CHAPTER V. FREDERIC I. [1159—1163.

 

Death of Adrian II — Double Papal Election—Council of Pavia — Hostilities in Lombardy — Surrender and Doom of Milan — Affairs of Germany — Henry the Lion and the Slavonians — His Quarrel with his Bishops —Negotiations touching the Schism — Polish Affairs — Renewed Struggles of the Slavonians. 

 

During the seven months that the siege of Crema had lasted, changes and events had occurred to share the Emperor’s attention with that operation. At a very early period of the siege, the Imperial camp had been sought by another embassy from the Roman Senate. Its object is not positively known; but, the Romans being again at variance with the Pope, is not unlikely to have been a renewal of the former invitation, to rescue Rome from priestly thraldom, and restore her to her proper station, as metropolis of the world, by making her the seat of his Imperial government. Frederic, whatever were the message and his answer, appointed Palsgrave Otho and the Earls Gozwin and Biandrate as his representatives to accompany the return of the Roman deputation; charging them apparently, in addition to their mission to the Senate, with some proposals to the Pope at Anagni, whither he had again deemed it expedient to retire. These proposals were, of course, designed to avert the sentence of excommunication, which, as an irresistible instrument of compulsion, Adrian was understood to be now upon the point of pronouncing against the Emperor. The negotiations with the Holy Father, whatever might be their purport or nature, were abruptly broken off by death. Adrian IV expired at Anagni, September 1st, 1159.

The body of the deceased pontiff was carried to Rome for interment; and even before the obsequies were performed, the Cardinals, twenty-three in number, appear to have been seized with apprehensions of a schism, and to have taken measures, as they hoped efficacious, for averting the danger. They entered into a written agreement that the ensuing election, to be valid, must be unanimous; that a single dissentient voice should annul it, unless the objector could, by negotiation, be induced to revoke his dissent. But party spirit ran too high to render the required unanimity possible. In spite of the compact, a double election occurred, and is, as usual, contradictorily described by the writers of the opposite factions; whilst, if the previous compact were of any value, it is self-evident that both elections were null and void. As regards the blame of the double election, that appears to be pretty equally divided between the parties; the Guelphs having been guilty of the first violation of the solemn engagement, the Ghibelines of the first intemperate conduct. The facts appear to be these.

After three days’ deliberation, and vain struggles for the proposed unanimity, fourteen of the twenty-three Cardinals fixed their choice upon the Chancellor of the Roman See, Rolando Bandinelli, Cardinal of St. Mark; the very individual Prince of the Church who had so deeply offended the Emperor and the Princes of the Empire at Besançon. This choice was in itself unobjectionable, Rolando Bandinelli being a man of great abilities, who had earned the cardinalate by distinguishing himself as Professor of Theology at Bologna. But against it the remaining eight Cardinals protested, as invalid for want of unanimity; and as necessarily so offensive to the Emperor, that it would be likely to produce noxious dissensions between the two Heads of Christendom. The fourteen persisted nevertheless; and in utter disregard of their signed and sealed compact, pronounced Cardinal Rolando a lawfully elected Pope. He, on his part, declined the honour tendered him; but whether merely in the established nolo episcopari form, or honestly, either out of respect for the compact he had signed, or because really shrinking from so arduous an office as the Papacy must be, asserted and exercised as it was in his principles and his nature to assert and exercise it, is problematical. His party, equally regardless of his refusal as of their own plighted word, proceeded, with a sort of gentle violence, to invest him, despite his resistance, with the Papal mantle; when Ottaviano, Cardinal of Sta. Cecilia, a noble Roman and a Ghibeline, interposed, exclaiming that no man could be made Pope against his will. The remaining seven cardinals of the minority now, emulating the fault of their opponents, proclaimed Ottaviano himself Pope, and he at once accepted the nomination. A very indecorous scuffle for the Papal mantle ensued, the Cardinal of St. Mark’s not choosing to part with the insignia of the Papal office that he had refused to undertake. Ultimately, the prize remained with the Cardinal of Sta. Cecilia, whom Guelph chroniclers accuse of having, with his own hands, violently stripped it from his rival’s shoulders. The doors of the conclave w ere then thrown open, and a crowd of armed Ghibelines poured in, greeting Ottaviano—whose Roman birth made him the favourite of the Roman people and clergy—as Pope. He assumed the name of Victor IV, and was forthwith installed in the Lateran; whilst his opponent, who entitled himself Alexander III, and his Cardinals, were detained in captivity. In this state things remained for twelve days, during which the ardently Guelph family of the Frangipani laboured to excite the populace against Victor IV, who was warmly supported by the Senate. The Frangipani so far succeeded, that upon the thirteenth day, by means of a popular commotion, they effected the release of Alexander and his cardinals, who immediately fled from Rome to Anagni. The rival Popes then proceeded emulously to excommunicate and anathematize each other.

This double election, with its consequences, was speedily announced to the Emperor in his camp before Crema. A modern politic sovereign might probably have rejoiced in a schism that must weaken the usually encroaching Papacy, and have left the two Popes and their Cardinals to fight out their own quarrel. But to Frederic Barbarossa, the election of the supreme pontiff was matter of deep religious interest, even more than of political importance.

A schism in the Church was, in his eyes, a serious misfortune; and, though his judgment must needs have been biassed by resentment against one of the pretenders to St. Peter’s Chair, and knowledge of the friendly sentiments of the other, he endeavoured by the best means in his power, to ascertain which of them was the true Spiritual Head of Christendom. Affirming that upon the Emperor was it incumbent to provide against the dangers that the Cardinals, “for their own ends, and disregarding the will of God,” had brought upon the whole Church, he, by the old prescriptive Imperial right, if long disused, never renounced, even by Lothar, convoked a General Council, to meet at Pavia in the ensuing month of January, in order to examine and decide which of the two claimants was the lawful Pope, he addressed letters to all the prelates of Christendom, individually inviting them to constitute this Council; and others to all Christian potentates, entreating them not to declare themselves for either competitor until this indispensable Council should have decided between the two. And finally, he summoned both the elected pontiffs to appear before this General Council, the only tribunal authorized to judge between them. But notwithstanding Frederic’s professions of impartiality, and doubtless honest endeavours to act up to those professions, his wishes and inclinations were betrayed by the very superscriptions of these last two summoning epistles. The one was directed to “Victor, Roman Bishop, and the Cardinals who have elected him;” the other to “the Chancellor Rolando and the Cardinals who have elected him.”

To this summons Alexander haughtily replied, that the lawful successor of the Blessed Apostle could acknowledge no jurisdiction of Emperor or Council; it was his to summon, not to be summoned, to judge, not to be judged; and he took no further notice of summons or Council. Victor, on the contrary, of a more pliant temper, either conscious of his own weakness, or relying upon the Imperial summoner’s disinclination for his rival, immediately repaired to Pavia, where he exerted himself still further to conciliate the good will of the Emperor and his court, as also that of the prelates as they arrived.

Frederic, at the period he had originally named for the opening of the Council, was still detained, if not engrossed, by the siege of Crema. When, released by its fall, he returned to Pavia, he found this important business awaiting him, and lost no time in endeavouring to forward it. Not above sixty or seventy prelates, and these mostly Italians and Germans, appear to have been present; but with this attendance, upon the 4th of February, he proceeded to open the Council. He is said to have briefly addressed the fathers of the Church as follows:—“Not only the old Roman emperors, but also Charlemagne and Otho the Great, convoked Councils of the Church, to decide weighty questions. I presume not to pass judgment between the rival claimants of the Papal See, but desire to be instructed by holy and learned men, such as I see before me, which of the two Popes, elected in opposition to each other, I am to obey as head of the Church. Do you, without reference to me, thoroughly investigate and decide this momentous question, as you will answer it to God.” Having thus spoken he withdrew, taking with him all the laity.

During seven days the Council deliberated. All were disposed to pronounce Victor the Supreme Pontiff, propitiated most likely by his prompt recognition of their authority; but the Lombard Bishops were reluctant to condemn the Roman Chancellor unheard. Against this reluctance Alexander’s adversaries represented that his being unheard was entirely his own fault; to which the German prelates added, that it were hard to allow the wilful obstinacy of one of the candidates for the tiara to render the expense and inconvenience occasioned them by a summons to Italy, unavailing. Ultimately, intercepted letters, written by Alexander and his Cardinals, w ere laid before the Council, from which it was evident both that prior even to Adrian’s death they had conspired to prevent the election of any Pope who should not be of their own faction, and that they had now confederated with Milan, and the other insurgent cities of Lombardy, against the Emperor. The Council was satisfied, and proclaimed Victor IV the true Pope.

The doors w ere then thrown open and the decision was announced. The Emperor and Princes declared their approbation and concurrence; and the assembled people, being thrice asked whether they acknowledged Victor IV as Pope, thrice assented with loud exclamations. The next day Victor was brought in state from a monastery where he had taken up his residence. He came, clad in the papal vestments, and riding a white palfrey. The Emperor awaited him at the door of the cathedral, held his stirrup whilst he alighted, and led him by the hand to the high altar, where he knelt to kiss his slipper: all present followed his example. As Pope, Victor then celebrated high mass, after which he solemnly excommunicated the refractory Anti-pope, and, as the sentence was pronounced, the torches were emblematically extinguished. The Emperor, considering all doubts and difficulties to be removed by this solemn recognition of Victor, despatched embassadors, in company with the Papal Legates, to the several European courts to make known the decision of the Council, and urge the acknowledgment of the true Pope.

Alexander III lost no time in retorting the excommunication of his triumphant rival; including in his anathema, the ecclesiastical adherents of that rival and his lay supporter, the Emperor, whose subjects he at the same time released from their oaths of allegiance. He likewise sent legates forth, to counteract, throughout Europe, Victor’s legates and Frederic’s embassadors; and he drew yet closer the bonds of alliance with Milan.

Again the period of feudal service had expired, and again the Emperor had no right to detain the German princes; as little had they to detain their vassals in Italy, even if themselves willing to remain there. Frederic therefore dismissed the greater part of his German host with thanks, rewards, and exhortations to return next year, bringing fresh troops. His brother, the Rhine Palsgrave, his cousins, the Duke of Swabia and the younger Welf, son to the Duke of Spoleto, Palsgrave Otho, and a few more, would not desert him; and their vassals, imbued with their spirit, remained with them. But this addition to his Italian army was not sufficient to enable him to do more, during the year 1160 and the early portion of 1161, than repress the attempts of Milan against the loyal cities, and carry on desultory hostilities, which, being retaliated, were productive of no result beyond much suffering on either side. Evils from which, however, young Welf, who seems to have enjoyed full authority over so much of his father’s Italian domains as were really in the Duke’s possession, found means to protect those domains.

In the summer of 1161 Frederic received reinforcements from Germany; but he, upon whom he was most entitled to rely, was not amongst the leaders, his warriors swelled not the ranks of those reinforcements. The Duke of Saxony and Bavaria alleged the necessity he was under of punishing the Slavonians, who, during his last absence in Italy, had disobeyed his commands to respect the property of the Danes: and it may be suspected that he did not much regret the necessity, which, by weakening his Imperial kinsman and liege lord, might prolong the detention beyond the Alps, of him from whom alone the Lion could apprehend any check to his ambitious schemes. Still, if less numerous than Frederic had hoped, the German troops that joined him were sufficient to render it, at the first blush, matter of some surprise that again this year he should have contented himself with checking the incursions of the Milanese upon the loyal Lombards, ravaging their own territories, obstructing the introduction of provisions into Milan, and punishing, in the sanguinary spirit of the times, by blinding, cutting off the nose, or the like, those peasants who, for the chance of obtaining scarcity-prices, attempted to carry their produce thither in defiance of his prohibition; an act of rebellion against their acknowledged sovereign, be it remembered. But the surprise felt at such apparently desultory measures vanishes upon consideration. It was evidently his object to reduce Milan by a species of blockade, the evils of which would press upon the Milanese alone; thus sparing the lives of the loyal and of the rebels likewise, since with themselves, it would always rest to end those evils by submission.

The summer was thus occupied; at the close of autumn the Emperor again dismissed the German vassals whose term of service had expired. But while so doing he took, in their presence, a solemn oath, never to quit Italy till he should be master of Milan. And in further proof of his sense of the arduous, and possibly hazardous character of the task to which he thus pledged himself, he provided for the contingency of his own death during its execution. Deeming the times probably too troublous for the reign of a child with a regency, he made no mention of his own infant son as his successor; but designated as such, in the first instance, his brother Palsgrave Conrad, and in bis default, his cousin Henry Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, of whom, however disappointed in the exertions he had hoped from him, it is clear he as yet entertained no mistrust. After the departure of the Germans he fixed bis winter quarters at Lodi.

It may seem strange to modern readers that a blockade so imperfect as that which has been described should have answered its purpose; but early in 1162, whilst Frederic still sojourned at Lodi, the wisdom of his seeming procrastination was made manifest. Hunger for the second time conquered Milan. The Consuls, presenting themselves before him at Lodi, offered to capitulate; the Emperor, as was his wont, refused to admit rebels to a capitulation, insisting upon a surrender at discretion; and the Consuls, exclaiming that death was preferable, returned home, to “die among their neighbours.” But, as usual, the populace, who, by their intemperate violence, had provoked the vengeance hanging over them, lacked fortitude to endure the consequences of their own outrageous conduct, the calamities in which they had involved themselves and others. A struggle in arms might have excited them; but they were intolerant of the evils of scarcity, which indeed pressed more heavily upon them than upon the wealthy, and they compelled the Consuls to comply with the Emperor’s demands.

What was to be the fate of the vanquished remained as yet wrapt in mystery. The Emperor required, in the first place, as upon the former occasion, complete and entire submission. To mark this, the ceremonial of the surrender was performed with prolonged formalities. Upon the 1st of March eight consuls and as many knights repaired to Lodi, there, in the name of Milan, to surrender at discretion, laying themselves and their fellow-citizens at the Emperor’s mercy. Upon the 3d, three hundred knights laid their swords, with the keys of the city and of her castles, and thirty-six banners, at the Emperor’s feet. Lastly, upon the 6th, all who had been consuls during the last three years of rebellion, with a body of the burgher troops escorting the carroccio, and ninety-six more banners, proceeded to Lodi. When the mournful procession came in sight of the Emperor, the trumpets of the carroccio sounded for the last time, the strain dying away as the mast,—upon which appeared, beside the crucifix, the figure of St. Ambrose in the act of giving his blessing,—sank, as if spontaneously. Then the trumpets, with the banners, were thrown at the feet of the victorious sovereign. The carroccio was broken to pieces and its attendants fell prostrate crying for mercy.

It is said that Frederic, dreading the influence of his tender-hearted consort over his sterner mood, had forbidden her presence at this scene. But the roughest warriors were moved. Biandrate, who since his reconciliation with the Emperor, had fought as gallantly against, as previously for, his insurgent fellow-citizens, stood forward to add his supplications to theirs; and almost all present shed tears. Frederic alone sat unaltered in countenance. At length he spoke. “Such mercy as is compatible with justice, shall be yours. By law, you have all forfeited your lives; but, your lives I give you, and will subject you only to such measures of rigour as are necessary to prevent the repetition of your crimes.”

What those measures should be, was reserved for discussion in a Diet to be held at Pavia. Thither Frederic, after despatching six German and six Italian commissioners to Milan, to receive the citizens’ oaths of submission and allegiance, removed with his court, and also with the Milanese knights, now increased in number to 400, whom he detained as hostages. At this Diet were present, the Italian nobles and prelates, with the Consuls of all the loyal cities. Among them, Milan had few friends. Pavia detested her long triumphant rival; and all the Italian Ghibelines, nobles and citizens alike, wished the arrogant city to be disabled from annoying and oppressing her neighbours. The personally insulted and threatened commissioners, Archbishop Reginald, and Palsgrave Otho, would hardly plead in her favour. The Rhine Palsgrave is said to have been the inveterate enemy of all Lombard Guelphs, whilst Lodi and Como must have been on fire with impatience to see their tyrant treated as she had treated them. This last proposal, as most consonant with Frederic’s notions of strict justice, was the course adopted. The Milanese were commanded to quit their native city, and build themselves, for their future abode, four villages; each two miles distant from Milan, and at least as far from each other, to each of which he named a governor. Their moveable property, the citizens were allowed to take with them, or at least, as usual, what they could carry; but the walls and fortifications, and according to some writers, the buildings, with the exception of the churches, were to be demolished; and the ditch filled. This work of destruction he committed to Lodi, Como, Novara, and other cities that had smarted under the yoke of Milan, and joyfully did they undertake it. Whether Milan was, or was not sacked, is as much a disputed question as the degree to which it was destroyed. Plundered it certainly was, a proof that a limited portion of their property only was to be carried off by the inhabitants ; but plundered, it should seem, in orderly manner for public account, since one tenth of the booty was assigned by Frederic, to divers Italian and German cloisters. A piece of the booty upon which he set especial value, was the shrine containing the relics, genuine or supposititious, of the three Kings who, supernaturally guided, visited Bethlehem to worship the infant Saviour. This he presented to his Chancellor Reginald, for the Cathedral of his See, where it is still exhibited. Upon the 26th the Emperor entered Milan, in triumph, not by one of the gates, but over the filled-up ditch and razed wall, hastily prepared for his passage.

This destruction of Milan is the act generally selected, as one of unprecedented barbarity, to brand Frederic with tyrannical inhumanity; and Tiraboschi, who admires the grandeur of his character, thinks he must have blamed himself for suffering any provocation to impel him to such cruelty. The republican Sismondi, it has been seen, regards it in a different light: and although the act is unquestionably repugnant to modern feelings, yet amidst the massacres, tortures, and other horrors, narrated and to be narrated in the present pages, it is difficult to discover any very extraordinary inhumanity or tyranny in disabling rebellion (as he hoped), by merely retaliating upon Milan, somewhat less barbarously, the treatment she had wantonly inflicted upon Lodi and Como. Nor did Frederic himself apparently, or contemporary Ghibelines, ever consider the doom of Milan as obnoxious to censure, the latter habitually boasting of it as a glorious instance of retributive justice. When the Imperial Court was so moved by the distress of the Milanese, a sentence of death for all the leading men, and of utter spoliation for the rest, was probably anticipated.

The Emperor, when his officers were so grossly insulted at Milan, had vowed never to wear his crown till the guilty city was subdued. For three years he had faithfully kept this vow; and when, upon the 1st of April, A.D. 1162, he returned to Pavia, there to celebrate simultaneously his triumph and the Easter festivals, and appeared in public with his Empress, both having their crowns on their heads, the clamorous enthusiasm that greeted them, made the welkin ring. Prelates, nobles, consuls, and podestas, thronged around him with congratulations. Brescia, and other confederates of Milan, hastened to earn their pardon by assisting in her demolition, paying heavy self-imposed fines, receiving consuls and podestas of Imperial nomination, and promising on oath to supply ample contingents for the Emperor’s wars, against Rome, Apulia, or other rebellious towns or provinces. The previously loyal Bologna alone, made a show of resistance, that brought the Imperial forces down upon her; when in alarm she deputed the four Doctors who had attended at Roncaglia, to plead in her favour. For their sakes she was pardoned, upon submitting like the rest.

But, if Frederic punished severely, he liberally rewarded. To Pavia, Lodi, Cremona, and Como, he granted or confirmed the privilege of electing their own magistrates. The Pisan municipality, in recompense of Pisa’s staunch loyalty, he invested with the county, or more properly with an Earl’s privileges and rights, over a number of Tuscan towns. Genoa had no such claims, having received Pope Alexander with great honours, only turning against, and, in fact, expelling him, when alarmed by the fall of Milan. But Genoa was forgiven and permitted to earn future rewards. Frederic negotiated with both Pisa and Genoa, for the use of their fleets, and for other services beyond what was feudally due, in his projected war with King William; and by some chroniclers, is said to have promised them not only a share of the Sicilian booty, royal treasure included, but the island itself, in vassalage. When Milan was at length fairly subdued, however, he did not hold it expedient to remain in Italy, merely to make Avar upon William the Bad. His most important business he now judged to be healing the schism in the Church ; and the negotiations to accomplish that object, as well as the affairs of Germany, recalled him north of the Alps. But prior to accompanying him on his return, it will be desirable to see what the state of Germany had been during his prolonged absence in Italy.

Of the several princes who forsook the Emperor amidst his Italian troubles in 1159, one had returned to forward his own ambitious schemes of aggrandizement, during so favorable an opportunity; another to receive, unjustly, the punishment he had justly incurred by his previous treachery. Their acts and their fate are the most memorable events of these years in Germany; and the last named, as a more distinct transaction, less involved with the continuous history of the period embraced in these volumes, may take precedence.

The prince in question was Arnold Archbishop of Mainz, whose unprincipled superseding of his, whether innocent or guilty, confiding predecessor, Archbishop Henry, the reader will not have forgotten. It might be anticipated that the man who had so basely attained his temporally, as well as spiritually, important office, would not be likely so to exercise the authority committed to him, as to win the love and respect of his flock or of his vassals. He is said, indeed, to have been even ascetically austere in his habits of life, and very charitable to the poor; but this eulogy is more than qualified, is well nigh neutralized, by the addition, that he was arrogant, harsh, violent in temper, and carried to exaggeration most of the faults imputed to his predecessor. His defence of the most extreme Church pretensions was characterized by a relentless fierceness that exasperated all opponents; especially after he had himself been irritated, by the condemnation which the Emperor and Diet pronounced of all parties, in his quarrel with the Rhine Palsgrave, Hermann von Stahleeke. Hence, prior to his attending the Emperor into Italy, dissensions of various kinds had arisen between him and his flock; these Frederic, to whom both parties appealed, had appeased; and he had been moreover evidently prepossessed in favour of the prelate, by the apparent—possibly real—clemency of his request, that the rioters should merely be sentenced to repair the damage they had done.

What had since occurred to enrage the Mainzers seems doubtful; but Arnold had, upon his road home, received more than one hint of danger awaiting him. The saintly Abbess Hildegard warned him of what he had to expect, clothing her intimation in words that betrayed the indifferent opinion she entertained of himself. She wrote to him:—“Turn thee to the Lord, for the hour of death is at hand!” Arnold, his natural arrogance inflated by past success, scornfully observed, “The Mainz dogs bark, but dare not bite.” This comment was reported to the holy Abbess, and again she wrote, “ The dogs that will rend thee piece-meal, are unchained.” Incensed rather than alarmed, the Archbishop hurried forward to punish the mutineers; and when he reached Mainz, resolved, not in fear, but as a mark of his displeasure, instead of entering the refractory city, to take up his abode at the Abbey of St. James, situated without the walls. There he required the citizens to wait upon him, make their submission, and give him hostages for their good conduct and his safety, before he would condescend to set foot amongst them. Having sent this message, he appears to have awaited the answer, without taking any measures of precaution: and in this state of inconceivably supine security, the insurgents, having ascertained, possibly through some of the monks, that he was very slenderly escorted, surprised and mur­dered him. Then, alarmed at the sacrilege they had committed, the citizens of Mainz sought to gain a protector by raising a brother of the Duke of Zäringen to the archiepiscopal see, in contempt of the rights of the Chapter; the lawlessness of which proceeding they endeavoured to disguise, by presently terrifying the Canons into electing their nominee. It is reported that, in addition to this measure, they violently seized the church treasure, in order, almost avowedly, to assist threats by bribery. The Pope naturally refused to sanction such an obtrusion of a prelate upon a Chapter by laymen, and those laymen murderers; whilst, even before this refusal was known, the illegally elected prelate had been rejected. The Emperor had sent his brother, the Rhine Palsgrave, and their brother-in-law, Lewis, Landgrave of Thuringia, who had married a daughter of Frederick the One-eyed, into Germany, to hasten the march of his anxiously expected reinforcements; and these princes were actually holding a Diet at the moment of the Mainz catastrophe. That Diet, declaring its horror of the whole transaction, of the sacrilegious murder and the audacious usurpation of the rights of the Chapter, annulled the pretended election, and substituted as irregularly, though by what form or process is not exactly known, Christian von Buch, Dean of Merseburg, for the intended Zäringen prelate. Both appealed to the Emperor and his Pope, Victor, who pronounced both elections alike invalid, because alike uncanonical, and conjointly named Conrad von Wittelsbach, Otho’s brother, Archbishop of Mainz.

The ambitious deserter of his sovereign was Henry the Lion. He, upon reaching his favourite duchy, Saxony, was met by the King of Denmark’s complaints of Obodrite insincerity. The vessels Niklot had delivered up, proved to be old hulks, no longer seaworthy; and the Danish merchants had suffered, as before, from Slavonian pirates. Waldemar more than insinuated suspicions that the Duke, who received, under the name of tribute, a share of the profit of these piratical expeditions, had connived at Niklot’s conduct; suspicions corroborated by the fact that the similar promise made at the same time to Henry’s vassal, the Earl of Holstein, to spare the Holsteiners, had been religiously kept. The Lion’s answer was a profession of his abhorrence of such equivocation, such really direct perjury, as characterized Niklot’s conduct, and of his determination severely to punish the offender, in fact, the accusation was clearly welcome to him; whether he had or had not connived at Niklot’s breach of his engagement, he at once perceived that the punishment to be inflicted offered him the opportunity he wanted to complete the subjugation of the Slavonians, or at least of the Obodrites. This duty, to wit, that of thus redeeming his plighted word, was the plea upon which he had evaded his other duty, of hastening, as a loyal vassal and grateful kinsman, to the assistance of the Emperor in Lombardy.

Henry accordingly summoned Niklot to his presence to explain his conduct. But the Slavonian prince, either conscious of disobedience, or apprehensive of being made the victim of his Lord’s policy, instead of obeying, attempted again to surprise Lubeck, which town, extorted, whilst still in ruins, by Henry from the Earl of Hostein, in exchange for some other, locally less valuable, was now a thriving seaport. Niklot’s scheme was foiled, and he himself, in the war that ensued, falling into an ambuscade, was slain. He was the last Slavonian prince who struggled with any degree of success or reputation to avert the complete subjugation of his compatriots, and consequent extirpation of his religion, in Germany, although neither the last Slavonian prince, nor the last prince of his race who attempted it. For the moment, however, hostilities ceased upon his death, and the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria granted part of his principality, in stricter vassalage, to two of his sons, Pribislav and Wertislaf, jointly. A third son, Pritzlaf, had honestly embraced Christianity, and, obtaining a sister of Waldemar’s in marriage, appears to have been domiciliated in Denmark. Why he was excluded from any share of his father’s heritage—to even a disproportionate share, his conversion and his matrimonial alliance would, under the circumstances, have seemed to entitle him—does not appear. It is related, in proof of this convert’s genuine Christianity, as it might be in proof of what was then the prevalent idea of Christianity, that being seated at his royal brother-in-law’s festive board w hen the tidings of his father Niklot’s death arrived, he dropt the morsel he was conveying to his mouth, and covered his face with his hands; but, after a minute’s reflexion, lifted up his head, said, “The contemner of the True God must needs perish”; and, having thus conquered all filial regrets, resumed the business of the hour, his repast, with his previous diligence and cheerfulness. Those lands that Henry withheld from the Slavonian princes, he granted in fief to Saxon nobles, or kept as private ducal property.

The peace, thus seemingly re-established, was short­lived. Pribislaf and Wertislaf were dissatisfied with obtaining: a part only of their father’s possessions. The Slavonians in general had lost little or none of their old hatred of Christian laws and institutions, especially the payment of tithe, to them a novel and thence more odious institution, as it had been of yore to the Saxons themselves, whilst those who were subjected to Saxon nobles or to ducal officers, were further irritated at the treatment they received from their new masters. Nor can their insurgent propensities be blamed, if the general conduct of their German masters towards them be judged from that of one individual; recorded by contemporary chroniclers, without any apparent disapprobation, simply as a matter of fact. They state that Gunzelin Earl of Schwerin, in order to check the depredations of Slavonians upon his German settlers, authorized these last to hang, without further form or inquiry, any Slavonians whom they might find upon a bye-path or off the public roads (per avia incedentes).

Is it possible to withhold sympathy from a people struggling to preserve or to recover their liberty from such alien conquerors, who, without a shadow of right beyond superior power, had subjugated, inthralled, and oppressed them; their faith from converters who could teach a Christian son to regard his father’s death, and as he believed, eternal perdition, as just now described? Can it be matter of surprise, to be told that after their subjugation all the vices inherent in the Slavonian character, were more fully developed, whilst all the virtues were extinguished. And with many of the vices incident to a savage state, more than its usual virtues had previously been ascribed to them. They are said to have been industrious; so hospitable that robbery, if indispensable to the entertainment of a guest, became a venial offence; and their women to have been invariably chaste, although so enslaved, so harshly used by the men, that mothers killed their new-born daughters, out of pure love, to spare them a life of misery, even as some of the aboriginal American women are reported to have done.

Pribislaff and Wertislaf—confident of the support of their countrymen, as well of those forcibly severed from their authority as of those still their subjects, and concerting their measures with their neighbours the Pomeranian Princes—rose against their conqueror. But too many enemies were united against the Slavonians of Germany, to leave them a chance of success. The Duke of Savony and Bavaria attacked them by land, as did, farther eastward, the Margraves of Brandenburg and Misnia, whilst the King of Denmark, accompanied by Pritzlaf, appeared on the coast with a fleet, and burnt Rostock. Under these circumstances, resistance became hopeless, and the subjugation of the Obodrites was consummated. Henry did not, indeed, dispossess the brother princes, but he rendered their vassalage more galling, granted more lands to Saxon nobles, and invited more settlers from Flanders and Zealand to occupy the uncultivated districts, as rent-paying land-holders, with great privileges. Moreover, he appointed bishops without reference to the Emperor. Waldemar reduced the Prince of Rügen to the condition of a Danish vassal, and the Margraves appear to have acquired considerable additions to their several dominions. The Slavonian concerns of his duchy thus fully, and as he hoped, finally settled, the Lion turned his attention to other affairs; and pre-eminent in importance amongst these w as the Schism. He had, in submission to the authority of the Council, acknowledged Victor, of course requiring all his vassals to do the same; he now concurred with a Legate of this Pope’s in removing from his see, Ulrich Bishop of Halberstadt, who, alone of Saxon prelates, had declared for Alexander, and substituting Gero Dean of the Chapter for the deposed Ulrich. Henry then repaired to Bavaria, where opinions were more divided upon this question; and there, as if to prove that he was no warm partisan of Victor’s, he attacked the Bishop of Ratisbon, who had, like himself, accepted the Council’s decision. The grounds of the attack are uncertain. Accusations of unclerical conduct were long afterwards brought against the Bishop, but never proved; and this seems likely to have been merely one of the many feuds in which the Lion’s domineering and ambitious temper was incessantly involving him with his vassals and neighbours, spiritual and temporal. Indeed the warmest admirers of this prince scarcely venture either to limit his ambition and rapacity, or to deny the violence, the injustice, even the craft, (for something of the fox mingled with and degraded his leonine nature,) to which he occasionally had recourse, as often to accomplish some private object of his own, as to advance the prosperity of his dominions. But whatever were the motive of Henry’s aggression, the venerable Archbishop of Salzburg, though himself a partisan of Alexander’s, interposed for the protection of the Bishop of Ratisbon, or to speak correctly, the repression of the attempt at ducal interference with episcopal concerns; and his mediation had restored peace about the time of the Emperor’s return to Germany.

Thus Frederic, on his arrival found Henry the Lion very considerably increased in power, and the murderers of Archbishop Arnold unpunished; but Germany, for the most part, unusually tranquil. The only existing symp­toms of disturbance seem to have been, the impunity of Mainz, the division of opinion touching the claims of the rival Popes, and the assumption by the city of Treves, in humble imitation of the Lombard cities, of the title of a community. The schism, and the respective proceedings of the pontifical rivals, were the business which the Emperor deemed principally, or at least primarily, to require his attention.

The Legates of Alexander had, throughout Europe, successfully contended against those of Victor; notwithstanding the support which the latter received from Imperial Embassadors. Only in Denmark and Hungary, then avowedly vassal states, had Victor been acknowledged as Pope. Lewis VII of France, and Henry II of England, had severally assembled the prelates of their respective kingdoms, to investigate the important question; and both Synods, either convinced by the arguments of Alexander’s Legates, or influenced by the jealousy both their Kings seem to have entertained of the sovereign authority claimed by the Emperor, pronounced Alexander III true and lawful Pope. The Envoys of Frederic and Victor represented that a question so important to the whole Christian world could not be decided by the prelates of any single state; whereupon the two Kings jointly convoked a Council to meet at Toulouse, to which they summoned all Christian prelates, as well as the two pretenders to St. Peter’s Chair. But the two Kings had no pretension to the Imperial right of summoning an oecumenic Council; and if at Pavia only Italian and German prelates formed the deliberative body, at Toulouse, it consisted solely of French and English. Yet such as it was, with far less right than its predecessor, being equally incomplete in the character of a representation of the whole Church, and not convoked by lawful authority, this synod boldly assumed the style of a General Council, and entered upon the investigation of the circumstances of the double election.

During all this time, Alexander had vainly endeavoured to establish himself at Rome. The turbulent republicans speedily convinced him that any other residence was preferable to the Eternal City; and leaving the Bishop of Praeneste as his deputy to continue the struggle for the proper Papal capital, he repaired to Sicily, in vessels sent by the King to convey him thither. But Sicily was not the stage on which to contend for the Papacy itself, and he proceeded to Genoa, where, as before said, he was, during the resistance of Milan, received and entertained with great honours. The fall of the Lombard Queen so changed the disposition of the Genoese as to alarm the Holy Father for his personal safety; and whilst Genoa hastened to offer the Emperor and Victor every atonement for her offence in entertaining Alexander, he betook himself to France, where he hoped to find more decided support. Nor was he disappointed. He was received with all the demonstrations of reverence ever rendered to popes: clergy and laity, nobility and commonalty, flocked around him; and, what was of more consequence, the Toulouse Council, rejected all the evidence invalidating the elec­tion of the Chancellor Rolando, as undeserving of credit, because resting upon the authority of his private enemies; and acknowledged him as the true Pope.

This flattering aspect of his affairs was ere long, indeed, in some measure overclouded. But from this moment much discrepancy again exists between the narratives of the transactions found in French and German, in Guelph and Ghibeline historians respectively. From the comparison of these conflicting accounts, it should seem that the original acknowledgment of Alexander by Lewis VII, a man of weak character, usually ruled by the last speaker, was the fruit of the influence of his second wife, a warm partisan of that pontiff. But the influence proved transitory. This Queen, who, like Eleanor of Aquitaine, gave him only daughters, died early; and, upon losing her, he selected, as her successor and his third wife, Adelaide, sister of the Earl of Champagne, the husband of one of his daughters by Queen Eleanor. To the Earls of Champagne Victor IV was distantly related, and Queen Adelaide naturally esteemed her own kinsman the true Pope. Her royal consort’s faith in Alexander was shaken, by her arguments, but he still received him hospitably. The wavering in the monarch’s adhesion to the Pope of his first choice was increased by a warning from the Emperor that his pontifical visitor was a needy man, who looked to French money for relief from some pressing debts. That the Imperial suspicion was not altogether groundless, the conduct of Alexander early proved, whilst his arrogance ere long offended Lewis.

The King now, if not earlier, authorized the Earl of Champagne to visit the Emperor in Italy, and open a negotiation with him relative to the schism. As to the date of the Earl’s mission, whether he were only despatched when the Pope had offended the King, or upon his first arrival, opinions are divided. So are they with respect to the extent of the powers intrusted to this doubly connected embassador. Some writers say that the Earl was despatched early, with very limited powers, afterwards greatly enlarged when Lewis was angered by Alexander’s haughty resentment of his presuming to negotiate upon a subject, so far beyond the sphere of his competence. Others, who agree as to the date, affirm that the Bishop of Soissons, then French Chancellor, from the first authorized the Earl to overstep these limits, governing himself by his own discretion; and this statement seems, upon the whole, most consonant with the course of events.

The Earl of Champagne arranged with the Emperor that, for the solution of this important question, he and the King of France should, upon the 29th of August of the current year, 1162, meet upon the frontier of their respective realms; the place selected being a bridge over the Saone, at St. Jean de Losne, which, as uniting the two, was, or should be esteemed, neutral ground. That the two sovereigns should be respectively accompanied by their chief ecclesiastics and nobles, and by the two Popes elect, the Emperor by Victor, the King by Alexander. That there, in the presence of the two monarchs, the two claimants should, before a mixed committee, partly lay, partly clerical, as thus best representing the whole of Christendom, a sort of miniature Ecumenic Council, and carefully selected for the purpose, debate their respective pretensions to the Papal crown. That, in this character, of the representative of an Ecumenic Council, the committee so selected should decide between them; that, should the decision be adverse to Cardinal Ottaviano, the Emperor should immediately fall at Cardinal Rolando’s feet, acknowledging him as Pope Alexander III; should it be adverse to Cardinal Rolando, the King of France should, in like manner, fall at Cardinal Ottaviano’s feet, acknowledging him as Pope Victor IV. The Earl himself did not wait for this investigation, but took the opportunity of his mission, to kiss the feet of his kinsman, as Supreme Head of the Church.

Why this convention proved ineffective, where the fault of its failure lay, was the grand subject of contention and contradiction at this epoch; but upon deliberate consideration of the whole of the certain as of the doubtful points, it seems to lie chiefly at the door of the arrogant Alexander, who treated the slightest hesitation as to his papacy as sacrilege, and a little at Lewis’s, the King not being ultrascrupulous in point of veracity. The course of the transaction appears to have been as follows.

It is quite certain that Alexander, as before, refused to argue his right, or submit it to any sort of inquiry, asserting that Pope he was, and as such, supreme Judge,—superior to all tribunals. Hereupon Lewis, partly awed by this haughty refusal, partly influenced by his brother, the Archbishop of Rheims, and partly frightened by his formidable vassal, Henry II, of England, both of whom were then staunch adherents of Alexander, seems to have sought by equivocation to disentangle himself from, or at least to deny, or evade fulfilling, the compact concluded in his name. His Embassador, offended at such repudiation of his work, indignantly declared, that if his plighted word were violated, he must, to guard his own honour from stain, transfer his homage, and the allegiance of his county of Champagne, to the Emperor. Such a loss was not to be risked, and again it is certain that Lewis proceeded to St. Jean de Losne, but without Alexander, whom he was pledged to bring thither; that he appeared the first upon the appointed bridge, and after waiting a little while, washed his hands in the river, in token of having performed his part of the compact. Having thus, as he hoped, satisfied the Earl of Champagne, he hurried back to Dijon.

Victor meanwhile, upon learning his opponent’s refusal to attend, as arranged, had strongly objected to submitting his claim, already sanctioned by two Councils—a second had sat at Lodi, which confirmed the decision of that held at Pavia—to further investigation. But he had yielded to the remonstrances of his Imperial protector, and accompanied him to the bridge, which they reached shortly after the French King’s departure. The Emperor caused representations to be addressed to the King—who was exulting in his skilfully achieved triumph—upon the absurdity of considering a treaty, made for an object so momentous as the prevention of a schism in the Church, void, because one of the contracting parties might be casually so delayed as to present himself an hour, or even a day later than that appointed, at the place of meeting; and the Earl of Champagne openly declared that his honour could not be so satisfied. Frederic is stated by French writers to have been followed to the bridge by a formidable army, intended to compel the acknowledgment of Victor, without further inquiry; which coercion Lewis only escaped by his early retreat. Italian Guelph writers add, that the design was to make both Alexander and Lewis prisoners; a nefarious scheme, foiled solely by the approach of Henry II with an army as large as the Emperor’s. Attended by numbers of great vassals, lay as well as spiritual, the Emperor would unquestionably be; partly for state at such a meeting, partly to select from amongst them his portion of the mixed committee; and these princes would, moreover, in their turn be attended by their own vassals. It is likewise certain that many had repaired to Dole— whither Frederic had gone to be near the place of meeting —upon business totally unconnected with that meeting; as e. g. Waldemar King of Denmark, and Raymond Earl of Provence, who came to do homage, the one for his kingdom, the other for his county; the Archbishop of Lyons, who sought his sovereign’s protection against his Chapter, &c. &c.; and all these might be invited to stay and accompany him, in order to enhance the solemnity, the ecumenic character, of the proceedings. It is likewise very possible that Lewis, who had no such body of potent vassals to oppose to them, and still more, Alexander, might naturally, if groundlessly, conceive some apprehension from the proximity of so considerable a force. But had Frederic designed to take any unfair advantage of his preponderance in force, there was nothing to prevent him from crossing the bridge and executing his treacherous purpose in France, as Henry II was not at hand at the first failure of the meeting. He did nothing of the kind; and surely a Prince who professed to be governed solely by justice, and whom scarcely any, even of his bitterest enemies, charge with habitual disloyalty, is not, because an antagonist was idly frightened or idly suspicious, to be accused of such gross perfidy, without a shadow of proof; it might be further said, without even the allegation of any rational motive; since it is self-evident that such a compulsory recognition would not only be revoked the moment the coercion was withdrawn, but must shock and alienate all who yet hesitated between the competitors.

However this may be, Lewis now desired and, after some negotiation, obtained a further delay, and a term of three weeks was agreed upon, at the end of which the monarchs, the rival pontiffs, and the Committee, should meet as before proposed. Alexander is said to have caused the interposal of the delay, in the hope of meanwhile procuring, from the King of England, such succours as would make his party more a match for the Emperor’s. It answered his purpose, though in a different way, giving him time to guard against the apprehended defection of Lewis. Very early in the three weeks, Frederic’s large company or army had consumed all the provisions within convenient reach of Dole—the Arelat chancing that year to suffer from dearth—and was therefore obliged to remove to a greater distance. Lewis repaired to the appointed place, again without Alexander, and upon this occasion, at least, it seems to be admitted, before the appointed hour; but whether or not having previously again formally acknowledged Alexander, and thus, as far as in him lay, stultified the projected investigation and decision, is one of the many contested points in this transaction. Upon the bridge Lewis certainly found, not Frederic, but the Archbishop of Cologne, with whom he speedily got into altercation; when Reginald, incensed at what he deemed the French King’s equivocations and evasions, boldly asserted, that the decision in a disputed papal election was as much the exclusive right of the Emperor, as that respecting the disputed election of any French prelate was the French King’s, and that the reference to an Ecumenic Council had been a voluntary concession of Frederic’s. Whether this were meant as a taunt, or as a claim seriously intended to be revived, may be doubted, when it is recollected that the Emperor’s sanction was, till Gregory VII’s time, indispensable to a papal election. Be that as it may, Lewis took fire at this preten­sion; the Earl of Champagne avowed his honour satisfied, and the French party rode off. Alexander was now undisputed Pope throughout France, as he had for some time been in the dominions of the King of England.

The schism remained unhealed, and the rival Popes excommunicated each other as before. It is said that Waldemar of Denmark’s chief advisers, his foster-brother Bishop Absalom, and Archbishop Eskil, favoured Alexander; and that the Danish monarch, inclining the same way, left the assembly when Victor began to anathematize his rival. If this were so, and Frederic at such a moment suffered so offensive a demonstration of independent and opposing opinion, it is strong evidence of the fairness of his intentions in regard to the baffled deliberative interview.

Upon the failure of this projected meeting, with its anticipated important results, Archbishop Reginald, who had been awaiting it in Frederic’s court, as of course to be one of the judges, repaired to Cologne. He had not visited his see since his return from Italy, and now carried thither the precious shrine presented to him at Milan by the Emperor. This he deposited with all due rites and ceremonies in his Cathedral; and the wealthy commercial city gloried in the appropriate, hallowed guerdon of her prince-prelate’s abilities and zeal; whilst her loyalty was confirmed by gratitude for a gift that tended yet further to enrich her, through the numbers of pilgrims attracted thither by the highly prized relics of the three Kings. From Cologne, the Archbishop returned in all haste to Italy, to watch over his master’s interests there.

Frederic now visited divers parts of Germany, settling disputes, repressing encroachments, and fostering indus­try. Amongst other matters, he ordered Treves to annihilate its new-fangled Communio, which, whether so designed or not, sounded to his ears like Lombard republicanism and sedition. But Treves, true to the loyalty of German cities, unseditiously obeyed.

Ever indulgent to Henry the Lion, Frederic now supported his suit to Victor for a divorce from their common cousin, dementia of Zäringen, who had been some fifteen years his wife, and whose wedding portion, consisting of Swabian fiefs, he had exchanged with the Emperor for other fiefs in Saxony, as a convenient concentration of property for both, and these fiefs he retained. The plea of the Duke was, of course, consanguinity—in the present case indisputable, they were first cousins, which was, however, as well known when they married as now—his real motives are unknown. His admirers conjecture her sterility to have been the principal; but the word can be used only in an extraordinarily modified sense, for if Clementia had not made him the father of a son, she had given him two daughters, both affianced brides; the eldest, of the Duke of Swabia, the youngest, still an infant, of Waldemar’s infant son and heir Canute; and as he had now established the right of daughters to inherit duchies, it might have been supposed that the prospect of his grandson’s uniting Swabia with his own Saxony and Bavaria, which from his superior power enabling him to dictate the terms of union, must have absorbed the third duchy, would have been satisfactory to his ambition. But whatever were the Lion’s object, he obtained his divorce, and returned a bachelor to Saxony to prosecute his various schemes of aggrandizement. The repudiated Duchess some little time afterwards gave her hand to a Comte de Maurienne; perhaps an indication that the Duke was actuated by jealousy; since he did not, by any apparent haste to marry again, confirm the idea that he was particularly impatient for male heirs.

The Emperor next turned his attention to the Mainz crime. A diet held at Erfurth had already denounced against the murderers of the Archbishop, and against the city that harboured them, all the heaviest dooms of Imperial justice, viz., the Acht and Oberacht, that is to say, the ban of the Empire and some kind of enhancement of that sentence of outlawry. The sentence had as yet been little more than minatory; but early in the year 1163, Frederic proceeded to Mainz, to put the decree of the Diet in execution. At his approach, murderers, rioters, accomplices, all fled, and within the city only one individual implicated in the outrage could be found for punishment. Without the walls, the Abbot of St. James’s and his monks stood their ground, trusting that their complicity, if complicity there were, was unsuspected. But the accusation was brought against them, and they were unable to clear themselves. The Abbot was in consequence deposed and expelled, whilst the monks were, in a manner, imprisoned in their monastery. They seem to have become actually frantic with terror, for which no adequate cause, unless the consciousness of guilt, can be discovered; and many perished by leaping from the walls, or in other, absurd as unsuccessful, attempts to escape. Those who, submitting to their doom, remained quietly in their cells, were in due time released. The Emperor then turned his wrath, as usual with him, against the city itself; which he treated, if far less rigorously, yet after the fashion in which he had treated Milan. He deprived Mainz of those advantages which as he conceived intoxicated the inhabitants with ideas of their own strength and power. He cancelled all its chartered rights and privileges, razed the walls, filled up the moat, and levelled the houses of the fugitive criminals with the ground. The rich citizens thereupon quitted the degraded city, its commerce perished, and Mainz is said to have been for years a desert, the haunt of banditti and of wolves.

A more pleasing task was, if not quite to redress, yet to alleviate the wrongs suffered by kinsmen and faithful friends. The Polish Prince, Vladislas, had again been despoiled. Boleslas, taking advantage of the prolonged absence of his brothers Imperial protector in Italy, had again seized his duchy of Silesia, and Vladislas himself had died an exile. But his sons, Frederic’s cousins, had done good service in the Italian wars, and the Emperor was anxious to reward them. All that their father had been robbed of he could not, hampered as he was by the schism and the still disturbed state of Italy, hope to recover for them; and indeed to their father’s suzerainty, which, appertaining to the eldest of the family, was now rightfully vested in Boleslas IV, they could have no right; so that one great difficulty was removed by the death of Vladislas. The Emperor, therefore, instead of invading Poland, opened a negotiation with Boleslas; who, weakened by foreign and civil wars, now offered Silesia, as a vassal duchy, to his nephews in full of all their claims. The nephews gladly accepted it, and divided this portion of their patrimony into three separate duchies of Northern, Middle, and Southern Silesia. They thus resumed their station as Princes of Poland; but though they and their descendants continued for a time to bear that title, to be summoned to Polish Diets, and, as Poles, to attend them, their German connections, inducing German education and German marriages, gradually alienated Silesia from Poland, more and more strengthening the tie that attached it to the German Emperor, the acknowledged Lord Paramount of all the Polish duchies. For the same weakness that had compelled Boleslas to do this imperfect justice to his nephews, and his continuous broils with them and with his brothers, prevented any attempt on his part to shake off the Imperial suzerainty.

In this negotiation, and in the menacing demonstration that had facilitated it, Frederic was zealously aided by the Margrave of Brandenburg. To him the weakness of the Polish princes, who contended with him for dominion over the Slavonian tribes occupying what is now Pomerania, Pomerelia, and Western Prussia, was matter of supreme importance; and the severance of Silesia from the principal duchy of Cracow, therefore, a welcome lessening of his most formidable rival.

But at this period such chief German interests, as were not individually the Emperor’s, turned upon the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. Eagerly he returned from his southern to his favorite northern duchy, the intended nucleus of his kingdom; if, as seems likely, a kingdom, whether independent or not, he did now project for himself. Upon his arrival he found the Obodrites again in arms. Prince Wertislaf had thrown himself into Wurle, so a strong fortress; and there his obtrusive mesne Lord, Henry, besieged him; with his superior forces, speedily reduced him to extremities; and then, by a promise of personal safety as to life and limb, prevailed upon him to surrender. But he compelled him, together with all the inhabitants of Wurle, to implore pardon bare-foot, bare-headed, with ropes round their necks; in short with every circumstance of humiliation, for which Henry’s Guelph and liberal partisans so bitterly condemn Frederic in the case of Milan, where it was not inflicted upon an hereditary Prince. And further, as his promise had not included liberty, he carried Wertislaf in chains to Brunswick, leaving a German Burgrave as master of Wurle. Pribislaff, in alarm lest any act of hostility on his part, should cost his brother his life, laid down his arms, abandoned his hereditary principality, and took refuge in Pomerania.

The Duke next addressed himself to the decision of a dispute about tithes, between the Bishop of Lubeck and his scarcely half converted or civilized flock. This was quickly settled, but well nigh as quickly did insurrection revive amongst the inthralled Slavonians.

Henry appears to have relied upon Pribislaff’s fraternal affection for restraining his warlike spirit, his patriotic aspirations. But if the self-exiled Prince, however weary of banishment, endured it for the sake of his brother, so valueless did the captive feel his actual existence, that by message he exhorted Pribislaff not to place his single life in competition with the deliverance of their country and the re-establishment of the religion of their forefathers. Thus stimulated, Pribislaff sounded the inclinations of his former subjects, and of his hosts, the Pomeranian Princes. The Obodrites were sullenly enduring the yoke, or champing the bit, of the Saxons; the Princes saw that they must be the next victims. Those armed at his call, as did these to support him; and at the head of nearly all the Slavonians of northern Germany, Pribislaff confronted the Lion.

The Duke was surprised unawares. Mecklenburg, and some other fortresses held by the Saxons, fell ere any steps could be taken for their relief. But hastily the Lion summoned his vassals, commissioned those nearest the scene of action, as the Earls of Holstein, Ditmarsen, Oldenburg, and Schwerin, to check the progress of the rebels, whilst he was collecting his more remote forces, conjointly to crush them. And he concluded a new treaty with Waldemar, by which it was agreed that all Slavonians resident beyond the Peene (which seems to designate the Pomeranians to whom other princes laid claim), and especially all the islands upon the coast, should be allotted to Denmark. Waldemar, who at Dole had obtained from the Emperor a somewhat indefinite grant of Slavonian territory, hereupon assumed the title of King of Denmark and the Eastern Slavonians.

The Earls executed their commission to all appearance very completely. Not only did they check the progress of the insurgents, they drove Pribislaff, in seeming despair, back into Pomerania, where he remained totally inactive. Waldemar co-operated by sea, and now the Duke, advancing with a second army, laid siege to Malchow, one of the strong places recovered by the Slavonians. He at the same time, whether in a burst of anger, or as a measure of intimidation, in utter disregard of his own solemn promise, which had in no way been made contingent upon the conduct of others, hung his unfortunate prisoner, Wertislaf, before the face of the garrison. But the death of their prince, fear for whose life might, had he been preserved as a hostage, have been a restraint upon them, in lieu of intimidating, fired the garrison to vengeance. The town was fiercely defended, and the enraged Lion swore never to stir from before the walls until it should be his.

Meantime the four Earls, deeming Pribislaff cowed into complete submission, disdained to use the most ordinary military precautions. Without scouts or even outposts they lay encamped, as if in profound peace, waiting till the Duke should join them to advance with his whole force into Pomerania. But the inaction of Pribislaff was a stratagem, intended to lull his enemies into such security; and having succeeded, he now, burning to avenge his brother’s murder, prepared to take advantage of his success. He proposed to surprise the Earls and their army asleep in their beds; and, but for the merest accident, in this also he would have succeeded. A party of non­free Saxons having been ordered overnight to fetch provisions from a distance, started before daybreak, and had not proceeded very far on their way, when they descried the Slavonian host advancing. Some of the party ran back to alarm their own camp, whilst others hurried to the Duke’s, there to give notice of the danger impending over this division of his force. The menaced troops had barely time to start from sleep, snatch up their weapons, and meet their assailants; none to clothe themselves in their armour, seemingly a tedious operation. Their defence, though brave and resolute, was disorderly; they were overpowered, and the Earls of Holstein and Ditmarsen slain; the Slavonians gaining a complete victory, had they known how to use or to secure it. But they fell to plundering the camp; the routed troops rallied, and joined the Duke, who, upon this emergency breaking his vow, hastened to the support of his incautious vassals. He arrived, if too late to prevent the disaster, yet in time to remedy it, and evening saw the victory as completely his, as morning had seen it Pribislaf’s.

The Obodrite struggle was over, and the land as far as the Peene, that is to say the whole of what is now Mecklenburg, the Lion’s. Henry then joined Waldemar, who had landed at the mouth of that river, and w as subjugating the districts to the east of its course, without encountering such desperate resistance as the Duke had found to its west, and therefore without devastating them. When the ducal forces joined the King’s, the conquest proceeded with increased rapidity; but Henry did not long co-operate with an ally whose aid he no longer wanted. The Duke of Saxony and Bavaria was suddenly recalled to Brunswick to receive an embassador from Constantinople. It is however somewhat difficult to conceive that the pompous the East Roman Empire should condescend to honour with an embassy a mere prince of the Empire, whose power it had no means of appreciating; to which consideration two others may be added, namely, that the Chronicler who records the embassy does not state its purpose, and that it is never mentioned again. Hence a suspicion cannot but arise of the fox’s nature just then prevailing over the lion’s, of the announcement being a device of Henry’s to excuse his deserting a neighbour, as powerful as himself, whom he had no desire to see master of any part of the now sufficiently debilitated Slavonian district. He returned to Brunswick to occupy himself with granting new fiefs, colonizing, and further settling the territory of the Obodrites.