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.