MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK III.

HENRY VI—PHILIP—OTHO IV.

CHAPTER IV.

HENRY VI. 1194—1197

Death of Tancred—Henry’s acquisition of Sicily—Plots— Henry’s excessive severity—Affairs of Germany—Progress in great schemes—Affairs of the Eastern Empire—Death of Saladin—Affairs of Sicily and Apulia—Henry’s tyranny— Death

Whilst Henry was thus deliberately preparing to renew the war, Tancred remained master of Sicily and Apulia, with the sole exception of the fortresses of Sora and Rocca d’Arce; his tranquillity undisturbed save by occasional forays of the Imperialist governors of those places, and occasional incursions of their Tuscan colleagues; all cecked, with little difficulty. But anxiously and dili­gently did he still, perforce, court the protection of the Roman See; whence probably his release of the captive Empress, and undoubtedly his restoration of divers possessions wrested from that See. But Tancred’s career, if prosperous, was brief. At the close of the year 1193, or in the very beginning of the next, his eldest son and colleague, Roger, died, leaving no child by his Greek wife, Irene. Tancred immediately caused his second son, William, to be crowned as his colleague and heir; but William, as yet a mere child, could in no degree supply the place of his active and popular elder brother. Tancred himself was almost immediately afterwards taken ill, and died upon the 20th of February, 1194. William III, being already crowned, succeeded as a matter of course, and the widow ed Queen Sibylla assumed the government in the name of her minor son.

The death of the usurper, in the vigour of manhood, coinciding, happily for Henry, with both his reconciliation to the Welfs and his supply of English money, he found himself in a condition to take advantage of the favourable opportunity. In the month of June of this same year, 1194, again accompanied by the Empress, and at the head of a powerful army, he crossed the Alps. He renewed the former agreements with Genoa, and with Pisa, for the services of their fleets, and again the old doubts and disputes, as to the terms, are rife. Yet upon this occasion the diploma, according to Muratori, exists; that grants, or rather promises to grant to Genoa in fief, half of Palermo, Messina, Naples, and Salerno, with the whole of Gaeta, Trapani, and Mazara. Of Gaeta, at least, the course of events seems to prove that the grant was to Genoa and Pisa conjointly, and to the share of the latter the mesne suzerainty of Corsica was added. Grants lavish enough assuredly ; though all, it will be observed, as fiefs in vassalage only; and even so by no means coming up to the Guelph assertions. When, however, the apparent amount of these grants, and the character of the granter, are considered, it were difficult not to suspect that the Emperor, in making such profusely liberal promises, trusted much to the usual rivalry and consequent hostility between these powerful, though small, commercial states, for enabling him to elude the fulfilment. The cities were now, however, upon unwontedly good terms; Clement III having, in 1188, divided Sardinia betwixt them, when the son of Barasone, who fell back to the old family title of Judge of Arborea in lieu of the new one of King, was assigned as a vassal to Genoa.

These arrangements completed, the Emperor advanced to the frontier of the Duchy of Apulia, and, in August, crossed it unopposed, apparently needing the aid of neither fleet nor army to occupy this portion, at least, of the Kingdom he claimed. The Apulian nobles hastened to do him homage, as to their rightful sovereign; the cities, Naples included, threw open their gates, all averring that reluctantly, and only under compulsion, had the usurper been acknowledged. Salerno alone, despairing of pardon for the treasonable seizure and surrender of their Queen to her rival, attempted resistance. Upon the 27th of September, this offending city was taken by storm, sacked, and then burnt; the male inhabitants being in part put to the sword, the rest exiled or thrown into prison. From Salerno Henry proceeded into Calabria, which submitted like the northern provinces of the realm.

But whether the Emperor did or did not want the succours for which he had bargained, the Genoese and Pisans had been active in performing their part, and promoting, at least, their own interests. The Genoese appear to have again superseded their many Consuls by a Podestà, Oberto di Olivena, a Pavian, solely for the conduct of this expedition, so anxious were they for its success. He exerted himself as expected; and, in the month of August, the combined republican fleets had taken Gaeta. This being one of the places granted them, they immediately obliged the bishop, magistrates, and people, to swear fealty to them. And even here, if the Emperor really had trusted to the rivalry of Pisa and Genoa for rendering extravagant promises nugatory, it became evident that his hopes were not likely to be disappointed; for upon this, their first acquisition, the apportioning of their respective shares produced violent dissension. For the moment, indeed, the quarrel was sufficiently made up, or rather, perhaps postponed to allow of their proceeding conjointly to the conquest of their other fiefs.

But on their making Sicily, discord finally superseded this temporary harmony. Early in September, before the Emperor was yet master of Salerno, the combined fleets entered the harbour of Messina, and landed the troops they had on board; which was scarcely accomplished ere hostilities again broke out between them. They were carried on as well at sea as on shore; when the Genoese gained the victory upon the liquid, the Pisans upon the solid, field of battle. The Emperor was yet far distant, but fortunately an Imperial general had accompanied the auxiliary armament. This was Markwald von Anweiler, who, upon the death of the Duke of Swabia, had returned to Germany, and, retaining his old office in the imperial household, stood high in the confidence of Henry VI. Markwald, who appears to have from the first joined the allied fleets of the rival cities, was much alarmed at this premature explosion of enmity between the auxiliaries of his Imperial master, whilst the object for which their assistance had been sought was still unattained; Sicily being apparently quite as much disposed to favour the pretensions of William III and Sibylla, as Apulia to acknowledge Henry and Constance. He therefore interposed his mediation betwixt the angry rivals, and partly by persuasion, partly by authority, prevailed upon both antagonists to bind themselves by oath to keep the peace for the future, and reciprocally restore the booty taken in the recent engagements. The Genoese honestly performed this last article of the convention, but the Pisans are accused of having delivered up as the whole of their booty, a shield, a pitch kettle, six instruments for breaking flax, and a basket containing a little cinnamon and one root of galangal. This affront, added to the unjust detention of property, produced a new affray. The Pisans not only ill used some Genoese, but seized a Genoese ship upon her arrival from Alexandria ; and as they were conceived to rank, as usual, highest in the Imperial favour, the Genoese, through fear of Henry’s displeasure, forbore to retaliate, though their Podesta, Oberto di Olivano, is reported to have died of grief and mortification. The Pisans prepared to disturb his obsequies with insult, but were prevented by Markwald from thus offending against common decency and the feelings of mankind.

But either this slight restraint upon the indulgence of their enmity and insolence outweighed, in Pisan estimation, all they owed to, and all they hoped from, Imperial favour, or else their leaders had accepted, as they are charged with having done, bribes from Queen Sibylla. For, declaring themselves illtreated, they now refused to quit the harbour of Messina, or take any further part in the contest. The Genoese thereupon the more eagerly fulfilled their engagements to the Emperor. They joined Marshall von Calden, Calaten or Kalanthen—thus variously written is the name of an old Bavarian family, ancestral to the House of Pappenheim, so distinguished in later wars—who was marching to encounter Sibylla’s army, shared in the victory he gained, as in the subsequent taking of Catania and Syracuse, and were partners in the atrocities perpetrated, as usual, in the captured towns.

By this time the Emperor, master of the continental provinces, had crossed over with his army to Messina; and he endeavoured to conciliate the insular portion of the kingdom, by at once granting Messina a charter, rich in civic rights and privileges. At Messina the new Genoese leader, Ottone di Carreta—whom upon the Podestà’s death, the sailors and soldiers of the armament appear to have elected as his successor—returning victorious from his short campaign with Calden, presented himself to Henry, and demanded the promised fiefs, in return for the services of the republic’s fleet and army. Cautiously evasive was the answer: “You have fought gallantly, as is your wont, and have shown yourselves worthy of your forefathers. But Palermo still obeys the usurper. The capital must be mine, ere the guerdon of services be claimed.”

The delay thus gained did not prove long, the Palermitans, like the other Sicilians, discovering as little inclination to support William and bis mother against the successful Emperor, as they had previously, to oppose Tancred’s usurpation for the sake of the absent heiress. The grand opponent of the German succession, the Chancellor Matteo, was dead; and the next in importance among Tancred’s partisans, the Archbishops of Palermo and Salerno—this last being Matteo’s son—found it impossible to prevail upon the Palermitans to defend the boy-king against the rightful heir and the half-insurgent island. Under such circumstances Sibylla, with her children and chief partisans, fled from the capital, to take shelter in the strong fortress of Calatabellota; and the Palermitans, who, it may be remembered, had previously incurred suspicion of a preference for the legitimate heir, invited the Emperor and Empress, as King and Queen of Sicily, to take possession of their Sicilian capital.

Upon the 30th of November, 1194, the streets were decorated with tapestry, silks, and other costly hangings; the air was redolent of incense. The whole population, apparelled in festal attire, and marshalled according to their respective ranks and ages, went forth in procession to meet their new sovereign. Encircled by princes and nobles, at the head of his army in military array, the Emperor advanced. He came alone; the Siculo-Norman Queen, the Empress Constance, was not present to participate in the triumph of her cause and animate the loyalty of her hereditary subjects; but her very absence was matter of additional rejoicing. After years of disappointment, she was expecting to give birth to an heir of the Sicilies, of Germany, of the Holy Roman Empire; and when the critical moment drew near, it was judged imprudent further to expose her to the fatigue and occasional inconvenience of accompanying the army, and to the risk of being surprised by the access of suffering and danger, at a distance from proper accommodation. She had therefore remained at Jesi, in the march of Ancona, there to await the result of the expedition, and her own hour of agony, of danger, and of hope.

Sibylla, now, either despaired of her son’s cause; or judged that, to advance it, she must be at liberty, not shut up with the principal men of her party in a castle, where, if safe, they must perforce be inactive. She therefore made overtures to Henry, who, knowing the impregnable strength of Calatabellota, gladly entered into negotiations relative to William’s pretensions. He promised to remunerate his young competitor’s renunciation of the crown, with investiture of the principality of Tarento, in addition to his patrimonial county of Lecce; and to assure to all his partisans, upon their submission, safety of person and property. The terms were accepted. The young King laid his diadem at the feet of the Emperor, who was immediately crow ned with it in the Cathedral of Palermo.

The goal prefixed by the Emperor being now reached, Carreta again appeared before him, and said: “Lord Emperor, the whole kingdom is, by our aid, subject to thee. Now fulfil thy promises.” The Imperial answer is said to have been suggested by some unpatriotic Genoese, who pointed out Carreta’s want of lawful authority. But whether so, or wholly Henry’s own, it confirms the accusation of disgracefully undignified craft brought by Guelphs against this able member of the Swabian dynasty, and very faintly rebutted by Ghibelines. He said: “Your Podestà is dead; and I see no one here who is properly entitled to speak in the name of Genoa. Let a plenipotentiary from Genoa claim the fulfilment of my promises.”

But before such a plenipotentiary could present himself, all the privileges previously granted to the Genoese, including even old ones that they had enjoyed under the Norman kings, were revoked, and the assumption of the title of Genoese Consul within the Sicilian realms was prohibited under pain of death.

Why Henry acted so perfidiously towards those who had faithfully and actively discharged all the duties they had undertaken towards him, it is hard to conjecture; unless they really had extorted from him verbal promises, in addition to those recorded in writing, beyond what he could fulfil, without unreasonably deteriorating the kingdom to gain which they were made; or unless, which from the difference of his conduct towards the Pisans seems likely, the extravagant promises were made to the Genoese exclusively, with the single exception of Gaeta, which, it has been seen, they were to share with those rivals and colleagues. For, in direct opposition to this shameful breach of faith towards the Genoese, who had fairly performed their part of the compact, he appears to have frankly kept his word to the Pisans, whose demands, indeed, were more rational, but of whom he had just ground to complain. To Pisa he granted all the promised rights, liberties, and exemptions, together with the mesne suzerainty over Corsica, Elba, and some smaller islands; but in the Sicilies, it should seem, only the right to establish factories. It may be added, that the Guelphism of the one city, and the Ghibelinism of the other, were thenceforward decided.

In regard to the Sicilies themselves, the strictest discipline was maintained amongst the troops. Henry had hitherto discovered no symptoms of tyranny, and all things went on as smoothly as though Constance had at once succeeded to William II, without intervening usurpation or contest. But a scene of savage cruelty, of at best ultra-Draconian law, was now to be enacted, which Guelph writers assert, moreover, to have originated in fraud and forgery; Ghibelines, to have been merely the inhuman punishment of a really detected, treasonable plot. Yet assuredly some were included in the doom who were too young to be truly supposed accomplices. The proceedings nevertheless certainly bore the aspect of legality, according to mediaeval fashion.

Upon Christmas-day, the Emperor, assembling his ministers and councillors, informed them that a monk had just revealed a conspiracy to him, placing in his hands, as evidence, a packet of letters, which he laid before them. These letters implicated in the plot against Henry, besides several prelates, nobles, and officers of state, the whole family of Tancred, children included. Against some of these accused persons, there can be little doubt that Henry would be easily satisfied as to the sufficiency of proof, but as little is there that Sibylla would readily enter into any scheme for the recovery of what she deemed her son’s birthright. Whatever the truth of the tale, the Emperor so far took a proper course that he proposed to refer the whole affair to the regular tribunals; the Council applauded the liberality of the proposal, it was adopted, and the Grand­Justiciary, Pietro di Celano, took the matter in hand. In modern times the line of conduct adopted by this functionary would unquestionably stamp the whole history of the conspiracy with falsehood. Without the slightest attempt at investigating the authenticity of the letters, he accepted them as genuine, as irrefragable proof of the guilt of the accused. But such was the practice of the age; the sifting of evidence, the comparison of handwriting, and the like, of a modern Court of Justice, were niceties then undreamt of; as, for instance, Varese, the somewhat partial modem historian of Genoa, in relating a prosecution for conspiracy there, says, that the Podesta did not even lay the accusing letters before the Judges, who convicted the prisoners upon his simple statement that letters proving their guilt were in his hands. Nay, more, Balbo, amidst his praises of the free institutions of Florence, casually mentions that the subordinate Judge, who had presided at a criminal trial, making a false report of it to the Podestà, that supreme Judge, who saw and heard through another’s eyes and ears, acquitted the guilty and convicted the innocent. No remark is made, even by these modem writers, upon the system. If, in those days, therefore, Celano permitted his assessors to read the letters in question, he must be accounted a most conscientious judge. However that may be, he convicted all the accused in the mass, though he sentenced them to various dooms, the atrocity of most of which was certainly intended to gratify the Emperor, if it were not suggested by him, for if he ever had designed to govern the Sicilies leniently, the discovery of this plot completely changed his purpose. Of the prelates and nobles thus convicted, amongst whom were the Grand-Admiral Margaritone, the Archbishop of Salerno, and two other sons of the deceased Chancellor Matteo, many were severally sentenced to be hanged, be­headed, impaled, burnt to death, or buried alive; those, whose lives were to be spared, to mutilation, or loss of eyes, with life long imprisonment. This last, perpetual imprisonment, was the punishment allotted to Sibylla and her family. Nor was the Grand-Justiciary content with living victims, he most incomprehensibly included the deceased usurpers, Tancred and his son Roger, amongst those convicted of, or at least sentenced for, a plot concocted long after their deaths. He accordingly ordered their tombs to be broken open, and the crowns with which they had been interred, but to which they were not entitled, to be taken off their decaying heads.

Henry sent all the prisoners, whose presence in Sicily could be dangerous to his government, of course especially Tancred’s family, beyond the Alps. Sibylla, and her daughters, were confined in an Alsatian convent, but not compelled to take the veil; and the youthful ex-King w as committed to the castle of Ems in the Vorarlberg. Whether the poor boy were or were not robbed of sight, or otherwise mutilated, is another of the unsettled questions of history. The assertion, that he was deprived of more than liberty, does not rest upon contemporary authority ; and there is a tradition of his having subsequently effected his escape from prison, made his way over the Alps, and lived and died as a hermit, near Chiavenna; in which assuredly such an enhancement of the interest, and yet more of the marvellous in the exploit, as its being achieved by a blind youth, would not have been missed, had the rumour of his personal ill-usage been as old as the tradition. It must, however, be admitted, that there was no humanizing element in Henry VI, to temper the spirit of the age; with which such a mode of rendering a rival innoxious, was very consonant. Upon this ground of consonance with the spirit of the age, the most esteemed, perhaps, of German historians, says: “I almost forgive, I, at least, in great measure, excuse this harshness of Henry VI. It belonged to the morals, customs, and manners of the people. Only through such horrors could a nation of fancy so excitable, and that had run wild, be reduced to peace and order.” It may be added, that, in those days, limiting the punishment of treason to the ringleaders, or to offenders of the highest class, suffering the inferior class, and therefore the greater number to escape with life, was esteemed an extraordinary degree of clemency.

Nevertheless such punishment of persons who, if criminal and illegitimate were yet members of the royal family, and akin to his Empress, seems even then to have been thought extraordinarily severe; at least if it be true that the Queen-mother of England, Elinor, wrote to the Pope—with whom she was still in correspondence touching the Emperor’s determination to extort the whole of her son’s exorbitant ransom—urging him to obtain some relaxation of rigour towards the widow and orphans of a not explained; and it can only be conjectured that, having been entertained by Sibylla as Queen of Sicily, she introduced a request in her behalf into a letter written upon her own son’s concerns. If she now aroused the Holy Father, as when she wrote respecting Richard’s imprisonment, the exertions of the Pope were now as then unavailing. Remonstrance never turned Henry from what he judged politic; and that leniency to traitors and rebels was contrary as much to his nature as to his policy, may be inferred from another sentence, seemingly his own device, and executed during either this or his next visit to Sicily. One Giordano was accused and apparently convicted of plotting to get the kingdom by marrying the Queen, of course not waiting for the natural death of her impeding husband, who was some ten years her junior. By Henry’s command the criminal was seated upon a throne of red hot iron, with a crown of red hot iron not merely placed upon his head but fastened on .with nails ! But to return to Christmas 1194. Upon the very day that heard those sanguinary sentences pronounced, that perchance saw some of them executed, Constance, under such fearful auspices, gave birth at Jesi to her only child, Frederic Roger, afterwards the Emperor Frederic II. Inasmuch as her marriage had for eight years been sterile and her fortieth birthday was now approaching, the parti­sans of Tancred had represented her pregnancy, from the time it was announced, as supposititious; a calumny that was revived when her son incurred papal enmity. Though through life he showed himself a genuine German Hohenstaufen and Norman Hauteville, he was repeatedly called the purchased offspring of low-born parents; and more than one couple of peasants were named as the mercenary parents who had sold him. The Empress was acquainted with the reports industriously circulated of projected imposture, and endeavoured to refute them by inviting several cardinals and other prelates to be witnesses to the birth of her child. As many as fifteen ecclesiastics of high dignity are said to have in consequence attended. Such precaution to assure a nation of the genuine royal birth of its future sovereign, now so customary that its neglect at once excites suspicion, appears to have been then almost unprecedented.

The birth of a son and heir was first announced to the Emperor by the Graf von Bogen, whom he had outlawed for pertinaciously waging a private war, in defiance of the positive prohibition of his immediate Lord, the Duke of Bavaria, and of his sovereign, the Emperor. For Henry, like all the monarchs of the Swabian dynasty, strenuously exerted himself to suppress private feuds, as a chief cause of disorder; and compel all men, how high soever their station, to submit their quarrels to judicial investigation. It scarcely need be added that the offending Earl’s joyful tidings were recompensed, even by the stern Henry, with a full pardon, and a large portion of Imperial favour.

The happy event seems also to have stimulated the Emperor to unwonted liberality in the rewards bestowed upon his champions and adherents; though in most of them he may have been likewise actuated by the desire of establishing Germans as members of the Italian nobility. To the highly esteemed Markwald von Anweiler he gave the duchies of Romagna and Ravenna with the march of Ancona; to Conrad von Lutzelenhard, the duchy of Spoleto, all or most of which, having been parts of the dominions of the Great Countess, the Popes claimed as Church property. To Diephold, Margrave of Vohburg according to some writers, according to others, a brother of Markwald’s, he granted the county of Acerra, as forfeited by Sibylla’s brother; and to Roffredo Abbot of Montecassino, the most active of his Apulian adherents, ample territories for his abbey. To his brother Philip, a handsome and amiable young man, of highly cultivated mind, he gave the remainder of the Matildan heritage, with the title of Duke of Tuscany; to this gift he added a permission, by Philip far more highly prized, to rescue from the dreary fate to which the family of Tancred was doomed, the youthful widowed daughter-in-law, the Greek Princess Irene, promised to Philip himself prior to her marriage with King Roger, and whose charms of person and of mind, had now captivated him. With the Emperor’s consent, Philip offered his hand to the bride, of whom he had once been robbed, and was gratefully accepted. Their union appears to have been one of extraordinary, though unfortunately not long-lived, happiness. Irene is termed by contemporary poets, “ the galless dove, the rose without a thorn.”

These grants of possessions which the See of Rome deemed its own, proved keener stimulants to Celestin than Elinor’s letters, perhaps even than the claim to papal protection, which he could not but feel that the family of Tancred, whom Clement III had more than encouraged to seize the crown. He was exasperated, and now actually did proceed to fulminate the threatened excommunication against the Emperor. The sentence was doubly grounded, upon the cruelties committed in Sicily, and upon the pertinacious exaction of the full amount of King Richard’s extorted ransom. The Emperor paid no more regard to the thunders of the Church, than to the sentiments and remonstrances of the Empress; who, upon her recovery, immediately rejoined him, and who, if somewhat stern and ambitious, both felt that Tancred’s children were of her own blood, and appears to have entertained a deep sense of her duties towards the nation hereditarily committed to her charge. For awhile he remained similarly unmoved by the opinions and feelings, now pretty openly expressed by the Sicilians: who were disgusted as much possibly by his German manners and habits, as by his haughty implacability, and who held themselves vassals of Constance, but not his, nor owing him the allegiance due to her. They now required him to leave to his Empress the government of her own kingdom, and, for a while at least, withdraw to Germany. For some time he sternly refused to intrust authority to a woman, whilst they resolutely denied that in the Sicilies the sovereign authority was his to intrust or to refuse; and so powerful was their party, and so rapidly did, it increase, that the imperious despot ere long found it necessary to give way. Before the end of February, 1195, he did thus quit Sicily, leaving Constance, however, in the position rather of his vicegerent than of an independent Queen. He spent some time in visiting the continental provinces of the kingdom and then repaired to Lombardy.

There he found the usual rivalries, reciprocal hostilities and internal disorders. As a sample of the height to which these last ran within the tow ns, it may suffice to state that, in the preceding year, 1194, the Bolognese, becoming dissatisfied with their Podesta, seized him, threw him into prison, there extracted his teeth—not metaphorically—and then, as an act of grace, turned him out of the town. Amidst such troubles and convulsions the Lombard League had just been renewed for thirty years, and Henry found his influence, as well as his actual power, much diminished; the result possibly of his conduct in the Sicilies, and towards the Genoese. At Pavia, where he arrived in May, he was met by a Genoese deputation, with the Archbishop at its head, sent to demand the promised grant of Sicilian and Apulian fiefs, or rather, it would seem, the independent possession of the districts therein comprised. This he positively refused, declaring that he could admit no partnership in sovereignty—a reasonable plea, had it been advanced when the demand was first made. In lieu of their ruinous claim, he offered pecuniary remuneration of the Genoese services, together with his assistance in the war then carrying on between Genoa and Aragon. But the Genoese insisted upon their bond, and they parted mutually exasperated. In fact, all that the Emperor could accomplish during this sojourn in northern Italy, was to give the Imperial sanction and ratification to a Ghibeline League formed by Pavia, Cremona, Lodi, Como, and Bergamo, with the Marquess of Montferrat, and to Cremona’s claim of mesne suzerainty over Crema, Lucca, and Guastalla.

Thence the Emperor returned to Germany, intent upon achieving the second of his three great schemes, to wit, consolidating Germany, and rendering the monarchy, when thus stable in all its parts, hereditary in his own family. The moment seemed propitious. Henry the Lion, whether at length tamed by age, or by the Emperor’s having two of his sons in his power—although hostages for the King of England’s ransom, they were also virtually responsible for his good faith—had honestly observed the terms of his last reconciliation, and remained at peace with his neighbours—some evidence that they were seldom the aggressors. He now dwelt quietly at Brunswick, occupying himself with the improvement and decoration of that favourite residence, with devotional practices, and with collecting old chronicles. These he caused his chaplains to arrange in due chronological order, transcribing such as he could only borrow. They were read to him at all his spare hours; and he is said to have taken such pleasure in listening to these records of the past, that he spent whole nights so engaged. Amidst these tranquillizing pursuits he had so completely disciplined his naturally restless and ungovernable temper, that he now bore, without murmur or complaint, an illness tedious as painful; and expired with the words “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner!” upon his lips. He died the 6th of August 1195, dividing his possessions, reduced as they were, amongst his sons. A pernicious custom of German princes, which gradually crumbled Germany into tiny principalities, eaten up by the expenses of a court with civil and military establishments, and always at variance amongst themselves consequently powerless against foreign enemies, even could any enlarged national patriotism have existed amongst such multifarious, often rival, petty states. Exactly how this division of Brunswick was arranged seems somewhat uncertain; the most usual statement is, that Henry the Younger, the eldest of the surviving sons, inherited the Dukedom of Brunswick, Otho, Haldensleben; William, Luneburg and Lauenburg. Nevertheless Henry will hereafter be seen to demand the addition of Brunswick to his share, in compensation of other losses. As the whole was ultimately reunited in the hands of the youngest, William, the question is for­tunately not very material. In November, the death of the Rhine Palsgrave added the Palatinate to the new Duke of Brunswick’s patrimony.

But, if the Emperor found him he most feared peaceful, and upon his death bed, Germany was not therefore tranquil. Feuds were, as a matter of course, everywhere rife, though for the most part such as were easily appeased by his authority, and not unfrequently converted into sources of acquisition for the crown. One or two only of these can be worth specifying. The before mentioned family feud in Misnia had revived, if a little less offensively than before, being in a fratricidal instead of a parricidal form. The old Margrave was dead, and his eldest son, Albert, whom he had endeavoured to supersede, having lawfully succeeded to the principality he had sought to usurp, was at war with his younger brother, Dietrich, for the large portion of the family domains bequeathed him by their father. The contest ended abruptly by the sudden and certainly suspicious death of Margrave Albert and his wife; that they were poisoned no one doubted, but as to the poisoner opinions were divided. Most persons accused him whose interest in their removal, whilst yet childless, was apparent,—the brother; but the Guelphs boldly charged the crime upon the Emperor; and assuredly he it was who reaped the profit; for, without taking the slightest notice of Dietrich’s right of succession, as though his guilt had been proved, the Emperor occupied the margraviate as a lapsed fief, to be disposed of at his pleasure.

The feud between the Archbishop of Bremen and the Earl of Holstein, Henry likewise rendered profitable to himself. The Earl had expelled the prelate from his principality, for having confederated with the deceased Duke of Brunswick in his last rebellion; and the prelate had sought support at Rome. He obtained from Celestin a bull confirming him in his see, and commanding his immediate re-instalment therein. Thus armed, he returned, to triumph, as he hoped, at once, over his enemy; but the Emperor refused to acknowledge the Pope’s authority in such matters, until the Archbishop purchased the recog­nition by the payment of a heavy fine.

But all this, and more of the same nature, was insignificant in Henry’s eyes, save as obstacles impeding, or means to advance his second grand object, to wit, making the Empire hereditary in his family. For this, as before said, he thought the time propitious, alike by the birth of his own son, by the death of the old Lion, by the blending of the Welf interest with his own, through the marriage of the young Duke of Brunswick,—which placed his descendants, if not himself, in the line of succession—and finally by his own possession of two hereditary realms, Sicily and Apulia, of which to offer the annexation as integral provinces of Germany. The outline of his scheme was, in addition to this offer, to recognise and legalize the still illegal, though now habitual hereditary succession to fiefs, of all kinds and all degrees; to win the ecclesiastical princes by renouncing for ever the royal and imperial claim to the property left by churchmen, whether prince-prelates or parish priests, thus admitting their right to dispose of it by will; and in return for all these concessions,—and for the renunciation of some other feudal rights, as, e.g. that of disposing of maids and widows in marriage—to ask, as the key-stone of the new system, the extension of the hereditary principle to the crown. This scheme of reform, w ell digested in all its parts, the Emperor laid before successive Diets, held at Mainz, Gelnhausen, Wurzburg, Frankfurt, and Worms; and he laboured hard, by argument, persuasion, granting of charters with divers privileges, and perhaps some little bribery, to carry it through. The degree, to which the hereditary principle, though maintained to be contrary to law by the Emperors, was now established in all fiefs, might seem to render Henry’s offer of legalizing it almost nugatory; for, to give a single instance of the completeness of its establishment, Otho II of Brandenburg, fearing the extinction of the male line of his house, surrendered in 1196, nearly the whole of the Old Mark, to the archiepiscopal see of Magdeburg, of which he already held several masculine or sword fiefs, to receive the whole back in spindle or female fiefs. Since to none, therefore, was the recognition of a right which they had so thoroughly brought into action, material enough to make them zealous in the business; the Emperor can hardly have been much dissatisfied with the result, when upon the first moving in the matter, fifty-two temporal princes signified in due form, their approbation of, and assent to, his proposal. He might fairly look to winning hereafter, by separate negotiations, many even of the most important of those who now hung back, unwilling alike to confirm, to their own vassals, the right they themselves had usurped, and to renounce their chance, however remote, of the crown. From the Church, on the other hand, Henry encountered insuperable opposition. If the inferior clergy were well pleased with a plan that secured to them the disposal by will of their little property, the ecclesiastical princes, and all who were in a position to aspire to that dignity—rallied under the banner of their Primate, the Archbishop of Mainz. This prelate, imbued with the very spirit of Rome, asserted that any and every claim upon property left by churchmen, being founded in injustice, the renunciation of such an illegal pretension was no concession, was merely conforming to the law; and could, therefore, be no compensation wha­ever to the principal prelates, for robbing them of the right of choosing their sovereign. Lastly, the Pope, who saw that the proposed change must necessarily annihilate the Papal pretension to conferring the Empire as a free gift, and to the consequent superiority of the Papal giver over the Imperial receiver, strained every nerve to foil it. And loudly did Celestin protest against an innovation that would despoil the German prelates of one of their most valued rights.

To carry his point in spite of the Pope and of the ecclesiastical princes of Germany the Emperor felt to be impossible; wherefore, con tenting himself for the present with the progress made, he postponed all further negotiation concerning this object, perhaps till the crown of the East-Roman Empire, should give him additional means of purchasing or compelling acquiescence with his will. Meanwhile, he turned his thoughts to otherwise accomplishing the small portion of his large scheme most individually interesting to himself, namely, the succession of his son. Again, the Archbishop of Mainz opposed him; but ultimately gave way, and he prevailed upon the princes, spiritual as well as temporal, in return for his compliance with their wishes in dropping his proposal, to elect the baby, Frederic Roger, King of the Romans.

The accomplishment of one part of his gigantic project, the recovery of the Empress’s heritage, and his unsuccessful endeavour to carry the second, the rendering the German, and consequently, the Imperial crown hereditary, had not so engrossed the Emperor, that he had not been likewise preparing the way for the attainment of the third—the reunion of the Eastern with the Western Empire. He had demanded of the usurping Greek Emperor, Isaac, the cession of a district conquered by the fleet and troops of William II of Sicily, and extending from Epidamnus to Thessalonica, both inclusive; which he affirmed to be part of the Empress’s heritage, stolen by Greek craft, amidst the disorders of Tancred’s usurpation. He had likewise called upon Isaac for effective support to the kingdom of Jerusalem; as being yet more especially an outwork to the Eastern Empire, than to Christendom at large. And to these demands he had added complaints of the inhuman treatment of some Sicilian prisoners taken in the last war, who had, it was alleged, been starved to death in their dungeons.

But, if to Isaac these demands and complaints were addressed, not with him was the negotiation respecting them carried on. In April, 1195, his brother Alexius Angelus, taking advantage of the general dissatisfaction, deposed, imprisoned, and blinded the usurper, to reign as wrongfully in his stead. The new usurper invited the German Envoys to an audience, at which he thought so to dazzle them by Oriental magnificence, that in sheer bewilderment they would abandon all their demands. They coldly remarked: “If the Greeks do not at once accede to every one of our Emperor’s demands, they must straightway defend their riches with the sword, against men who know how to conquer the gewgaws they disdain.” Alexius III was terrified; he not only acceded to every demand, but engaged to pay a heavy indemnity for the delay in the settlement of the business, which, the envoys alleged, his rebellion against his brother had occasioned. This sum he endeavoured to raise by a tax laid indiscriminately upon noble and plebeian, upon clergy and laity. But the imposition of such a tax alienating all classes from the monarch who imposed it, he abandoned the measure in alarm, and had recourse to the arbitrary seizure of church plate and jewels, and the plunder of Imperial monuments. When he would thus have violated that of the founder of the city, Constantine the Great, he found that other plunderers had forestalled him, leaving him nothing.

Alexius had been the more amenable to fear of German arms, from the circumstance of a new Crusade—as usual a subject of terror to Constantinople—being even then in process of organization. Since the conclusion of the truce with Saladin, changes had occurred in the East, offering a chance of re-establishing the kingdom of Jerusalem, too favourable to be neglected by the Pope. These changes unavoidably awaken regret, that the royal Crusader of the lion-heart had not remained in Palestine to profit by them, even whilst conscious that the profit would have been pretty much confined to his own feelings and to his European reputation—in Syria, his fame was scarcely susceptible of addition;—for under the circumstances of Europe and of Asia, it is indisputable that the fall of the Syro-Frank states could only have been delayed. Five months after Richard sailed from Acre, his great antagonist, Saladin, died!

The death of this perfect type of Moslem heroism was analogous to his life. He had employed the leisure from warfare allowed him by the truce, in visiting, states­man like, the different provinces of his empire, now extending from the Lybian desert to the sources of the Tigris, and from the southern extremity of Arabia to Mount Taurus. He had examined into the state of those that most seemed to need the master’s eye, especially his most recent acquisitions, where he diligently remedied evils and arranged the government. He determined to make Jerusalem his habitual residence, and directed the Cadi Bohaeddin there to build colleges and a hospital, whilst he himself returned to Damascus to prepare for that indispensable religious duty of every Mohammedan, a pilgrimage to Mecca; as soon as the political duties of his station should permit his undertaking it. At Damascus, he was seized with a high fever, from which he had scarcely recovered, when the approach of a caravan of pilgrims returning from the Holy City of Islam, from the performance of that very duty, with all the rites enjoined by their Prophet was announced to him. He rode forth to pay due respect to the now sanctified pilgrims, by meeting, and escorting them into the city. He rode forth, in Kurd hardihood, without a cloak, and the day proved wet. The late fever, following upon repeated indisposition, had impaired the original Kurdish vigour of his constitution, and a relapse was the consequence. The Sultan took to his bed, and despite the science and the cares of his body physician, the learned Jew, Maimonides, never rose from it more.

Before taking a final leave of this remarkable man, a few more words, with an anecdote or two concerning him, may not be unwelcome. One, in proof that he was by nature both clement and tolerant, notwithstanding the massacre of the monastic knights, and another act of well-meant, or perhaps, unavoidable intolerance, to be afterwards told, shall lead the way. Two Cistercian monks had visited his dominions in missionary zeal, hoping to convert the Mohammedans, and in their preaching they dwelt much upon the duty of fasting, of which they were doubtless examples. The Imams would fain have put these aggressive- unbelievers in Mohammed to death; but Saladin forbade, declaring that the good will to the Arabs which had induced the monks to incur the danger, must not be thus repaid; and plotted, it should seem, a practical refutation of one of their doctrines. Wine was supplied to the abstemious cenobites, and whether they were weakened by long abstinence, or whatever might be the cause—such truly zealous missionaries cannot be suspected of habitual intemperance—they indulged indis­creetly in the unexpected cordials. So indiscreetly indeed, that all thought of their monastic vows was obliterated; and inebriety betrayed them into the snares of two courtezans commissioned to entrap them. In this disgraceful position they were surprised and brought before the Sultan at his public audience, when he thus quietly addressed the abashed missionaries: See how much better than yours is our law, which allows the use of meat to strengthen the body, and prohibits wine, that temporarily destroys the mind.

Yet, thus tolerant by nature, he is said, to have considered philosophy as a study inimical to religion, and certainly commanded the execution of one Yahia, a philosopher, poet, and physician of Aleppo, upon the charge of being a sceptic, if not an atheist. He might possibly fear to incur the charge himself if he refused to sanction the doom; but it is more likely that he really deemed the misfortune of entertaining such opinions a crime deserving death. So decidedly did he herein only go along with his age, that his admiring biographer Bohaeddin relates this sentence without a remark, as if a matter of course; yet censures, as an act of weak scrupulousness, his refusal to break his faith, plighted for the security of Christian pilgrims, and massacre those who, upon the conclusion of the truce, flocked to Jerusalemtheir numbers being so great that their loss must have very decidedly weakened the Kings of Jerusalem and England. Bohaeddin, who blames this scrupulous observance of his word by Saladin, records an instance of an equally strict observance of it in an opposite direction, evidently without blame: and, whether true or false the anecdote illustrates the sentiments of the age. It will be remembered that, in retaliation of the massacre of the Acre hostages, Saladin had sworn to behead all Christian prisoners. Bohaeddin re­lates that one sentenced victim strove to avert his fate by pleading that he had, upon that very occasion, rescued a Mussulman. The Sultan asked, “Was it an Emir?” and was answered, “No, I am too poor.” All present implored his pardon: Saladin remained silent, and without a word in reply went forth to prayers. That duty performed, he mounted his horse and rode through and round his camp, as usual, inspecting every detail. When he returned to his tent, he ordered the prisoner’s immediate decapitation. Now as Richard certainly did not take ransom for any of his hostages, the prisoner’s supposed answer discredits the anecdote. But it nevertheless shows the feelings, real or supposed, of Saladin, his ministers, and friends.

In illustration of Saladin’s tenderness as a father, it is related that a Frank embassy chancing to be presented to him when he was playing with his youngest son, the child, frightened at the apparition of figures and dresses so strange to him, began to cry and scream ; whereupon the Sultan, instead of sending the troublesome urchin to his nursery, entreated the embassadors to defer their audience in compassion to his terrified little boy. But if he thus spoiled his children in their infancy, he endeavoured, at least, to remedy the evil by good advice when he hoped they were capable of understanding and profiting by it. In proof of which, the counsels, excellent, if often grounded upon motives redolent of self-interest, with which he dismissed his best-loved son, Daher, to the government of Aleppo, just intrusted to him, shall close the account of this favourite hero of Moslem and Christian romance. He bade him:—“Honour the Most High God, the fountain of all good, and observe His commandments; for that will bring thee happiness. Beware of shedding blood, for shed blood slumbers not. Win the hearts of thy people and watch over their welfare, for they are intrusted to thee by God and by me. Win the hearts of the Emirs and distinguished men, for only by my indulgence have I reached the height on which 1 stand. Hate no one, for death awaits us all. Injure no one, for man forgives not till he has consummated his vengeance: only God, the all merciful, pardons upon repentance.”

Saladin had, during his life, assigned the government of divers provinces and states to his sons, brothers and nephews; and appears to have died without making testamentary or even verbal provision as to the succession to his empire. Probably he either supposed that his eldest son Afdal would naturally take his place, or thought the intrusive Franks now so debilitated as to supersede the continued necessity for such extraordinary consolidation of power to effect their expulsion. The result of Saladin’s making no arrangement was that his eldest son Malek el Afdal, assumed to be the heir, was acknowledged as such, and received the oaths of allegiance. But he was totally unfit to rule such an empire, and each of bis sixteen brothers, of his uncles, and of his cousins, managed to retain as a principality what, under Saladin, he had held as a government. Thus Malek Afdal was Sultan of Damascus; Aziz, the second son, of Egypt; Daher, the third, of Aleppo, &c. His younger sons and nephews had only the title of Emirs of different cities and districts. Amongst all these princes Saladin’s already often mentioned brother, Malek el Adel, appears to have been the only one who, in point of ability or unity of purpose, bore the slightest resemblance to himself. They all presently quarrelled. The details of such family intrigues and dissensions, unconnected with great national interests, even if involving the fate of millions of human beings, are usually too revolting, as well as too tedious, to be unnecessarily developed. In respect to these Kurdish kinsmen it will be enough to say, that, whilst they were striving to despoil each other of some portion, and often of the whole, of their respective shares, Malek el Adel first honestly played the part of a mediator amongst his numerous nephews; then, finding the task hopeless, and perhaps disgusted with their moral and intellectual deficiencies, turned his attention to his individual aggrandizement, and seized every opportunity of adding some of their possessions to his own allotted portion of the contested territories.

Henry, the new King of Jerusalem, in the absence of a crusading army, had no means of profiting by this division of the hostile forces. The Sheik of the Assassins is indeed said to have offered him his friendship and the use of his murderers; but even had such an ally and course of action been suited to a Christian ruler, to have lessened the number of his enemies would, in this instance, have proportionately diminished his chance of safety. His only other ally was Leo Prince of Armenia, whom he gained by negotiating a peace between him and the Prince of Antioch; which the marriage of Bohemund III’s eldest son and heir, with Leo’s niece, Alice, a daughter of his deceased brother Rupin, sealed; and also by sanctioning, upon the same occasion, his assumption of the title of King. But Leo was a very insufficient support. Warriors at home Henry had none, except the military Orders, who hardly acknowledged obedience to be due from them to the King of Jerusalem, and were moreover at strife with each other for temporal objects. Nor was his fragment of a kingdom thronged, as might have been hoped, with immigrants from the provinces conquered by the Mohammedans. Saladin had insured, to all Christian inhabitants of those provinces who chose to remain under his sceptre, the full possession of their property; and those, who did not avail themselves of his offers, returned to Europe, rather than seek new establishments in the evidently sinking Syro-Frank states. Even many inhabitants of the provinces still subject to Henry and Isabel followed their example; and the King himself, it was suspected, was not indisposed to do the same. For he constantly refused to be crowned; not from Godfrey de Bouillon’s religious scruples, but, because, as long as that ceremony was unperformed, he held himself free to return to his county of Champagne. Once crowned, he felt that he should be pledged to devote his whole. life to his precarious Asiatic kingdom.

But he did not permit such feelings to interfere with his duties to that precarious kingdom. Most strenuously did he exert himself for the preservation of its remaining, and for the recovery of its lost, provinces. Incessantly he urged the Pope, the Emperor, and his two royal uncles, not to suffer this, perhaps unique opportunity to escape them. Nor were these prayers and expostulations, with the exception of those addressed to Philip Augustus, poured into deaf ears. Celestin warmly embracing his views, had both proclaimed a Crusade, and sent Legates every where to preach it, to repeat and enforce King Henry’s statements and arguments; as an additional spur prohibiting, until this duty of Christian men should be accomplished, all tournaments and martial sports. Of the monarchs, he, upon whom he would most have relied, Richard, pining, when his nephew first attempted to invoke his aid, in an unknown prison, and now but just released from confinement, with his dominions assailed on all parts, and his ransom still in great part due, was in no condition to undertake the new Crusade, with which at his departure he had threatened Saladin. Hence, Philip Augustus being clearly out of the question, it was the Emperor whom the Pope exhorted to lead the expedition, in emulation of his father. It might be inferred from this proposition that Henry was rather menaced with excommunication, than actually under the sentence; and whether he was so or not, is a question still not positively answered; although, as will presently be seen, it is difficult to doubt his being included in the sentence fulminated against the captors and jailers of the royal Crusader. At all events, Celestin, zealous in the cause of Palestine, and not personally hostile to the Emperor, seems to have been willing to allow him this additional means of atoning for his offence. A Crusade, for the strengthening of the kingdom he designed for his own outwork against the Moslem, entered into Henry’s views; as did the prospect of conciliating the Pope, and even inducing him to overlook his extortion from Richard,—now no longer a Crusader,—whilst advancing papal objects. He declined to lead the army in person, because his presence in Europe was, for the moment, indispensable to the success, not only of his own schemes, but of the Crusade itself, which he zealously exerted himself to promote. Accordingly, at an Apulian Diet, that he had held at Bari, upon his road home from Sicily, he had pledged himself to send 1500 knights and as many warriors of inferior rank to Palestine, maintaining them there for a year. He had likewise promised his support to the Legates, visiting his dominions to preach the Crusade; and it was preached at the several Diets he had held since his return. The Archbishops of Mainz and Bremen, the Bishops of Wurzburg, Passau, Ratisbon, Prague, Halberstadt, Naumberg, Zeiz, and Verden, the new Rhine Palsgrave, the Dukes of Austria, Brabant, Limburg, and Carinthia, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Landgrave of Thuringia, the Earl of Holstein, with many nobles of less rank and power, took the cross: but some, afterwards repenting of their zeal, proved dilatory in the performance of their vow, and Margrave Otho actually obtained a papal dispensation from his. The more steadfast, with their vassals and followers, and the Emperor’s quota, formed two bodies. Of these, the one from the north of Germany performed the whole distance by sea; landed, as usual, in Portugal, for refreshment and a skirmish with the Peninsular Mohammedans; helped Sancho I to recover Lisbon; and then proceeded on their voyage. The other was joined by Margaret, the French Queen-dowager of Hungary,—who, having sold her dower to equip a band of Crusaders, led them in person. This division, estimated at 60,000 men, took its road through Italy, to embark, by Henry VPs invitation, at one of his southern seaports for Palestine. Its numbers, joined to the rudely overbearing demeanour of the Germans in what they deemed a conquered country, awoke a very general apprehension, that the Queen’s consort had fraudulently sanctioned the Crusade, in order to employ the Crusaders in enslaving his Italian and Sicilian vassals. These suspicions gave birth to some disorders and blood­shed; but the fears were allayed, and the Crusaders embarked in ships provided by the Emperor, under the command of Conrad, Archbishop of Mainz; to whom, glad probably to be for awhile rid of him, he transferred his own authority over them.

This was the Crusade, the preparations for which had so terrified Alexius Angelus for his own safety, as to induce his prompt submission to the demands of Henry VI. He had not indeed as yet fully complied with those demands; the cession of the district w as not completed, nor had he succeeded in collecting the sum of money he had pledged himself to pay. And before he was quite ready to perform his engagements, the danger at which he had trembled had, as he flattered himself, wholly passed away.

In the autumn of the preceding year, 1196, the Emperor, deeming sufficient impulse given to the Crusade, had returned to Sicily, leaving his brother Conrad Duke of Swabia, as his vicegerent in Germany, charging him, amongst other commissions, with the chastisement of the Duke of Zäringen, who had in various ways offended him. The utilitarian inclinations that had been apparent in the early Dukes of Zäringen—who, it may be remembered, founded Freyburg in the Brisgau in the hope of deriving from that town such wealth as the commercial prosperity of Cologne afforded its archbishop—had been perpetuated in the family. These Dukes, unlike their contemporaries, preferred the occupations of peace to those of war; their territories prospered; they were now opulent as powerful, and continued to be, as from the first they had been, habitually opposed to the chivalrous Emperors of the Swabian dynasty. Duke Bertold V had refused alike to attend the late Emperor in his Crusade, to take part in that now organized, and to assist Henry VI in any of his Italian expeditions; and he now alleged the founding and fostering of Berne in Switzerland, as the engrossing business that must detain him at home. But neither were these sins of omission his only offences; nor peaceful pursuits the sole means employed by him to augment his power. He had taken advantage of Frederic Barbarossa’s Crusade, of Henry’s frequent absence in Italy, and of the death of Otho Earl of Burgundy, leaving a little daughter as his sole heir, to subjugate no small portion of the County of Burgundy, that old object of the ambition to the Dukes of Zäringen. And for these several offences the Duke of Swabia was charged to carry war into the Zäringen territories.

The commission was much to the taste of Conrad, a bold and skilful knight, but unfortunately a slave alike to his passions—amongst which thirst for the excitement of war ranked high—and to his appetites. He invaded the Zäringen country; Bertold, unable to make head against him, retreated before him; and he advanced victoriously into the very heart of the ducal domains. But there, at Durlach, his triumphant career was prematurely arrested, and he fell a victim to his own vices. The fact is certain, although the particulars of his fate are not; being variously related by various writers. According to one account, he was slain by an injured husband, who surprised him n his wife’s chamber. According to another, a virgin to whom he offered violence, either in her wild struggles to preserve her purity, bit him so severely in the eye that inflammation ensued; or stabbed him with his own dagger, which she snatched from his belt; and of the one or the other he died in three days. And again, another version makes the unfortunate lady, whether wife or maid, thus avenge the outrage, the perpetration of which she had been unable to prevent. But, whatever were the manner of the catastrophe, Conrad, through the unbridled indulgence of his licentiousness, died in the very midst of victory. His death left Germany, for the moment, without a ruler; but, as Duke Bertold, upon this occasion, acted only on the defensive, it likewise suspended hostilities.

When these melancholy tidings reached the Emperor, he immediately conferred the duchy of Swabia, and the other fiefs left vacant by Conrad’s death without children, upon his youngest, and now only^ brother, Philip; whom he likewise named his Imperial vicar in Germany. Philip hastened thither, to solemnize his marriage with Irene, in the neighbourhood of Augsburg, to receive the homage of his new vassals, and to exercise his vicarious, imperial authority. He did not renew the war with Zäringen, judging the lesson the Duke had received, it may be presumed, sufficient; and in the discharge of the high func­tions intrusted to him, he appears by his mildness and courtesy to have gained general esteem and good will. But his chief business in Germany was, to obtain from the Princes the confirmation of his royal nephew’s election, and their promise forthwith to crown him as King of the Romans at Aachen. The Crusade had now taken out of his way the Emperor’s former opponent in this election, the Archbishop of Mainz. The next important personage upon such questions, the Archbishop of Cologne, was equally opposed to it; but Philip addressed himself sedulously to gain his friendship, and hoped and believed that he had secured his concurrence. The vote of the Czech Przmislaf, called by Germans Ottocar, Duke of Bohemia, was promised in return for the promise of the title of King, to be upon this occasion hereditarily given. And now, thinking success to be assured, the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany returned to Italy, to fetch the infant monarch for his acknowledgement and coronation.

Whilst his brother was thus labouring in his service, Henry was rendering his exertions abortive. His principal occupation in Italy was remedying what he deemed the weak lenity of the austere and not very lenient Constance. Truly, as the avenger, did he pass through Apulia. He dismantled Capua and Naples, in chastise­ment of their insurgent or rather anti-German inclinations, a chastisement that, exposing two of his wealthiest cities defenceless to rebel or invader, as well as to the arbitrary will of the monarch, seems more like the caprice or the temper of an angry tyrant, than the repressive measure of an able despot, such as Henry VI generally showed himself. But not unjustly, if too horribly, did he retaliate upon Acerra his treacherous murder of the loyal Andria. Acerra had hitherto, by concealment, avoided capture; but, when the Emperor revisited Italy, deeming it impossible longer to elude detection, he attempted to fly, and was betrayed into Diephold’s hands. Henry ordered him to be fastened to a horse’s tail, so dragged through the streets of Capua, and then hung by the feet, his head downwards, till life, if any remained, should be extinct.

The Emperor then passed over into Sicily, where dissensions again prevailed between him and the Empress; but to what height these dissensions rose, to what steps they led, are again points upon which old chroniclers differ, as do their followers, modern historians. Constance, though innately indisposed to political liberality, felt for her hereditary vassals and subjects, felt for her nephew Tancred’s children; and moreover feared her consort’s inordinate severity might so alienate the affections of the nation, as to endanger her son’s succession. But whether these sentiments impelled her, as some writers assert, to concur in a conspiracy against him, even whether during his brief sojourn in Sicily any extensive conspiracy against him were really formed, is very doubtful; and according to some writers it was the plot previously mentioned, of the poor wretch punished with the red hot crown, that she sanctioned. That Henry was generally abhorred, is indeed certain; as also that some degree of conspiracy, of actual revolt, occurred, and, as usual, cruelty, rather than severity, marked the punishment. In the process of quelling this revolt, the Emperor in person besieged the castle of Castro-Giovanni, the Castellano or lord of which he had declared a rebel.

The defence against so merciless a victor was resolute, and the siege therefore tedious. Henry cheered the dull hours of its continuance with the eager pleasures of the chase; and, as if forgetful of the deleterious effects of a southern climate upon German constitutions, of which he had had personal experience, pursued that amusement in the most sultry season, aggravating the evil by other acts of imprudence. One of the days allotted to this exciting sport, the 6th of August, 1197, proved unusually hot, even for August in Sicily. The Emperor not only would not be persuaded therefore to relinquish his favourite recreation, but when overheated sought refreshment in large draughts of cold water; and sleep, by establishing his bed, at night, in the open air. A violent illness was the natural consequence. He was removed to Messina, where, after lingering for some weeks, he died the 28th of September, or, according to some accounts, a few days later, at the early age of thirty-one.

Whether his death were simply the result of his own indiscretion, or of poison administered by Sicilian conspirators, impatient of his tyranny; and whether in the latter case, the Empress were or were not cognisant of the patriotic crime was disputed at the time, and is so still. When the Emperor’s tomb was opened in the last century, nearly 600 years after his interment, and the body found in such perfect preservation that even the characteristic sternness of the countenance was plainly discernible, the question was thought to be decided in favour of the accused, and poison disproved whilst later scientific investigations would rather lead to inferring the presence of arsenic from such appearances. But, whether nature, resentment, or compassion removed him from a kingdom that he was driving to despair, of the universal explosion of joy produced by the news of his decease, there is no question; nor, it is to be feared, of the massacre of such Germans as fell in their way, by the Sicilians on both sides of the straits, in that unchecked explosion.

That the Emperor lay under excommunication at his death, the most generally received opinion, is rendered the more likely from the difficulties that appear to have long obstructed his interment. The Empress, who had conjugally attended upon him during his illness, applied to the Pope for permission to bury him in consecrated ground, upon the plea that, upon his deathbed, he had repented of all his sins. But this indulgence Celestin refused, until all pecuniary differences with the King of England should be settled to his satisfaction. A negotiation ensued, and in the end Constance, as guardian of her son, is said to have taken upon herself to release Richard from all remaining debt; and Celestin thereupon, giving up the claim to repayment of what had been received, to have revoked the excommunication. Another account is, that Henry himself upon his deathbed despatched such a release to Richard. A third, more comprehensive, asserts that before his death he had purchased both the revocation of the sentence of excommunication, and the papal recognition of his son’s hereditary right to Sicily, on both sides the Faro, as well as to Germany,—together with the regular consequence of such recognition, a papal promise to crown him Emperor when of fitting age—by formally renouncing the Imperial claim to the Matildan heritage. But were either of these last statements correct, there could be no need of negotiation, or of the delay that appears to have occurred before Henry was pompously interred at Palermo. His early death and the infancy of his heir, necessarily put an end to his magnificent schemes, and threw the power once more into the hands of the German Princes and of the Pope.