MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

CHAPTER VI.

FREDERIC I. [1163—J166.

Affairs of Lombardy—Frederics Third Italian Expedition— Affairs of Sardinia— Of Germany—The Schism—Henry II of England and Alexander III— Wurzburg Diet—Affairs of Papacy and the Sicilies, 

Whilst the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria was aggrandizing himself in Germany, the Emperor’s presence was again urgently needed in Italy. The imperially appointed Consuls and Podestas were too generally intoxicated with power, for the exercise of which they held themselves responsible to a distant master only, upon whose favour they relied. Some of them either lacked the temper and policy requisite to bear, and with mild firmness repress, the provocations that in many cities were offered them, or deemed it needless to exercise those qualities if possessing them; whilst others were deficient in strength of principle adequate to control their own passions, when in a position to command their gratification. By arbitrary exactions, by wanton tyranny, or by audacious profligacy, these officers in many places envenomed the ill-will already borne by all who aimed at independence and dominion, to the Imperial authority, as to the yoke of a foreign monarch. At Milan and Bologna they were murdered by the exas­perated people. Archbishop Reginald, upon his arrival, assumed a sort of viceroyalty over all these petty despots, but whether his government was or was not exempt from the vices fatally blighting theirs, is another point in dispute between writers of Ghibeline and of Guelph pre­possessions. The strict impartiality, however, with which, in obedience to, and sympathy with Frederic, he administered justice, is admitted by all. But it failed to reconcile Lombard minds to German rule; was disregarded by the hostilely disposed, as insufficient compensation for subjection, whilst tending to alienate the previously loyal. These, presuming on their services, had fully relied upon permission to trample at their pleasure upon their vanquished enemies, and resented the restraint laid upon their revenge. In illustration of the degree of licence in which the Ghibelines had expected to be indulged, it may suffice to say that, the Emperor having authorized the Pavians to render Tortona innoxious by razing the walls, rebuilt contrary to his commands, they demolished the town itself as well as the walls. Equality before the law, and liberty without licence, were ideas not yet conceived; and those who revelled in such retaliatory excesses naturally looked upon every attempt to curb the absolute freedom of their vindictive will, as an encroachment upon their rights.

In the autumn of 1163, Frederic again crossed the Alps, but upon this occasion without an army, relying upon the general recognition of his sovereign authority for remedying the ills to which his absence had given birth. But his Chancellor’s obnoxious government being the fruit of his injunctions, his own was too much akin to it to satisfy those, who fancied that their fidelity gave them such claims upon his gratitude, as must entitle them to unlimited and irrational indulgence, or in other words who would have had him, as the Guelphs chose to consider him, the Head of the Ghibelines, not the impartial Lord of all. Thus his justice disappointed and therefore offended the loyal, whilst his clemency was insufficient to conciliate the disloyal. He had already spontaneously released all the Milanese hostages except one hundred; their fellow-citizens now solicited the liberation of that hundred; and they obtained it when the deputation presented their petition, as the Emperor required, upon their knees. That the Milanese deeply resented as a humiliation this, then customary, form of seeking favours at the hand of a sovereign, shows the progress which their republican spirit had by this time made towards real republicanism.

In the following April, 1164, occurred an event that might have relieved the Emperor from the chief difficulties of his position: this was the death of Victor IV, at Lucca. The Archbishop of Mainz strenuously advised that this opportunity of closing the schism, by acknowledging Alexander, should not be missed. Frederic felt the force of his arguments, and despatched a messenger to the Archbishop of Cologne, with orders to make no move in the matter until he, the Emperor, should have had time for deliberation upon the momentous subject. But the two survivors of the Cardinals who had elected, and adhered to Victor, Guido di Crema and Giovanni di Santo Martino, with the Lombard and Tuscan bishops of that party, and some of their German brethren who chanced to be present, including, it is said, the Archbishop of Cologne himself, individually hopeless of obtaining their own pardon from Alexander, were determined to commit the Emperor to their support. Without waiting for instructions from him therefore, in two or at most three days after Victor’s death, they proceeded to a new election. The papacy, or rather anti-papacy, their proceedings being clearly illegal, whether Alexander’s tenure of his high office were so or not, was first tendered to the acceptance of the Bishop of Liege, who prudently declined it; whereupon Cardinal Guido di Crema was chosen. He at once accepted the hazardous dignity, took the name of Pascal III, and neglecting all customary ceremonial, was hastily consecrated by that same Bishop of Liege, who had shrunk from personally incurring the obloquy heaped upon the Head of the Schism. Rightly had they judged Frederic Barbarossa, whose messenger at his arrival found Pascal III installed as the successor of Victor IV. However anxious to close the schism, however detrimental to his own interests this crafty precipitation, he held himself bound to support his faithful adherents, and acknowledged Pascal as Pope. But even in Germany numbers of both clergy and laity saw that, though doubts had existed as to which of Alexander or Victor was lawfully, or rather least unlawfully placed in St. Peter’s chair, there could be none touching the utter invalidity of Pascal’s pretended election by one Cardinal, and prelates who had no right of suffrage.

In Lombardy, the aspect of affairs had by this time become less favourable to Frederic. The fear, the envy, and the hatred of Milan, that had attached her prospective as well as her actual victims to him, had expired with her preponderance; and the Emperor began to take her place as the object of the fears, as his deputed officers very generally did of the hatred, she had previously excited. Even Venice, after promoting and exulting in the ruin of Milan, as the riddance of a detested rival, now began to look uneasily at his growing power. The Emperor of the East Romans could never be cordially and permanently the friend of his brother Emperor of the West Romans; and Manuel stimulated to the utmost all these apprehensions, acting upon Venice, through able diplomatists; amongst the wavering Lombard cities, by gold lavishly distributed. With the nearest of these waverers, as Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, and some others of the Veronese and Trevisan marches, Venice now formed a confederacy, professedly religious, and solely for the support of Alexander against anti-popes; but which presently assumed a menacing attitude towards the Emperor, even whilst all avowed themselves his subjects, avowed the obedience and service paid by their ancestors to Charlemagne to be his right.

Frederic assembled an Italian army and marched against the confederates; but he found them stronger than he had expected, and, what was worse, he saw reason to distrust the fidelity of his own troops. Reluctantly he acknowledged the mortifying necessity of immediate retreat, and of abstaining from any attempt to strike a blow, until he should be joined by a German army in which he could confide. That he and his still loyal Lombard vassals might be able so to wait, he fortified and garrisoned several castles and towns, and sought the friendship of the rival of Venice, Genoa; whilst he endeavoured to keep waverers, both cities and noble vassals, steady, by grants of divers favours,—to towns frequently the right of electing their magistrates.

The Emperor had, repeatedly but vainly, endeavoured to reconcile Genoa and Pisa, admonishing them to refer their quarrels, more especially that relative to Sardinia, to a judicial tribunal, as enjoined by the laws enacted at the Roncaglia Diet. It seems to have been in obedience to this injunction that representatives of both parties attended at an Italian Diet, when an application for the dominion of the island in question, perhaps as independent of both cities, was made to him. To explain the transaction will require a few words relative to the previous history of Sardinia.

This island had, prior even to its subjugation by the Arabs, been divided among four hereditary princes, entitled Judges—a denomination that becomes less strange when it is recollected that to preside over an Imperial tribunal of justice was the original business of the Comes, Graf, Comte, or Earl; whence Judex (judge) might be deemed a synonymous title with Comes; in Lombardy, indeed, Comes- judex seems to have been the proper title. Under the Moslem rule, these hereditary Judges retained their titles, though not their authority. When the Pisans and the Genoese jointly planned the recovery of Sardinia from the Arabs, prospectively arranging their shares of their future acquisition, the Genoese, probably not anticipating complete success, chose the booty, abandoning the island to their allies. The conquest was completed; the Genoese were perforce content, professedly at least, with the booty they had bargained for, and under the sovereignty of the Pisans the Judges again reigned. When a Pisan noble succeeded to, or supplanted one of the old lines of princes, no unfrequent occurrence it may be presumed, he assumed the same title of Judge. Sardinia thus constituted, had, as a Pisan dependency,—Pisa itself, being included in the duchy of Tuscany—been a subfief of Matilda’s: but in the contention for her heritage, to which her death gave occasion, the Popes claimed it, upon the plea that all lands reconquered from misbelievers, were reconquered for the See of Rome. Meanwhile the island had become both a subject, and a theatre, of war. When Genoa saw Pisa mistress of Sardinia, she quickly repented and recanted her injudicious preference of booty to territory. The Pisans refused to admit the recantation, and war ensued both for and in the island; the several Judges owning vassalage to either city, as their individual interest dictated, or as the preponderance of either coerced them.

To this war had for some years been added a sort of subsidiary civil war amongst the Judges themselves, who reciprocally usurped each other’s dominions.

It was one of these insular princes, Barasone Judge of Arborea, professedly a vassal of Genoa, who now solicited of the Emperor a grant of the whole island as a vassal kingdom, for which, in the shape of a feudal due or tribute, he offered to pay him 4000 marks of silver. Through how many degrees of vassalage Barasone proposed to hold his crown, does not clearly appear; nor did he probably wish that it should. He could not, by seeking to disown the suzerainty of Genoa, risk losing her protection, upon which he relied for support, and which she could only be expected to give, in order to acquire the real suzerainty of the whole, through her vassal’s kingship. Neither could he, while soliciting a favour of the Emperor, acknowledge a wish to despoil that monarch’s uncle, Welf, of the suzerainty, which he held only by Sardinia’s being, through Pisa, a Tuscan dependency.

The Emperor lent a willing ear to the request, but in so doing discovered no disposition to rob either the faithful Pisans, or, through them, his uncle, of any right they might have. The scene as dramatically described by the old annalist shows that it was to them he in the first instance proposed the office of conveying Barasone to Sardinia, and establishing him there as king. The Pisan deputation not only refused so to do, but objected to such an exaltation of Barasone, which would, they averred, be injurious as well as disgraceful to Pisa. The Emperor was displeased with the answer; although, considering the candidate for royalty’s connexion with Genoa, he might have foreseen the probable tenor; and turning to the Genoese, inquired: “Can you, and will you execute my commands, whether the Pisans will or not?” And eagerly the Genoese replied, “We can and will execute your commands, in spite of the Pisans.” The head of the Pisan deputation, startled at this aspect of the affair, now exclaimed: “Lord Emperor, with due reverence be it spoken, how can you give away the property of others? Sardinia is ours, granted us by Pope Innocent II. Neither should you give crown and realm to an ignoble servant (ministerialis) of ours, unworthy of such dignity”. His Genoese rival as vehemently retorted: “Barasone is not of ignoble, but of noble birth; many Pisans has he in his service, and Sardinia belongs rather to Genoa than to Pisa”. The dispute went on in the same strain, until the Emperor ended it by saying to the Pisans: “I do not recognize your pretensions to Sardinia, which the Popes had no authority to give you; and he whom I, concurrently with the Diet, exalt to the dignity of a King, cannot be your vassal.”

At Pavia, the Emperor accordingly crowned Barasone King of Sardinia, and as such the Bishop of Liege anointed him. But the 4000 marks were not forthcoming, and the new King was in some danger of being dragged away to Germany as a hostage for its payment. From this fate he was rescued by Genoa’s advancing the necessary sum; but he merely exchanged a northern for a southern prison. Genoa detained him in captivity as her debtor, whilst in his name she now carried on the war with Pisa for Sardinia, and strove to exercise his newly acquired, royal rights.

And here, as well as elsewhere, may perhaps be inserted a Genoese anecdote of those times alike characteristic of their romantic, and sensuously impressionable temper, and calculated to show how little the liberty then so passionately sought by the Lombard cities, resembled the staid liberty—ensuring security of person and property, with equality before the law—enjoyed by free states in modern times.

Genoa had long been distracted by the fierce enmity of two families, the Voltas and the Avogados, which many atrocious outrages, even ending in violent deaths, had confirmed in hereditary virulence. The members and partisans of these races habitually waged war upon each other in the streets, and assailed each other’s fortified mansions, to the no small annoyance of neutrals, if in those days any such pacific natures there were. The evil at length became so intolerable, that the aged Archbishop plotted with the Consuls a coup de theatre that should force a reconciliation upon the hostile factions. They issued their orders accordingly; and in the dead of the night the citizens were startled from sleep by the sound of the bell used solely to convoke the General Assembly. All hurried forth in alarm to the usual place of meeting, the Piazza in front of the Cathedral, there to learn the cause of the unwonted summons. This none could tell; and whilst every man gazed in perplexity at his neighbour, as perplexed as himself, a solemn procession, lighted by torches, was seen advancing. At its head walked the venerable Archbishop, with the relics, supposed, if not genuine, of St. John the Baptist borne immediately before him, and attended by the whole body of the Clergy, in full canonicals, with waving censers, &c. After the clergy, walked the Consuls and the other Magistrates, carrying Crucifixes. Upon reaching the centre of the Assembly, the prelate staid his steps and spoke. He adjured the leaders of the opposite factions, in the name of the God of peace and mercy, of the salvation of their own souls, of their country and of her liberty, which their dissentions were destroying, to lay their hands upon the Gospel, and upon the hallowed relics now brought before them, and so to swear reconciliation, peace, and oblivion of all past wrongs whatsoever. When the Archbishop ceased speaking, the Heralds solemnly approached Orlando Avogado, the only one of the leaders present, and called upon him to comply with the prelate’s exhortation. The people with loud cries repeated and inforced the words of the Heralds, and even some of his factious kindred, touched by the effective scene, added prayers to the same purport. Avogado, overpowered by conflicting emotions, flung himself, in a paroxysm of passionate agitation, upon the ground, rent his clothes, and invoked the spirits of the dead whom he had sworn to avenge, who would never suffer him to forget their wrongs. But the Archbishop, the Consuls, the Clergy, and the Magistracy, pressed around him, exhorting, admonishing, imploring, and loudly supported by the crowd in a sort of running accompaniment, till they fairly conquered his resistance, dragged him to the shrine, and amidst the blessings of the whole people, extorted from him the oath they had demanded.

And now the whole people escorted the again formed procession to the mansion of the adverse leader, Inigo di Volta. They found his kinsman Folco di Castro with him, and both deeply moved by the reports brought them of the scene just described. In this frame of mind, and aware that their enemies had yielded, their resistance was far less obstinate than Orlando Avogado’s had been, and the solicitations of the revered prelate, of the honoured magistrates, speedily obtained from them the oath so hardly wrung from Avogado. The kiss of peace was then exchanged between the hereditary foes. The bells now rang a joyous peal, whilst the procession returned with the reconciled enemies to the Piazza, where the Te Deum was chaunted by the clergy in the Cathedral; and the entire population, thronging both church and Piazza, joined in the solemn strain of thanksgiving.

The hopes with which the Emperor had crossed the Alps, to wit, that he could govern Italy by Italians alone, had been painfully disappointed. He had found the loyal Lombards totally inadequate to the task he had assigned them; and now, having made the best temporary arrangements in his power, he returned to Germany in search of troops with which to reduce the refractory to obedience. But the state of Germany had changed since his departure, and it was not calculated to afford him, immediately at least, the needful support. It was even fuller than usual of feuds, and since the election of Pascal III, much more divided than before upon the question of the schism. He indeed found the potent kinsman, in whose affection he still trusted, Henry the Lion, in untroubled possession of his two duchies and of his Slavonian acquisitions; as able as, he might well hope, willing, to lend effective aid in subjugating and tranquillizing Italy. But this was far from being the case with the rest of his relations and connections. His brother, the Rhine Palsgrave, his brother-in-law, the Landgrave of Thuringia, and his cousin, the Duke of Swabia, were all at war with his Chancellor, the Archbishop of Cologne, who had returned to Germany when his master went to Italy. The cause of this great feud is not positively known; but it has been conjectured to have originated in a certainly somewhat unwarrantable act of the Chancellor’s, though not of recent date. He had, during the blockade of Milan, made prisoners of a party of Milanese Consuls, on their way, protected by a safe conduct from the Rhine Palsgrave, to an interview with that Prince, the Landgrave of Thuringia, and the King of Bohemia, whose mediation they meant to solicit. Whether the Chancellor so acted in real or in pretended ignorance of the Palsgrave’s safe conduct, or as denying his authority to grant one, is, and must remain doubtful, no time having been allowed for explanation by the Milanese, who from their walls saw the capture of their magistrates and rushed forth to recover them. If this were the cause of quarrel, the loyal determination not to suffer private dissentions to interfere with the success of the Emperor’s plans had induced them to defer hostilities not only till Milan had submitted, but till after the Roncaglia Diet and the suppression of the renewed troubles, including the second Milanese rebellion. But whatever the occasion of their enmity, the Palsgrave and his allies had invaded, and wee then ravaging, the territories of Cologne.

The South was disturbed by another feud, in which the Emperor’s paternal and maternal kindred were opposed to each other: and which is memorable as first introducing into history the ancestors of the two chief reigning families of Germany; then, as almost ever since, opposed to each other, namely, those of Habsburg and of Hohenzollern. The Swabian Palsgrave, Hugo von Tubingen, having surprised and captured three robber knights, in the very act of plunder, dismissed two of them, who proved to be vassals of his own, unscathed, whilst he hanged the third, who was, like himself, a vassal of the Duke of Spoleto. The Duke demanded satisfaction, which Hugo refused; secretly encouraged by the Duke of Swabia, whose bellicose propensities were insufficiently occupied by his share in the war with the Archbishop, and whose hereditary enmity to the Welfs does not appear to have been mitigated by either the Emperor’s Welf blood, or his own marriage to the Lion’s daughter. The Duke of Spoleto, foreseeing that this feud was likely to spread, summoned his son Welf from Italy, as of fitter age than himself to undertake its conduct; whilst he, the father, supplying his son’s place south of the Alps, should enjoy a more genial climate, if not a more tranquil region. Welf the younger, upon his arrival, summoned the friends and allies of his family to his assistance, and his call was obeyed by the Duke of Zäringen, the Margraves of Baden and of Vohburg, the Bishops of Augsburg, Worms, and Spires, and the Earls of Feringen and of Habsburg; the last being, both by blood and by marriage, allied to the Duke of Zäringen. These allies are reported to have brought Welf some 5000 horsemen. Palsgrave Hugo, thus seriously threatened, called upon his friends and allies; at whose head is found the Duke of Swabia, amongst them an Earl of Zollern or Hohenzollern, an ancestor of the royal house of Prussia. Hugo’s forces were still very inferior to Welf’s; a disparity which they compensated by posting themselves in the strong castle of Tubingen. Welf rashly assaulted it, and was repulsed with the loss of 900 men, left prisoners in Hugo’s hands, he himself escaping with difficulty.

In addition to these most important and extensive feuds, the Bishops of Munster, Minden, and Paderborn were at war with the fratricidal Earl of Arensberg, who, after illegally imprisoning his own brother, had either caused him to be murdered in his dungeon, or had starved him to death in it. The Bishop of Utrecht was at war with the Earl of Gueldres for the Stewardship of his See; which office having been granted hereditarily was claimed by the Earl of Gueldres in right of his wife, the only child of the last Steward, and held as much by force of arms as by the favour of the citizens of Utrecht; whilst the new Bishop maintained that a Woman was incapable of inheriting an office that her sex disabled her to exercise, and that the office and official fiefs had therefore lapsed to the See. Other feuds amongst inferior nobles increased the disorder, but need not be enumerated.

The Emperor at once addressed himself to remedying these manifold evils, for which purpose he summoned all the different parties to a Diet appointed to meet at Bamberg. There he so impressively represented to Palsgrave Conrad and Archbishop Reginald, the principals in the first of these feuds, that it was the especial duty of his brother and of his Chancellor to preserve the peace of the Empire, and set an example to all others of obedience to the laws, that they renounced their enmity and embraced. The reconciliation of their respective allies followed of course. He next compelled the Swabian Palsgrave to make due compensation to the Duke of Spoleto for selecting his vassal as the sole sacrifice to the violated laws, whilst he pardoned his own, and to release his 900 prisoners without ransom. Then proceeding to feuds in which he was less personally interested, Frederic obliged the Earl of Arensberg to satisfy his episcopal adversaries, by submitting to whatever penance they might see fit to impose, in expiation of his crime. And he persuaded the Earl of Gueldres to pay the Bishop of Utrecht a sum of money, in consideration of his being permitted to retain his stewardship. In like manner, in various ways, by force or by persuasion, he quelled or appeased the minor feuds.

In the first two of these decisions the Emperor has been taxed by some modern writers with sacrificing the interests of his paternal relations to those of his more favoured maternal connexions; although it may be observed, in regard to the first, that no Welf was concerned in that feud, and if Conrad were sacrificed, it was to the Chancellor, Archbishop of Cologne, and an act rather of policy than of affection. But though it seemed right to mention this imputed offence, being mentioned it may be left to refute, or be refuted, by the other accusation, more perseveringly brought against Frederic Barbarossa, to wit, that of malignity towards, and jealousy of, the Head of those maternal relations, the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, whom he had so freely permitted to make himself a formidable rival, even to the Head of the Empire.

The temporal affairs of Germany were thus quickly and easily arranged by the energy of Frederic; the papal schism was beset with greater difficulties, and caused him more anxiety. But even in this thorny business, about the beginning of the year 1165, he had reason to hope for a great increase of strength to his party; had reason to hope for the adhesion of the powerful King of England and of half France to his Pope.

It cannot be necessary to remind the English reader that fierce dissentions broke out between Henry II and Thomas a Becket, as soon as the King had made his Chancellor and boon companion Archbishop of Canterbury; that the gay gallant, the bold monarchist statesman, instantly addicted himself to asceticism, and asserted Church pretensions in the very spirit of Gregory VII. But the immediate connexion of these dissentions with the rivalry of the contending Popes may hardly be quite as familiar to every English reader’s mind. It was in the beginning of the preceding year that Henry extorted from Becket his assent to the Constitutions of Clarendon, which the prelate afterwards retracted and fled. Alexander III, in order to secure the constant adhesion of so potent a sovereign, had in the first instance sanctioned these new laws (of the tenor of which he seems, indeed, to have been then ignorant), and blamed Becket’s opposition to them. But when he learned from the fugitive Primate their tendency to subject the clergy to the state, and to emancipate the English Church from Papal control, amidst all the perils and embarrassments still surrounding him, the Pope boldly condemned the Constitutions of Clarendon, whatever were the risk, and relieved Becket from his oath of assent. In so doing he threw himself upon Lewis VII alone for support; and for obtaining it trusted to the French King’s acrimonious jealousy of his formidable royal vassal, a much stronger sentiment with him than any fear of papal encroachment. 

Henry II, indignant at being thus, as he thought, deserted by Alexander,—who can, as yet, hardly be taxed with desertion, having simply withdrawn a sanction given under a mistake—immediately made overtures to Frederic, tending towards his, in his turn, deserting Alexander and acknowledging Pascal. Frederic, to improve this favourable disposition of so important a potentate, eagerly despatched Archbishop Reginald to England, to ask the bands of two of Henry’s little daughters; one for his own son and heir, Henry, still an infant; the other for his cousin, the divorced Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. He relied upon the address and the eloquence of his Chancellor, when thus brought into relation with the English King for confirming his alienation from Alexander, and obtaining even a declaration of adhesion to Pascal. The proposals of marriage appear to have been accepted; for though that with the future Emperor, Henry VI, did not ultimately take effect, the English Princess Matilda, some years later, when of fitting age, became the wife of Henry the Lion; and if Reginald did not obtain the desired declaration, he was, at his return, accompanied or followed by English Envoys, commissioned to attend and take part in the deliberations of the Imperial Diet upon this momentous question.

The Diet in which the schism was to be discussed, and, if possible, decided, was that convoked for Whitsuntide, 1165, at Wurzburg. This Diet w as numerously attended, and the Envoys of Henry II were present. Frederic in person explained to the assembly the pains he had taken to have the facts relative to the double papal election carefully and impartially investigated, stating further that such evidence of the illegality of Cardinal Rolando’s election had been laid before three Councils, two that had sat in Italy and one in the Arelat, as had fully convinced those Fathers of the Church of its nullity. Hereupon the Archbishop of Cologne, starting up with his usual im­petuosity, required, in his double capacity of Arch-Chancellor of Italy and of acting Chancellor of the Emperor Frederic, an oath from Emperor, Princes, and Prelates, never to acknowledge as Pope, either Cardinal Rolando or any orfe hereafter elected by his faction; and another from the Princes and Prelates, never to elect an Emperor who would not pledge himself to maintain this German view of the Papal question. Against whoever should dare to violate these oaths he denounced forfeiture, if a layman, of his fiefs and allodial property; if an ecclesiastic, of his ecclesiastical dignity likewise. He himself immediately, with all appropriate solemnity, took both the oaths upon the Gospel.

The abruptness of this requisition, and the violence of the measure proposed, appear to have startled the Diet, and given rise to taunts and recriminations amongst the members. These did not, however, prevent Reginald’s example from being followed. The Emperor, the lay Princes, and most of the Prelates, took the first of these oaths; and so did the English Envoys, whether empowered so to do, or carried away by Reginald’s influence and by momentary sympathy. But two of the greatest among the prelates refused thus to pledge themselves; namely, the Archbishop of Mainz, Palsgrave Otho’s brother, and the newly elected Archbishop of Salzburg, uncle to the Emperor, and a brother of Henry Duke of Austria. The former, who perhaps resented the neglect of his advice at the epoch of Victor’s death, is averred to have already privately acknowledged Alexander, prior to the meeting of the Diet. At all events he secretly withdrew from Wurzburg the night after the scene just described, to join that pontiff in France; a transfer of his spiritual allegiance that earned him a cardinal’s hat. But yet more painful to Frederic than the desertion of Conrad von Wittelsbach, was that of his uncle: and during many months continuous endeavours were made by his Imperial nephew himself, and by Henry Jasomir, the prelate’s own brother—Bishop Otho was dead—to win him back to the side of Pascal. Henry the Lion alone seems to have taken the Archbishop of Salzburg’s part, justifying his attachment to Alexander upon the ground of Alexander’s really being the lawful Pope; a plea somewhat inconsistent with the oath of inviolable adherence to Pascal, which he had so very lately, and to all appearance unhesitatingly, sworn at Wurzburg; but well agreeing with much of his subsequent conduct, and with what his biographer asserts of his real opinion upon the subject. The assertion of this eulogist of Henry the Lion being, that his hero had from the first believed Alexander to be the true Pope, and had acknowledged Victor against his conscience, entirely upon political grounds. Neither such worldly motives, nor remonstrance or representation could influence the Archbishop ; and a Diet held in the spring of 1166, pronounced, in imperfect conformity to the recently taken oaths, the forfeiture during his life of all the temporalities of the see, which, as usual, were to revert to it at the death of the prelate who had incurred the punishment, but did not presume to depose that prelate. The execution of the sentence was committed to princes and nobles his neighbours, amongst whom his spoils were prospectively allotted, as stimulants and rewards of their zeal. The archbishopric is said to have been cruelly ravaged in consequence of the fidelity of the vassals to their ecclesiastical prince.

With regard to the more important see of Mainz, the course was easier to all parties. The prelate being less dear to the Emperor, and his disobedience more flagrant, Pascal, conjointly with the Diet that had so solemnly bound itself to his cause, deposed Conrad von Wittelsbach; and Christian von Buch, whom the Diet had formerly appointed Archbishop of Mainz, and Frederic, in obedience to his own Pope, rejected, was again proposed. Pascal had previously objected, not to himself, but to his utterly illegal nomination; and now willingly joined with the Emperor, who had found Christian alike active and able in his service, in recommending him to the Chapter. He was unanimously elected, and presently ' recalled from Italy—where, at the head of a small army, he was conquering one town after another of the Papal States for Pascal—to be installed in his see. But the new Archbishop becomes, a little later, so leading a personage in the history of the times, and is so strikingly mediaeval a character, as to claim a few words of description.

Of the Priest, Christian von Buch seems to have had little, save great diligence in saying Mass—which never, under any circumstances or in any emergency, did he neglect—a habit of animating his troops to battle with hymns and psalms rather than martial songs, and a degree of learning, then pretty much confined to the clergy, and rare even amongst them. He spoke six or seven languages, viz. Latin, Greek, German, Flemish, French, Lombard,—meaning, probably, the as yet unwritten, uncultivated jargon, erelong to be developed into Italian,— and according to some writers, Chaldaic, or the language of the Syrian Christians. As a statesman and a soldier he was inferior to scarcely any of his contemporaries. Endowed with a powerful intellect, and upright in his intentions towards all parties, he was at once a zealous champion of the Imperial authority against ecclesiastical encroachment, and a good feudal Lord to his Ecclesiastical Principality, whenever the Emperor’s need of his  service allowed him leisure to attend to its interests. He as vigorously defended the just rights of his vassals and of his flock, as he actively fostered their prosperity. An instance of his merits in this line may be mentioned in his bold and successful appeal to the King of France, for justice to some Mainz merchants, who had been plundered by the Comte de Macon, “whilst French traders,” the Archbishop observed,  are protected in Germany.” His services to the Emperor and to different Popes will be seen in the course of the narrative. A stalwart warrior, he appears to have habitually worn armour under his episcopal vestments, and in action to have wielded a sort of triangularly headed mace, or club, with which he felled many a foe, and knocked out it is said the teeth of nearly two hundred individual Lombards, besides crushing, maiming, and grievously wounding a hundred rebels in one particular battle fought near Bologna, to say nothing of his feats in many other engagements. So that in his hands the club hardly seems to have answered the purpose for which it was customarily borne by martial ecclesiastics; namely, by not piercing the flesh, to enable them to indulge their pugnacious propensities without disobeying the letter—whatever might be the case as to the spirit—of the Church’s prohibition of bloodshed to her sons. Christian’s armies are said to have usually swarmed with women of a description that the hallowed character of the priestly General should naturally have banished. . But the Archbishop did not suffer any super­refined scruples to rob him of success. He dreaded by the exclusion of these polluted and polluting camp-followers to disgust and alienate the lawless mercenaries and other wild bands that thronged to his standard, and he chose rather to turn a necessary evil to account. He had these wretched women drilled and trained to arms; a scheme which answered so well, that he is said to have been indebted to his regiment of amazons for the capture of two castles.

But to return to the Wurzburg Diet, or rather its immediate consequences. Whilst the negotiations with the Archbishop of Salzburg were pending, the Emperor had kept his Christmas at Aix-la-Chapelle; where, by his desire, and in the name and by the authority of Pascal, the Bishop of Liege canonized Charlemagne; that prototype, upon whom Frederic strove to model himself. Part of the ceremony consisted of the exhibition of the exhumed bones of the dead hero, adorned with the crown and other ensigns of sovereignty, to public veneration. Need it be said that this canonization by the authority of an anti-pope is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church?

The greater part of the year 1166 Frederic devoted to the concerns of Germany. He appointed the autumn for the assembling of another army destined to reduce the insurgent Lombards to obedience, and actively occupied the intervening months. He compelled Hungary again to pay her discontinued tribute; appeased feuds, regulated the tolls upon the Rhine, the mode of ensuring the preservation of its banks and those of other rivers, and the like, devoting much attention to the general business of administration.

Henry the Lion might by this time very fairly have been an object of anxiety to him, if not of positive jealousy. By his progressive accumulation of fiefs, whether held as ducal territories, or in vassalage of any prelate, and his Slavonian additions to Saxony, combined with his casual occupation of the temporalities of the archbishopric of Bremen,—forfeited for the prelate’s life by his default at Roncaglia—his possessions were very superior to those of the House of Hohenstaufen. But the great power of the kinsman he loved appears to have created no uneasiness whatever in Fredericks mind. The only act of his that can at all be considered as indicating a shadow of reserve or caution in respect to this highly favoured Welf relation, is his constant refusal to give him Goslar, the strongest place in Saxony, in exchange for any of his Swabian domains.

The Emperor now felt himself adequately prepared for his fourth expedition to Italy: but whilst he had been fully occupied in Germany, Alexander III, as compensation for the seemingly imminent loss of England, had recovered the proper seat of the papacy, Rome. All the agents he had employed in Italy were dextrous, and the chief of them, Giovanni Cardinal de’ S.S. Giovanni e Paolo, was a man of extraordinary address. By working upon the passions of the Romans and by a profuse distribution of money, he, after clearing the Senate of schis­matics, introduced into it so many creatures of his own, that at length prevailing, he obtained the despatch of a deputation to France, whose business was inviting and pressing the Pope’s return to his capital. The invitation was not, indeed, couched in the most flattering or the most encouraging terms; inasmuch as it ended with a threat, that if he, Alexander, were not in Rome by Michaelmas 1165, the Romans would acknowledge Pascal as Pope. Alexander felt little confidence in his inviters; but his position in France was unsatisfactory. Henry of England avowedly hesitated as to which Pope he would acknowledge. The constancy of Lewis VII was evidently shaken; and he pressed Alexander, with a warmth that betrayed impatience to be freed from an inconvenient guest, not to risk the loss of such an advantage over his rival as the possession of Rome would give him. Under such circumstances, it was with less alacrity than might have seemed appropriate to the occasion, that Alexander and his Cardinals prepared for their return home.

Nor, indeed, did their voyage thither promise more security than their residence in the Eternal City. One or other of those virulent rivals, Genoa and Pisa, was almost certain to be active in the Emperor’s service; and upon this occasion it was the latter, recalled to her habitual loyalty, by the imprudent rapacity of the Genoese. They had treated their insolvent royal debtor, Barasone, so harshly, had sought to subject him to terms so oppressively burthen some, that he had had recourse to the rival city, offering to transfer his homage to her. And Pisa, repenting, perhaps, of her opposition to his exaltation to the title of king, now gladly accepted him as her royal vassal. Thus reconciled to the Emperor and his Pope, Pisa sent out ships to intercept Alexander; but her ships attacked the wrong vessel, and captured only a party of Cardinals, whom they immediately released. Alexander after escaping this danger prosecuted his voyage in safety, but did not immediately make for Rome. He first visited Sicily, where he relied upon the ill-will borne by the Norman monarchs to both Emperors, eastern and western alike, for ensuring him support. Nor was he disappointed, although the island since his last visit had been convulsed with change.

Maione’s head appears to have been completely turned by his success against the Greeks; and now, not contented with the absolutely despotic authority that he owed to his King’s weakly fond affection, he had plotted against the life of that confiding monarch, from whom he had by his wanton, or as has been thought, his far-sighted tyranny, alienated all classes of his subjects. The plan Maione proposed to the malcontent nobles was, to murder the King, and place his minor son, Prince Roger, upon the throne, making the Queen-mother Regent. The nobles were pleased, with the idea of a minority, and if any among them aspired to the regency, they kept their wishes to themselves, till a favourable opportunity should offer. It is averred, they proposed to create one, by making Maione the next victim to the King, either as an accident in the riot, or openly, as the punishment of his regicide. As for Maione, knowing his influence over the Queen to be unbounded, he might well have been content with the prospect of her regency, as indeed he might have been with the position he already held. But his despotic power had intoxicated him to an actual extinction of common sense; explicable only by the blind infatuation, which conscious superiority to all around them, together with constant success, often induces in really able men. Not only did he habitually risk offending the Queen, if her paramour he were, by his innumerable infidelities,—no beautiful woman could, it is alleged, preserve her purity from his snares or his violence,—it is asserted that he designed to make the princely boy’s substitution for King William a mere stepping-stone to his own usurpation, and fancied he could prevail upon the haughty nobles, who seldom men­tioned him but with contemptuous anger as “the oilman’s brat,” to bend the knee to him as king.

Circumstantially to track the foul labyrinth of Maione’s complicated intrigues, against the master whose offences he of all men was least entitled to punish or to judge; against his fellow-conspirators, when they awoke mistrust; and of those fellow-conspirators against each other, as well as against him, would be revolting, and is, fortunately, not an indispensable task. Altogether omitted indeed they cannot be, being essential features, characterising the age, at least in that country. Moreover, the realm in which they were conceived and executed—though no member of the Holy Roman Empire, and only occasionally involved or connected with its history—before the close of this current century formed part of the dominions of the Emperors of the House of Swabia. But a succinct sketch will sufficiently enlighten the reader upon the irksome topic.

When treacherously, or in the audacity of tyranny, Maione had imprisoned, blinded or mutilated, all whom he feared as rivals, he seems to have momentarily interrupted the treasonable plots, he had for some time been carrying on, in order to revel, without a thought of self control, in the fulness of absolute power and of licentiousness. In fact, he had conceived a hope of effecting his usurpation more easily, and had employed one Matteo, a Palace Notario or Secretary, to negotiate with Alexander a transaction similar to that between Pope Stephen II and the Frank Pepin. But Alexander scornfully rejected his bribes; whilst at home Maione found the inevitable result of his recent conduct to be general dissatisfaction, even amongst his fellow-conspirators, which the sharpwitted upstart failed not speedily to discover. This dissatisfaction appeared most openly in Calabria, and he looked round for an emissary to treat with, and win back these malcontents, whilst he himself should resume his suspended machinations at Palermo. The diplomatist he selected upon this occasion was Matteo Bonello, a young man of high birth and large fortune, related to almost every noble family in Calabria, who was endowed with brilliant talents, and had acquired military fame, but was deficient in firmness of purpose. Bonello was in love with, and beloved by, Contessa Clemenzia di Catanzaro, an illegitimate daughter of the late King; yet Maione, who admired his abilities and longed for such a confederate, hoped to bind him to his interests by crossing his marriage with Clemenzia, and offering him the hand of his own sole child and heiress. And, strange to say, Bonello, unsuspicious of course that to Maione his disappointment in regard to Countess Clemenzia was due, proved the instability imputed to him by accepting the offer.

The result of his mission was not what Maione intended and expected. Bonello repaired to Calabria, found the discontented nobles, for the most part friends and relations of his own, assembled, and exerted his utmost eloquence to reconcile them to Maione, by vindicating his administration. But it was a task of less difficulty to the insurgents to refute his arguments, and convince the embassador of the cruel tyranny exercised by the low-born despot for whom he pleaded,—especially in one point, to wit, invariably preventing heiresses from marrying, until they attained an age that would nearly ensure their dying childless, and the consequent lapse of their fiefs to the crown. It is said the insurgents likewise convinced Bonello that Maione alone had prevented his marriage with the Countess, which they undertook still to effectuate. Bonello joined the anti-Maione confederacy, and returned to Palermo its agent and instrument.

Whilst this was passing in Calabria, in Sicily Maione had quarrelled with the ablest of his fellow-conspirators, Ugone Archbishop of Palermo, respecting the regency during the intended young King’s minority. Each now, setting the Queen aside, insisted upon it for himself. Maione, annoyed at this rivalry—which foreboded invincible opposition to the subsequent assumption of the crown that he meditated—proceeded to rid himself of opposition, by causing a slow poison to be administered to the ecclesiastical would-be Regent. At this juncture, Bonello presented himself. Maione had heard of his defalcation; but the noble subaltern, by reports, boldly mendacious, of his negotiation, and by vehemently pressing for the immediate celebration of his promised nuptials with the omnipotent favourite’s daughter, succeeded in duping his able patron. Meanwhile, he arranged with the prelate, then lingering upon a sick-bed, from the effects of the drug that Maione, as the sufferer was well aware, had contrived to give him; the assassination of “the Oilman’s Brat,” whom they both abhorred.

Partly with a view to avert suspicion; partly in order to repeat the dose, Maione visited his victim. He came, affectionately bearing in his band a medicine, particularly recommended by skilful leeches in maladies resembling the Archbishop’s. Warmly the invalid thanked his considerate friend, and evaded for the moment taking the potion, by alleging an utter inability to swallow. He put it by, for the first moment at which he should feel the power of deglutition restored; and he entreated this solicitous friend to remain with him, listen to some difficulties that had occurred to him, as likely to impede the execution of the regicide as projected, and discuss the remedy. Maione, hoping to find a moment in which he might persuade his friend to swallow the poison he had brought, assented; whereupon the prelate secretly despatched a messenger to Bonello, to say that Maione should be so detained till dark, and bid him make his arrangements accordingly. Maione was thus detained till nightfall; then, having satisfactorily planned the murder of the master who owed his surname of the Bad mainly to his intending assassin’s seductions, he received his congenial ally’s promise to swallow the dose be had brought him as soon as he should feel it possible, and took his leave. He quitted the episcopal palace with attendance provided only for daylight, and suddenly found himself waylaid, surrounded, and attacked by armed men. His servants fled from superior numbers, and the Lord Grand-Admiral fell under the swords of his assailants.

But his enemies had little cause, immediate or ulterior, to joy in their triumph. The King and Queen deeply resented the assassination of their favourite. Bonello fled to a fortress for safety and the Archbishop, without taking the second dose so kindly brought him, died of the poison he had imbibed before his suspicions of his fellow­conspirator were awakened. In vain the courtly members of the confederacy strove to reconcile the monarch to the loss of Maione, by revealing the traitorous schemes of the unworthy object of his regret; the discovery of which they represented as their sole motive for taking his life. But at length, when reasoning and evidence had proved equally unavailing, the production of a crown and sceptre, found amongst Maione’s treasures, convinced the seemingly imbecile William of the truth of their accusations; whilst his cupidity was tempted with the confiscation of the unprecedentedly enormous wealth that the Oilman’s Brat had amassed. It was confiscated; Bonello was recalled and treated with apparent friendliness at Court; the people well-nigh deifying him, as their deliverer from intolerable oppression.

But again Maione’s partisans, supported by the Queen, who, it is affirmed, regretted her paramour, whether guilty of purposing regicide or not, won the King’s ear. The palace eunuchs, who had been his accomplices in conspiracy, and mistrusted those fellow-conspirators who had turned against him, persuaded William that the crown and sceptre had been designed for a new year’s gift to him, and were thus evidence of Maione’s faithful attachment, not of treasonable projects. They then found little difficulty in persuading him further, that for his fidelity alone had , he been thus treacherously murdered. Bonello now met with studied slights, was required to pay an old, forgotten debt to the treasury; and though his popularity prevented any open attempt upon his life, he saw good cause to apprehend imminent danger. A new’ conspiracy was hereupon organized by him and his friends, not, indeed, to murder but to depose and confine the King, proclaim his son Roger in his stead, and appoint a regent during the young monarch’s minority. In this less sanguinary plot, William’s illegitimate kindred, namely, his half-brother Conte Simone, and his nephew, Tancredi Conte di Lecce, a natural son of his eldest brother, Prince Roger, joined. It was successfully executed as soon as attempted, and Conte Simone was Regent for his royal nephew. But the victors had shamefully abused their victory; not only plundering the palace, but, when they had placed the Queen in honourable custody, brutally outraging its female inhabitants, the ladies of her Court included; whilst the extreme ease with which they had accomplished their design, led the triumphant confederates to neglect precautionary measures for their security. Bonello, who alone amongst them might have been capable of directing the storm he had raised, left Palermo; and, in his absence, the people were, by the third day of the new reign, thoroughly disgusted with his accomplices. The opposite faction, seizing the propitious moment, by a sudden attack mastered the palace, released all captives, and reseated William upon the throne. The boy-usurper was casually wounded by an arrow during the affray, but so slightly, it is said, as not to prevent him from waiting upon his father, with congratulations upon his recovered liberty and power; when a kick from the irritated parent so injured him, as erelong to cause his death. This fearful consequence of his ebullition of ungoverned passion was quite unforeseen by the King, who met the royal mother’s sorrowful reproaches with a burst of sobbing tears.

The whole band of conspirators effected their escape, and the loss of their intended minor sovereign, far from damping, served rather to stimulate their energies. The manner of the young Prince’s death rendered the father yet more odious to his subjects than before; and a younger brother was left, whose minority would, of course, last still longer for the benefit of the regents. Plots, therefore, incessantly succeeded to plots, and once more roused the King to momentary exertion. At length the royalists succeeded in capturing Bonello, who was looked upon as the soul of all the conspiracies. He was blinded and thrown into prison, where he presently died, as was generally believed, a violent death. William then, esteeming Sicily secure, passed over with his whole force into Calabria, where rebellion, excited and guided by the vindictively mourning Clemenzia, was raging. He was too powerful for her; he crushed the rebellion, and cruelly punished the rebels, his half-sister included. This achieved, William returned to Palermo, and committing the government to Richard Palmer, Bishop of Syracuse, an Englishman, highly praised by Italian writers, and to Maione’s worthy creature, the Notario, Matteo of Salerno, he sank again into his former lethargy of voluptuous indolence. It is even positively averred that he actually forbade the disturbance of his repose by the communication of any disagreeable intelligence; and the disheartened faction, deprived of Bonello, and of the Conte di Lecce, who fled to the Greek empire, suffered him to drone away his existence.

It was upon Maione that Alexander had hitherto relied, and his object in visiting Sicily might be to ascertain the probable effect of the all-powerful favourite’s fall upon his own prospects. In these he found no change. The King roused himself in some measure from his state of Sybarite indulgence, to receive the Pope with the deferential honours due to the Lord Paramount of the Sicilies and the spiritual Head of Christendom. He ordered a body of troops into the Papal dominions to support him against the Pascalites, and even against the Romans, should need be; and he sent a Sicilian squadron, to escort him to Ostia.

This was the last act of William the Bad’s life, unless his summoning the historian Romoaldo, a member of the royal family and Archbishop of Salerno, may be so called: an incident at least worth naming, because the prelate was fully as much celebrated for medical as for theological science; and it was for the relief of the body, and not of the soul, of the royal patient, that his aid was required. In the month of May, 1166, William I died, and was succeeded by his only surviving son, William II, a boy about twelve years old. The Queen-mother, Margaret of Navarre, was named Regent, and whatever may have been her previous faults and frailties, her administration awoke hopes of better days. Conciliation appeared to be the object and rule of her conduct. Political offences she judged leniently, and immediately released all prisoners, recalled all exiles, sentenced for crimes of that nature. She further restored confiscated fiefs, and repealed an oppressive tax; and the tranquillized kingdom cheerfully swore allegiance to William II.

To return to Alexander III. At Ostia he was met by the Roman nobility, magistracy, clergy, and such a body of the people as could scarcely be called a deputation; by all of whom he was, on the 23d of November, 1165, conducted in triumphal procession to the Eternal City and installed in the Lateran. Established there, he saw his prospects gradually brighten. His presence and his sanction gave a semblance of truth to the religious tinge which the Venetian Confederation, assuming for itself, had imparted to all recent Lombard movements. Since the departure of Christian von Buch, the Emperor’s able substitute for Archbishop Reginald, as his vicegerent in Italy, to take possession of his see, the Imperialists had been inactive, or were weakly commanded; and Alexander’s newly supplied army of Sicilian troops easily recovered for him the conquests of the absent Archbishop.

CHAPTER VII.

FREDERIC I. [1166—1174.

Frederics Fourth Expedition to Italy—Lombard League — Frederic and Faecal at Rome—Dieasters—Affairs of Germany—League against Henry the Lion—Hie formidable power—State of Schism—Archbishop Christian in Italy— Siege of Ancona. 

Late in the autumn of 1166, Frederic, accompanied by his Empress, again crossed the Alps, now at the head of an army fully equal to asserting and enforcing the Imperial sovereignty. But again he did not, as was expected, hurl death and destruction amongst his rebellious Lombard subjects. He evidently desired rather to alarm by the display of his power, and so influence, than to coerce by its exercise. His appearance in such strength, and the energy of Archbishop Christian, who, in company with Archbishop Reginald, had already returned to Italy, seem to have sufficed at once to check the progress of the— nominally anti-Pascal—Venetian Confederation, and to prevent the evils it might have occasioned. The cities were, for the moment, quiet; and Frederic would not, for the sake of chastising past misdemeanours, risk impeding his main business in Italy, to wit, installing Pascal in the Lateran, by engaging in hostilities that might prove tedious. He advanced pacifically to Lodi, where he spent the short remainder of 1166, in the administration of justice and decision of disputes, as well between town and town, as between the towns and his own officers.

The most important of the affairs brought before the Emperor at Lodi was again the contest between Genoa and Pisa for Sardinia. The war, which, in consequence of Barasone’s transfer of his vassalage to the latter, as mesne Suzerain of that island, had broken out anew, had proved unfavourable to Pisa, and she it was that now appealed to an Imperial tribunal. The Emperor listened attentively to the arguments of both parties, though the Genoese urged theirs with such reckless audacity, that all present looked for their immediate chastisement, and a sentence in favour of Pisa. But Frederic, calmly observing, “I gave King Barasone those rights only which were mine to give, without prejudice to those of any third party;” reserved the question of the conflicting claims of the two cities for more deliberate investigation, which he directed the two Archbishops of Mainz and Cologne to make. Pending the inquiry, he ordered the prisoners on both sides to be released; a command which both sides disobeyed, even whilst, by the offer of troops or ships to assist in the impending enterprise, both were contending for Imperial favour. In this contest Pisa triumphed; having offered the double of Genoa’s proposed contingent, her offer was of course accepted. And this, it is alleged, influenced the investigation, as Pisa seems to have obtained the investiture of her magistracy with the island of Sardinia, for which she is said to have paid a feudal due of about half what Barasone had promised. But surely the original agreement between the cities at the conquest of the island, if it could not give Pisa a right, in opposition to Imperial or to Papal claims, was amply sufficient as a bar to any Genoese pretensions.

In January, 1167, the Emperor quitted Lodi to accomplish his purpose of placing his own Pope in the proper seat of papal government and sovereignty. He sent the two Archbishops, Christian and Reginald, with one division of the army through Tuscany, to visit Lucca, where Pascal chiefly resided, in their way; and thence escort the pontiff either to Rome, or to such place in its vicinity as they should deem most convenient. He himself, with the main body, marched soon afterwards by Bologna and Ravenna to Ancona. That city, if no longer actually held by the Greeks, being still intimately connected with the Eastern Empire, and the very focus of Byzantine intrigue, he there halted, and laid siege to it. To this measure, which, by delaying his advance upon Rome, proved in the end incalculably prejudicial to some of his views, he was probably impeded as much by his knowledge of the negotiations then in progress between Manuel and Alexander, as by his own chivalrous spirit.

The Constantinopolitan Emperor, though brave as brave may be, bad more of the politician than of the knight in his nature. His great ambition was to recover the Sicilies for the Eastern Empire, and in Frederic, as German Emperor, he saw the chief obstacle; in the friendship of the Pope, if obtainable, the greatest possible furtherance to his attainment of that object. He had, therefore, for years assiduously encouraged and fomented with gold, every Lombard tendency to insurrection; he sought for influence in Rome, by giving a niece in marriage to a member of the then preponderant family of the Frangipani. He had latterly gone further in the overtures he made to Alexander. Not only had he solicited the crown of the Holy Roman Empire at his hands; not only had he offered him troops and money to aid his struggle against Pascal; he had actually proposed to reunite the Greek to the Latin Church. Such a reunion, such a restoration of a really Catholic Church, under the Roman successor of St. Peter, could not but be the first, the warmest wish of every Pope, its achievement the greatest possible glory of any pontificate. Alexander must have felt the temptation very strong; nevertheless, he was too clear-headed to suffer himself to be allured even by this, the most irresistibly alluring of all conceivable phantasms. He well knew that the temper of the Greek Clergy placed the reunion nearly, if not quite, beyond the power of the most despotic Emperor; and he dreaded the entanglement which such a disposal of the crown of the Western Empire, lawfully placed on Fredericks brow by his predecessor, Adrian IV, must create. But he made use of the negotiation to obtain more Greek subsidies for his Lombard allies, and thus to determine and expedite their meditated insurrection.

Thus excited and assisted, whilst incessantly stimulated by the prayers of the deeply humbled Milanese, the Lombards grew with every passing day more impatient of extraneous authority, even independently of any misgovernment; and frequently did they suffer misgovernment from arbitrary or rapacious German governors, who disregarded the commands of their habitually distant Lord.  In numbers far greater than had ever confederated with Milan,—divers of the ordinary Ghibeline towns having gradually imbibed something of their neighbours’ spirit of independence—they accordingly now re­solved really to emancipate themselves from the sovereignty of the Emperor. This resolution gave birth to the far-famed Lombard League.

Upon the 7th of April, 1167, deputies from Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua, Ferrara, the long loyal Cremona, and some towns of less note, secretly met at the monastery of San Jacopo in Pontide, situate between Milan and Bergamo, where they concluded a convention, the terms of which were pretty nearly as follows : “Inasmuch as it is better to die than to live in shame and slavery, we engage upon oath that every confederated city shall from this time forward assist every other, to which the Emperor or his Commandant, or any one in his name, shall offer fresh wrong: all without prejudice to the allegiance we have sworn to the Emperor.” The deputies further resolved that Milan should be restored to her former strength and dignity; and they fixed a certain early day upon which every confederated city should expel all Imperial officials, still without prejudice to their allegiance. This was the first germ of the Lombard League, which plays so prominent a part through the remainder of this century and part of the next. Such a reservation of allegiance, whilst projecting such decidedly insurgent measures, must to the modem reader appear either irony, or a hardly plausible fallacy, introduced for the relief of tender consciences, thus enabling them to delude themselves into the belief that they were still loyal subjects. But in the twelfth century, the relative rights and duties of sovereign and subject were so vague, so undefined, that only Jurists could be expected to form distinct ideas upon the subject. When the absolute authority of the monarch was nearly nullified by the equally absolute authority of great vassals; when those vassals, imitated by the power­ful cities, made war on each other and treaties of commerce with foreign states—an anomaly, which however, by forcing the recognition of rights in subjects, probably preserved Europe from Oriental slavery—it really is possible the Lombards might entertain some confused notion of adhering to their allegiance, whilst rejecting all control by the sovereign to whom they owned that allegiance due. To conduct and language so incompatible, according to modern ideas, with the position of subjects, may very possibly be attributed the prevalent impression of the Lombard cities having been so many independent republican states, which the Emperor, without any claim to lawful authority over them, laboured to conquer.

The League, which Greek deputies were urgently persuading Venice to join, proceeded without loss of time to the execution of its plans, beginning with the restoration of Milan. For this purpose it was essential that the dispersed Milanese nobles, who had retired to their castles when the citizens were made villagers, should be re­assembled, without awakening suspicion of design. To accomplish this, early in April, a pretended maniac, in fantastic guise, galloped through the country in all directions, everywhere drawing children and rabble about him by the sound of a pipe. The noble in those days came forth like the peasant, to see what was passing, when the pseudo-maniac whispered the appointed day in his ear. Upon this appointed day, the 27th of the same month of April, the Milanese were formally reinstalled in the city, or rather upon its site; when they and their allies set diligently to work, first to rebuild the walls and towers and clear out the ditch, then to repair or reconstruct the ruined houses, the archiepiscopal palace included. It is averred that Constantinopolitan money greatly promoted and facilitated the whole business, if it were not its original instigator. But if so, it rather enkindled than supplied the place of patriotism, which was actively displayed upon the occasion. The women proved the genuineness of their feelings by the sacrifice of their jewels, to assist in new decorating the churches, and restoring the cathedral, which had been accidentally injured in the general destruction of Milan. Tortona likewise was rebuilt and reoccupied.

Every day other cities joined the League, which thus demonstrated its power and its boldness. But the confederates were bent upon gaining Lodi to their cause; the position of that city, which commanded the supply of provisions to Milan, rendering its possession most impor­tant to both the League and the Emperor. But Lodi, mindful alike of the favours received from the Emperor and of the injuries suffered from Milan, was Ghibeline in heart and soul; the Lodesans positively refused their adhesion. Their old allies, the long equally loyal, and equally favoured Cremonese, were then commissioned to win these obstinate Imperialists to the Lombard cause; and a Cremonese deputation visiting Lodi, urged the citizens to join a confederation whose sole aim was the general good of Lombardy, its emancipation from foreign thraldom. “You!” exclaimed the Lodesans in reply, “you, who helped to rebuild our city destroyed by Milan; you, who like brothers undertook our protection against Milanese tyranny, who co-operated with us in punishing that tyranny, how are you so strangely altered that you would now urge us to commit unnatural outrages, to break our oaths, and sacrifice our benefactor to our enemies”. This second refusal brought the forces of the League upon the faithful city, whose crops were burnt, whose fields, vineyards, villages were ravaged. Still Lodi stood firm, and ere commencing a regular siege, a third embassy, composed of the nobles and principal citizens of the League cities, repaired thither. Upon their knees these embassadors repeated the arguments and entreaties of their predecessors, whilst threatening utter destruction as the penalty of refractory pertinacity. The Lodesans repeated their refusal to act in any way against their sovereign, the Emperor. The siege was thereupon formed, in numbers sufficient to establish a complete blockade. Frederic was at that moment engaged in the siege of Ancona: and whether he would not be recalled to Lombardy, and involved in quelling its revolt until he should have first installed Pascal in .Rome, or that he feared to damage the reputation of his arms, should he raise the siege of Ancona (as to which strong feelings, as will be seen, were entertained),or were unaware of Lodi’s inability to endure a long blockade, he remained in his camp, merely pressing forward his operations to be the sooner at liberty. Ere they had made any progress, Lodi was starved into a surrender. The Lodesans took the prescribed oath, still, their loyalty unshaken by the Emperor’s apparent neglect, carefully insisting upon the reservation of their allegiance. The Lombard arms were next turned against Trezzo, which had been rebuilt by the Emperor again as a safe stronghold in which to establish his treasury, and again, with that treasury, it was taken.

Whilst these things were passing in Lombardy, and the Emperor was engrossed by the siege of Ancona, the Archbishops, with Pascal in their company, were advancing slowly towards Rome, gaining adherents to their Pope on their way, gaining him some even within the walls of Rome. It had never been intended, however, that Pascal should attempt to enter the Papal capital without his Imperial protector; the two Archbishops, therefore, left him, with troops sufficient for his security, at Viterbo, whilst they led the bulk of their army to join the Emperor and assist in the siege.

The Papal capital continued meanwhile to be occupied by Alexander; but, notwithstanding his invitation thither, and his pompous reception, he had found there little comfort and less obedience. Despite his entreaties and earnest remonstrances, the Romans refused to move against Pascal at Viterbo; choosing rather to indulge their old neighbourly hatred of the Tusculans, by plundering and ravaging the territories of those old enemies, than to do battle in the cause of the Pope they acknowledged. Such was the devastation they wrought, that the Tusculans, and their Lord, Rainone, applied to the Emperor for aid and redress; which he, conceiving the relief they prayed a matter of no difficulty, directed Archbishop Reginald to afford. The prelate threw himself, with the small corps he had taken with him, into Tusculum; but was besieged there by a Roman army, 20,000 strong, and he made urgent demands for reinforcements. Frederic assembled a council of war, to which he submitted the question, whether it would be proper to raise the siege of Ancona, in order to lead the whole army to the assistance of his Chancellor. The Council decided that, upon no consideration must the Emperor disgrace his arms by raising the siege; but Archbishop Christian, indignant at such neglect of the peril of his brother-prelate, collected, upon his own responsibility, a body of volunteers, with whom he hastened to Tusculum. Upon reaching the vicinity of the besiegers, so disproportionately superior were their numbers found, that even this warlike church­man offered to treat. The Romans, confident in that numerical superiority, tauntingly replied to his overtures: “It is mighty gracious of the Emperor to send us his priests to say mass to us; but we shall sing to them in a different key. This day shall the Archbishop and his whole army be food for the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air”. Upon receiving this answer Christian unfurled his banner, began, as was his usual practice, a hymn, in which his whole army joined, and with his wonted impetuosity fell upon the enemy. Reginald, noting the movement, sallied with his men and the Tusculans to support his friends, and the boasters were terror-stricken at the sudden double onslaught. Their cavalry fled first; then the infantry; and according to the most moderate computation, in this rout rather than action, the Romans lost 2000 killed and 3000 prisoners.

Tivoli, Albano, and other hostile neighbours of Rome—in Italy neighbour and enemy might in those days be almost called convertible terms—now eagerly joined the Germans in ravaging the crops and vines of the Romans; whilst from a distance only, from Lombardy or the Sicilies, could Alexander, implicated upon this occasion against his will, hope for assistance. Both were ready to yield it. The Regent of Sicily saw that the complete subjugation of Alexander would be followed by the invasion of Apulia, in retaliation of the assistance her deceased consort had given that pontiff. She therefore sent him money with which to reward or attract partisans and troops for his protection, offering ships to bring him away, should he wish to remove from the scene of danger.

These vigorous measures of the Sicilian government convinced Frederic that his advance upon Rome must be no longer delayed. He therefore, however loath, after the sacrifices made to obviate the necessity that he deemed disgraceful, treated with Ancona; accepted, as ransom, or composition, a considerable sum of money, and took hostages for the future neutrality of the town. He then raised the siege, and marched southward so rapidly, that the Sicilian troops, fearing to be cut off, hastily retreated. Pisan vessels at the same time occupied the mouth of the Tiber; and the reunited Imperial army encamped before Rome.

But Frederic’s protection of Tusculum, by disappointing the Romans of their anticipated triumph, had changed their political inclinations. They now forgave Alexander his refusal to sanction their war upon that city, and cordially embraced his defence, co-operating with the troops in his service. Churches, monuments of classical antiquity, if the site were opportune, became fortresses; the Coliseum had long been the stronghold of the Frangipani; and a week elapsed ere the Emperor had mastered even the then strongly garrisoned and well-defended Leonine city. But no sooner was he thus in possession of St. Peter’s and the Castle of St. Angelo, than he invited Pascal to join him, duly escorted as well for safety as for honour.

The Tiber alone now separated the rival Popes, each occupying a portion of the Eternal City; and Frederic, through the Archbishops, proposed a compromise. It was, that both pontiffs should simultaneously and spontaneously renounce their claims, and the Cardinals of both parties unite in conclave for a free, and really canonical, election. With such election he pledged himself not to interfere, promising moreover, upon its satisfactory completion, to release the prisoners, and restore the booty taken before Tusculum to the Romans. It seems hard, that the prince who proposed this compromise should be represented as the pertinacious adherent of anti-popes as such, and instigator of their election. The contemporaneous Romans appreciated him differently. The proposal charmed the would-be masters of the world, who were already tired of fighting for a choice between Popes; and the offensive as successful protection of Tusculum being now partly expiated, partly forgotten amidst the annoyances that a siege brought in its train, they w ere again seized with their frequent longing for a resident emperor. Vehemently they urged upon Alexander the acceptance of the terms, as a sacrifice which it was incumbent upon the pastor to make, for the preservation of his flock. But Alexander, who had no intention of closing the schism at his own expense, would listen to no compromise; and his Cardinals, to whom the proposal had been addressed, replied that God alone could judge a Pope, who was superior to all human tribunals. The answer displeased the Romans; as, indeed, it very reasonably might—the question being not of judging a pope, but whether an individual were pope or no. They repeated their urgent entreaties that he would accept the offer; and when they found their wishes slighted, began to desert in alarming numbers. The nobles, in their urban fortresses, still held out; but the people, now favouring the Emperor, evidently inclined to acknowledge Pascal. Alexander perceiving the impossibility of longer maintaining himself in Rome, secretly fled with his Cardinals, taking refuge in Benevento.

The Romans immediately threw open their gates, and took the oath of allegiance to the Emperor, submitting their republican institutions to his pleasure; when he at once ratified all the rights and privileges of the municipality and people. Pascal, upon his admission into his capital, devoted his attention to, and employed himself in, purifying the altars, profaned by an anti-pope; and then, upon the 1st of August, solemnly crowned Frederic and Beatrice. Frederic, having been previously crowned by an undisputed Pope, Adrian IV, his going through the ceremony a second time upon the occasion of his Empress’s coronation, may be conjectured to have been a compliment to Pascal, designed to mark him to the Romans as Adrian’s proper successor. It is to be observed however that ceremonies, emblems, ensigns of dignity, both visible and tangible, were to the taste of the age; sovereigns wore their crowns upon all state occasions, at least, and were not unwilling to create the occasion; so that it may have been no more than a conjugal attention to Beatrice. After the ceremony, Frederic and Pascal swore fidelity to each other, and swore further never to seek a dispensation from this oath.

Frederic now seemed really in a position to reduce the Lombards to obedience, and compel the Normans to acknowledge his suzerainty; thus more than restoring the complete empire of the Othos, if not quite of Charlemagne. But the siege of Ancona had hindered him from reaching Rome during the cooler season; and the usual obstacle, the deleterious effect of an Italian summer upon German constitutions, again blighted his prospects. The usual epidemic was now increased by the malaria of the Roman Campagna, and further envenomed by superstitious fears. A church had been unfortunately burnt during the siege, when the flames melted some metal images of the Saviour and the Apostles; and the troops saw the judgment of Heaven upon this sacrilege, in the marsh fever that was hurrying them to the grave. Common men and camp­followers were the first swept away by this pestilence, but not they alone were its victims. Besides 2000 gentlemen, many earls, prelates, and even princes were of the number; the most distinguished being the Emperor’s highly valued Chancellor, the Archbishop of Cologne, and his two cousins, the Duke of Swabia and the younger Duke Welf. An historian may be permitted to add the name of Acerbo Morena, the son of the Otto Morena, and continuator of his father’s chronicle.

Frederic, in the midst of his triumphs, actual and anticipated, yielded to this irresistible necessity, and leaving Archbishop Christian with a small body of troops at Rome to protect Pascal, led back the remains of his erst formidable host to Pavia. He continued to lose men by the way, and carefully avoided all hostile encounters. At Pavia he halted j and confident that in the cooler climate of northern Italy his troops would recover their health, he prepared for chastising the Lombard League. To this end he convoked a Diet there, naturally summoning those only upon whose loyalty he could rely. The Marquesses of Montferrat and Malaspina—the last had with his men escorted the pestilence-stricken army from Rome—Earl Biandrate, the Signori or Lords of Belforte, Leprio and Martesano, with the Magistrates of Pavia, Novara, Vercelli and Como, appear to have constituted the assembly, in, whose presence, and with whose concurrence, the Emperor threw

down the gauntlet to the League. Upon the 21st of Sep­tember he denounced the ban of the Empire against all the confederated cities, except Lodi and Cremona, which, as having joined it under compulsion, were exempted. He further asserted the Imperial sovereignty, by appointing governors, podestas, &c., to the insurgent cities.

Those cities, undaunted by Imperial wrath, renewed their engagement, and made some progress in the still vague organization of their confederacy. Upon the 1st of December, Milan, Venice, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Brescia, Bergamo, Parma, Piacenza, Mantua, Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, and even the favoured Lodi and Cre­mona—whether still coerced or having changed their politics—by their deputies, signed a document, pledging them to the following points. The first, never to pay money or do service to the Emperor, beyond what had been customary between the death of Henry  and the accession of Frederic (that is to say, during the virtual abeyance of Imperial authority in Italy). The second, to expel all Imperialists and confiscate their property. The third, not to make peace or war separately, but to support each other against all foes (no reservation of allegiance now); and to refer all disputes amongst themselves to arbitration; such arbitration, and the general government of the League, being committed to a congress of Rectors, to be chosen from the Consuls, Podestas, or other Magistrates of the confederated towns. The fourth and last point, was to oblige all inhabitants between the ages of sixteen and sixty to swear to this League.

In Frederic Barbarossa, the spirit of chivalry was singularly, for that age, blended with the statesmanship of the sovereign; but he yielded, upon the present occasion, too eagerly to the impulses of the former, when, with an army thus weakened, he rashly defied the Lombard League. The reinforcements brought him by the few faithful Lombards could in no degree supply the place of the Germans lost by death, by sickness, by returning home with or without leave, and by retiring into monasteries to expiate the sacrilege—either of accidentally burning the church and its contents, or of having warred, perchance, against the true Pope—which had brought down disease and death upon their devoted heads. With these reinforcements the Emperor indeed ravaged the territories of Milan and Piacenza, in retaliation of the injuries inflicted upon Lodi; but he found the Lombards too strong to allow of his undertaking any important operation. He returned to Pavia, where he was even menaced with a siege, and resolved again to seek support in Germany. He left Archbishop Christian, with the major part of the small residue of his army, to re-occupy Rome and her territory when the season should render a southward move feasible.

But the Lombards, well aware of the object for which he then desired to visit Germany, endeavoured to detain him in Italy, where, with his reduced numbers, they hoped to destroy him. With this view they guarded the Alpine passes: that by Susa over Mount Cenis alone remaining open, because beyond their reach. The Earls of Maurienne, in Savoy, who had acquired the Marquesate of Susa by marriage with the heiress, but not the title apparently, had no connexion with the League. Humbert, the then Earl, who seems to have first substituted Savoy to Maurienne in his designation, as indicative of a more extensive principality, bargained with the Marquess of Montferrat, to keep this road open to his sovereign, upon receiving a sum of money.

Frederic, with forces reduced indeed, quitted Pavia, and marched with all convenient speed for Susa, a large Lombard army threatening to intercept him. As a measure of prevention that should deter hostility, he ordered the execu­tion of two or three of the hostages given by Milan and by divers revolted cities, prior to their present insurrection, to answer for their fidelity; and announced that in case of an attack by the troops of those cities, the lives of all the rest would be the forfeit. The feelings of the modern world naturally recoil from this sacrifice of unoffending men: but again it is to be remembered that Frederic Barbarossa was a son of the twelfth century, when human life was of little account; and that in truth the very meaning of giving hostages for the observance of an engagement, is that their lives are forfeited by a breach of engagement on the part of those for whose faith they are responsible. Hence even whilst we shudder at the barbarity of an execution, which in the nineteenth century makes the blood run cold, the clemency that had spared the forfeited lives of the whole body of hostages, after the rebellion of those for whose loyalty they were in pawn, is entitled to admiration. And indeed one of the startling facts of mediaeval history, is the little regard habitually paid by givers of hostages to the danger to which their revolt, or other violation of compact, exposed the persons so given. Upon the present occasion, however, this was not the case. The menace, and the sanguinary proof that it was serious, answered the intended purpose. The Lombard army abandoned its threatening posture, and in March, 1168, Frederic, with little more than an escort, reached Susa.

But though in the city of a prince professing loyalty, the dangers of the Emperor were by no means over. Just before his arrival there, some treachery was detected in Zilio di Prando, one of the Brescian hostages. Frederic sentenced him to death, and despatched the rest of these unlucky guarantees for their recklessly forsworn countrymen, to Biandrate, a strong town, where it was thought they might be securely held in the custody of a sufficient German garrison. The Susans, who as Piedmontese sympathised more with their Cisalpine countrymen than with their Savoyard Lord, took fire at Zilio’s doom, the rather, perhaps, as occurring upon their domain. They declared that if they had suffered their Earl to promise the Emperor a free passage with his attendants, they would never permit the Lombard hostages to be either dragged out of Italy or detained prisoners in it, and insisted upon their immediate liberation. Frederic very naturally refused to part with the only security—such as it was—he had for his own safety, at least until he should be on the northern side of the Alps; nor indeed was there any good reason beyond inability to keep them, for their being even then released. But the angry Susans upon this refusal conspired to murder him, or, if that be doubtful, at least to take him prisoner, in the ensuing night. The plot was betrayed to Frederic by his landlord, and as his escort was now too weak to encounter the citizens even of a single town, he left Susa secretly, attended, the better to avoid observation, by only five persons, and began the ascent of the mountain at dusk. Those of his suite who remained behind kept up the appearance of the Imperial service, to avert the discovery of his departure till he should be beyond the reach of Italian rebels; for which purpose Hermann von Siebeneichen, a genuine Knight, laid himself down in the Emperor’s bed to await his intended murderers. The conspirators upon discovering the substitution appear to have been touched by this self-sacrificing loyalty, and spared Hermannis life. But ten others of the Germans left at Susa they seized, and delivered over to the widow of Zilio di Prando, to be dealt with at her pleasure. What that pleasure was does not appear.

With his five companions only, the erst triumphant Emperor re-entered Germany, a fugitive. The garrison he had placed in Biandrate was immediately besieged there with overwhelming numbers, and its resistance overpowered. The hostages, whose lives, now indisputably forfeited, the garrison, either in obedience to the Emperor, or from humanity, or as a measure of prudence, had spared, were of course set at liberty; but the conquerors, far from being softened by the recovery of their friends unharmed, massacred the whole garrison. The fierce wrath of the Lombards thus slaked, the remainder of the Germans who had attended the Emperor to the neighbourhood of Susa, were permitted to take refuge in Ghibeline cities, and in the service of Ghibeline nobles.

The exultation of the Lombards at this final triumph, for which they forgot that they were mainly indebted to the Italian climate and the Roman malaria knew no bounds. All Imperial officers were forthwith expelled, the loyal struggles of Lodi finally crushed, the domains of Biandrate conquered, and the Earl himself, as also Marquess Malaspina, constrained to join the League. The Marquess of Montferrat and the city of Pavia, alone in Lombardy, remained loyal. Milan was now completely fortified, the League further organized, and every pretence of continued allegiance almost openly discarded; every appeal to any Imperial tribunal, upon whatsoever plea, being prohibited. As though their arms alone had vanquished the whole power of the German Emperor, the Lombards now looked down upon the Constantinopolitan Emperor as an insignificant ally; or perhaps suspected his purpose of succeeding to the sovereignty they had wrested from Frederic. Any gratitude, they might be supposed to owe him for various most seasonable succours, was wholly superseded by republican pride and self-confidence. The Milanese insulted his bust, and the Congress of the League forbade its members to treat with him without especial permission.

But, if the Emperor had quitted the southern portion of his Empire unwillingly, he had not sought the northern before it required his presence. He appeared there indeed shorn of the glories he had hoped to bring home, and that in great measure through his own fault; first, by so losing time in the siege of Ancona, as to delay his visit to Rome until the sickly season; and secondly, by menacing the Lombard League when he was not in a condition to strike. But he showed himself, nevertheless, on his arrival, every inch a King, resolute as ever to enforce obedience to the laws, abstinence from private warfare included. Such sovereign interposition was especially needed in the north of Germany, where civil war was even then raging; the transgressor of the realm’s peace being his favoured kinsman, the potent Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. The Lion represented himself, however, as the aggrieved party; and with respect to the actual breaking out of hostilities, he in some measure was so; inasmuch as the princes, whom he had separately wronged, had, in order to recover their losses, united to attack him, whilst, as they hoped, not fully prepared for war with such a coalition.

This ambitious prince, indisputably the original aggressor,—who, at the Emperor’s last departure for Italy, had recently celebrated his marriage with Princess Matilda of England—had not accumulated the mass of domains that excited the jealousy of his compeers, and might reasonably have caused some apprehension to the Emperor, without provoking proportionate enmity in the jealous. Whilst Frederic was present in Germany, this enmity had been sullenly smothered; but awaited only his being called away, to explode. Accordingly, no sooner was their sovereign beyond the Alps, immersed in Italian politics, in the struggle against Italian rebellion, than the Margraves of Brandenburg and Misnia, the Landgrave of Thuringia, the Archbishop of Magdeburg, with other princes and prelates of less account,—but all of whom had suffered from the violence, or the manoeuvres of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria—burst into his dominions. Simultaneously with their invasion, broke out an insurrection to which Waldemar, incensed at Henry’s desertion of him the preceding year, had stimulated Pribislaf; to whose support the Danes hastened on one side as did the Pomeranians on the other. All seemed to prosper with the allies. The Landgrave surprised and took Haldensleben; the Earl of Oldenburg occupied Bremen for the Archbishop, who had forfeited it, and was joyfully welcomed; the citizens having found the Lion a far more oppressive and more rapacious master than their banished ecclesiastical prince.

Both as a warrior and as a politician, the Duke met his enemies with all the boldness with which he had provoked them, and fortune still favoured him. The Slavonian insurrection, as fomented and aided by Denmark, he deemed the most fraught with peril; and with it therefore he began, dealing with it in the latter character. A quarrel with Norway dividing Waldemar’s attention, prevented his supporting Pribislaff as efficiently as he had promised; and Henry, seizing the opportunity, appeased, by all sorts of concessions, the wrath of his royal neighbour, and induced him to conclude a new treaty of peace. He next bought off the Pomeranian princes; and having thus stripped Pribislaff of all assistance, he, by the generous offer of a pardon, with the renewed and somewhat en­larged grant of part of his father’s dominions in fief, converted a dangerous insurgent into a grateful vassal. Whether Pribislaff received baptism seems doubtful; but Christian or Heathen, he never again broke his oath of fealty. The insurrection thus suppressed, Henry, at the head of his collected forces, attacked the enemies who from the eastern side had invaded his duchy, and drove them before him as far back as Magdeburg. Then leaving them upon the territory of the Archbishop, he turned westward, and presently scared the Earl of Oldenburg from Bremen. Entering the evacuated city, he, without the indispensable legal reference to Diet or Emperor, by his sole authority, laid it under the ban of the Empire, and exercised such severities, that the citizens were glad to redeem themselves from his vengeance by a fine of 1000 marks of silver. Finally, asserting that Archbishop Hartwig, even in his retirement at Hamburg, was preparing to recover the temporalities of his see by arms, and that the Bishop of Lubeck had refused to do him homage for those belonging to his, he successively attacked these prelates, destroyed the few fortresses still remaining to the Archbishop, compelled him to fly to Magdeburg for shelter, and took possession of the diocese of Lubeck. The ravages committed by both parties during this campaign are described as unusually horrible.

This was the state in which Frederic found northern Germany, when, in the spring of 1168, escaping from assassination at Susa, he returned in a condition so seemingly depressed, that those most conscious of having broken his laws, perhaps flattered themselves he would shrink from the task of enforcing them. But his spirit, as before intimated, was undepressed. He at once summoned all parties before a Diet to be held at Frankfurt. He there impressively remonstrated with them, one and all, upon the contempt of his exhortations to preserve the peace of the Empire, shown in their breach of his laws prohibiting private wars. He reproached them with having withheld, for use in their feuds and hostilities, the troops that should have reinforced his army, when weak­ened by sickness; and thus exposed the Head of the Empire to disgrace, from his inability duly to chastise the Italian rebels. These reproaches he more especially addressed to the allies, as having been, if not the original aggressors, yet the first to begin hostilities; and upon his steadily asserted principle that an illegal attempt at self­redress forfeited the right to legal redress, he refused to listen to the complaints and statements by which the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria’s enemies would fain have palliated, if not justified their conduct. Finally, he commanded the restitution of all conquests on both sides, and the re-establishment of the status quo ante bellum.

To this assertion of sovereign authority all bowed. To Henry the sentence brought rather more gain than loss: but, even had the latter preponderated, he might have rejoiced to be so cheaply relieved both from a formidable league of aggrieved rivals, and from any, possibly, apprehended consequences of his mischief-working defalcation in Lombardy. The confederated princes, fearing that resistance on their part would impel the Emperor more decidedly to support the Duke, judged it best to wait for a more favourable opportunity of seeking that legal redress, now refused as the penalty of their own conduct. All submitted, except the Earl of Dasemberg; and him, thus left single-handed in the struggle, the Lion promptly obliged to follow their example. Tranquillity was thus restored throughout the greater part of Germany.

That is to say, intestine tranquillity, for to live really at peace with all his neighbours seems to have been to Henry the Lion an actual impossibility. He now engaged in war as the ally of the King of Denmark: who, having settled his quarrel with Norway, addressed himself to completing the subjugation of Rügen; which various accidents, his desertion by the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria being one, had hitherto interrupted. The Duke now joined Waldemar in extirpating Slavonian idolatry from its last and chiefest stronghold, on the remotest point of this singularly shaped island. Professedly, he did so as amends for his desertion of him, amidst their last war against the Slavonians; but he seems to have been actuated by the wish to share the spoils; since, the Pomeranian princes lending their aid, in expectation of .obtaining the island in vassalage of the Danish crown, the success of the enterprise was nearly certain. Jointly the conquest was completed; but Waldemar was as unscrupulously rapacious as Henry; when he no longer needed assistance he both disappointed his Pomeranian allies of their recompense, and arrogantly refused the Duke any participation in the booty, lands, contributions, or ecclesiastical patron­age. Henry thereupon invited his Slavonian vassals to resume the piratical incursions of their Heathen forefathers upon Denmark. Delightedly they complied; spreading such desolation through Waldemar s dominions, that, upon one market day at Mecklenburg, seven hundred Danes were sold as slaves. The annoyance brought Waldemar to terms. He agreed to divide the Rugen hostages, tolls, and dues with Henry: and the affianced bride of his son Canute having died in infancy, he ac­cepted for him, in her stead, the Duke’s eldest daughter, the widowed Duchess of Swabia. Henry, at the same time, gave an illegitimate daughter in marriage to a son of Pribislaff.

And now, at length, the whole Slavonian district, since forming the duchies of Mecklenburg, was incorporated with the duchy of Saxony, to which some of the Pomeranians appear to have been tributary. Piracy was strictly prohibited; the fisheries, trade, and agriculture were actively encouraged. Pribislaff built towns; Henry castles, cloisters, and churches, whilst founding bishoprics; and, in the last three, placed German clergy to convert those who were still idolaters, to instruct and confirm in Christianity those already converted. He granted uncultivated districts at fixed rents, with the privilege of electing their own magistrates to Hollanders, Flemings, and Frieselanders; and the colonization of Slavonian lands with Germans, which had been so long in progress, was completed. The provinces flourished wonderfully.

But, if Henry the Lion were thus successful in the north, in the south his injudicious economy was preparing a grievous disappointment for him. Welf Duke of Spoleto, it will be recollected, early appeared in the unamiable character of an uncle, endeavouring to usurp Bavaria, the patrimony of his infant orphan nephew, who probably never forgot the attempt; and though subsequently Welf appears for some considerable time to have conducted himself in an unobjectionable manner, the original taint, intense selfishness, remained. When his only son died at Rome, he sought oblivion of his sorrows in excitement and sensuality. He abandoned all political concerns, separated himself from his wife, the equally bereaved mother of Duke Welf,—to whose physical efforts some authors have, it will be remembered, asserted that he owed his safety at the fall of Weinsberg—filled his Court with dependent boon companions and courtesans, and lavished such extravagant sums upon these associate upon dress, banquets, hunting parties, entertainments, and orgies of all descriptions, that his ample means were soon exhausted, and he found himself deeply involved in debt. He applied for assistance to him, who, since his only child’s death, was his natural heir, his brother’s son, the powerful Duke of Saxony and Bavaria; coupling his request with a promise of bequeathing him his large share of the Welf patrimony. Henry closed with the proposal, but delayed upon various pretexts to perform his part of the contract; trusting, perhaps, that the death of his now hard-living old uncle would prevent its necessity. The Duke of Spoleto, harassed and irritated by repeated disappointment, now applied to his sister’s son, the Emperor, to whom he owed his Italian possessions, and against whom, just before his son’s death, he is believed to have caballed with Alexander III. This application was immediately successful; and either through kindness or policy he was relieved from his embarrassments. The effect was every way happy. The aged Duke was, perhaps, the more touched by the liberal act, from the really austere morality of his Imperial nephew, and his mind apparently recovered its tone. Sickening of the licentious pleasures in which he had been wallowing, he dismissed his profligate associates, invited back his Duchess Uta, distributed alms, endowed churches and cloisters; and, in natural gratitude for many benefits, named Frederic Barbarossa his universal heir. The tenor of the Duke of Spoleto’s will was, it should seem, no secret; and the example was followed by his brother-in-law, Rudolph Earl of Pfullendorf; who, having no children by his wife, a sister of Jutta Duchess of Swabia, named Jutta’s son, the Emperor Frederic, his heir. The anger of Henry the Lion, at his uncle Welf’s thus disposing of possessions that he had deemed his future property, would not be lessened by the consciousness that he had lost them through his own fault. His resentment is said to have been attested by a prohibition ever to give the, till then favourite, family name of Welf to any of his descendants; and it is at least certain that none of them have ever borne it.

These bequests following his inheritance of the duchy of Swabia and the Franconian family fiefs from his deceased childless cousin, together with the lapse to the crown of various scattered fiefs for want of male heirs, and the occurrence of some opportunities to purchase or exchange, had gradually gathered in Frederic’s hands, prospectively at least, a mass of domains, that balanced those of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and enabled the Emperor to ensure an adequate provision to his five sons, against they should be of man’s estate. At the Whitsuntide Diet, held at Bamberg, A.D. 1169, the eldest, Henry, still a child, was, upon the proposal of the Archbishop of Mainz, then in Germany, elected King of the Romans; and, on the 15th of August, crowned at Aachen by Philip von Heinsberg, who had succeeded Reginald von Dassels as Archbishop of Cologne. To the second son, Frederic, was assigned the Duchy of Swabia, with the Welf fiefs of the Duke of Spoleto and the heritage of the Earl of Pfullendorf; to the third, Conrad, the family fiefs in Swabia and Franconia, whether with or without the title of Duke of Franconia, seems doubtful, in this prospective allotment amongst children, for the most part still in the nursery; to the fourth, Otho, his mother’s county of Burgundy, to which was attached the rectorate or Lieutenancy of the Arelat (that of Upper Burgundy remaining in the Dukedom of Zäringen), and, according to some writers, a pro­mise of the kingdom of either the Arelat or Burgundy. To the fifth son, Philip, then just born, a few lapsed fief were secured, as a temporary provision; but the Emperor seems to have had an idea of educating this little prince for the Church, with the view of hereafter seating him in St. Peter’s Chair.

During the seven years that Frederic now passed in Germany, he resided much in Swabia; which he esteemed convenient, as in some measure a central position, and to which he was attached as his hereditary duchy. It flourished under his fostering care, and the city of Ulm, especially, attained to the level of long prosperous rivals. But his paternal solicitude was not limited to his family possessions. The Empire was indebted to it for many improvements, for the remedy of many crying evils. He destroyed numerous strongholds of robber-knights, and prevailed upon some of the princes so far to follow his example in repressing outrages obstructive of civilization and prosperity, as to impose heavy fines upon such of their knights as should plunder travellers. At the same time he encouraged and patronized to the uttermost the Reichsritterschaft or immediate Chivalry of the Empire: the nobly born but poor, who were ready to serve in any war, under any prince, in fact to live by their swords, as much as did the robber-knights, only lawfully instead of unlawfully; and who offered both an imperfect substitute for a standing army and the material out of which one was to be formed, or at least officered.

Another great evil of the epoch was the oppression of Cloisters by their noble Stewards. The remedy which Frederic proposed for this grievance was to make all monastic establishments immediate vassals of the Empire; attaching a general Stewardship to the Crown, to be exercised by Deputy-Stewards, responsible for their conduct to the Emperor. This was a course, which many cloisters for both sexes had petitioned him to adopt in their respective cases. The scheme was, however, found impracticable as a whole, being opposed by what in modern phraseology would be termed vested rights; viz., rights reserved to themselves and their families, by Princes and Nobles, when founding or endowing such establishments. He was therefore obliged to rest content with making the change for individual religious houses, wherever it appeared to be feasible. In many parts of Germany, he renounced by charter a highly valued but often most oppressively used prerogative of the crown, to wit, the right of disposing of vassals’ daughters and widows in marriage. And to divers cities he granted divers chartered rights, especially to Worms, which he pretty nearly emancipated from the authority of its Bishop.

It was about this period that the wealthy freemen who neither held nor granted fiefs, anglice freeholders or franklins,—still, notwithstanding the progressive changes, an important body—began to adopt the names of their castles or mansions as family surnames; and henceforth the task of the genealogist is easy. The nobility had earlier taken this means of distinguishing races; or it should, perhaps, be said the higher nobility had thus set the example, for Pfister calls these freeholders a middle order of nobility, in fact constituting the German Baronage—the German form of the title Baron being Freiherr, and Freifrau, literally free sir and free dame or woman. The pride which these franklins still took in their freedom,—the offspring of the early German horror of vassalage—though much declined from what it was when, in the tenth century, his son’s acceptance of an Imperial fief drove the haughty Etico into a monastery—is happily illustrated by a trifling anecdote of Frederic’s reign; which will therefore, whether or not belonging precisely to these seven years, here find an appropriate place. It offers a whimsical contrast to the complicated scheme of feudalism, which allowed not only the great Duke of Saxony and Bavaria to be the vassal of bishops within his own duchies, but even the mighty Emperor himself to hold lands as Trueisess, or Sewer, to the Bishop of Bamberg.

As Frederic was one day riding towards the Swiss city of Constance, a man, sitting at his own gate by the roadside, doggedly refused to rise, make obeisance, or show any of the usual tokens of respect, as the Emperor passed. He was sharply rebuked by the Imperial attendants, and brought before the Emperor to answer for his irreverence. Boldly he said, “I pay thee not the honours required, because from me they are not due. I owe the Emperor military service, but nought further; for I, the Herr von (Lord of) Keukingen, am no one’s man (i. e. vassal), not even the Emperor’s.” Frederic praised his spirit of independence, wished he had many such to serve him in the field, and added, “ That you may serve me there the more effectively, accept a fief from me.” The Lord of Keukingen was not quite as sturdy as old Etico, and accepted.

During these seven years, Frederic maintained internal peace and order unbroken; everywhere he enforced submission to the Imperial authority, and compelled the ever-resisting Poles, and Bohemian Czechs, to acknowledge, and the latter to obey, his sovereignty. But still, even here the schism was his bane. Many individuals, if not a large body of the German clergy, were convinced that, whatever Alexander’s election might have been, Pascal's was certainly illegal; and Frederic felt bound to assert the lawful authority of the Pope he acknowledged. Several Cistertian Abbots were therefore deprived of their monasteries, and the Bishop of Passau was deposed, as partisans of Alexander. The Emperor’s uncle, Conrad Archbishop of Salzburg, unshaken in his conviction by the forfeiture and spoliation he had suffered, died a faithful adherent of Alexander’s, in the abbey of Admont, to which he had retired. Thereupon the Chapter, Clergy, and Vassals of Salzburg, imbued with their lost pastor’s opinions and spirit, hastily united to elect as his successor, his nephew, Prince Adalbert of Bohemia. To Frederic the choice was agreeable, and he invited his youthful ecclesiastical relation to Bamberg, where he was then holding a Diet, to receive investiture of his temporalities. Adalbert obeyed the friendly summons; but he, as his electors probably well knew, entertained the same opinions as bis deceased uncle concerning the schism. He had, immediately upon his election, applied to Alexander for consecration; had received it, and appeared at Bamberg wearing the pall sent him by the Emperor’s enemy. Frederic had no choice but to refuse investiture to the prelate elect, consecrated by a Pope whom he did not recognize as such. He refused even to receive Adalbert, although he came accompanied by his royal father, the faithful and valuable friend of Frederic, to whom he owed his royal dignity. Subsequently the princely archbishop either changed his opinion upon the schism question, or thought proper to submit to Imperial authority. He renounced his spiritual allegiance to Alexander, acknowledged his rival, and was invested with the temporalities of his archbishopric.