MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK II.

FREDERIC I, SURNAMED BARBAROSSA

CHAPTER III.

FREDERICK I. [1155—1158.]

Affairs of Germany.—Henry the Lion and Henry Jasomir.—Frederics Marriage.—Affairs of Poland.— Of Bohemia.—Of Denmark.—Relations with France and England.—Affairs of the Sicilies.—Of Lombardy. —Dissensions and Reconciliation with the Pope.

If the affairs of Italy, both in the north and in the south, were so far from settled that the Emperor must needs have contemplated an early return thither, his presence was for the moment yet more indispensably necessary in Germany. The Coronation-Progress had lasted longer than mediaeval patience could submit to the Realm’s Peace, which was, by law, to have been observed during its continuance. Those civil broils, private feuds, plunderings by robber-knights, and ecclesiastical encroachments upon the sovereign authority—which he had repressed, though not absolutely quelled, prior to crossing the Alps—had, therefore, broken out with fresh violence when his stay in Italy was pro longed, and he might well be supposed engrossed, by the troubles and rebellions of that country.

To name only a few of the principal. A Bishop of Ratisbon, elected since Frederic had quitted Germany, had presumed to grant fiefs belonging to his see, without having received investiture of his temporalities from the Emperor. Archbishop Arnold, the treacherous supplanter in the see of Mainz of the friend and prince, Archbishop Henry, whose interests he was commissioned to defend, was at war with Hermann von Stahleck, Palsgrave on the Rhine, a powerful and ambitious prince, who had wrested some districts from the sees of two of his (Arnold’s) suffragans, the Bishops of Worms and Spires. In the north the Slavonians of Brandenburg, under one Yasso—the reputed nephew of Pribislaff Henry, the bequeather of the province, and disinherited by that bequest—had taken the opportunity of the Margrave’s absence upon his Crusade, and the Emperor’s upon his Coronation-Progress, to throw off their fealty to the former; whilst the forfeiture incurred by the Archbishop of Bremen, and some others, required to be inforced, unless the laws of the Empire were to be a common laughing stock. But important above all others, and yet more, perhaps, in Frederic’s eyes than to the general tranquillity, was the still pending contest for Bavaria, of which Henry Jasomir retained possession, in utter disregard of the Diet’s sentence.

Against one uncle, between two uncles and his favourite cousin, the Emperor would proceed only by negotiation. But towards the other offenders he felt no such tenderness: whilst to establish peace and good order in Germany was necessarily his primary object, not only because he esteemed it the first duty of a monarch thus to secure tranquillity to his subjects, but also because indispensable to his obtaining thence the force requisite to crush rebellion in Italy. This regal duty with respect to them, therefore, he at once proceeded to perform.

He compelled the Bishop of Ratisbon, and all who had done homage to him for fiefs appertaining to his see, to pay the heavy fines they had incurred by their illegal precipitancy. He commissioned Henry the Lion to seize and temporarily occupy the towns and castles of the archiepiscopal see of Bremen, which the Archbishop had forfeited by his default at Roncaglia. He summoned the Archbishop of Mainz and the Rhine Palsgrave, with their allies, to a Diet, to be held at Worms in January, 1156. These belligerents, notwithstanding the imperial command, which he had transmitted from Italy, to observe the Realm’s Peace, lay down their arms, and expect justice from him at his return, had continued to wage fierce war, savagely devastating each other’s territories. When, however, they beheld him again present in Germany, they suspended their sanguinary operations; and, obeying the summons, attended the Diet. There each endeavoured to justify himself by inculpating his antagonist as the aggressor; but Frederic refused to inquire into the origin of the quarrel. Both were violaters of the proclaimed peace, which both had sworn to observe, and he treated this public offence as superseding all others. As the penalty denounced against this undeniable crime, he, in concurrence with the Diet, sentenced the chief transgressors and their noble accomplices to the disgraceful and even then, as before said, nearly obsolete, punishment of carrying a dog a specified distance—usually a German mile. From this ignominious doom only the Archbishop, in consideration of his spiritual dignity, was personally exempted. The Palsgrave himself, despite his high temporal dignity, and the ten Earls who had joined either party, were compelled to endure the shame; and so keenly did Hermann von Stahleck feel that shame, that he instantly retired to a monastery, where he soon afterwards died. The example, if, as it seems to have been thought, startlingly severe, was effective. Other feuds were aban­doned ; the belligerents in all haste making up their quarrels as they best could, to escape the Emperor’s notice.

The revolt of the Slavonians was of a different character, and not so to be suppressed; but the Emperor judged it sufficient to direct the Archbishop of Magdeburg to assist Margrave Albert, at his return, in reducing the rebels to obedience. And so it proved. The Margrave and the Archbishop did, in the course of the following year, thus reduce them; and this was the last Slavonian effort to recover absolute independence. But peace seemed to be restored amongst the Princes of the Empire even before this revolt was extinguished ; and Frederic, leaving it wholly to those whom, temporally and spiritually, it most concerned, turned his attention next to destroying those castles of robber-knights whence—especially upon the Rhine as the principal highway of commerce— they plundered peaceable citizens and other travellers, committed every kind of lawless outrage, and wholly interrupted the trade of the country. Yet did these robber-knights, whom he thus determinately punished and humbled, rendering them innoxious, constitute a large proportion of the Chivalry of the Empire; the class held to be most peculiarly favoured by this chivalrous Prince, the class to which he looked for the supply of troops,—independent of the great vassals and of feudal service—so essential to his Italian projects. Can there be a stronger proof that his actions were governed by impartial justice, or at least what he deemed such, than his protection of trade and traders against these knights?

This terrible, in its individual effect, but to the Empire at large most beneficial, sentence of dog-carrying, was to the Emperor himself productive of another advantage, which he could not have anticipated. The death of Palsgrave Hermann, without children, left the Palatinate of the Rhine vacant. This palatinate—comprising, as it did, the greater portion of that part of the original duchy of Franconia which lay on the left bank of the Rhine, and the Vogtey or Stewardship of most of the Rhenish bishoprics and archbishoprics—already ranked, it has been seen, amongst the chief German principalities. The Emperor now added to it such fiefs and Franconian ducal rights as were at his disposal, obtained for it from the Archbishop of Cologne a grant in perpetuity of the county of Stahleck, which had lapsed to his see by the extinction of the line of earls on Hermann's death, and conferred the principality, thus enlarged, upon his half-brother Conrad, the offspring of his father’s second marriage with Agnes von Saarbrucken. The Rhine Palsgrave appears henceforth to have been considered as the representative of the Dukes of Franconia, and as such, the first lay Prince of the Empire.

Whilst all these transactions were in progress, nego­tiations relative to the duchy of Bavaria had been, and still were carrying on. Of the three competitors for its ' possession, the one who had both the least grounds for the pretension, and the least means of supporting that pretension, viz : Welf, was naturally the first, and the most easily, pacified. He had long since advanced another equally baseless claim, namely, to the heritage of the Great Countess, in virtue of his uncle Welf’s marriage with that mighty princess. But how idle soever the plea upon which this claim rested, to Frederic it was welcome; and of the Matildan heritage, both of what was and of what, as usurped, was not at his disposal, he readily gave his uncle investiture. Thereupon Welf, renouncing all pretensions to Bavaria,—at least in opposition to his other nephew, Henry—assumed, and thenceforth bore, the titles of Duke of Spoleto, Marquess of Tuscany, and Prince of Sardinia. Although far from possessing like Matilda the real sovereignty of all these dominions, a sufficient portion thereof acknowledged his authority—his suzerainty was yet more extensively acknowledged—to render him an opulent and a powerful prince. The Marquess of Este appears to have ere long transferred to him, as Duke of Spoleto, the homage he had previously done to Henry the Lion as head of his house,—probably with the consent of Henry, as part of the arrangement.

The negotiation with Henry Jasomir, the actual occupant of the disputed duchy, offered more difficulty. At length, however, the mediators, who were the Duke’s own brother, Otho, Bishop of Freising, his brother-in-law the Duke of Bohemia, and the Bavarian Palsgrave Otho, convinced him, if not of the justice of the Lion’s claim, yet of his own inability single-handed to withstand the Wolfs, supported by the Emperor and the whole force of the Empire, in the execution of a decree of the Imperial Diet; and further, that if some few princes there were, unwilling to see one of their body so preponderantly powerful as a Duke of Saxony and Bavaria must be, such malcontents would in all probability be more willing than able to stand by him; even if they were not as unwilling to see Bavaria as well as Swabia and Austria in the hands of members of the Imperial family. Under these circumstances Henry Jasomir, at length yielding, agreed to treat concerning a compromise; and as Frederic was most desirous as far as possible to gratify his uncle, a convention to the following purport was arranged. Henry the Babenberger agreed to resign Bavaria, upon condition that his margraviate of Austria should be altogether detached from the duchy, and emancipated from the ducal authority of Bavaria, its forces being no longer bound to follow the ducal standard to the field; that it should be augmented by the addition of the territory lying between the Inn and the Ens—now Upper Austria—including the important bishopric of Passau—virtually the metropolitan see of Austria—and should be constituted a duchy with unusual privileges. The privileges upon which he insisted were, that the duchy of Austria should rank next to the original national duchies; should be so far hereditary in the female line, that the eldest daughter of a Duke who should leave neither son nor brother, might inherit it; that in default of even a daughter, the last Babenberger should be entitled to bequeath the duchy, which must be and remain indivisible, by will; that the Dukes should not be bound to attend any Diet not convoked by the Emperor in person, or to take part in any foreign wars, except against Hungary—which in fact were mostly Austria’s own, owing to the ill-will in early times apparently unavoidable upon long disputed frontiers, and ever prevailing between Hungary and the Eastern march. The duchy was farther endowed with various privileges of little historical importance. Henry the Lion, either out of regard for Frederic, or from consciousness that the whole Empire would be against him should he refuse to make the moderate sacrifice required, agreed to accept Bavaria, thus shorn of her former fair proportions; and a Diet was accordingly appointed to be held at Ratisbon, in the autumn of this same year 1156, for the consummation of the arrangement.

At this Diet all parties attended, and the witnesses whose presence appears to have been essential to the perfect legality and stability of the transaction, being too numerous to be contained in hall or church, an open field, either near the town, or in the nearest district of Upper Austria—a disputed point—was prepared for the ceremony. The ceremony in its details is interesting, being one of the last emblematical legal operations recorded in the annals of. Germany, inasmuch as written, documents began about this time to supersede her original picturesque usages.

Upon this plain then the Estates of the Empire assembled in full Imperial Diet. In presence of the Diet and of the whole Bavarian vassalage, Henry the Babenberger, delivered into the Emperor’s hand seven banners, to wit, those of Bavaria, and her several marches and dependent provinces, thus expressing, or typifying his renunciation of the duchy. The Emperor immediately delivered the whole seven to Henry the Welf, thus investing him with the entire duchy, as vacated by Henry Jasomir’s act; when the new Duke of Bavaria, as agreed, instantly redelivered to the Emperor two of these banners, namely those of the then Eastern March, or Austria, and of the older Eastern March, between the Ens and the Inn, when Hungary extended to the former river; thus in the same emblematic style signifying his renunciation of those Marches, and of all claim to authority of any kind over them. These two returned banners of the two Eastern Marches, the Emperor then formally delivered to Henry the Babenberger, and his Greek wife Theodora, conjointly; by such conjoint investiture granting, with the concurrence of the Diet and to the personal knowledge of the vassalage, the limited right of female succession before described. They were received by Henry Jasomir on horseback, in princely array, ducal staff or sceptre in hand, ducal hat on head.

Some writers have averred that the title of an Archduchy was now given to Austria, to mark its superiority over such dukedoms as Zäringen, Carinthia, &c., but the title does not at this time appear. The new Duke of Austria made Vienna his ducal capital, and began the cathedral of St. Stephens. It will be noticed that the Dukes, and indeed all the Princes of the Empire, had their regular capitals—in German phraseology, residence towns—and it was the number of the widely scattered crown domains, which could be rendered profitable only by a sojourn long enough to consume their produce, together with his high duties, incessant calls for the presence of the Emperor in different parts of his realms, that seems to have prevented his having, in like manner, a fixed seat of government.

Frederic appears to have felt such reliance upon the ties of blood, strengthened, as he must have deemed them, by those of gratitude, that holding himself as sure of the affectionate fidelity of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, as of his brother, the Rhine Palsgrave’s, he considered Germany to be tranquillized as soon as he had satisfied the Duke of Austria. In this tranquillity he felt the greater confidence from having re-established the Imperial prerogative in regard to the election of prelates, such as the Calixtine Concordat had been understood to acknowledge it, prior to Lothar’s concessions. Elections took place in his presence, therefore assuredly under his influence; even an Archbishop of Cologne had been so elected, and Frederic proceeded to give him investiture of the temporalities of his see without waiting for the Pope’s approbation of the new metropolitan. And here better perhaps than elsewhere may be introduced an anecdote, the precise date of which is as immaterial as it seems to be uncertain, tending to show that influence over elections was not worse placed in imperial hands, or at least in Frederic Barbarossa’s, than in those of pope or perhaps Chapter.

Upon the death of the Abbot of a considerable abbey, two monks were, by their respective factions amongst their brethren, severally named as his successor; and to the Emperor, in accordance with the Calixtine Concordat was the choice between them referred. Monks were bound by the rules of monastic discipline to be always provided with needle and thread, in order at once to repair any unseemly rent in their garments. Frederic asked the candidates for their needles; only one of them could produce the humble implement of industry, the appointed guard against indecorum; and him the Emperor named Abbot.

Frederic’s satisfaction in all these transactions was enhanced by a second matrimonial engagement, which in the midst of them he contracted. The bride was a vassal of his own instead of a Greek princess. Although his nuptial proposals had been favourably received at Constantinople, the subject was still under discussion when Frederic was at Ancona, and the negotiation, whatever might be the cause, made no progress. Whether the German Emperor were offended by any arrogant conditions which the Eastern Emperor might have annexed to the grant of his daughter’s or his niece’s hand, or simply by his offers not being eagerly accepted—whether Manuel resented the failure of Frederic’s proffered co-operation against the Normans—or Frederic a fraud, by which, after his departure from Italy, the Greek Commanders had endeavoured to  promote their success in Apulia—is uncertain; but the last seems the most likely cause of rupture. This fraud was the promulgation of a document, bearing the forged signature and seal of the German Emperor, and transferring to the Eastern Empire all rights of sovereignty appertaining to the Holy Roman Empire over the maritime districts of Magna Grecia. Whether the Constantinopolitan Court were or were not cognizant of the fraud of its officers, however impertinently the matrimonial overtures may have been received, it is very clear that Manuel was even more desirous than Frederic of the connexion, for he now sent an embassy to Germany to renew the negotiation, and was too late. Ere his embassador arrived the treaty for a different marriage had been concluded.

The treaty in question was with Countess Beatrice, the daughter of Earl Renault, the successful competitor of the Duke of Zäringen for her principality. This contest was still considered by the Duke as undecided, when, upon Renault’s death, a third claimant arose in the person of Renault’s brother, Earl William, who, asserting Burgundy, although it had come to his family through a woman, was not heritable by females, seized and imprisoned his niece as a rebel. Whilst the contention during her compulsory default was carrying on between him and Duke Bertold, Beatrice appealed to the Emperor for protection against both her uncle’s usurpation, and the empty pretensions of the Duke. The Imperial interference in behalf of the rightful heiress was efficient. Frederic compelled Earl William to release the young Countess, restore her usurped dominions, and content himself with some lordships upon the Saone, held with his hereditary title of Earl. His promises to the Duke of Zäringen he fulfilled by arranging a compromise for his pretensions to the county, which were clearly groundless, he not having a drop of the blood of its earls in his veins, wherefore Lothar could have no right to give it him so long as a collateral of the race existed. Frederic granted him, instead, the mesne suzerainty of the bishoprics of Geneva, Lausanne, and Sitten, or Sion, in Switzerland, and he attached the Imperial Vicariate of Burgundy to the dukedom of Zäringen. All this being accomplished, the Emperor asked, and, need it be added, easily obtained, the hand of the young Countess of Burgundy.

Such was the state of the affair when the Greek matrimonial embassy reached the court of the Western Emperor. He, it must be presumed in courtesy, to spare an Imperial Princess the mortification of being offered and refused, deferred the reception of the Constantinopolitan diplomatists until their mission had been rendered nugatory by the celebration of his nuptials with Beatrice, at Whitsuntide, 1156. This marriage incorporated the county of Burgundy with the patrimonial possessions of the Emperor, and was thus as politically advantageous as it proved prolific and happy.

At the Whitsuntide Diet, Vladislas of Poland renewed his supplications for Imperial assistance to recover his duchy of Cracow, together with his supremacy over his brothers, both usurped, it will be remembered, By Boleslas IV. One of the most active supporters. of this petition was the dethroned Duke’s namesake and brother­in-law, Vladislas, Duke of Bohemia. The tie between them had indeed been weakened by the death of the Austrian Duchess of Cracow; but her loss had enabled her widower to enlarge his German connexion by a second marriage with a daughter of Albert the Bear, who in consequence supported him as zealously as did the Duke of Bohemia. Hence, notwithstanding Frederic’s impatience to return to Italy, chastise Milan, expel the Greeks, whose fraud he could not pardon, and force the King of Sicily both to reconcile himself with the vassals, whose rebellion his tyranny had provoked, and to do homage to himself instead of to the Pope for his realms, an expedition on behalf of Vladislas was undertaken:—Frederic himself, probably, feeling that whatever could exalt and enhance his imperial sovereignty at home, must facilitate bis operations south of the Alps, whilst any hesitation to assert that sovereignty, to afford protection when solicited, by degrading him in Italian eyes, must proportionately counteract those operations.

With an army composed chiefly of Saxons and Bohe­mians, as the nearest neighbours to Poland, and the natural allies of the Prince who was to be restored, but unaccompanied by the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, or it should seem any of his vassals, Frederic entered Silesia. He crossed the Oder, his troops wading and swimming; whereupon the terrified Poles, not daring to defend Glogau, and fearing to see it transformed from a guardian into a hostile fortress, set the city on fire previous to evacuating it. Glogau was burnt to the ground, and the garrison fled, making for the army that Boleslas IV. was bringing to their relief. With this army, into which he had received the fugitives, Boleslas IV retreated before the Emperor as far as Posen, and thus far the Emperor pursued his unopposed triumphant career, his warriors devastating the country they traversed, under the very eyes of the exiled heir, whom it was their object to reinstal. At Posen Boleslas paused, but, knowing his troops inferior to the Germans, he feared to do battle with the Imperialists. In these circumstances he judged it expedient to submit for the present, and, trusting to the Emperor’s multifarious concerns, especially his calls to distant Italy for furnishing opportunities to evade, as before, the fulfilment of the terms, whatever they might be, that he must now accept. He accordingly solicited the mediation of the Duke of Bohemia, although the friend and connexion by marriage of his wronged brother, probably as being, like himself, of Slavonian race; and the Czech Duke, alive to the advantage of supporting Slavonians, negotiated his peace upon the following conditions. Barefoot, with a sword hanging from his neck, was Boleslas to repair to the Imperial camp, fall at the Emperor's feet, do homage for his dominions, whatever they might be, and make oath that it was not in contempt of the Imperial authority that he had driven bis elder brother out of Poland. He was further to pledge himself to pay certain sums of money, as fines, to the Emperor, the Princes of the Empire (probably those present), the Empress, and the imperial court, respectively ; to appear before the Diet convoked to meet at Magdeburg the following Christmas, there plead his cause, and both hear and submit to its decision upon the points in dispute between himself and his elder brother Vladislas; and finally, however that decision should eventuate, to attend the Emperor with a body of troops upon his next Italian expedition. For the fulfilment of these prospective engagements, his youngest brother, Casimir, and some of the chief Polish magnates, were to be given as hostages.

Those conditions, the performance of which was to be immediate, were, however painfully humiliating, duly executed; the humiliation was undergone, the homage was done, and the hostages were given. But Boleslas apparently valued the life of one brother no higher than the rights of another, or than his own character for honour and veracity; since as soon as the pressure was removed by the withdrawal of the Imperial army from Poland, he thought no more of his plighted word. Frederic replaced Vladislas in those districts of the Silesian duchy that were occupied by the German army, leaving his claim to the remainder, as well as the other points in dispute with his brother, to the decision of the Diet. Whilst Frederic remained in Germany, with his eye upon Poland, Boleslas, although he failed to attend the Diet, respected this Imperial act, but again expelled Vladislas as soon as he saw his protector elsewhere and otherwise engaged.

The services of the Duke of Bohemia, and his promises for the ensuing Italian expedition, were rewarded with the crown and title of King, which, in concurrence with the Diet, the Emperor conferred upon the husband of his aunt. Thus raised in dignity, Vladislas returned to Bohemia; but his subjects, in the true Slavonian spirit, abhorring the idea of incorporation with Germany, resented this acknowledgment of the Emperor’s sovereignty. It is reported that upon his arrival the Czech grandees thus addressed him:— “Who compelled thee to acquire rank and power after this fashion? Did not we, when we vanquished the Emperor Lothar, win the crown with our bodies? Couldst thou not receive it here, at home, without the Emperor? If a German King thou wilt be, then art thou no King for Bohemians.” To these reproaches Vladislas replied : “Voluntarily did the Emperor honour me, his uncle, and voluntary are the services I, in return, render him. With mine is your honour exalted, and he who assists me in these services shall, besides honour, receive rewards. But if any one would rather sit idle at home, would rather toy with women than fight the foe, he is welcome, for aught I care, to shun the ranks of our bold warriors.” The new King’s resolute gallantry, and the prospect of gaining booty in the Italian wars, overpowered the some­what narrow patriotism of the Czechs.

Imperfect as Frederic’s success in Poland must appear to the reader, it answered his personal purpose. The recognition of his sovereignty, the long refused homage again done, sufficed to confirm and enhance the Emperor’s authority both at home and abroad, more especially with those states that acknowledged or disowned his suzerainty according to circumstances. His arbitration or intervention was sought in Hungary, where Prince Stephen implored Imperial protection against the oppression of his royal brother, Geisa, who on his part sent an embassy to vindicate his conduct before the Imperial tribunal. From Denmark likewise he received a fresh acknowledgment of his sovereignty, and entreaties for his intervention. But the civil war that had there broken out during his absence in Italy requires something more of detail.

Swevn, who had married a daughter of the Margrave of Misnia, had irritated his subjects almost as much by what they called the assumption of German state, as by his debauchery, extortion, and generally despotic conduct. Even Waldemar, who for his father’s sake had so steadily supported him, he at length completely alienated. So impatient had Sweyn become of the remonstrances which Waldemar, as his friend, thought it his duty as much as his right to address to him, that when, with his whole court, he accompanied his Queen to visit her parents, he intreated his father-in-law to relieve him from the annoyance by the death of this troublesome kinsman. Indignantly the Margrave exclaimed, “Rather would I see you, and even my daughter, perish upon a scaffold than so stain my honourable name in old age!” Whether this unsuccessful treachery became known to Maldemar, or he were merely disgusted by Sweyn’s tyranny, he had now forsaken him and joined Canute, wooing and wedding his sister, as a pledge of reconciliation. The brothers-in-law triumphed, and Sweyn fled to Misnia in search of support. The Margrave offered him an asylum as long as he might require it, but declared the force of Misnia inadequate to attempt the recovery of his kingdom. Sweyn then sought the assistance of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, for which, cloaking a bribe under the name of defraying expenses to be incurred solely on his . behalf, he offered him a large sum of money, procured by the plunder of some Russian ships, seized in the very port of Schleswick where they were trading—an act of piracy that for awhile destroyed the commerce of the place.

The Lion accepted his petitioner’s offer, and in 1157, being then in quiet possession of his second duchy, afforded him the promised succours; but did so less efficiently than might have been anticipated. Ghibeline writers charge this prince with designing to break the bonds of vassalage, and form a northern kingdom for himself, in which it would naturally be very desirable to include Denmark. Whether he ever did distinctly form such a project for the actual disruption of Germany seems questionable, and it is at all events unlikely that he should already have done so, having been hitherto occupied with the acquisition of Bavaria. But that he was ambitious of greatly extending and augmenting his dominions is certain, and the Saxon duchy was evidently what he intended for the nucleus of those dominions. With such views he could not but see his most formidable rival for sovereignty over the German Slavonians in Denmark, and could not desire to see that rival strengthened by internal quiet. Hence, when he had by arms replaced Sweyn in possession of some portion of his lost kingdom, he professed to consider his engagement as fulfilled, and left him to make his part good as he best might, with the aid that he permitted Niklot and his Obodrites to give him.

Thus deserted by his powerful supporter, Sweyn felt it hopeless to get the better of his united antagonists, by arms, and negotiations were opened, which ended in the division of the small kingdom amongst three kings, Sweyn, Canute, and Waldemar. But the first could hardly be expected to rest content with a part of that, the whole of which had once been his. The treaty and reconciliation were only the means he adopted to rid himself of his rivals. He invited them to a banquet to celebrate their new-born friendship, and they incautiously accepted the invitation. At a given signal he left the banqueting hall, when a band of armed men rushed in, and fell upon the unarmed, defenceless guests. Canute was at once assassinated; Waldemar, endowed with greater presence of mind and unusual bodily strength,, though wounded, threw down the lights, and in the consequent darkness effected his escape, as did his foster-brother, the subsequently celebrated Archbishop Absalom. Waldemar, of course, immediately resumed, to avenge the murder of his brother-in-law and the attempt upon himself, the arms just laid aside; and civil war raged anew. In one engagement Sweyn was wounded and fell; but he had not merited an honourable death upon the battle field. He rose, fled, and in his flight was slain by the rude hands of disaffected peasants. Waldemar was thereupon proclaimed King of Denmark, and he it was who now solicited the Imperial ratification of his title.

Contemporary writers aver that even powerful and independent monarchs now conceived such apprehensions of the Emperor’s preponderance, that they were willing to purchase his friendship by some kind of acknowledgment of the suzerainty which, as Head of the Holy Roman Empire, that had once comprised all western Europe, he claimed over their kingdoms. His convoking a Diet to sit at Besançon in order to receive the homage of his Burgundian and Arelat vassals, especially of those whom he had personally acquired by his marriage with their hereditary Countess, so alarmed Lewis VII, that he sent an embassy professedly to meet and compliment him, but really to ascertain whether any inroad upon France were contemplated. His apprehensions were speedily relieved, and his embassador convinced that Frederic’s thoughts were engrossed by Italy. But that he should have enter­tained such apprehensions cannot be matter of surprise, when the relative power of the two countries in the twelfth century, and the debilitation that France had lately suffered is borne in mind.

Since Frederic’s accession Elinor’s contempt for her monkish consort had been so enhanced by the passion she conceived for the youthful Henry, son of the Empress Maud, when upon his father’s death he visited the French Court to do homage for his County of Anjou, that the dissensions between her and Lewis became actually insupportable. Of the consequent transactions there are two versions, both from contemporary authority. The account most generally adopted and most in accordance with the usual course of events, is that the jealous husband sought and obtained a divorce from his faithless wife, endeavouring, but in vain, to keep her duchy and county, nominally for their infant daughters—son they had none. The other resting upon documents recently brought to light represents jealousy as less strong in the bosom of the King of France than his love for Aquitaine and Poitou, and states that it was Elinor herself, who, impelled by the tastes of the Troubadour and the inflammable blood of the south, sought her release from marriage bonds, which, as a restraint upon her intercourse with the gallant as handsome, youthful Earl, she could no longer endure; that she at length, extorting her husband’s consent, obtained a divorce, when, baffling alike the King’s efforts to retain her dominions, and two attempts by ardent lovers either of her person or of those dominions, to seize and wed her by force, she bestowed them with herself upon the Earl of Anjou, and also it was rumoured, a child, some months earlier than was quite reputable—a circumstance that may explain the final marital consent to the dissolution of the marriage. In the year 1154 Stephen King of England had died, and Henry, in virtue of his mother’s convention with her usurping kinsman, quietly succeeded to his throne. Thus the King of England, prospectively Duke of Normandy in right of his mother, who, meanwhile, cordially supported him, Earl of Anjou and Maine in right of his deceased father, and husband of the Duchess of Aquitaine, Countess of Poitou, held, with the exception of the half independent duchy of Brittany, the whole western side of France; in vassalage it is true, but a vassalage more onerous to the liege Lord than to the liege man. Whilst in the south, those provinces that were not included in the duchy of Aquitaine or in the Arelat, mostly owned the mesne suzerainty of the Kings of Aragon or Navarre, and were in great part held by their kinsmen.

But if Lewis VII’s dread of Frederic’s power is very intelligible, not so the excessive respect displayed by Henry II of England towards the Emperor. In answer to an Imperial embassy, proposing a firm peace, and a kind of commercial treaty between the two countries, he is said to have addressed a letter to the Emperor, which, in addition to expressions of grateful acknowledgment, contained the following words: “England, and whatever is elsewhere subject to our sway, we offer you and commit to your power, that all may be done according to your pleasure, and the Imperial will be in all things observed. Be there, then, the union of love and peace, “ as also safe commerce between our nations; but so that to you, as pre-eminent in dignity, remain the command, whilst to us the will to obey shall not be wanting.” The old chronicler who transcribes these expressions, professes indeed to regard them as honied words devoid of sense; and it must be confessed that Henry II. does not appear to have been much more scrupulous in regard to veracity than his contemporaries. But that one independent monarch should even dream, in the utmost extravagance of flattery, of addressing such an acknowledgment of inferiority to another, must be taken as evidence that Frederic’s lofty ideal of Imperial Sovereignty, was pretty generally admitted throughout Europe as correct. A circumstance so explanatory of bis conduct, should not be lost sight of even by the historian whose sympathies are most enlisted on the side of the Lombards, struggling against what they felt a foreign, if a lawful, yoke.

At this Besançon Diet that had alarmed Lewis VII, or soon afterwards, Frederic appears to have redeemed his promise to his deceased uncle Conrad, investing his young cousin and namesake, Frederic, with the duchy of Swabia, and the family possessions in Franconia. But the consciousness of supreme power which, amidst loyalty at home, and respects and fears of neighbouring states Frederic enjoyed at Besançon, was not to be unalloyed. The condition of Italy was becoming daily more unsatisfactory to the Emperor, but not so to the Pope; who, no longer wanting imperial support against the Romans, with whom he now thought himself able, unassisted, to deal, revived that Papal claim to supremacy, which was never suffered to lie dormant, except from actual impotence to assert it. In the language and tone of the papal letters brought to this Diet, and in that of the Legates who bore them, this pretension boldly re-appeared.

The business of the Legates was to demand the punishment of an act of violence upon an ecclesiastic, committed in Upper Burgundy. Eskil Archbishop of Lund, the prelate whom St. Bernard had admonished rather to perform his episcopal duties, than to take the monastic vows, had, on his way home from a visit to Rome, been attacked, by Burgundian nobles or robber-knights, and was not only plundered, but detained a prisoner, until he should pay a very heavy ransom The prelate had appealed to the Emperor; but he, who held the assumed metropolitanship of Lund, an encroachment upon the rights of German archbishops, refused to interfere, alleging his ignorance of the existence of any such person as an archbishop of Lund, or of the actual perpetration of any such crime. Eskil, who would not expend the revenues of his see upon his own ransom, next applied to Adrian for redress; and the Pope despatched his Chancellor, Cardinal Rolando Bandinelli dei Paperoni, and the learned Cardinal Bernardi to Besançon, to demand satisfaction for this outrage. But ere relating the offence they gave to the whole Diet as well as to the Emperor, it will be proper to see what was the condition of Italy that emboldened the Court of Rome to re-assume this lofty tone.

In the South the Greek armament, with which Frederic was to have co-operated, had made considerable progress in Apulia, where the cruelty of King Roger had been ill calculated to conciliate the attachment of his latest acquired subjects; and the tyranny of the son and that son’s favourite, had deepened the hatred provoked by the father. But Maione, as before said, if unprincipled and arbitrary, was able. If he monopolized great offices in his own family, making himself Grand-Admiral, and his brother Stefano Captain-General of the fleet, as his deputy, his nephew Grand-Seneschal, and a brother-in-law Viceroy of Apulia, the emergency awoke his better qualities, and he breathed a spirit of exertion and resolution into King and vassalage. He raised troops, and roused the monarch to lead them in person against the invaders. Stefano gained a splendid victory over the Greek fleet; whilst on’ shore, Maione himself organized a defensive system, gradually recovered the lost provinces, and expelled the Greeks from Apulia. He then appeared in such strength before Benevento, and so ready to give the again, as usual, dissatisfied Romans effective assistance, that the Pope deemed it expedient to make peace. To this Maione, provided it were on his own terms, was thoroughly dis­posed; those terms being that Adrian should revoke the excommunication, give William investiture of his realms, with authority yet more absolute than that enjoyed by his father, and entirely abandon the cause of the papal allies and vas­sals, the insurgents—the restored exiles included. Rebels who rely upon foreign assistance, however just their cause may be, are commonly sacrificed in the end; and with all these conditions Adrian reluctantly complied, save as he bargained for permission to emigrate, on behalf of such of the insurgents as were not already captured and executed. Those writers who do not make the Prince of Capua’s fate precede Frederic’s former expedition to Italy, say it was now that his vassal, and supposed friend, the Conte di Forli, betrayed him into the hands of the revengeful King. The emigrants appealed to the Emperor; many of the noblest, including the Earls of Loritelli and Rupecanina, repaired to his court, and sedulously stimulated his resentment against the Pope, who had deserted them.

But vet more strength than from his alliance with his former enemies, the Normans, did Adrian derive from the growing ambition and audacity of Milan. Even whilst the Emperor was still in Italy had that arrogant city, in direct contravention of his commands, attempted to rebuild Tortona; and although then foiled by the arms of Pavia, she had, since his return to Germany, renewed the attempt. Again Pavia strenuously opposed her proceedings; but this time Milan had succeeded, and had reinstalled the excelled Tortonese in their restored town. The Emperor had pronounced all the royalties enjoyed by Milan forfeited by this act of rebellion; but he was beyond the Alps, and Milan, laughing at a sentence which could not at the moment be enforced, and exulting in this triumph over her acknowledged sovereign, now cast off every semblance of obedience. She waged war upon all who still professed loyalty, as the Marquess of Montferrat, the cities of Cremona, Novara, &c., and had domineered more tyrannically than ever over those she had thoroughly subjugated. The only accession to the Imperialists in Lombardy, and that not improbably in appearance only, was Verona. She had sent her Bishop, with the two loyal noblemen who had attended the Emperor throughout his Italian campaign, to the Ratisbon Diet, in 1156, to profess her dutiful loyalty, her joy at the defeat and death of the miscreant Alberico,  to offer an ample pecuniary gratuity, and to promise zealous aid in all future operations against Milan; and she now declared herself ready to fulfil all the promises then made. 

This desertion of Verona was, in Adrian’s estimation, hardly any counterbalance to Milan’s eager determination to cast off the authority of the Empire; and the Papal Legates at Besançon felt themselves strong. They did not delay to exhibit and abuse their strength, by insulting the Emperor and the assembled Princes of the Empire. The very salutation with which they accosted the monarch ran thus: “The most Holy Pope Adrian and the Cardinals greet thee—he as thy father, they as thy brethren.” They then presented, or rather showed, and read aloud in Latin, immediately translating it into German, a letter from the Pope, which, in addition to the bitterest reproaches concerning the ill-usage of the Archbishop of Lund, contained the following arrogant phrases: “Thou shouldst recall, most glorious son, before the eyes of thy spirit, how willingly, how joyfully, thy mother, the most Holy Roman Church, in the past year, received thee; with what cordial good-will she treated thee, what a fullness of honour and dignity she conferred upon thee, and how cheerfully, by the grant of the Imperial crown, she exalted thy greatness to the highest pitch. Neither do we repent of having in everything fulfilled thy desires; had thy Excellency received at our hand, were that possible, yet greater beneficial [the Latin word, meaning both fiefs granted and benefactions, is in the present case untranslatable, so as to preserve the equivoque], we, considering the increments and advantages that may, through thee, “accrue to the Church of God and to us, should rejoice thereat.

How the Princes of the Empire might have been dis­posed to consider the ruffianly seizure of a Danish prelate, does not appear, inasmuch as the word beneficia, taken as implying, as it was certainly designed to do, that the Em­pire was a fief, granted by the Pope, effectually prevented the subject matter of the letter from obtaining any attention. Words ran high; and Cardinal Rolando fanned the flame by insolently asking, “From whom, if not from our Lord the Pope, does the Emperor receive the Empire?” At this direct assertion that the imperial crown was the free gift of the Pope, the indignation of Palsgrave Otho burst all bounds. Drawing his sword he sprang from his seat, rushed upon the presumptuous Cardinal, and would have cut him down upon the spot, had not the Emperor in person caught his arm. Frederic then exerted himself, with the assistance of his Chancellor, Graf Reginald von Dassel, to allay the tumult, and have the Legates escorted in safety to their quarters.

But if he rescued the Cardinals from the sudden burst of popular resentment—if the tumultuous anger of princes and nobles may be so designated—he by no means intended to let the insult pass with impunity, or to submit to Papal usurpation. He ordered the baggage and papers of the Legates to be examined, when amongst these were found, not only letters addressed to the German prelates, designed to awaken in them contempt for the imperial authority, if not to excite them to actual rebellion, but also the Papal seal and signature affixed to blank sheets, which the Legates might fill up as to them should seem expedient. Their hostile intentions and dangerous powers thus ascertained, Frederic did not hesitate as to his course. He com­manded the two Cardinals to quit Besançon the following morning, and return to Rome, without deviating from the straight road, either to the right or to the left. It has been asserted that the Legates were likewise instructed to object to Frederic’s marriage with the Countess of Burgundy as bigamy, thus virtually denying the validity of his divorce from Adelheid von Vohburg. But though it is likely enough that Adrian may have grudged the Emperor the acquisition of domains which he owed to his second marriage, it is by no means so that he should have risked weakening the papal authority, by disallowing a papal act, that is to say, attempting to invalidate a divorce which one of his predecessors, Eugenius III, had sanctioned. Therefore, as no further mention of any idea of the kind occurs, the report may be set down as Ghibeline slander.

The bold dismissal of the Legatos sent to complain of Burgundian misdeeds appears to have touched the hitherto refractory hearts of the wife’s vassals in favour of her im­perial husband; and its effect was, it may be presumed heightened by an example of his respect for justice shown in Burgundian affairs. It has been stated that, in the compromise between the Countess of Burgundy and the Duke of Zäringen, the Emperor had assigned to the latter the mesne suzerainty over three Burgundian bishoprics. At this Besançon Diet the Bishop of Geneva produced documents proving the exemption of these sees from such intermediate suzerainty; whereupon the Emperor at once cancelled the grant, and made the Duke full compensation from his own or his wife’s private domains. And now the Archbishop of Lyons, Primate of the Arelat, the Archbishop of Vienne, Chancellor of that kingdom, with most of the Burgundian and Arelat princes, prelates, and nobles, hastened to Besançon to do homage, take the oath of allegiance, and receive investiture of their fiefs; whilst those who could not attend deputed representatives to perform in their names such of these duties as might be performed by proxy.

The Emperor neglected not the means of extending and vivifying the flame of loyalty thus originating in Papal aggression. He addressed letters to such German great vassals, ecclesiastical and temporal, as had not been present at Besançon; describing the conduct of the Legates, and explaining it, not as a casual ebullition of Papal presumption, but as the prosecution of the old scheme for subjecting the Imperial to the Papal Crown; describing, likewise, the offensive picture of Lothar at Innocent’s feet, which Adrian had promised him to destroy, but had not even removed from the spot where it was exhibited; and dilating nearly in the style of the apostate monk, Henry, or Arnold of Brescia, upon the contrast between the lowly Apostles, and the pompous court of the ambitiously aspiring successor of the fisherman, St. Peter. Nor did he omit to dilate upon the contempt with which the Germans were spoken of at that court, as stupid creatures, formed only to obey.

The spirit of Germany was roused to resist Papal encroachment. The lay Princes, prepared with unwonted promptitude for the Italian expedition, appointed to begin at Whitsuntide of the next year, 1158. The prelates cordially united with them and the Emperor, to withstand every Papal invasion of German independence. And the Emperor despatched his Chancellor, Bishop Reginald, with the Bavarian Palsgrave Otho, to Italy, to announce his coming, encourage all loyal vassals and cities, and stimulate their movements, that they might be in readiness to join his standard as soon as it should appear south of the Alps. He at the same time placed some check upon the com­munication of the disaffected with Rome, by ordering all the Alpine passes to be strongly guarded. Nevertheless, he gladly accepted the offer of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, to take advantage of the personal favour Adrian had shown him, in order to propose himself as mediator. Frederic could not but shrink from a rupture with the Papal See, how much soever irritated against the indi­vidual Pope.

The Pope was no less active than the Emperor in seeking support ; one of his first measures being an attempt to lure the German prelates from their unaccustomed loyalty. He addressed an energetic epistle to them, complaining of the Emperor’s ingratitude, of the affront offered him in the dismissal of his Legates, of the obstruction of intercourse between Germany and Rome, and calling upon the German prelacy to form a wall of defence for the Church—bring the Emperor to a sense of the duty and obedience he was bound to pay the representative of the Blessed Apostle St. Peter, and procure ample satisfaction from Palsgrave Otho and Chancellor Reginald, who had been most active in the violence offered to the Legates.

The reply of the German prelates bespoke the spirit then animating the whole nation. With professions of the utmost veneration for his Holiness, and obedience to his injunctions, they stated that they had admonished the Emperor, as commanded, and had received the most satis­factory answer. The Emperor had disclaimed any, the most remote, idea of encroachment upon the rights of the Church, but alleged that he must govern the Empire by its old laws and usages ; that the Empire was the gift (beneficium) of God, assigned by free election, in which the Archbishop of Mainz had the first voice; then the other Princes in regular order; the right of crowning the elected monarch as King of Germany being vested in the Archbishop of Cologne, as was that of performing his yet loftier coronation as Emperor, in the Pope. They added that he justified the dismissal of the Legates as necessary to prevent the dissemination of seditious writings throughout Germany; the guarding the Alpine passes as designed, not to obstruct the resort of pilgrims, or persons duly authorized by their ecclesiastical superiors, to Rome, but to prevent abuses oppressive to the Church, and subversive of monastic discipline. The Bishops added that the Emperor, as he would not encroach upon the rights of the Church, would endure no encroachment upon those of the Empire, but rather lay down his crown than see it tarnished whilst on his head; and he, therefore, insisted upon the annihilation of the offensive picture and the recantation of the offensive expressions; they stated further that he had said much respecting the Holy Father’s alliance with William of Sicily, and some other matters, which they in reverence omitted; merely observing that Palsgrave Otho was in Italy preparing for the Emperor’s arrival, as was the Chancellor Reginald, an upright peaceable man, to whom the Legates mainly owed their rescue from the storm of public rage, provoked by the language they had used at Besançon.

This unexpected loyalty of the German prelates, confirmed by the tone of the Bishop of Bamberg, who was deputed by his brethren to carry their answer to Rome, made a deep impression upon the Pope, as betokening Frederic’s great power. The impression was deepened by the concourse of Italian prelates and vassals, with some Consuls of cities, around Reginald and Otho, all professing loyalty, and promising their contingent of troops to join the Imperial army upon its appearance. Adrian’s confidence in external support was shaken; he saw that conciliation was again the most seasonable policy, and while he lent a more willing ear to the representations of Henry the Lion’s envoys, he despatched two other Cardinals upon a new and very different mission, more seemly from the Head of the Church, being pacific.

These Legates visited the German Bishop and Palsgrave at Modena, to request from them permission to cross the Alps, which was gladly given, but could not insure to the travellers an untroubled journey. It obviated, indeed, any difficulties on the part of the Imperialist guards of the mountain passes, but could not hinder the outrages of robber-knights. By such the Legates were, as the Danish Archbishop had been, attacked and plundered in some of the Alpine defiles ; and only by leaving the brother of one of these Princes of the Church, as a hostage for the enormous ransom which their victorious assailants demanded, could they themselves obtain permission to prosecute their important journey. But the object now was conciliation, and no public complaint was made of this flagrant violation of the law of nations. Indeed, it scarcely appears to have been mentioned, except as the cause and excuse of the delay in the Legates’ arrival at Augsburg, where it had been arranged that they should present themselves to the Whitsuntide Diet, then and there to make their apologetic explanation of the language that had given offence. This Diet, when they at length reached Augsburg, was actually breaking up, and the several Princes upon the point of proceeding to head their respective troops upon the expedition to Italy.

The dissolution was however postponed, the expedition itself delayed, in order that the assembled Estates of the Empire might witness the reception and demeanour of the new Legates. They accosted the Emperor in presence of the Diet in the following satisfactorily modified form of their predecessors’ address. “The Head of the Holy Roman Church, your Highness’s pious father in Christ, greets you as the first and dearest son of St. Peter, and all the Cardinals, our reverend brethren and your clergy, greet you as the Lord and Emperor of Rome, and of the world.” They then tendered and read aloud an ex­planatory letter from the Pope, in which he assured the Emperor that he had used the word beneficium purely in its spiritual, not in its feudal sense, as a benefit, a doing of good, and such the placing the imperial crown upon the head of the elected monarch, must, he averred, surely be considered Frederic seems at first to have thought the explanation somewhat lame; but the apologetic answers of the Cardinals, and yet more the respectfully amicable tone in which they were made, supplied all that he had felt deficient. Nor it may be presumed would he be hyper-fastidious upon the occasion, influentially as he must know that the enmity or amity of the Pope would act upon his every enterprise in Italy. He declared himself satisfied, gave the Legates the kiss of peace for the Pope, and the whole Roman hierarchy, and dismissed them with assurances of restored harmony and friendship. He delegated to Henry the Lion the duty of procuring redress for the Cardinals, the robbery having perhaps been perpetrated within or near the Alpine frontier of Bavaria, and ample redress and satisfaction they appear to have obtained.

The contingents of the different princes had been draw­ing together even whilst the Diet was sitting; and although several of the great vassals, occupied by pressing affairs of their own, remained at home with the Emperor’s consent, some temporarily, as the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, till he should have arranged his newly arisen dissensions with the Danes and Slavonians, and others altogether, still when the Emperor reached the place of assemblage upon the Lech, he found an army, answering to his boldest expectations awaiting him. Nor was the host here arrayed the whole; for having determined not again to risk irregularities by leading numerous forces in one body over the Alps, he had directed the Duke of Zäringen with his Burgundians and the Lotharingians to take his line of march over the Great St. Bernard, and it is very unlikely that this division should have been brought so far out of its way as the banks of the Lech. Of the remainder, the Duke of Swabia, with the Swabians, Franconians, and some Rhinelanders proceeded by the Splugen pass, Chiavenna, and the Lake of Como; the Dukes of Austria and Carinthia led their vassals, and, it is said, a Hungarian contingent, through Friuli; whilst the Emperor in person, accompanied by his brother the Rhine Palsgrave, by the King of Bohemia, the Archbishops of Mainz and Treves, and the majority of the princes, conducted the main army by his former road through the Tyrol, and over the Brenner. He felt as he did so, that his proud hope of restoring the Holy Roman Empire to its pristine dignity and splendour of sovereignty, was about to be realized, at least, in Italy.

CHAPTER IV. FREDERIC I. [1158—1160.

Frederics Second Italian Expedition —Rebellion of Milan — The Emperor in Lombardy — Siege and Submission of Milan — Second Roncaglia Diet — Laws then promulgated —Dissensions with Adrian — Second Milanese Rebellion — Siege of Crema.