled him.—Election of Lothar.

The origin and early history of the progenitors of the Emperors of the Swabian dynasty, that is to say, of the House of Hohenstaufen, is, if not actually unknown, obscure. It is not even certain what rank they bore; whether that of simple nobles, or the loftier, of belted Earls; whether they were immediate or only mediate vassals. During the period of Hohenstaufen sovereignty, the genealogy of the family was traced back, not only to the Carolingian predecessors of those Emperors, but, as if that were insufficient dignity, to the yet earlier, Merovingian, long-haired Kings of the Franks. The critical investigation of later historians has referred this splendid ancestry to the adulation of court sycophants, and reduced all that can be ascertained upon the subject to the few following particulars.

In the beginning of the eleventh century, the castle of one branch of the Swabian noble family of Staufenecke and Rechberg stood in, or immediately above, the village of Büren, or Beuren, as it is sometimes written, their property, whence the sons of this branch were denominated the Gräfen (Earls) or more likely the Herren (Lords) of Büren. This village is situated at the north-western foot of a lofty hill, that rears its cone-like form abruptly from the plain, and is distinguished from the adjacent southern chain of the Staufenecke and Staufele hills, high above which it towers, as the Hohe Staufe, or high Staufen. About the middle of the century one of this family fell in Henry III’s Hungarian wars, and his son or nephew, Friedrich von Buren, who had married Hildegard, the daughter of a noble Alsatian family, removed from his village mansion at the foot of the hill, to a castle which he had built and fortified upon its summit, and at the same time exchanged the title of Lord of Büren for that of Earl or Lord of Hohenstaufen. It may be observed, in relation to this change of title, that in those days, when surnames were only just coming into general use—they were so rare prior to the crusades as to be almost unknown—titles were not, except in the case of principalities, as invariably fixed as in modern times. The actual title was indeed fixed, a simple Lord could not at his pleasure call himself an Earl, but the one of the Lord’s or the Earl’s possessions, when he had many by which he was designated, was at his choice, and while the Head of the family commonly called himself Graf or Herr, of its original seat, or the birth place of its founder, the younger branches were Graf or Herr each of his own only, or favourite, domain. A great difficulty, in tracing genealogies far back. From the epoch of this upward migration, and transformation of the Lords of Buren into Lords of Hohenstaufen, their history is no longer a matter of question or tradition; but of the castle whence they derived their new designation, a mere insignificant ruin remains.

From the battlements of Hohenstaufen castle the eye ranged in almost every direction over a vast extent of fields, meadows, vineyards and woodlands, amidst which were interspersed towns and villages to the number of sixty. The prospect was closed to the south by the primeval snows of the Alps, gleaming far above and far beyond the already mentioned chain of Staufenecke and Staufele hills, and to the west terminated in a misty line, marking the Black Forest. Biographers and historians of the Swabian Emperors have imagined that the magnificence of this view filled the bosoms of the family with ambitious aspirations. The possibility of such an influence cannot be disputed; although it may perhaps be admitted as a more reasonable conjecture, that the supposed cause was rather a casual result of its supposed effect; that ambition to increase his power and raise his rank instigated the Lord of Buren to quit his lowly residence for a position more secure against the attacks of those enemies, whom in the pursuit of the objects of that ambition he must needs provoke, whose subjugation he perchance already meditated. But whichever were cause, whichever effect, certain it is that during the civil wars that distracted Germany, whilst its princes contended for the person and the power of the minor Henry IV, Frederic Lord of Hohenstaufen, the builder of the castle, raised himself to the level of the proudest Swabian earls; and that the next Frederic, the son of him who had soared to the summit of the highest Staufen, attained to a yet more exalted station.

In the troublous times of Henry IV’s majority, the second Friedrich von Hohenstaufen was distinguished amongst his compeers for talent, activity, and valour; but yet more, amidst his brother nobles1 general and reckless pursuit of their individual interests, for his unflinching loyalty. In these eminent qualities, he was second only to the Duke of Lower Lorrain, Godfrey of Bouillon, the Crusader; in steady loyalty was well nigh his only rival. The Emperor Henry IV, who, amidst rebellion and papal persecution, had ever found in this second Lord of Hohenstaufen a staunch and efficient supporter, who had suffered so much evil, and anticipated yet more, from the selfish policy of the Princes of the Empire, determined to balance, as far as might be, their ascendancy, at the same time that he rewarded the fidelity of his trusty vassal. To this end, in the year 1079, whilst the anti-king Rudolf, who had received the duchy of Swabia as the portion of his wife, the Emperor’s sister, was in arms against his imperial brother-in-law, he summoned Frederic of Hohenstaufen to Ratisbon, and there, in full Diet, according to the chronicler, thus addressed him:—"Frederic of Hohenstaufen, thou right good Knight, who hast ever been the truest to me, as the bravest, thou seest how rebellion rages throughout the Roman empire, how faith and loyalty are trampled under foot, no lawful authority being obeyed, no oath held sacred. Yet is all power, as thou knowest, from God, and he who withstands his sovereign withstands God. Up then, stalwart hero! Fight manfully, as heretofore, fifi against the empire’s foes and mine, and I shall not forget thy services. Thou shalt have my only daughter, Agnes, to wife; and since my brother-in-law, Rudolf, abjuring his honour and the ties of blood, seeks to usurp my crown, I will set thee over the duchy of Swabia, which he, by his disloyalty, has forfeited.”

As the Emperor himself had not at this time completed his thirtieth year, it is evident that the promised bride could be but a mere child, the marriage simply prospective, and the sole immediate result of the betrothal the investing the future bridegroom with the duchy of Swabia, vacant, according to Alleman or Swabian law, as forfeited by Duke Rudolfs rebellion. But if Frederic of Hohenstaufen’s power to assist his persecuted monarch was thus increased, the bitterness of the civil war appears to have been thereby envenomed. The anti-king himself, indeed, soon afterwards fell in battle at Merseburg, where Godfrey of Bouillon, the Imperial standard-bearer, struck off his right hand, the hand, as Rudolf in his last moments remorsefully observed, with which he had pledged to Henry IV the faith he had broken. But his son Rudolf instantly claimed the duchy as his lawful heritage; and upon his dying without children, Bertold Duke of Zäringen, who had married his sister, the anti-king Rudolf’s daughter, claimed it in right of his wife; and Bertold was no insignificant opponent. To his father, Graf von Breisgau, one of the most powerful of the Swabian earls, Henry IV’s father, Henry III, just before his death, had promised the then vacant duchy of Swabia. The Empress Agnes, as Regent, unaware of this promise, gave the duchy to the late anti-king Rudolf, as her daughter’s portion; and when informed that she had thus ignorantly broken her deceased husband’s engagement, offered the Earl in compensation for his disappointment the dukedom of Carinthia, with the margraviate of Verona. The Earl, resolved at any rate to be a duke, accepted what was offered him, but not as compensation; and it should seem, to mark his dissatisfaction, he changed his title from Duke of Carinthia to Duke of Zäringen. This some writers call translating Carinthia; but as Zaring, a Swiss town, gave its name to his principal county, and was perhaps the original seat of the family, it might rather be termed transferring the locality of his dukedom. The first Duke of Zäringen, though he reconciled and allied himself to the prince who had superseded him, never forgave the Empress for depriving him of the promised national duchy, and his posterity appear to have inherited his resentment, showing themselves the almost invariable enemies of her descendants. His son, Duke Bertold, was the mightiest of those who may be distinguished as secondary Dukes, and was vigorously supported by Welf, Duke of Bavaria, who, regardless of the gratitude he owed the Emperor for the gift of his own duchy, was often found in open rebellion against him. The large posses­sions of Duke Welf in Swabia, the native land of his family, rendered him a very important auxiliary to either claimant, and the feud was at last ended by a compromise. The Emperor exempted the Swabian domains of both Welf and Bertold from the ducal authority of Frederic of Hohenstaufen and of all his successors, further satisfying Duke Bertold by some Swiss grants. Duke Bertold, like his father, took what he could get, without forgiving either the donor or the receiver of the duchy that he deemed his by right.

Of the subsequent career of this first Hohenstaufen Duke of Swabia it will be enough to say, that he proved himself through life the unfailing and energetic champion of his imperial father-in-law. He appears to have been at his side in every campaign, in every expedition, save when left in Germany to combat rebellion there, whilst Henry maintained the struggle in Italy. The unfortunate monarch in his last and most painful conflict with his unprincipled and unfilial, as able son, Henry V, had neither this energetic champion nor the forces of Swabia to support him. Duke Frederic died a.d. 1106, at the very commencement of the younger Henry’s parricidal rebellion: his heir was a minor, and his brother Otho, Bishop of Strasburg, had accompanied the Duke of Lower Lorrain upon his crusade.

The marriage of Duke Frederic and Princess Agnes had produced two sons, Frederic and Conrad, who, when they lost their father, had barely completed the fifteenth and the twelfth year of their respective ages. King Henry, the proper title of the rebel son since his coronation as his father’s subordinate colleague and heir, immediately possessed himself of the persons of his widowed sister and her children. The mother he at once gave in marriage to Leopold, Margrave of the Bavarian Eastern March (a name preserved in the German Oesterreich, literally eastern realm, but Englished as Austria), whom, by the gift, he lured from his previous fidelity to the Emperor. His nephews he kept under his own care, assuming the guardianship of their persons, together with the administration of the duchy, during the young Duke’s minority; by which means he turned its forces against the sovereign for whom they had hitherto fought.

When the rebel son’s conduct assumed its most atrocious character; when by downright treachery and perjury he was enabled, disregarding his too fondly trusting father’s pathetic adjurations, and humble, only too humble, prayers, to imprison that father; to extort from him the abdication of his authority; the surrender of the regalia, then esteemed almost indispensable to lawful sovereignty; when finally the persecuted father died of a broken heart; deep was Margrave Leopold’s remorse for his share in the rebellion. Thenceforward he thought only of atonement, and addicted himself to the form of expiation then esteemed the most efficacious; so numerous were the churches and cloisters built and endowed by him, that he thereby earned the surname of the Holy.

Meanwhile, the death of Henry IV ended the unnatural war before the Hohenstaufen brothers could be called upon to take part against either their grandfather or their uncle. When they attained to man’s estate, that uncle was lawfully king and emperor; he had faithfully discharged his self­assumed office in relation to them, and their path of duty was clear. And fortunate were they that it was so, for early were they called into action. Henry V, whom the Popes had thought their creature, was no sooner really king and emperor, than, like his father, he was involved in war with such of his vassals, as chose to disguise their own ambition under the mask of devotion to the Church, and with the Popes themselves, whose pretensions he now felt intolerable. In these wars he long found his nephews his zealous and useful assistants. That the sons or the deceased Duke of Swabia inherited the talents, the courage, and what one party called the virtues, the other the faults of their father, seems to be generally admitted, although, as to their relative merits, some discrepancy of opinion appears amongst contemporary chroniclers, the palm of superiority being assigned now to the oldest, now to the youngest, perhaps according as circumstances brought the one brother or the other most conspicuously forward. Both were gallant warriors; and the matrimonial alliance which the young Duke of Swabia early contracted enabled them to render their uncle the more efficient service. He married Jutta, or Judith, daughter to Henry the Black, who had recently succeeded to his childless brother Welf, the second husband of the Great Countess, as Duke of Bavaria. Jutta’s sister was the wife of Conrad, Duke of Zäringen; and Frederic’s connexion with these powerful princes both rendered the reduction of all turbulent Swabian vassals to obedience an easy task, and drew over those princes themselves to the Emperor’s party.

And invaluable was such an accession of strength to Henry V, who, in addition to the feuds inherited with the crown, had now in his turn to encounter ingratitude, though far less criminal than had been his own. He had, immediately upon his accession, proceeded to recompense his two chief confederates in rebellion, one an ecclesiastic, Graf Adalbert, a younger son of the House of Saarbrück, the other a layman, the powerful Lothar, Graf von Supplinberg, whose wife, Richenza, was heiress of all that has since constituted the duchy of Brunswick, and part of the kingdom of Hanover. The See of Mainz chancing to be then vacant, the Emperor named Adalbert Archbishop of Mainz, thus, in fact, making him primate of Germany. He likewise claimed the disposal of the duchy of Saxony, which he alleged was vacant, as a lapsed fief, in consequence of the death of Duke Magnus, the last lineal male descendant of the ducal race of Hermann Billung. Magnus had, indeed, left two daughters, severally married: Elike, or Eilike, the eldest to Otho the Ascanian, Graf von Anhalt; the youngest, Wulfhilda, to Henry the Black of Bavaria; but no claim had been hitherto even advanced on the part of a female to inherit or transmit a duchy. Otho had, nevertheless, during the recent civil wars, assumed the title of Duke of Saxony in right of his wife, but was unable to maintain it against the imperial power. The Emperors had always sought to restrict the, tolerated rather than acknowledged, right of male heirs to the succession to principalities and great fiefs; and of all Emperors, Henry V was the least likely to suffer any extension of vassal rights, or encroachment upon his prerogative, even if he had not wanted Saxony for his friend Lothar. Treating the pretensions of Otho and Elike, therefore, as utterly groundless and absurd, he invested Lothar with the duchy of Saxony, and proceeded to divide the allodial property of the Billung family between the daughters, as co-heiresses. In this last operation he disappointed the general expectation—Elike, probably to punish her husband’s presumptuous assumption of the ducal title, obtained only Aschersleben and Ballenstadt, whilst the far larger portion of the Billung patrimony, with Lüneberg, was allotted to her younger sister, Wulfhilda, Duchess of Bavaria.

But it was to the leader of a rebellion, not to the person of the individual, that both Adalbert and Lothar were attached; the churchman to the partizan of the Pope against the Emperor, the Saxon noble to the enemy of the Franconian monarch, the object both of Saxony’s long-cherished resentment against the Frank Carolingian Emperor, and her later ill-will to the Franconian dynasty, that occupied the imperial throne, vacated by the extinction of her own imperial race. From the moment that Henry V became Emperor, he was to Adalbert and Lothar as odious as his father had been; and no sense of gratitude to their benefactor interfered with their using his gifts to injure the giver. The confederacy of the newly-created Archbishop and Duke was unbroken. Henry discovered their plots, seized the ecclesiastical plotter, imprisoned him, and treated him, as might be anticipated, with vindictive severity. The captive prelate found means to make his hard usage known at Mainz; the citizens adopted his quarrel, and when the Emperor visited the city, they in arms extorted their prelate’s release. Thenceforward in Adalbert, factious, opposition to the monarch was envenomed by personal revenge.

Against these potent foes the Duke of Swabia and his brother waged active war, now by their uncle’s side, now as his Lieutenants when he was summoned to Italy. Nor did they serve a thankless kinsman. In 1115 Henry, having vanquished the revolted Bishop of Wurzburg, punished his rebellion by depriving his see of the ducal rights that had been attributed to it, since the duchy of Franconia had, upon the accession of the Franconian dynasty to the throne, ceased to exist. The Emperor now reconstructed the duchy, as far as the distribution of many parts since its virtual dissolution might admit, added to it the burgraviate of Nuremberg, and the vogtei or stewardship of the see of Wurzburg itself, in compensation of irrecoverable losses, and then conferred the revived duchy upon his younger nephew, Conrad.

The new Duke of Franconia employed his uncle’s gift as was expected, the more efficaciously to support the giver’s rights; but of the two brothers, Frederic appears to have been the most active. He is known to history by the surname of the One-eyed; but whether he were thus disfigured from his birth, or, which is more likely, as the result of a wound, is not stated. It is, however, carefully recorded that he was endowed with the rarest manly and princely qualities; that he was blameless in his life, never having done an act that any human being could reprove or challenge; whilst, by his courtesy, he attached to his service many knights, besides those who were feudally bound to him. Thus reinforced by voluntary followers and allies, in addition to his vassals, the Duke of Swabia waged war upon the rebels who rose against his uncle, the chief scene of his exploits being the banks of the Rhine, where the power of the Archbishop of Mainz was predominant.

But it was not by mere fighting that Frederic sought to weaken that formidable power, to subjugate those rebels. So diligently did he proceed to bridle both actual insurgents and all who were known to betray a rebellious or refractory disposition, by building and strongly garrisoning fortresses in every favourable locality, as to give rise to an odd popular saying, that Duke Frederic always rode with a castle at his horse’s tail. Thus fighting, destroying, and building, he followed the course of the Rhine from Basle, which appears, upon the present occasion, to have been his starting point, downward as far as Mainz. This city, likewise, which the Archbishop held against the Emperor, he might, with the forces he brought against it, have easily stormed. But he knew that the inhabitants had already repented their late exertions on behalf of their Archbishop, and were, like all citizens with hardly any exception, loyal at heart, though compelled into rebellion against their will by their prince-prelate. The kindly-disposed Duke shrank from exposing men, who sinned only through weakness, together with their families, their venerable churches, their shrines and holy relics, to the outrageous violence in which the disorderly bands that had followed his banner, swelling his troops into a little army, would hold themselves entitled to indulge, were the town so taken. He accordingly for­bore to use the means in his hands of humbling the Archbishop, and quietly awaited the result of a blockade.

The unapostolic prelate repaid the warrior’s forbearance by an act of treachery which, if momentarily successful, was in its turn rewarded as treachery ever should be. He opened a negotiation with the Duke of Swabia, professed the deepest regret for the past, and the most earnest desire to return to his allegiance. Frederic, himself veracious, believed him, and raised the blockade. Judging the Empire to be pacified, and his own task, therefore, accomplished, by the submission of the principal instigator, the real head of the rebellion, he lent a willing ear to the impatience of many of his vassals to go home, permitted his voluntary followers to disband when their services seemed to be no longer needed, and, breaking up his camp, set forward with very reduced numbers pacifically to evacuate the archiepiscopal territories. When Adalbert had ascertained that his too confiding antagonist was enfeebled, hardly more by the disbanding of his troops than by the relaxation of vigilance consequent upon a sense of security, he ordered the gates to be opened, and, bursting forth with his whole garrison, fell by surprise, with numbers now greatly superior, upon the peaceably retreating little troop. But Frederic and the men who had remained with him were tried warriors. Quickly recovering from the momentary disorder into which the utterly unexpected attack had thrown them, and exasperated by the perfidy of their clerical enemy, they fought with even more than their wonted courage. In the end they defeated their assailants, and drove them back to the gates of Mainz. But these were not found open to receive and shelter them. The loyal burghers, delighted to perceive that they were at liberty to follow their own inclinations, closed them against the fugitives, and the Archbishop was excluded from his capital. It was hoped he was thus rendered in some measure innoxious; but when in that trust Duke Frederic was recalled from the Rhine district, the Duke of Saxony hastened to the assistance of his confederate, whom he compelled the reluctant men of Mainz again to admit and obey. The civil war raged as before.

That Frederic’s high sense of honour remained untainted by the example of unclerical, unchristian falsehood of which he had so nearly been the victim, appeared upon divers subsequent occasions, one of which may not unfitly be here narrated. He had taken post in the loyal city of Worms, when the insurgents advanced in threatening array to the walls; but deeming themselves not of force adequate to a regular siege, proposed to treat. The Duke, desirous to avoid shedding the blood of fellow countrymen, welcomed the proposal, and met the leaders to negotiate in person. Whilst they were thus engaged, the vehemently loyal men of Worms, indignant at the bare idea of making terms with rebels, took Archbishop Adalbert for their model, and bursting forth from the city gates, fell suddenly upon the unprepared enemy, threw him into disorder, and, if supported by the Duke’s warriors, would evidently have completely routed him. But Frederic refused to profit by a breach of faith. Undeterred even by the risk of alienating the overzealous and too little scrupulous citizens, he kept back his own troops, and continued the negotiation as before, leaving the Wormsers to avert, as they best could, the danger to which they had, to say the least, wilfully exposed themselves. Unsupported, they were driven back with loss and shame, whilst the Duke was concluding a truce, as preliminary to a general pacification. But the repugnance of the Wormsers to treating with rebels, if not their consequent conduct, was speedily justified. The projected peace failed by the evidently predesigned treachery of the insurgents, and the truce was short-lived.

The civil war continued, although at one time the imperialists were so triumphant that, at the celebration of the Emperor’s marriage with the Princess Maud of England, the Duke of Saxony was compelled to attend and sue for pardon barefoot. But to detail all the vicissitudes and incidents of the strife were as tedious as it were superfluous; and it may be as well here, once for all, to state the plan upon which the present history will be written. The enumeration of ever-recurringr analogous and insignificant transactions, the endless detail “of feats of broil and battle,” seldom of such importance as should render them politically interesting, and more seldom clearly intelligible when described by civilians, which usually weary the reader in histories of early ages, will be avoided. What appears either influential in result, or characteristic either of the times or of individuals, will be selected for circumstantial narrative; whilst the rest, whether battle, siege, negotiation, or event of what kind soever, will be as much compressed and condensed as conveniently may be, often the issue only being mentioned.

The civil war in question lasted until the imperious Henry was constrained, in order to leave himself at liberty to prosecute his contest with the Pope in Italy, to purchase peace in Germany by various concessions. Of these none perhaps more deeply mortified him than the restoration to the bishopric of Wurzburg of many of the Franconian fiefs and all the ducal rights with which he had invested his younger nephew, as Duke of Franconia. He endeavoured to make Conrad amends by giving him the marquisate of Tuscany, to which he attached the government of all the other territories that had been possessed by the Great Countess, and which conjointly formed the bitterly contested Matildan heritage, further adding Ravenna as a dukedom. Yet it hardly seems that the creation of a new dukedom was indispensable to Conrad’s retention of his ducal rank, since he continued to call himself and to be generally called, Duke of Franconia, probably on account of the very superior dignity of that first of the national or provincial duchies.

Conrad accepted the compensation offered him, but evidently considered it unsatisfactory, and did not concur frankly in the transaction. Both brothers appear indeed to have deeply felt, if they did not resent, this sacrifice of the interests and dignity of the junior, in return for their unwearied zeal and exertions in their uncle’s service. They withdrew from the court of the Emperor to devote their time and attention to their own lands and vassals, taking no share in his contest with the Pope in Italy. This forbearance has been ascribed less to resentment of a private wrong, compulsory upon the Emperor, than to piety, and a conviction that Henry V carried his enmity to the Pope, and his ideas of the despotic character of imperial sovereignty, to an unreasonable length. Nor is it unlikely that men religious and chivalrous, as Frederic and Conrad of Hohenstaufen appear to have been, must have seen reason to disapprove of much in the conduct of Henry V, who may, with little exaggeration, be called a parricide. But nothing positive is known upon the subject. What is certain is that they never again aided their uncle in his broils with his vassals, Italian or German, and that, upon one occasion, Frederic even assisted the anti-imperialist Bishop of Worms to recover possession of his episcopal city. 

Conrad repaired to Tuscany, and seems by his mild government to have greatly endeared himself to his new vassals. He did not however remain very long amongst them. An eclipse of the moon occurred; and whether, infected with the superstition of the age, he really were alarmed by the phenomenon, “with fear of change perplexing monarchs,” really saw in it a manifestation of divine wrath, or took advantage of the popular belief to escape from scenes, in which he was painfully reluctant to participate in any way, he immediately vowed an expiratory pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Such pilgrimages then no longer resembled those toilsome and perilous wayfarings, that had exposed the pious devotee to insult and outrage, and thus given birth to a crusade. The pilgrim could now be easily as safely transported by sea to the place of his destination, and when he had reached it, the performance of his vow implied the welcome duty of fighting “beneath the Cross of God.” A duty performed, when the devotee was of Conrad’s station in society, at the head of a band of chosen warriors. Upon this military act of devotion the Duke of Franconia and Ravenna set forward without delay.

During his absence in Palestine, Henry V, in the full vigour of manhood, was seized, in May 1125, with a malady, against which the medical skill of the age was speedily found ineffectual. He summoned his nephew Frederic to his deathbed; the call was instantly obeyed; and if any alienation of regard had arisen betwixt the uncle and nephew, a cordial reconciliation took place. The childless, dying Emperor bequeathed the whole of his private, or family property, consisting chiefly of fiefs and allodial estates in Franconia, to his two Hohenstaufen nephews. His sister had by her second marriage, his own work, given him nineteen nephews and nieces, but none of these could rival his ward’s, the offspring of her first nuptials, in his affection; and what he could, he did, towards securing to the Duke of Swabia the succession to the Empire. Depositing the Imperial insignia, the possession of which was then, as has been said, esteemed essential, if not actually indispensable, to the lawful exercise of sovereignty, in the hands of his youthful consort, Maud, he committed her and them to the care and charge of the Duke.

Frederic lost no time in taking possession, for his absent crusader-brother and himself, of their deceased uncle’s bequest, patrimonial fiefs and allodia alike. And it may be worth remarking that this last portion of that bequest, always indisputably heritable by both sexes, was unusually large; the ample possessions of Conrad II prior to his election having been, almost without exception, allodial. The fiefs were mostly subsequent acquisitions.

Frederic was now thirty-five years of age, and, conscious of his lofty position—his power augmented by this immense addition to his duchy and his Swabian patrimony,—claiming through his mother a descent by females from Charlemagne,—strong in his high reputation, in the warm attachment of his Swabians, in the assured support of his stepfather, the Margrave of Austria, of his father-in-law, the Duke of Bavaria, and of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Zäringen,—he almost felt his deceased uncle’s crown as securely his as the family heritage. But he had antagonists of whom he dreamt not, and with whose artful manoeuvres his chivalrous frankness was ill calculated to contend.

Since the Duke had forborne to assist his uncle against the Pope a reconciliation had taken place between himself and the Archbishop of Mainz, which, sincere on his part, he believed to be equally so on that of the prelate, whom he had even, upon more than one occasion, supported against the Emperor. But Adalbert had not forgiven the man whose straightforward gallantry had foiled his perfidious stratagem, and he knew that the Court of Rome was bent upon excluding from the Imperial throne every scion of the house that had so strenuously resisted its encroachments upon the sovereign authority. He might therefore possibly persuade himself that he was merely doing his duty in promoting the apparent interests of the Church, whilst he was really gratifying his own vindictive feelings.

The means of effecting Frederic’s exclusion, if not easy, Adalbert saw were yet within his reach. He well knew that all the princes of the Empire looked to the election of a monarch as an opportunity for extorting sacrifices from the candidate, and thence inferred that, whilst he might confidently rely upon most of the ecclesiastical half to obey the insinuated wishes of the Papal See, their lay brethren, who had now again seen three sons regularly succeed to their respective fathers upon the Imperial throne, could not but be disinclined to such an extension of the hereditary principle in regard to the crown, as admitting the succession of a nephew to his maternal uncle, the last of those sons, would be. He had moreover a candidate, alike suitable and docile, to oppose to the Duke of Swabia in Lothar Duke of Saxony, his own old confederate in rebellion, both with and against Henry V.

Lothar he knew hated Frederic personally, because akin to the friend against whom he had sinned, and by whom he had been so cruelly humbled; besides sharing the general Saxon ill-will to every non-Saxon emperor. He possessed private domains, his wife’s included, equalling, if they did not surpass, those of both the Hohenstaufen brothers; and his duchy, always the most powerful, had latterly been enlarged by the subjection of several Slavonian tribes on the shores of the Baltic, which Henry, King of the Obotrites and vassal of Duke Magnus, had recently compelled to acknowledge his own sovereignty, and through his the Duke of Saxony’s. The prelate could hardly have desired a better candidate. But, however favourable the prospect, it was not by open opposition that the Archbishop trusted to baffle the renowned, the popular, and the powerful Duke of Swabia, holding the all-important ensigns of sovereignty in his custody. His hopes rested upon a projected series of stratagems, to be conducted with profound dissimulation, and upon the unsuspicious temper of the Duke, who harboured no mistrust of a professed friend. To these crafty measures he forthwith had recourse.

The first operations of the prelate were directed to depriving Frederic of the regalia, and transferring them to his own keeping; and this he is said, by a writer of the following thirteenth century to have effected, by working upon the pride and generosity of the man be intended to wrong. He represented to Frederic his election as actually certain, and urged that it would be far more honourable to him if spontaneous on the part of the electors, than if, by retaining possession of the crown and sceptre, he appeared to challenge it as his birthright. The argument was plausible, and Frederic, relieving the Archbishop his friend, was deluded. When the politician had thus despoiled him of one of his sources of strength, he proceeded, in the exercise of his undoubted prerogative as Arch-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, to convoke an electoral Diet, appointing his own archiepiscopal city of Mainz as the place of assemblage. The wording of the proclamation by which this Diet was summoned, might have opened Frederic’s eyes, had not his own perfect guilelessness rendered him peculiarly obnoxious to deception; and thus, though the regalia were irrecoverably gone, might have armed him against future perfidious councils. It contained the following passage, surely indicating the design of a real election, in which to extort concessions from a successful candidate. “Especially we exhort you to recollect the oppression under which all have hitherto groaned, to invoke the guidance of Divine Providence, and in elevating a new sovereign to the throne, so to care for Church and State, as that they may be exempt from the late yoke and able to assert their rights; and we, with the people committed to our charge, enjoy temporal peace.” But Frederic saw in this only the reprobation of those measures of which he himself had disapproved, and still trusted in the Archbishop’s professed friendship.

The 24th of August 1125 was the day appointed for opening the Diet. The attendance was unusually large, Dukes, Margraves, Earls, mere Nobles, Prelates, all appeared with their respective trains, lay and ecclesiastical, and their escorts, to the number of 60,000 men; to which must be added the humbler crowd, attracted thither by the combined wish to enjoy the spectacle, and to profit by ministering to the wants of the congregated multitude. Two Legates sent by Honorius II, who had now succeeded to Calixtus II, expressly to watch over the Papal interests, were likewise present, though never before had an attempt at Papal intervention in the election of an Emperor been openly made. A yet more extraordinary attendant at the Diet was Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, the able minister of Louis VI, on behalf of his master the King of France; the pretence for whose presence it is hard to conjecture, although its object is abundantly manifest; he was there, invited by the Legates ana Archbishop to co-operate in preventing the election of a prince alike powerful and energetic, such as the Duke of Swabia, who would consequently be a formidable neighbour to the French King.

The right of suffrage in the election of an emperor, was as yet, it has been already stated, undefined by law in Germany. The princes spiritual and temporal, asserted that it was exclusively vested in themselves, as most interested, and best versed in state affairs; whilst the lower nobles and clergy laid claim to it, upon the plea of the reservation of their allegiance to the sovereign, in their oaths of homage and fealty to their immediate superiors. Upon the present occasion the whole 60,000 are said to have claimed votes; and had their claim been admitted, Frederic’s election was certain, the Swabians, Franconians and Bavarians being his partisans, the Lotharingians present favourably disposed to him, and only the Saxons, and the prelates of the Papal faction adverse. But Adalbert was thoroughly aware of the difficulties with which he had to contend, and was prepared for the conflict. He dexterously eluded the question of right.

He took advantage of the self-evident impossibility of such an army of electors finding accommodation within the city of Mainz, and of a precedent offered by the election of Conrad II, the great-great-grandfather of Frederic, to separate the nations, and thus preliminarily obstruct their free intercourse amongst themselves. He induced the Bavarians, and it should seem the Franconians, to encamp with the Saxons upon the right bank of the Rhine, whilst Frederic and his Swabians, coming down the left bank from Alsace, needed little persuasion to pitch their tents with the Lotharingians, where they were. He now pointed out the difficulty, not to say impracticability, of 60,000 electors deliberating in one assembly, and suggested, as a remedy, that each of the four nations, Franconians, Saxons, Bavarians, and Swabians, should select from amongst themselves, ten electors, to whom the choice of a sovereign should be intrusted. Nothing could apparently be fairer; the plan was adopted, and the Archbishop of Mainz, as a matter of course, was President of this Electoral Committee. Why the Lotharingians did not contribute their quota of ten is not distinctly explained; but they appear to have lost their character of nationality, either upon being broken into two duchies, or when the title of Duke of Lower Lorrain began to merge in that of Duke of Brabant.

The nomination of candidates, as well as the selection of a king from among those candidates when nominated, was left to the chosen forty, each ten being expected to propose a prince of their own duchy. The Swabian candidate was naturally Duke Frederic and the Saxon, Duke Lothar; whilst the Bavarian choice fell upon Margrave Leopold, Austria it will be remembered being then part of Bavaria. The Franconians seemed to have been perplexed to find a candidate; having been deprived of their own Duke, Conrad, they preferred his brother Frederic to every other, and him they could not name for two reasons; he was already a candidate, and was not a Franconian. Hence it is supposed, partly to avoid giving Frederic a formidable opponent, partly as a compensatory compliment to the Lotharingians for not having their ten in the committee, they chose to consider Lower Lorrain as still included in Franconia—it had once been part of Western Frankland or Franconia—and nominated, it is said, as their candidate, Charles Earl of Flanders, a Danish prince, who had succeeded to the county of Flanders in right of his mother Ethel, a Flemish princess married to Canute surnamed the Holy, King of Denmark ; upon whose murder in a rebellion, she had fled with her children to Flanders, where Charles had been educated.

The three first-named candidates were present, either as members of the forty, which the Dukes probably were, or among the numerous spectators of their proceedings; but it is not certain that the Earl of Flanders even attended the Diet. Of those present, Margrave Leopold at once frankly and honestly declined the honour proposed for him. He had never ceased repenting his participation in the rebellion against his imperial father-in-law, and might well feel that any opposition to the election of that injured monarch’s grandson would be an enhancement of his original offence. The Earl of Flanders seems not to have been again thought of after his nomination, which indeed few authors even mention; and Frederic and Lothar were now the only rivals. To neutralize the sympathetic effect of Leopold’s resignation, so manifestly in favour of his stepson, the Duke of Saxony, at the Archbishop’s instigation, with hypocritical modesty declined the arduous dignity to which he professed himself unequal. Frederic now stood alone, the single candidate, and, even if he had ever doubted his success, thought his election certain.

But the adroit Adalbert knew how to colour, how to distort every transaction so as to work upon the jealous irritability of the deputed electors. He contrasted the frank ambition of the Duke of Swabia and of his family for him, with the modesty of the Duke of Saxony. By a series of manoeuvres, that it were tedious to detail, he betrayed Frederic into conduct offensive to the electors, into steps that he represented to them as proofs of his reliance upon his hereditary right and contempt of their authority. Whilst thus misleading Frederic, he was underhand as actively canvassing in favour of Lothar, in which he was ably assisted by the Legates, who had obtained from this candidate for sovereignty three promises; one, to admit into the oath of allegiance taken by the prelates of the empire the reservation or exception of all ecclesiastical affairs, in which they were to be wholly and solely subject to the Pope; the second, to relinquish the Imperial claim to the Matildan heritage, which Honorius had, immediately upon Henry V’s death, occupied for his See; and the last, to solicit without delay the Holy Father’s ratification of his election, as essential to its validity. To secure the election of so yielding an Emperor, the Legates laboured indefatigably, and they gradually impressed upon those prelates who had been Frederic’s partisans, the paramount duty of supporting the candidate patronized by the Holy See, who promised such advantages to the Church. Lay princes were won to Lothar’s interest, by pledging him, if elected, to sign a document, thenceforward technically called a Capitulation, granting them jointly and severally all manner of concessions. But the master-stroke of Adalbert’s policy, was the seduction of Frederic’s father-in-law from his cause. To achieve this he, in the name of Lothar, offered the Duke of Bavaria for his eldest son and heir, Henry, afterwards surnamed the Proud, the hand of his, Lothar’s, only child Gertrude, the heiress of the extensive domains of both her parents; to which, in case of her father’s election, would be added his duchy of Saxony, as her present portion, with the prospect of succeeding to the Empire at his death. Such an accession of lands and power again proved irresistable, and the Duke of Bavaria, followed of course by all the Bavarian electors, deserted the cause of his daughter’s husband.

The result of all these and more intrigues was the elevation of Lothar, by what could in the first instance hardly be called an election, to the Imperial throne. Upon the 30th of August, Frederic’s momentary absence was secured by the last of Adalbert’s manoeuvres. As President of the Electoral Diet, he called upon the three candidates—for such, notwithstanding their declining the position, they appear to have remained—to bind themselves by oath to submit to the award of the Committee of Electors. Lothar of course complied with a demand which he knew was designed to advance his interest, and Leopold followed his example. Frederic hesitated, declared, perhaps by the Archbishop’s suggestion, that he could not bind himself by any oath without the consent of his friends, and rode off to his own camp to consult them. A murmur was presently raised amongst the forty electors against the arrogance that hesitated by such a pledge to acknowledge their authority. But the murmur was well nigh a work of supererogation. The Duke’s absence had been the object; and no sooner was he gone, than the Duke of Saxony’s partisans amongst the spectators raised a triumphant shout of Lothar! Lothar! as though he had already been elected. A few of the electors joined in the cry; and the shouters, seizing the candidate whom they were resolved to make successful, raised him upon their shoulders, and carried him about, exhibiting him to the external multitude as their elected sovereign. The supposed election was received with the usual acclamations, echoing those of his bearers. The whole proceeding, a sort of reminiscence of the old form, even in the twelfth century obsolete, of proclaiming the kings of the Merovingian dynasty, seems not a little to have shaken the nerves of Lothar, who was somewhat past the vigour of manhood; and his reluctance to bear a part in so tumultuary an operation, has by some writers been accepted as proof that he was ignorant as innocent of Adalbert’s intrigues in his behalf, and really wished  to decline the Empire. If he had, he surely would not have consented to obtain it by lowering its dignity, the price at which he did purchase the crown.

To the violence that alarmed the Duke of Saxony, the electoral committee presently put an end; but they could not, or would not disclaim the choice thus forced upon them. By the. constituted electors, Lothar was now sedately and regularly elected, and proclaimed King of Germany, prospectively Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

CHAPTER II . LOTHAR II. [1125—1137.]

Lothar's troubles.— War with the Hohenstaufen brothers. —Conrad anti-king.—External affairs.—Of Denmark. —Of Slavonians.—Missionary labours of St. Otho.— Affairs of Poland.—Of Burgundy.—Of Germany.— Papal Schism.— St. Bernard. — Affairs of Southern Italy. — Coronation Progress.—End of Civil War.— Apulian affairs.—Lothar's second Italian expedition. —Lothar's Death