MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK I.

CHAPTER III.

CONRAD III. [1138—1145.]

Election Manoeuvres.—Conrad elected.—Dissensions with Henry the Proud.—Death of Henry.—Rise of the terms Guelph and Ghibeline.—The Women of Weinsberg.—Compromise with the Welfs.—Other German Affairs.—External Affairs.— Italian Affairs.—End of Schism.—Roger's Conquest of Apulia, and government. —Dissensions of the Popes and the Romans.

At the death of Lothar the question as to the right of succession to the crown assumed an aspect analogous, with one material exception, to that which it had presented at the decease of his predecessor, Henry V. This exception was, that the admission of the right of females, if not to inherit, yet to transmit the inheritance of the Empire, would not now, as then, have been decisive in favour of him who claimed upon such grounds. On the contrary, it might be urged, as a necessary corollary from the admission, that the eldest nephew of Henry V was the lawful as well as natural heir of his childless uncle; wherefore the late Emperor Lothar, an usurper, who had held the empire illegally, neither had nor could have any right to bequeath either to son or to daughter’s husband.

But independently of the question of female birthright, the opinions and inclinations of the Princes of the Empire were much divided, even the same individual prince being often diversely influenced by conflicting interests and apprehensions. Competitors for the crown there could be only two; namely, the son-in-law of the last Emperor, and one of the nephews of his predecessor. If, in 1125, Duke Frederic’s power had been thought formidable to the rights, Or at least to the desires, of the Great Vassals, how much more so in 1138 was Duke Henry’s—a power resting upon an unprecedented accumulation of duchies, principalities, and domains, extending from the German Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. A prince who, uniting two provincial duchies, was at once Duke of Saxony and of Bavaria; Marquess of Tuscany, such as the marquesate then was; Burgrave of Nuremberg; Lord of the Welf patrimony in Bavaria and Swabia; in Saxony, of vastly the largest half of the Billung property, in right of his mother, Wulfhilda; more considerable of the Empress Richenza; might well seem an objectionable monarch to ambitious princes, eager for virtual if not nominal independence. Nor was the disinclination to give themselves a real master in so formidably potent an Emperor lessened by the character of the man. By the arrogance to which he owed his surname of the Proud, and which his warmest partisans are, therefore, unable to deny, though they endeavour to soften or explain it away, he had alienated the German princes and nobles as well as the Italians; whilst even the good qualities that counterbalanced his faults, seem rather to have increased than diminished the number of his enemies. His inflexible and impartial, as severe, administration of justice in his principalities, repressing robber-knights, rigorously punishing all crime without regard to the rank of the offender, had provoked enmity amongst his own vassals, and that enmity was embittered by his offensive demeanour.

But the terrors awakened by his power told in opposite directions. Whilst rendering the princes most averse to give the formidable Duke authority over themselves as their sovereign, it made opposing him a service of danger, from which many shrank; and upon this timid hesitation, Henry and his strenuous supporters very much relied for carrying the election. These supporters were his mother-in-law, the widowed Empress—a personage of great weight, both as a potent Prince of the Empire, and as having been the late Emperor’s partner quite as much in the government of his dominions as in his domestic life—and Henry’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Zäringen. In addition to their influence, and to the fear entertained of opposing such a preponderance of power, the regalia were in Henry’s custody; a most influential circumstance, while the material crown was still regarded with so strange a degree of mystic veneration.

On the other hand, the power of the Dukes of Swabia and Franconia, based upon the former duchy itself, upon the Hohenstaufen patrimony within the duchy, upon the patrimony of the Franconian Emperors, and upon Henry V’s grants to Conrad, of which he had been but partially despoiled, if too small when compared to Henry’s either to alarm or to encourage, was nevertheless considerable, and far superior to that of any other prince of the Empire. The brothers were, moreover, actively patronized by the Court of Rome; the natural papal aversion to the principle of hereditary succession in the Empire rendering the influence that had been so inimical to Frederic’s claim upon the last occasion, as much so to Henry’s upon this; whilst these motives of general policy were vivified by others of a more personal nature. Innocent had himself, when dependent upon the Emperor for support, suffered mortification from the haughty superciliousness of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and he had not forgotten the offence, which he might well think prognosticated no agreeable Protector or Steward of the Roman See.

The difficulty that might have seemed to threaten disturbance of unanimity amongst the friends of the House of Hohenstaufen, and even in the house itself, namely, the selection of the candidate for the dignity to which both brothers had at different times aspired, was obviated by the self-denial of the elder, who at once renounced the prerogative of primogeniture. Again the Duke of Swabia’s inducement to resign his birthright has been curiously canvassed, and various reasons, honourable to his character or the reverse, or at least depreciatory of the high estimation in which he was held, have been assigned. But it is surely sufficient to recollect that he had previously, upon whatsoever grounds, allowed Conrad to assume the regal title, at a moment when the assumption was fraught with peril, to show that he must have felt himself thereby pledged never, at a more propitious moment, to contest it with him. Such a feeling could scarcely need to be invigorated by the idea that the favour of the Pope might be personal to the pious crusader, who during Lothar’s last Italian campaign had won Innocent’s especial good-will.

Amongst the great princes of the Empire, the only cordial partisans of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria were those already named, to wit, his brother-in-law, the Duke of Zäringen, and his mother-in-law, the Empress: of the main body by far the greater number disliked and feared him. The Duke of Franconia, on the contrary, could reckon upon many personal friends, independently of his brother, the Duke of Swabia, as well as upon many political partisans; as the Archbishops of Treves—who had conceived an affection for him in Italy—and of Cologne; (Mainz was then vacant)—his half-brother Leopold Margrave of Austria, who, although only the third son, had been selected, with Lothar’s approbation, as more highly endowed, morally and intellectually, than his elder brothers, to succeed to his deceased father; his half-sister’s husband, Albert Margrave of the North March, rendered by his own interests an active and therefore most useful ally:—for he, the Bear, seeing in the interregnum and the necessary absorption of Henry the Proud’s forces and thoughts in the contest for the crown, an opportunity, to be clutched by the forelock, of recovering his maternal birthright, raised his vassals without a moment’s loss of time, and invaded Saxony. These were the principal: and not to pursue the inquiry into tedious detail, it may suffice to say that the less important immediate vassals, spiritual and temporal, were much divided, and mostly disposed to attach themselves to whichever party seemed likely to succeed. The Papal Legate was Cardinal Thietwin, by birth a Swabian, and therefore selected by Innocent, as likely to be more actively zealous in behalf of a Swabian prince, than an Italian cardinal, actuated solely by the Pope’s wishes and instructions, might have been.

Innocent had expressly directed his Legate to secure Conrad’s election, by previous negotiation, if possible, that it might be at last conducted with such regular observance of all established forms, as should preclude subsequent-disputes. The Swabian party in Germany fully appreciated the wisdom of this course, and in order to afford time for such negotiation, the Archbishop of Treves, who, acting as substitute for the non-existing Archbishop of Mainz, summoned the Electoral Diet, deferred its sitting as long as he judged consistent with propriety, appointing a period as late as Whitsuntide, 1138. The Empress, well versed in state affairs and political intrigue, and mistrustful of the prelate’s inclinations, perceived the injury this delay was calculated to do her son-in-law’s prospects, and sought to counteract it. She invited the princes, ecclesiastical and lay, attached to the deceased Emperor and to the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, to meet in her city of Quedlinburg, at Candlemas of this same year, 1138. She purposed that this carefully selected, as unlawfully congregated assembly, should surreptitiously assume the title of an Electoral Diet, and as such proclaim, rather than elect, Henry the Proud King of Germany, when the ceremony of his coronation, the proper regalia being in their possession, should immediately follow, the chief prelate present, whoever he might be, officiating. If this could be accomplished as proposed, Richenza doubted not but that the great body of the Empire, to avoid the evils attending a double election, would acknowledge Henry as King.

This well devised scheme was baffled by the rapidity of Margrave Albert’s movements. He had already invaded Saxony, and in the first instance so successfully, that, carrying his arms into the patrimonial domains of this mighty princess, he had before Candlemas made himself master of Quedlinburg, thus excluding the Empress herself, as well as her faction, from her own city.

The Swabian party, taking advantage of the inevitable consequent delay of her operations, hastened to forestall any future manoeuvres; justifying their own deviation from established forms, by the preceding, craftily planned as illegal, scheme of action. The two Archbishops of Treves and Cologne, the Dukes of Swabia and Franconia, the Margrave of Austria, and their friends amongst the Princes, instead of waiting for the appointed Whitsuntide Electoral Diet at Mainz, assembled upon the 22nd of February at Coblentz, and were met by Cardinal Thietwin. They at once elected Conrad, whom, on the 6th of March, the Legate crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle; if the original seat of Frank empire, of the Cathedral in which alone the indispensable coronation of a German monarch could be lawfully solemnized, should not, in narrating German History, be designated rather by its vernacular, though unmusical, name of Achen, than by its French appellation, however generally adopted. The open intervention of a papal Legate at Lothars election was noticed as an unprecedented innovation. So of course was this officious superseding of all the German prelates present at the coronation. The plea upon the present occasion was the default of an Archbishop of Mainz, which, though sufficient to authorize the assumption of his office of convoking the Electoral Diet, by the Archbishop of Treves, could hardly be similarly accepted in the case of the Legate, the two metropolitans next in dignity to the Mainzer being present, especially the Archbishop of Cologne, in whose province Achen is situated. But to make manifest the approbation of the Pope, the habitual object so important as to outweigh all other considerations. Nor was want of due authority in the officiating prelate the only irregularity in Conrad’s coronation, since the regalia being still in his antagonist’s possession, some substitute, ungifted with the mystic, consecrating virtue, ascribed by the nation to the genuine crown, must have been employed.

But whatever might be the general sense of these irregularities and informalities, Henry and Richenza could not allege that they invalidated Conrad’s election, without at the same time vitiating Lothar’s, which had been effected amidst and by irregularities, if of a different description. As the bare suspicion of any defect in the late Emperor’s title must have tended to invalidate all the acts of his reign, including the accumulation of duchies and principalities upon his son-in-law’s head, at which the Duke’s compeers, no longer checked by imperial authority, were beginning loudly to murmur; this was a risk to be sedulously shunned. Accordingly the Duke and Empress appear to have been altogether disconcerted by the promptitude of the transaction; and whilst they paused and hesitated, the Legate announced Conrad’s recognition as King and future Emperor, by the Pope, the Romans, and all Italy; and in Germany the monarch thus recognised had gained an important accession of strength by the elevation of another Graf von Saarbrucken, the brother-in-law of the Duke of Swabia, to the predominant archi-episcopal See of Mainz.

At Whitsuntide, the period originally fixed for the election, Conrad III held a Diet at Bamberg, which was very numerously attended. The immediate vassals flocked thither to take the oath of allegiance and do homage for their fiefs; even the widowed Empress and the Duke of Zäringen attending for this purpose, when the Duke actually distinguished himself by the fervour of his new­born loyalty. Thinking that he noticed a lingering antipathy to the Swabian dynasty in the Archbishop of Salzburg, he so vehemently exhorted that prelate to take the oath and do homage, so officiously pressed his mediation upon him, in case he feared Conrad’s resentment of past enmity, as to draw upon himself the whimsical and not very courtly retort, “Why of a surety, my Lord Duke”, quoth the Archbishop, “if your Grace were a waggon you would run before the oxen. What need of you between my Liege Lord the King and me?” He did homage, swore allegiance frankly, and kept his oath, which his zealous monitor, as will presently be seen, did not. For the moment, however, the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria appears to have been the solitary exception to the unanimity of the princes.

But this solitary exception was too important to be disregarded; since even if Henry were weakened by the submission of his staunchest friends, and by his feud with Albert the Bear, he still had possession of the regalia, without which ensigns of royalty Conrad, in the eyes of the nation, was scarcely King. Negotiations were opened for their surrender, and it is to be feared that, notwithstanding the piety of Conrad and the chivalrous honour of his brother, in these negotiations recourse was had to equivocation, if not to direct falsehood, for the attainment of objects so essential. Even Otho Bishop of Freising, one of Conrad’s half-brothers by his mother’s second marriage, in his chronicle says, that the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria was induced by promises to deliver up the regalia. What the promises were he does not explain; neither do those chroniclers of the adverse party, who most broadly accuse Conrad of duplicity, state in what the duplicity consisted : whence it may perhaps be inferred to have gone no further than vague assurances of favour in his quarrel with the Margrave, implying the retention of his mass of principalities, which he well knew provoked the envy and ill will of the other princes.

At another Diet, which Conrad held in the autumn of the year at Augsburg, Henry the Proud, whether lured by promises or alarmed by the Bear’s progress in Saxony, attended to surrender the highly-prized regalia, and to do homage for his various fiefs. But he presented himself at the head of forces so superior to those brought by any of the other princes or even by the King, that, although he did surrender the crown, sceptre, and other ensigns of sovereignty, Conrad looked upon his presence as a menace, and was alarmed for his own safety. Henry’s motive for this formidable display has never been clearly ascertained. Bavarian historians, even the latest, adopting or reasoning from the assertions of their predecessors aver that he had received intimations of its being the purpose of Conrad and the Diet to despoil him of, some at least, of his principalities; that he had already been called upon to surrender the marquesate of Tuscany, with its dependencies. These last advocates of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria must be held to acquit Conrad of deluding him with large promises; but their assertions seem irreconcilable with the known facts. To demand the surrender of the marquesate of Tuscany, would, in Conrad, have been a demonstration of hostility towards his friend the Pope, so injudicious, to say the least, in his position, that it were idle to suspect him of such imprudence. A yet stronger argument against it is, that Italian affairs were not discussed at German Diets, but regularly referred to the Diet, held by every Emperor at his entrance into Italy, upon the Roncaglia plain, near Piacenza; so that Conrad must have gone out of his way to offend a potentate from whom he was trying to obtain an important service. Neither can it be supposed that Henry would have given up the regalia had he had any notice of hostile intentions towards himself. But Conrad had been his rival; he knew that his brother princes maintained the illegality of the union of two of the national duchies; he might conclude the subject would be mooted at the Diet; and think possibly at once to intimidate and conciliate, by exhibiting forces designed to resist Margrave Albert, whilst he delivered up to the new monarch the insignia of his dignity.

Notwithstanding this martial demonstration, the Diet discussed both the questions in which the Duke was interested; to wit, whether one man could lawfully hold two national duchies, and whether the eldest daughter of Duke Magnus had or had not been entitled to inherit her father’s duchy. Henry alleged that the union of two duchies was neither unlawful nor unprecedented; that no daughter ever had inherited a duchy prior to Lothar’s law granting that privilege; but that, as this law, in virtue of which Gertrude had brought him Saxony, could have no retrospective action upon the then baseless pretensions of Elike, Saxony had, upon the failure of the direct male line of the Billung Dukes, lapsed to the crown, as had been adjudged by Conrad’s uncle, the Emperor Henry V; and finally, that he himself, therefore, lawfully held it, both as husband of the daughter of the last Duke, now legally his heiress, and as individually invested therewith by the late Emperor. The Diet, whether influenced by policy or justice, decided that Henry’s arguments were of no weight; that’the union of national duchies was illegal; that in default of male heirs, a daughter had always been entitled to inherit, or at least to transmit, a duchy like another fief; and that Albert the Ascanian, grandson of Duke Magnus by his eldest daughter Elike, was therefore the rightful Duke of Saxony.

Conrad pronounced sentence in conformity with the decision of the Diet; but as Henry’s armament was of more force than his logic, the monarch deemed it prudent to remove out of his reach. He accordingly withdrew, or in plain English escaped by night from Augsburg, repairing to Wurzburg, whither he invited the Diet to follow him. The members complied; and at Wurzburg, in full Diet, the sentence was again pronounced and published; and Henry, Duke of Bavaria, was summoned to attend, in order to surrender the unlawfully held duchy of Saxony. This summons the Duke, of course, utterly disregarded ; whereupon, with a precipitation unusual in the proceedings of Diets towards princes of his rank and dignity, he was declared contumacious, and laid under the ban of the Empire. At a third Diet, held at Christmas, at Goslar in Saxony, Conrad, with somewhat unseemly, but perfectly lawful haste, formally conferred the Saxon duchy upon Elike’s son, Albert.

The newly-invested Duke hastened back to his army, and his success, now that he was supported by the verdict of his peers, confirmed by his sovereign, was yet more rapid than before. Despite the utmost exertions of Richenza, whom the attack upon her daughter’s rights had driven into rebellion, and to whom, as more powerful and more popular than himself in Saxony, Henry committed the defence of his matrimonial duchy, Albert was speedily master of the northern and western districts, including part of her own domains, and Lüneberg, said to have been the original seat of the Billung ancestry of both competitors. Meanwhile Henry himself, in conjunction with the Duke of Zäringen, who, like the Empress dowager, had already revolted from the King, to whom he had sworn allegiance, sought to relieve her by a diversion, to which end they invaded Swabia.

This move was unfortunate for the Duke of Zäringen, without benefitting Richenza. The gallant Duke of Swabia, who was not in arms, and might perhaps have shrunk from an active part in humbling, however justly, the brother of his dead wife, was roused by this aggression upon himself. He now took the field at the head of his vassals and accompanied by his eldest son, afterwards the renowned Frederick Barbarossa, then a mere youth, although this was not his first campaign. He had already been intrusted with the command of his father’s troops in a private feud, and this at so early an age that his adversary, the Bavarian Earl of Wolfartshausen, would not, it is said, even when he saw the Swabians advancing upon him, believe that a serious engagement could be risked under so boyish a leader, until the boy’s onslaught, and his own defeat, convinced him of his mistake; when the juvenile victor equally distinguished himself by his liberality, releasing his prisoners without exacting any ransom. Throughout this, his second campaign, the younger Frederic yet further raised his military reputation by his valour and spirit of enterprise. The father and son not only expelled the invaders, but conquered the greater part of the Duke of Zäringen’s Swabian and Burgundian possessions, Zurich and Zaring itself included. These last triumphs, which compelled the rebel Duke to sue to Conrad for peace, were mainly attributed to the son.

Whilst the Duke of Swabia was defending the family patrimony, Conrad, somewhat too eager perhaps to retaliate the wrongs he and his brother had suffered from Lothar and Henry, pronounced—whether or not in concurrence with another Diet seems doubtful—certainly according to law, that the Duke of Bavaria, by his contumacy and rebellious resistance to the sentence of the Augsburg, Wurzburg, and Goslar Diets, had incurred the forfeiture of all his fiefs, the duchy of Bavaria included; and he conferred this hereditary Welf duchy upon his own half-brother, Leopold of Austria. The new Duke, supported by Frederic, hastened to take possession of his duchy; but notwithstanding the apparent accession of strength to the granter, this was as unfortunate a move for the mover, as the Duke of Zäringen’s had been. The Princes of the Empire, who judged Henry sufficiently weakened by the loss of Saxony, and were far more jealous of an Emperor, and of every member of his family, than of any prepotency in one who was still only a member of their own body, declared this transfer of Bavaria to Margrave Leopold an unjustifiable, as tyrannical, act of inordinate rapacity ; and almost all those who had hitherto professed neutrality, now took part with Henry. No Imperial army inforced the ban of the Empire.

Thus strengthened, the Duke repaired to the chief scene of action, Saxony; and leaving his brother Welf to defend Bavaria against Leopold and Frederic, joined Richenza. Their combined powers ere long drove Albert out of the duchy. But whichever party preponderated immediately awakened the jealousy of the princes. Fears of Henry the Proud’s power, and hatred of his arrogance now reviving, so recruited Conrad’s ranks, as encouraged him to lead his army into Saxony, trusting there to reinstal his Duke, who, it will be recollected, was the husband of one of his Austrian half-sisters. But he had been misinformed touching Henry’s force, and when the two armies met at Hersefeldt, found himself no match for his adversary. A battle seemed inevitable; and such was the superiority of numbers on the side of the Duke, that a victory which might have transferred the crown itself to his brow, and by the immensity of the possessions it would have restored him, have rendered the sovereignty probably both despotic and indisputably hereditary, seemed all but certain. This catastrophe was averted by the intervention of Conrad’s trusty friend the Archbishop of Treves, who now appeared upon the field in an unwonted, and if not exactly apostolic, yet pacific style. He presented himself in the interval of space still separating the hostile troops, followed by a long line of carts laden with pipes of wine, the contents of which he distributed with strict impartiality to both armies. Both drank, till both lay in a state of insensible intoxication upon the ground they had thought to drench with each other’s blood. The monarch and the rebel, without warriors, listened perforce to the prelate’s exhortations; and if he could not effect a peace, he at least prevailed upon them to conclude a truce for a year, during which to negotiate respecting all clashing interests; and to submit the question of the union of duchies, to re-examination at the Whitsuntide Diet.

But in a very few months the whole aspect of affairs was changed by the death of Henry the Troud, who, at the early age of thirty-seven, upon the 20th of October, 1139, expired at Quedlinburg. His death is, by writers hostile to the Swabian Emperors, of course imputed to poison administered at Conrad’s instigation, and, although without any sort of evidence, or, it may be hoped, grounds, with more show of plausibility as to motive, than in the case of his father-in-law. Chroniclers less, or  otherwise prejudiced, ascribe it to illness, which illness one of them distinctly derives from grief; and well might such be the effect of disappointment and mortification upon an irascible as haughty temperament: whilst others again merely state the fact of the Duke’s death without assigning any cause. No one appears to have laid the supposed crime to the charge of either of those who were most likely to benefit by his removal, namely, the dead man’s kinsman and competitor, Albert the Bear, whose surname would seem to indicate some deficiency in the milk of human kindness, or the new Duke of Bavaria, Margrave Leopold.

Whether it were nature or guilt that had relieved him from a formidable rival, the new Duke of Saxony hastened to take advantage of the circumstance. As if the truce had been personal to Henry the Proud, he again invaded the duchy, and again successfully. So completely did he now consider himself as Duke, that he summoned a provincial Diet to meet at Bremen, there conjointly with him to regulate the affairs of Saxony, and allay all remaining troubles. But these confident hopes were to be disappointed; the death of his rival proved rather a misfortune than an advantage to Albert.

The apprehensions and the resentments excited by the ambition and the arrogance of Henry the Proud, had died with him. The helpless innocence of his son, a boy scarcely ten years old, the grandchild of an Emperor, despoiled for his fathers offences not only of that father’s patrimony, but even of his maternal heritage, awoke as well general sympathy among his brother princes, as the compassionately respectful loyalty of the vassals of his family. And well did his mother and grandmother, Gertrude and Richenza, both Saxon princesses, revered and beloved by their compatriots and their vassals, know how to turn these sentiments to account in their own country. The energetic Empress-dowager so effectually roused Saxony against the intrusive Duke, that at Bremen he found himself in a position far worse than hers had been when excluded from Quedlinburg. He was there surrounded, not as he had hoped by a Diet of loyal vassals, but by hostile troops, from whom he with difficulty effected his escape. She soon afterwards drove him completely out of the duchy; and as a fugitive Albert appeared at Conrad’s court, whilst Richenza and Gertrude remaining in possession of Saxony, governed it in the name of young Henry.

In Bavaria a similar change of feeling had taken place. The great vassals, who had hated Henry the Proud even more for the arrogance, which they felt a personal insult, than for the stern exercise of authority by which he had curbed their tyranny, and the equally dissatisfied inferior nobles, whose plundering propensities he had steadily repressed and punished, all forgot their resentment against the dead father in pity for the orphan child, the oppressed descendant of their natural princes. Hence Welf found it easy to raise them against their new Austrian Duke. He gained battles, he took towns, he forced the imperialists to raise the siege they had laid to others, and in the course of the year 1140, reduced Leopold to great straits, despite the cordial support he received from Duke Frederic. Welf now deemed himself master of the duchy; but he had fought and conquered, not, as the Bavarians had supposed, for his fatherless nephew, the lawful heir, but for himself, and he now assumed the title of Duke of Bavaria.

Conrad had hitherto been variously prevented from taking an active part in the Bavarian war; but in the month of December of 1140, finding himself more at liberty, he led an army to the assistance of his brothers, Frederic and Leopold. Upon this occasion occurred two incidents of the character that renders a particular military operation worth selecting from the mass. One of these incidents is the first rise of those battle cries which became the distinguishing watchword, or more properly the names, of the factions, that for centuries distracted Italy yet more than Germany: the second, ranks among those gratifying traits of humanity occasionally recorded by history, as a relief to the crimes that defile her pages; soothing the reader with a view of our common nature more pleasing than that afforded by the intrigues of statesmen, the reckless ambition of demagogues and conquerors, the aimless ferocity of multitudes, or the vindictive cruelty of princes.

Conrad found his brothers driven from Bavaria, and turning their arms against the Swabian possessions of the Welf family. One of these was Weinsberg, a town situated near the banks of the Neckar, as its name implies, upon a vine-clad hill. This the three brothers besieged; Welf hastening to its relief, attacked the besiegers, and a desperate battle ensued. It was in this battle that the antagonist cries of Hie Waiblingen! and Hie Welf! were first heard. The latter cry, Welf, the reader already knows to have been in a manner the patronymic of the Dukes of Bavaria, as well as the individual name of the leader of one of the armies then engaged; its use therefore upon the present occasion needs no explanation; and is only remarkable from its having been thenceforward adopted as the denomination of all enemies of the Swabian dynasty, in the first instance, and subsequently of the enemies of all Emperors whatsoever. As such, being Italianized into Guelpho, it was adopted by the papal party in Italy, some little influenced, perhaps, by the circumstance of that party being usually headed by the Marchest d’Este, the kinsmen of the Welfs. The other, Waiblingen, is not quite so self-evident. It was the name of more than one castle belonging to the Hohenstaufen brothers, as part either of their patrimony, or of Henry V’s bequest; but why it should have been used as the battle cry rather than the name of the Emperor, or of either of his brothers then present in the field, it were hard to say. So used, however it was, and like the antagonist cry of Welf, both adopted as the name of the party that raised it, and, after being Latinized into Guibelinga, Italianized into Ghibellino.

The battle which gave birth to these cries was obstinately contested, but the victory was at length Conrad’s, and its immediate consequence was the surrender of Weinsberg. The besieged, so long as they could hope for relief, had defended themselves resolutely, even when reduced to extremities. Now such hope had become an impossibility, and they offered to capitulate. But Conrad, well aware that their means of resistance were exhausted, required a surrender at discretion; and the only alleviation of the hardship of such a surrender they could obtain, was permission for the women to escape, by quitting the town ere the victors should enter it, the outrages they dreaded from the licence of a soldiery, at once exasperated at the long resistance they had encountered, and intoxicated with their recent hard-fought victory, with further permission to take with them, for their future support, as much of their property as each could carry on her back.

The victorious army was drawn up in battle array, reluctantly awaiting the impending diminution of their anticipated booty in the departure of the weaker portion of the inhabitants with their treasure, ere they were to be allowed to enter, sack the town, and probably avenge their fallen comrades by the butchery of the men who had so pertinaciously withstood them. The Emperor, the Duke of Swabia, and the new Duke of Bavaria, were at the head of their troops, to see that the indulgence granted to the now defenceless women was not infringed. The gates were thrown open and the female procession came forth. But what was the amazement of the triumphant besiegers when every woman appeared, not loaded with jewels, raiment or money, but staggering under the burthen of her husband, her son, her father or her brother.

Frederic, who, as some writers affirm, was “made of sterner stuff” than his brother, and who might be incensed by the devastation of Swabia, considered this attempt to rescue the men from the vengeance of the conquerors, as a virtual infraction of the terms granted. He therefore pressed Conrad to insist upon the women’s returning to their homes, taking, as had been intended, the means of their future subsistence, and leaving the men to their fate. And even this, he argued would be a new favour, since in strict justice, by their attempted violation of the spirit of the indulgence granted them, they had forfeited all claim thereto, and ought to remain, like the men, at the mercy of the victors. But Conrad, whom his enemies have dared to accuse of two murders, showed himself more clement or more chivalrous. His heart was touched by the self-devotion of the women of Weinsberg, and he replied to Frederic’s arguments, that under no circumstances must the plighted word of a monarch be broken or evaded. Not only did he sanction the pious feminine abuse of his concession, but bidding them set down their living burthens, whom he dismissed unharmed, he sent them back to reload themselves with the valuables he had intended to bestow upon them, and which they, at the impulse of virtuous affection, had disdained, ere he suffered his troops to seek solace in plunder and intoxication for the disappointment of their other irregular appetites, whether vindictive or licentious. .

In commemoration of this transaction, the name of the town was changed by the citizens from Weinsberg to Weibertreue, literally Women’s-faith. It has since fallen into decay, but as lately as in the year 1820, the Wurtembergers, incited as aided by their Queen, erected upon the hill a monument more consonant to the act it was designed to rescue from oblivion than a magnificent temple might have been. It is an endowed edifice for the abode and maintenance of such indigent women as may have distinguished themselves by self-sacrificing fidelity.

In the course of the following year, 1141, a possibility of effecting by compromise the pacification of this sanguinary feud appeared, and was eagerly embraced by the Duke of Swabia, who, however resentful towards the ravagers of his duchy, reluctantly acted as an enemy to the kindred of the wife of his youth. The energetic and unyielding Richenza died; and the softer tempered Gertrude, who inherited neither the intellect nor the character of her mother, who is even accused of selling conquered provinces, as, e.g. Wagria, wrested from the Earl of Holstein, to her favourite, Heinrich von Badewide, remained sole guardian of her son. With her a negotiation was opened. Conrad offered her Saxony, somewhat reduced in magnitude and power, for her son, on condition of his renouncing all pretensions to Bavaria; and to alleviate the mortification of this sacrifice, he offered her Bavaria as a wedding portion for herself, provided she gave it with her hand to his half-brother, Margrave Henry of Austria, who had just succeeded to his childless brother Leopold. Gertrude accepted the proposals, to which, under her influence, her son consented; and with her and her party peace was restored.

The main difficulty seemed now to lie in reconciling Albert the Bear to the loss of the duchy, his hereditary right to which had been publicly recognised, and of which he had once actually had possession, though he had subsequently lost it. But the Margrave, since his second expulsion, may have begun to despair of his power of maintaining that acknowledged right against the will of so large a portion of the vassalage; and he might thence be the less indisposed to listen to the compensation offered, him. This was, a considerable increase of territory; the incorporation of. the whole, his Slavonian acquisitions included, with his margraviate; the complete severance of the margraviate thus consolidated, from the duchy of Saxony, of which it hitherto formed part, and the office of Arch-Chamberlain of the Empire, previously held by the Duke of Swabia, inseparably attached to it. To this proposed compensation the Margrave at last agreed; and—the town of Brandenburg with the large district belonging to it, recently bequeathed him by the deceased Slavonian Prince Pribislaff, named Henrv at his baptism being his most considerable province—the name of the principality was changed from the North Saxon March to the Margraviate of Brandenburg.

These various arrangements were appointed to be perfected in the Whitsuntide Diet, held at Frankfort in 1142. At this Diet the boy Henry formally renounced all claim to Bavaria, and was as formally invested with the duchy of Saxony. Margrave Albert with the like formalities renounced his right to Saxony, and was invested with his newly-constructed margraviate of Brandenburg. The nuptials of Henry of Austria, who bore the singular cognomen of Jasomir, or Jasomirgott, from his incessant use of the form of asseveration, Ja so mir Gott helfe (Yes, so God help me), with Gertrude, were solemnized with great magnificence in presence of the assembled princes, and the bridegroom was then formally invested with the duchy of Bavaria.

Fully restored, indeed, peace was not even now; as Welf, who claimed Bavaria for himself, not his nephew, naturally refused to acknowledge that nephew’s right to renounce it. He continued to assert his own pretensions to the duchy, and, assisted by all the enemies of the German sovereign, by Roger King of Sicily with money, and by the Hungarian regents for the minor Geisa, who had lately succeeded to his father Bela II, with troops, he kept up a harassing civil war against Duke Henry; but Conrad, considering his two brothers, the Dukes of Swabia and Bavaria, quite equal to the struggle with a pretender destitute of a shadow of right—since the duchy must be either his nephew’s, or forfeited, and therefore vacant at the Emperor’s disposal—now treated the contest as Henry Jasomir’s private feud, and devoted his attention to the general concerns of the empire.

But so much had the great question touching Saxony and Bavaria superseded all more private feuds, that upon its settlement Germany appeared, except in Bavaria, to be pacified. In the north, Margrave Albert and Adolf, Earl of Holstein, who, dispossessed during the late civil war of his country with its Slavonian dependencies, was now reinstated, were employed in confirming the Christianity of their Slavonians, in civilizing them, and in improving the country. Both invited German colonists to settle in their Slavonian districts upon the most advantageous conditions, especially Flemings, Hollanders, Zealanders and Frieslanders, who understood the art of draining morasses, and of reclaiming and protecting from the sea, low, often inundated, lands. For these colonists they built new towns, or enlarged mere hamlets into towns, thus to introduce manufacturing industry and other peaceful pursuits. So Earl Adolph, when visiting Wagria which, despite the young Duke of Saxony’s guardians, he had recovered from its purchaser, Badewide, being struck with the favourable position for foreign trade of the locality now occupied by Lubeck, if he did not actually found, converted a mere fishing village into that thriving seaport town, peopled from the maritime districts of Lower Lorrain. Some of his new towns, Margrave Albert, hoping to attract settlers by indulging their provincialism rather than patriotism, named after Flemish towns, with the modification required by the Saxon dialect, as Kemberg for Cambrai, Brücke for Brugge or Bruges, &c.

But such pacific policy was in Germany the exception not the rule; and some few of the feuds that, in addition to Welf’s continued struggle for Bavaria, then, as usual, prevented anything like perfect tranquillity throughout the country, must be mentioned, or the reader knows not what the empire was that Conrad had to govern. One of the principal related to what may now be called the remnant of the duchy of Lower Lorrain. The Duke to whom Henry V had given it, had very naturally supported the nephews of his benefactor, the Dukes of Swabia and Franconia, which act of gratitude Lothar had punished by confiscation, transferring the confiscated duchy to his own active partisan, Waleram, Duke or Earl of Limburg. Soon after Conrad’s accession Duke Waleram died, when the new monarch restored Lower Lorrain to Godfrey of Louvain, to whose son he gave a sister of his own Empress, in marriage, permitting the Earls of Limburg to retain the ducal title as Dukes of Limburg. But the empty title, which did not, it is to be observed, give the extensive ducal rights belonging to the national duchies, was unsatisfactory to Duke Waleram’s son Henry; and upon the death of Duke Godfrey, who did not long survive the recovery of his duchy, he endeavoured by force of arms to regain Lower Lorrain. When Conrad was at leisure to interpose, he quickly vanquished the Duke of Limburg, and confirmed Lower Lorrain to his brother-in-law.

This was not the only feud in the west, for there the Archbishop of Treves and the Earl of Namur were waging fierce war upon each other, while a little further south the Duke of Zäringen, dissatisfied with Lothar’s decision in his quarrel with Renault de Châlons for Burgundy, was still endeavouring to wrest the county of that name from him; but the disorders in the east more directly concerned the monarch. There, the Czechs had thought the civil war, that immediately followed Conrad’s election, a favourable opportunity for freeing Bohemia from German sovereignty; and the Duke was not withheld, by his wife’s being one of Conrad's half-sisters, from endeavouring to profit by it. A Bohemian Diet confirmed this assumption of independence, by enacting several fundamental laws; amongst other’s, some regulating the election of the Dukes, some giving great power therein to the Burgomaster of Prague, and some curtailing the ducal authority. So long as the contest for Saxony lasted, Bohemian independence flourished; but when the settlement of that dispute left Conrad at liberty to turn his attention to other insurgents, he speedily compelled Duke Vladislas to acknowledge him as his suzerain. Professedly without prejudice to the laws passed by his Diet, he now did homage to his imperial brother-in-law for his duchy.

With respect to those states whose dependent connexion with Germany was of a more doubtful character, Denmark was as usual distracted with the strife of the princes of the royal family for the crown, and the murder of those who wore it, a little sooner or a little later after placing it upon their heads; with which incessant revolts neither writer nor reader need be troubled, save when the Emperor, as suzerain, interposed his authority.

In Poland the powerful Boleslas III, who, though he had done homage to Lothar for Pomerania and Rugen, had asserted and maintained the perfect independence of Poland, died in 1139, and with his life ended the tranquillity as well as the greatness of Poland. Notwithstanding his own experience of the evils consequent upon the division of the kingdom—he himself had warred against and despoiled his brother—blinded by parental affection, he shrank from what seemed sacrificing his younger sons to the eldest, and divided the realm amongst his four elder sons, leaving only the youngest, Kasimir, a subject. As the sole privilege of primogeniture, he assigned to the eldest, Vladislas, with the principality of Cracow, comprising Silesia, a sort of supremacy or suzerainty over his brothers, denoted by the title of Grand-Duke, not to be hereditary in his posterity, but always inherited by the oldest of the whole royal race. The arrangement, as might have been anticipated, proved displeasing to all parties:—to Vladislas, who expected and had taught his haughty wife, another daughter of Princess Agnes, to expect that he was to inherit his father's sovereignty over Poland; and to his brothers, who were, perhaps, as envious of this modified supremacy as they might have been of his reigning over the whole duchy. Civil war broke out; and the four younger brothers uniting against the suzerain eldest, naturally overpowered him. Vladislas fled to Germany, where he appealed to Conrad, not only as his wife’s brother, for aid, but as Emperor, and as such Lord Paramount of Poland, for redress against both the rebellion of his brothers and the injustice of his father’s will, which divided what should in its entirety have been his. Conrad pronounced in his favour, and he thereupon did homage for the whole duchy of Poland. The Emperor led an army into Poland to seat his vassal brother-in-law upon the throne of his father. But in the difficulties of the country, in the want of roads and of provisions, he found obstacles more invincible than hostile troops; and a short experience of these induced him to permit the Margraves of Brandenburg and Misnia to mediate a peace for himself and Vladislas with the three brothers, who somewhat dreaded the Imperial power. To the mediators four weak princes were infinitely more desirable neighbours than one powerful king or duke; and, accordingly, they were far from seeking to overthrow the will of Boleslas III. The peace they arranged under the circumstances so far satisfied the Emperor, who felt that he had really failed, and knew that his presence was wanted in Italy, that all the brothers thereby acknowledged him as their sovereign, paid the expenses of the war, and referred their fraternal quarrel to the Imperial Diet, pledging themselves to attend and submit to its decision.

In Hungary likewise a pretender to the crown appealed to Conrad, acknowledging his sovereignty as Emperor, in order to gain his support. This was Boris, the son of King Koloman or Kalmeny, by a Russian princess, Euphemia or Predslawa, different writers giving her different names, daughter to the powerful Grand-Prince, Vladimir Monomach. The Hungarian monarch had married her in his old age, and, whether justly or unjustly, distrusting her conjugal fidelity, repudiated her when in a state of pregnancy. Euphemia retired to her father’s court, where her son, Boris, was born and educated. When he attained to man’s estate, he of course asserted his mother’s innocence and his own legitimacy, in virtue of which he now claimed the crown of Hungary. Stephen II, Koloman’s eldest son and heir, appears to have treated him as a member of his family, and concurred with Boleslas III. of Poland, who gave Boris his daughter in marriage, in obtaining for him the Russian principality of Halitsh, probably on the strength of his descent from Vladimir Monomach, but of which Halitsh Boris was deprived by the family that had previously reigned there. At one time Stephen, having no children, contemplated making Boris his heir; but he was induced to think the preference due, as a species of compensation, to his cousin Bela, who, in resentment of the treason of his father Almus, had in infancy been blinded, by order of Koloman, a deed—believed to have been that sovereign’s only crime— which he had bitterly repented, his remorse being even thought to have shortened his life. Accordingly upon Stephen’s death, the blind Bela had succeeded, and his Servian wife Helena, in an assembly of the States, demanded vengeance upon all concerned in robbing her royal lord of his eyes. Tumults and insurrections, in which Boris was said to be implicated, ensued, and continued after Bela’s death had left the throne to his little child Geisa. At length they were quelled, Boris fled, and sought shelter at Conrad’s court.

To the regents who governed for the minor, Geisa, and assisted Welf in his struggle for Bavaria, Conrad bore no good-will; and urged by the yet more resentful Henry Jasomir, who proffered vigorous support, he invaded Hungary on behalf of Boris. The result of the expedition is differently told by different historians, whose seemingly conflicting statements are not, however, absolutely irreconcilable. According to Hungarian writers the Emperor found it impossible to effect anything, and Henry Jasomir was in imminent danger in a defeat. According to German narratives the Emperor defeated the Hungarians, ravaged the country, and only withdrew upon receiving Geisa’s homage and oath of allegiance. Now it is very possible that Conrad may have had thus much success, and yet have found that to substitute Boris for Geisa was out of the questio ; and if, by receiving the homage of the King he came to depose, he acknow­ledged him, he must needs be said to have been foiled in his object, although inforcing the often refused homage was assuredly gaining one material object. Whether Henry Jasomir’s defeat and danger occurred upon this expedition, or upon some other occasion during the ever-renewed war in which Hungarian support of Welf, and his own consequent support of Boris, embroiled him for some years with Geisa, is not clear.

Italy was in a more disturbed condition than Germany, and Innocent again wanted Imperial aid. Both nobles and cities north of Rome were, as usual, at war with each other, and the imperial officers rather took part in their feuds, than sought to repress them; in fact to suppress them was impossible. To wage private war under some circumstances, was, according to the feudal system, the indefeasible right of every noble, if not of every free man; and all that monarchs the most sensible of the evils and inconveniences flowing from that right could do, was to regulate, and by steadily increasing strictness, confine it within narrower and narrower limits. That the cities, as soon as they felt themselves sufficiently powerful, should claim and exercise this right of the envied and detested nobility, a right so inherent in feudalism, was to be expected. Their doing so was in fact more offensive to the nobles than to the Emperors, who, as has been seen, favoured them everywhere, until in Lombardy their refractory temper rendered them formidable, which as yet it had not; this direction of urban ambition being no symptom of aspiring to republican independence. Arnold of Brescia is indeed said to have been at this time, in this his native place, organizing a federal republic in Lombardy; and that Arnold was in the end a republican demagogue, there is no doubt; but at Brescia it was chiefly against the wealth of the clergy that he seems to have declaimed, against the clergy that he excited both the nobles and the lower orders, who alike envied that wealth; and no traces of republican federation as yet appear.

In one point Innocent’s prospects appeared to brighten; and this was that Anaclet died in the same year in which Conrad was elected; but the schism died not with him, though the schismatic Cardinals, by the privacy with which they buried him, seemed almost willing that it should. But a Pope, his creature, was essential to the views of Roger of Sicily, and, stimulated by him, those Cardinals immediately elected another anti-pope, who called himself Victor IV. Innocent, however, gained over the brothers of his deceased rival, and at Rome opposition temporarily ceased. But if the Romans now acknowledged him as Pope, tractable to his will they were not. They had renewed the war waged, with only brief interruptions, for centuries against Tivoli, the virulence of which the Holy Father vainly endeavoured to temper. That virulence was now justified upon the plea of Tivoli’s schismatic adherence to the anti-pope. Despite his earnest admonitions, the pontiff-sovereign still, upon every slight success, heard them (reviving, mutatis mutandis, the old cry of Delenda est Carthago) clamorously insist that the walls of Tivoli must be razed, the inhabitants expelled, and the town itself demolished; but it had to be taken first, and taken as yet it was not.

In the midst of these troubles Innocent had convoked a General Council, which in 1139 assembled in the Vatican, and was numerously attended. Before this Council, which acknowledged Innocent II as the true Head of the Church, anathematizing his rival as a matter of course, the Bishop of Brescia laid his complaint of the heretical doctrines proclaimed by Arnold of Brescia, and of his exciting the laity against the clergy. Arnold was cited before the Fathers of the Church, convicted of all the offences laid to his charge, enjoined silence for the future, and banished from Italy. He obeyed half the sentence, withdrawing to Zurich, where, however, he preached as before.

The first real relief to Innocent II was the close of the schism; and for this he and the whole Church were indebted, not to the Ecumenic Council that had been convoked to afford it, but to St. Bernard, Ever indefatigable in his exertions for what he esteemed the cause of religion, the holy Abbot in person sought the new Anti-pope amidst his Norman partisans. The arguments he employed have not been transmitted to posterity; all that is known is, that his zeal was genuine as it was fervent, and that such seal, acting upon a powerful intellect, is the natural parent of persuasive eloquence. Accordingly, Abbot Bernard actually convinced Victor that his election was null and void, Innocent II being true and lawful Pope; and further prevailed upon him both to resign his unreal papacy, and to allow himself to be conducted to the feet of him whose title he had usurped, there to make his submission, and solicit his pardon: a victory over the strongest passions of the mighty, which “fought and won with the arms of charity, honesty, self-command, and eloquence,” a German historian, Baumer, thinks a more incredible miracle than those upon the strength of which the Abbot was canonized.

But if Victor were accessible to argumentative proof of his having no right to the high dignity to which he had been raised, his Norman supporter was not equally willing to resign, at a monk’s bidding, either his kingly title or his pretensions to Apulia, though the last were then nothing more; nearly all the princes, Norman or Lombard, and the Greek towns, still asserting their independence. But Rainulfo, who had made a good fight for the duchy somewhat unjustly given him, had not long survived Lothar and Anaclet; and upon his death Roger, regardless of the remonstrances as of the threats of Innocent, his Lord Paramount, as well as Pope, prepared both to inforce his right to Duke William’s heritage by arms, and to enlarge his duchy by reducing to subjection the yet unconquered Greek districts of Magna Grecia. His first measures were directed against the Norman princes, descendants of the fellow-adventurers of the Hautevilles, professed vassals of the Holy See, and opponents of his succession to his kinsman’s duchy. Vehemently Innocent remonstrated; whilst again Roger, unmoved, pursued his career of conquest. At length, when Robert Prince of Capua, was thus robbed of his principality, the Pope, exasperated beyond all bounds of prudence, marched at the head of an army to repress what he called usurpation, and reinstal his faithful vassal. But the sovereignty of Rome was insufficient to inspire military skill, and his Holiness proved a bad general; he was defeated, and upon the 10th of July, 1139, taken prisoner with his whole Council of war, com­posed of attendant cardinals.

To the Norman conquerors, it has been already observed, a pope was a welcome suzerain. His interest alone had attached Roger to the anti-popes, and that quick perception of whatever could conduce to their advantage, which had inspired his father’s and his uncle’s treatment of the captive Leo IX, showed him how to turn his triumph to the best account. The universally acknowledged, the now sole Pope was a helpless prisoner in his hands, and he thought only of conciliating his conquered foe. He treated his captive with the profoundest reverence; he strove in every imaginable way, except by releasing him, or renouncing his claim to Apulia, or his regal title, to prove his devotion, spiritual and temporal, to the papacy.

For a little while Innocent’s resentment withstood all Roger's demonstrations and attempts at conciliation. But at length the entreaties and representations of his impatient fellow-prisoners, the cardinals, prevailed, and he agreed to negotiate. Between adversaries so circumstanced, it was not difficult to arrange a treaty, in which each should consult solely his own individual interest. Innocent—disregarding alike the Emperor’s right to, at least, the joint sovereignty that he had himself conceded to Lothar, and the claims of his own vassal, Robert of Capua, to redress whose wrongs he had professedly armed—on the 7th of August, as sole and undisputed sovereign, in consideration of an annual tribute and of the cession of the principality of Benevento to the Papal See, confirmed to Roger the royal title granted him by Anaclet, and invested him with the whole of Magna Grecia as the duchy of Apulia; that is to say in addition to the duchy, as held by Duke William, with the other Norman and Lombard principalities, and the remaining few dependencies of the Greek Empire. Nay, he actually invested Roger’s second son, Anfuso, with the principality of Capua, and further conferred upon Roger himself and his successors the legatine authority in Sicily and Apulia. But if he acted without regard to imperial rights, Innocent was not indifferent as to the light in which Conrad might see his proceedings, and he sent him an apologetic explanation. It is somewhat startling to find that he prevailed upon the Abbot of Clairvaux, who in his advice to Lothar had treated the papal claim to sovereignty over the Sicilies on either side of the Straits as usurpation, to convey this explanation to the Emperor, and it can only be conjectured that, either in those days of mystic veneration for the visible and tangible ensigns of sovereignty, Conrad’s not having received the Imperial crown placed him in a position inferior to Lothar’s in respect to Imperial rights, or that the Abbot deemed those rights absolutely forfeited by Lothar’s sufferance of their usurpation. Conrad appears to have, at least tacitly, admitted the explanation; possibly because not then feeling himself in a position to quit Germany in order to assert his rights in Italy.

By force and fraud combined, the newly confirmed King speedily gave full effect to the Papal donation; and it is hard to say whether the rapacity and atrocious cruelty that marked, as they had his previous, his final subjugation of continental Sicily, or the revolting baseness to which terror drove some of the vanquished, be most degrading to human nature. The whole, relieved only by the happily contrasted nobleness of his son, Prince Roger, is too sickening to be dwelt upon. An instance or two must be given, indeed, to characterize the Norman monarch and his Greco-Italian subjects, but just to characterize them will suffice. And further to reconcile the reader to the perusal of-loathsome deeds it may be observed that even here some little progress towards the humaner feelings of civilization is perceptible. Roger’s cruelty seemed so far beyond the savage habits of the age, that his contemporaries compared him to a Turk or Saracen, the objects of their horror; whilst his uncle Humphrey, the third of the Hauteville brothers, in the preceding century had mutilated, and then buried alive, one of the ringleaders of the confederacy against the Normans, which was headed by Pope Leo IX, without provoking censure for excessive or vindictive punishment.

Roger’s wholesale massacres have been already spoken of, and were not discontinued. But to advert to more individual proceedings, amongst which his abandoning the nuns, at the capture of Capua, to the brutality of the troops, excited peculiar abhorrence; Bari refused to acknowledge him as its king; was besieged by him, and defended itself resolutely until compelled by famine to capitulate; when, upon the king’s plighted word for security of life and property, the gates were opened. After possession had been fully taken a soldier blind of one eye, who had been a prisoner of war there, presented himself before the monarch and, collusively, it was generally believed, as falsely, accused Prince Giaquinto, the former Commandant of Bari, of having, in a fit of causeless anger, torn out his lost eye. Roger, who chose to give his worst actions a colour of legality, summoned Judges from Troja and Trani to consult with those of Bari upon the question to which the unproved accusation gave birth; to wit; whether such an act of wanton cruelty had not rendered the Commandant and his Council incompetent to benefit by the capitulation. The lawyers well knew the answer they were expected to give, and would not risk Roger’s displeasure for the sake of justice or humanity. They decided that the capitulation, quoad the barbarians, the Commandant and his Council, was invalid, and they were blinded and otherwise mutilated; the rest were thrown into prison, and the property of all was confiscated—the main, if not the sole object of the whole transaction. On the other hand the inhabitants of Troja, emulating their lawyers’ eagerness to court their new master’s favour, and understanding that the King had said he would not enter a town containing an enemy or rebel, actually dug up the putrefying corpse of Rainulfo, that king’s brother­in-law, their own mesne lord and earl as well as Innocent’s duke, who was there buried, dragged it through the streets and out of the town, to fling it into a cess-pool. Prince Roger, disgusted by such adulation, flew to his father, implored and obtained permission to obey the impulses of his own loftier nature, and then hastening to Troja re-interred Rainulfo, as Conte di Airola e Avellino, with every mark of honour.

When his continental dominions were completely mastered Roger committed the government of them to his sons, as his Lieutenants or Viceroys, and withdrew to Sicily, evidently his favourite residence. There this king, who has hitherto appeared as a mere reckless, ruthless conqueror and crafty politician, busied himself in organizing the administration of that portion of his realms; for which purpose he convoked an assembly of Sicilian Barons and Prelates. With their concurrence he regulated his Court and Cabinet, then identical, and passed several laws for the protection of his subjects; as, e.g., one to prevent the kidnapping of free-born Christians, men, women, or children, and selling them into slavery; another to punish violence offered to females, and the like; whilst one, of a novel description, excluded from military service all men of inferior condition who could not reckon a soldier amongst their progenitors. For the regulation of the naval concerns of Sicily, a maritime code is said to have been compiled from the various laws and customs severally in force at Venice, Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa and Barcelona.

His court Roger constituted upon the Byzantine rather than upon the Frank model, the allotting specific departments of government to different officers being as yet little known in western Europe, where the King and his Chancellor usually despatched all business of state. He ordered that there must always be in Sicily a Grand-Constable to regulate all military affairs, a Grand-Admiral in like manner to order everything naval, a Grand-Chancellor to preside over the administration of justice, a Grand-Chamberlain, or in other words Lord High Treasurer, to manage the revenue, a Grand-Seneschal as controller of the royal household and the several royal palaces, and a Protonotario, First or Chief Notary, notaries having everywhere been originally the clerks or officers of the Chancellor’s court. This Protonotario seems to have been the representative of the Byzantine Proto-Logothetes, and was in fact Secretary of State.

Whether Roger were actuated in this orderly division of the labours of government by a perception of its utility, or by admiration of the pomp that such an array of courtly offices exhibited, may be questionable. The occupants of the several posts he selected indiscriminately from Normans, Italians, and Saracens, from Christians and Mohammedans ; amongst the latter occasionally employing even those guardians of the. Oriental Harem, who were unknown to Christian, or at least to Western Europe; nor even confined himself to his own subjects, or to his ancestral countrymen, the Normans, whom, as the bravest of warriors, he invited, extending his invitation to the French in general, to enter his service and settle in either Sicily, receiving adequate fiefs there. His first Grand-Admiral was a famous mariner of Antioch named George, the second a Sicilian Saracen, and an Englishman named Robert is found amongst his Grand-Chancellors. Of this English Grand-Chancellor of Sicily an anecdote, showing that Gregory VII had by no means succeeded in extirpating the heresy, as it was then termed, of simony, is recorded, which may find its place here. An abbot, a royal chaplain, and an archdeacon severally applied to the Grand-Chancellor for a vacant bishopric which each offered to purchase. With each he bargained hard, and when he had ascertained the utmost that each was willing to give, he assembled the clergy of the kingdom, in the presence of all their brethren taxed each of the three applicants with his attempted simoniacal offence, and then, by virtue of the King’s legatine authority appointed to the see, or in the royal name recommended for election, a poor monk of blameless conduct.

These pacific cares and duties did not engross the King to the neglect of his former pursuits—those of an intriguing politician and an ambitious conqueror. But his successes in either capacity, and indeed the rest of his reign—Sicily and Apulia not being as yet immediately connected either with the Holy Roman empire, or with the Swabian dynasty—may be fittingly despatched in few words, massing the whole without regard to chronology. Roger conquered the island of Malta, and the African provinces of Tunis and Tripoli, which he rendered tributary to Sicily; he maintained an active correspondence with Duke Welf, to whom he transmitted frequent pecuniary succours, in order, by his armed assertion of his alleged claims, to keep Conrad so fully occupied in Germany as should prevent his visiting Italy, where he dreaded the Imperial presence; and he was for ever embroiled with the Eastern Emperor, upon whose dominions he evidently gazed with longing eyes; though the quarrel is said to have originated in Manuel’s refusing the hand of his daughter to Roger, when for the second or third time a widower.

Innocent II, upon his reconciliation with Roger, and consequent release, returned to Rome, but found there neither peace nor repose. The Romans were discontented. During the schism, the Great Council had pretty much assumed the government of the city, especially the decision of all judicial questions: Arnold of Brescia’s doctrines, touching the unfitness of clerical hands to wield a temporal sceptre, had reached them, and found willing hearers; wherefore Innocent’s resumption of the sovereign authority was beheld with scarcely disguised irritation. Upon this dormant discontent an open cause of dissension supervened. The war with Tivoli still raged, if so large an expression may be applied to a feud between neighbouring towns, upon the strength of one of the parties being the Eternal City, the former mistress of the known world. Victory at length declared for the Romans; and now, in the exultation of triumph, they insisted upon the execution of their often repeated threat, the demolition of the hated town, and the expulsion of its inhabitants. The Pope, in a more Christian temper, opposed this violent proceeding, and made peace with the Tivolitans upon equitable conditions; one being that they, as former partisans of the anti-pope, should take a special oath of obedience to the Church.

This act of papal sovereignty in opposition to their inclinations exasperated the Romans, and the spirits  and the hopes of all disciples of the expatriated Arnold revived. They caught at the opportunity offered by this offensive clemency, to declaim against ecclesiastical rulers; whilst the turbulent nobles harangued the equally turbulent populace upon the liberties and glories of their ancestors, as contrasted with their actual degradation under priestly usurpation and priestly cowardice. To excite the restless and discontented to revolt was easy. The triumphant demagogues, noble and plebeian, led the way to the Capitol; where, at the head, and with the concurrence, of a crowd, intoxicated with anger, ambition, and vague expectation, they proclaimed the republic and re-established the authority of the Senate. But where was the Senate to be found? So completely had it been destroyed, A.D. 553, by the Ostrogoth Teja, that, although some relics appear to have been extant in the days of Charlemagne, not a single Senator was now forthcoming to exercise this restored authority. A new Senate was instantly elected by, and from, the Roman nobility.

Innocent meanwhile endeavoured to negotiate with the successful insurgents. His overtures were rejected; and to the mortification that the whole transaction caused him, is ascribed the malady which shortly afterwards, upon the 23rd of September, 1143, terminated his career. His successor, Guidone da Castello, as Pope, Celestin II, had been a disciple of Abelard, a fellow pupil with Arnold of Brescia, and appears to have been popularly raised to St. Peters Chair by the people and lower clergy, without regard to the exclusive right of election that had now, for half a century, been vested in the Cardinals. This Pope would probably not have been indisposed to some moderate reforms, in consonance with Arnold’s views; and however great the difficulty of satisfying the revolutionary appetite for change, that grows keener by feeding, it is not impossible that he might have effected some conciliatory compromise. But Celestin II died within six months from his election, and was succeeded by Gerardo Caccianemico of Bologna, Cardinal di Santa Croce, who took the name of Lucius II. This pontiff cannot have been without talent, since Innocent made him Chancellor of the Roman See on account of his abilities; but nothing of the kind appears in his conduct as Pope. He foresaw not the result of what was passing around him. He offered no opposition to the revolutionary measures of the people, so long as they were occupied in arranging their republican constitution. But when they reckoned their work done, and proceeded to put what they had organized in action, he was at once startled and irritated at the fruit of his own inertness. When the Romans elected Giordano Leone, a brother of the deceased Anti-pope Anaclet, Patrician, with supreme authority, to the utter rejection of the Prefect (at this time really a Papal officer, although the Emperors claimed, and as often as they had the means, exercised the right of appointing him); when they required the Pope to resign the revenues as well as the powers of sovereignty, and maintain himself and his ecclesiastical court upon the tithes, and the voluntary gifts of the laity; then Lucius, aroused to resistance, positively refused to allow their innovations, or comply with their demands.

Both parties now appealed to Conrad, both invited him to Italy. The Pope implored his aid to quell popular insurrection and restore peace, pressing him at the same time to receive the Imperial crown from his hand. The Pope’s refractory flock besought the Emperor to repair to Rome, in order to sanction and confirm all they had done for the re-establishment of the Republic; and to thank them for recovering from pontifical usurpation those imperial rights and dues, which they desired to surrender into his hands, and to see him enjoy and exercise. It will be recollected that the veriest tyrants among the old Roman Caesars called themselves Emperors of the Republic, and it appears as if such a republic was the utmost to which Italian votaries of liberty, whether Roman or Milanese, as yet aspired.

Conrad, engrossed by the internal disorders of Germany, did not at that moment deem it convenient to cross the Alps, and deferred accepting either invitation until some future day. Lucius, thus abandoned to his own resources, endeavoured to put down the insurrection with the assistance of his own Roman loyalists. Broils and affrays in the streets necessarily ensued, in one of which the Pope was struck on the head by a stone. Of this wound a few days afterwards, upon the 25th of February, 1145, he died.

Upon the 27th, after two days of inter-papacy, a successor was given to the slain Pope, in the person of the Abbot of St. Anastasius, a Cistercian monastery, founded at Rome by Innocent II. The new pontiff, who took the name of Eugenius III, was by birth a Florentine, and had proved the purity of his devotion by resigning a lucrative ecclesiastical office in his native city, to enrol himself in the austere Cistercian Order. He pronounced his vows at Clairvaux; and so gained the good opinion of his superior and teacher, St. Bernard, as to be recommended by him to the Holy Father for the government of the new Roman monastery of his Orden As Abbot, Eugenius had been held in rather slight esteem as a well meaning but weak man. As Pope, he showed himself gifted with great good sense, if not with brilliant abilities, by submitting his conduct as far as possible to the guidance of the universally revered Abbot of Clairvaux; whilst he displayed a degree of fortitude and efficiency wholly unexpected. Upon his election, the Romans required him to bind himself by oath to ratify all the changes they had made in the institutions of Rome. This he refused to do, unless with some modification of those changes, such as the acknowledgment of his Prefect as Governor of the city. The red-hot republicans rejected all modification whatever; the gates of Rome were closed against the sovereign pontiff, and he was obliged to be consecrated without the walls of his metropolis. After some further attempts at negotiation, Eugenius retired to Viterbo, or it should seem to Lucca. In the course of the year he succeeded in compelling the refractory republicans to submit to his terms, and returned to Rome, but was again expelled the following year; and he then withdrew to France, where he. was nearer to his chief counsellor the Abbot of Clairvaux. At the pressing invitation of the Romans, Arnold of Brescia now repaired to Rome, to assist in perfecting the new republican constitution. Without office or dignity he there exercised extraordinary authority; and by his eloquence stimulated all those yearnings of his hearers, after the power and fame of their classical ancestors, that awoke such horror of priestly sovereignty. Yet republican and demagogue as Arnold was, it was with his concurrence that the Romans again invited or rather summoned Conrad to Rome, there to sanction their revolution. They assured him that, in all they had done, they had been actuated by respect for the Imperial sovereignty, of which the Popes, in league with the Normans, were the worst enemies; they required him to fix his residence in the Eternal City, thence, like his predecessors of old, again to rule the world. Again it was impossible for Conrad, whatever might be his wishes, to comply with their desires. The attention of Europe was again forcibly called to the East.

CHAPTER IV.

THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM.—CONRAD III.

[1125—1146.]

End of Baldwin II’s Reign.—Accession of Fulk and Melisenda.—Rise of Zenghi.—Fulk's Policy and Death. — Melisenda and Baldwin III. — Internal Dissensions and Intrigues. — Relations with the Mohammedans.—Fall of Edessa.—Zenghis Death. —Preparations for the Crusade.