MEDIEVAL POPES, EMPERORS, KINGS,
AND
OR,
FROM A.D.
1125 TO A.D. 1268.
BY MRS.
WILLIAM BUSK,
AVTHOB OF
“MANNERS AND
CUSTOMS OF THE JAPANESE,” ETC,
VOL. II.
LONDON:
HOOKHAM &
SONS, OLD BOND STREET. 1855.
Digitized
by Microsoft ®
BOOK
II (continued).
CHAPTER IV.
FREDERIC I.
PAGE
Frederic’s
Second Italian Expedition.—Rebellion of Milan.—The Emperor in Lombardy.—Siege
and Submission of Milan.—Second Ron- caglia Diet.—Laws then
promulgated.—Dissensions with Adrian.— Second Milanese Rebellion.—Siege of Crema
. [1158—1160] 1
CHAPTER Y.
FREDERIC I.
Death of
Adrian.—Double Papal Election.—Council of Pavia.—Hostilities in
Lombardy.—Surrender and Doom of Milan.—Affairs of Germany.—Henry the Lion and
the Slavonians—His Quarrel with his Bishops. — Negotiations touching the
Schism. — Polish Affairs.— Renewed Struggles of the Slavonians . . .
[1159—1163] 32
CHAPTER VI.
FREDERIC I.
Affairs of
Lombardy.—Frederic’s Third Italian Expedition.—Affairs of Sardinia—Of
Germany.—The Schism.— Henry II of England and Alexander III.—Wurzburg
Diet.—Affairs of Papacy and the Sicilies
[1163—1166]
63
CHAPTER VII.
FREDERIC I.
PAGE
Frederic’s
Fourth Expedition to Italy.—Lombard League.—Frederic and Pascal at
Rome.—Disasters.—Affairs of Germany.—League against Henry the Lion—His formidable
power.—State of Schism.—Archbishop Christian in Italy.—Siege of Ancona .
[1166—1174] 90
CHAPTER Yin.
frf nr Rio i.
New
Anti-Pope.—Henry II an.l Schism.—Affairs of Italy.—Siege of Ancona.—Failure of
Hejry the Lion.—Emperor’s defeat at Legnaao.— Closing of the Schism .....
[1168—1178] 115
CHAPTER IX.
FREDERIC I.
Fall of Henry
the Lion.—Affairs of Germany.—Affairs of Italy.—Death of Alexander III.—Lucius
III.—Peace of Constance.—Marriage of the King of the Romans.—Urban III . .
[1178—1186] 141
CHAPTER X.
KINGDOM OF
JERUSALEM.
BALDWIN
III. AMALRIC.
Baldwin’s
Military Success.—Noureddin’s Plans.—Syro-Frank Dissensions.—Egj ptian
Affairs.—Amalric’s Accession.—His Wars.—Salailm in Egypt.—Christian and Moslem
Dissensions . [1152—1169] 173
CHAPTER XI.
KINGDOM OF
JERUSALEM.
AMALRIC. BALDWIN IV.— BALDWIN V.—SIBYLLA AND GUY.
Death
of Noureddin—Of Amalric.—Dissensions of Mohammedans.— Saladin’s concentration
of Power.—Syro-Frank Dissensions.—Death of Manuel.—Invasion of
Palestine.—Battle of Tiberias.—Loss of Jerusalem [1’69—1187] 201
CHAPTER XII.
' FRED .IUU I.
P VGE
Third
Crusade.—Movements in Europe.—Frederic’s preparations in Germany—In the
Countries to be traversed.—State of the Eastern Empire.- Saladin’s
Preparations.—The Emperor’s March.- - Difficulties in the Eastern
Empire.—Frederic’s Progress—His Success—His Death . . ..... [1187—1190] 228
HENRY
VI.—PHILIP.—OTHO IV.'
CHAPTER I.
KINGDOM OF
JERUSALEM.
SIBYLLA
AND GUY. GUY.
Continuation
of the Third Crusade.—Preparations of Kings of France and England.—State of
Sicily.—Transactions there.—State of Palestine.—Defence of Tyre.—Siege of
Acre.—Death of Sibylla.—Contest for the Crown.—Origin of Teutonic Knights .
[1189—1191] 254
CHAPTER II.
KINGDOM OF
JERUSALEM.
GUY. ISABEL AND CONRAD. ISABEL AND HENRY.
Conclusion
of Third Crusade.—Arrival of Philip Augustus.—Richard’s Capture of
Cyprus.—Arrival in Palestine.—Capture of Acre.—Departure of Philip
Augustus.—Richard’s Campaigns.—Murder of Conrad.—Isabel’s Third Marriage. —
Rescue of Joppa.—Treaty with Saladin [1191—1192]
284
CHAPTER III.
HENRY VI.
PAGE
German
Affairs.—Peace with the Welfs.—Sicilian Affairs.—Tancred’s Usurpation.—Henry
and Constance in Apulia.—Seizure of Richard Coeur-de-Lion — His
Captivity—Ransom — Release.—Further Negotiations [1189—1194] 316
CHAPTER IV.
HENRY VI.
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 . . [1194—1197] 354
CHAPTER V.
Political,
Intellectual, and Social State of the Holy Roman Empire and Countries therewith
connected, at the Close of the Twelfth Century 385
CHAPTER VI.
PHILIP. OTHO IV. •
State of the
Sicilies.—Election of Innocent III — His Character —
Views—Immediate
Measures.—Death of Constance.—Factions in Sicily—In Germany*—Double Election .
. [1197—1199] 446
CHAPTER VII.
PHILIP. OTHO IV.
Negotiations
touching the Double Election.—Innocent’s Decision.—
Civil War in
Germany. — Fluctuations of Success. — Change in Innocent’s Views.—New
Negotiations.—Murder of Philip
[1199—1208]
469
Notes
......... 495
Chronological
Table . . . . . . . 528
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POPES, EMPERORS, KINGS, & CRUSADERS.
CHAPTER IV.
FREDERIC I.
Frederics
Second Italian Expedition—Rebellion of Milan— The Emperor in Lombardy—Siege and
Submission of Milan —Second Roncaglia Diet—Laws then promulgated—Dissensions
with Adrian—Second Milanese Rebellion—Siege of Crema. [1158—1160.
In Lombardy
most anxiously was the advent of Frederic and his army expected by all
Ghibelines, then groaning under the heavy yoke of Milan. That city, exulting in
the previous Imperial abstinence from active hostilities, had prodigiously
increased in power and arrogance since the Roncaglia Diet, at which she had
deemed it expedient to attempt buying off the Emperor’s wrath. She had
materially improved her own means of defence; had rebuilt Tortona far stronger
than before; had greatly enlarged the number of her dependent allies, and had
fortified all these really subject towns. So complete was her triumph over her
constant opponent, Pavia, that this, her chief rival, had perforce submitted to
give two hundred of her best citizens as hostages for her obedience to Milanese
commands, and acceptance of her chief magistrates from Milanese nomination.
Thus had she robbed
VOL.
II. 1
Pavia, the
former capital of Lo.nbardy, as she had previously robbed weaker cities, of
that very right, for the enjoyment of which she herself was ready to rise in
arms against the Emperor, whom she acknowledged as her sovereign—the right of
electing her own municipal council.
Confident in
her own strength, with which she boasted that the Emperor himself shrank from
collision, Milan had cruelly tyrannized over Como and Lodi. Rebuilt and
fortified as, under Imperial protection, these had been, from the citizens of
the last-named town she required an oath of fealty ; and they took it,
reserving in that oath their allegiance to the Emperor. The rage of the
Milanese at this reservation was unbounded, and terrified the loyal but not
stout-hearted Lodesans. In vain the Bishop, the magistrates, the principal
citizens, flew to Milan, and upon their knees implored mercy. In vain two of
the most anti-imperialist cardinals represented to the Milanese-the injustice
of so unlawful a requisition, warning them in the name of the Pope, in the name
of the whole Church, against compelling the Lodesans to perjure themselves by
breaking the oath plready taken to the Emperor. The Milanese, licensed at the
pertinacious fidelity of the Lodesans to their allegiance, fell upon them with
overwhelming numbers, and a \irulent fury to which their previous tyranny and
violence had been child’s play. They destroyed the Lodesan crops, vineyards,
plantations, sacked the restored city, expelled the inhabitants, razed the
walls, burnt the houses, leaving the whole a mass of ruins; and thrust into
dungeons all who, confined by illness, or trustirg to the compassion of
neighbours, really their countrymen, still lingered in their birthplace. The
exiles sought refuge at Cremona and Pizzighitone; but many perished upon the
road, many after reaching their asylum, from the effects of their sufferings.
The cry for redress, for the intervention of Imperial authority, resounded
throughout Ghibeliue Lombardy.
As harbingers
of this much needed authority and redress, had the loyal greeted the Imperial
Commissioners, Palsgrave Otho, a stalwart warrior, the very impersonation of
mediaeval knighthood, and Bishop Reginald, equally, perhaps, the impersonation
of the best mediaeval Digitized by Microsoft ® (
11 GO]
IN LOMBARDY.
3
ecclesiastical
statesmanship. The warrior is known to the reader by his exploit against the
Tyrolese rebels ; the prelate (x) is described as a small, fair man,
cheerful and friendly in demeanour, high-minded, upright, sagacious, eloquent,
indefatigably persevering, and devotedly attached to the Emperor. That is to
say, he is so described by Ghibelines; for Guelph writers lay craft,
dissimulation, and inordinate ambition to his charge.
These unlike,
but happily associated deputies, as their first step, possessed themselves of
the Castle of llivoli, which, commanding the valley of the Adige, secured to
the Emperor his line, both of march and of subsequent communication with
Germany. They next visited Verona, now loyal, where they were received, as in
other loyal cities, with the highest honours. At Cremona they held a provincial
Diet, which was attended by the Archbishops of Milan (often at variance with
the city) and of Ravenna, by fifteen bishops, many nobles, and the consuls of
several places. This was the concourse that had alarmed the Pope into
placability. Thence they proceeded, by Ravenna and Rimini, towards Ancona,
where the Constan- tinopolitan general, Paleologus, was professedly raising troops
in order, conjointly with the German Emperor, to carry on the war against the
King of Sicily; but at the same time secretly intriguing with all the
inhabitants of the eastern and southern coasts of Italy, to effect the reannexation
of the maritime districts, at least, to the Greek Empire.
In the
vicinity of Ravenna the Imperial Commissioners encountered a party of Romagna
grandees, followed by their vassals, and headed by lladevico da Traversara, the
principal nobleman of Ravenna. They were of the number of those amongst whom
Byzantine cabal had been successfully active, and the meeting proved hostile;
when in spite of their numerous and armed escort, Otho immediately captured
them. The Ravennese, after obliging them to take the oath of allegiance to the
Emperor, he admonished to be for the future more steady in their fidelity, and
dismissed, in compliment, possibly, to their loyal German archbishop. The other
Romagnotes he compelled, besides taking the oath of allegiance, to pay Digitized
by Microsoft®
a heavy
ransom ere he released them. Then, having assembled some forces, he and
Reginald proceeded to Ancona, rejected alike the plausible allegations or evasions,
and the large pecuniary offers of Paleologus, and finally expelled him and his
Greek troops from the city, the last foothold of the Eastern Empire in Italy.
Whilst his
harbingers were thus happily preparing the w ay fcr him, Frederic had entered
Italy at the head of his army. The first hostilities occurred at Brescia, a
city in close confederacy with Milan, but seem to have occurred cccidentally,
rather than from any preconcerted plan of determined’ revolt. The Bohemians,
who formed the vanguard of the army, fancying themselves, perhaps, in an
enemy’s country, plundered some Brescian villagers; and the Brescians,
believing themselves both in perfect security within their strong walls and
certain of immediate reinforcements from Milan, instead of appealing toUhe
Emperor for redress, attacked with superior numbers the small body of
marauders, and routed them with great slaughter. The King of Bohemia hastened
to avenge his loss, and quickly drove the Brcscians to seek the shelter upon
which they relied behind their walls; whilst the Emperor, coming up with the
main body, ravaged the territory of the offenders, and threatened the city
itself. The rash citizens repented of their temerity, paid a heavy fine, gave
hostages for their future good behaviour, and, equipping their contingent, gave
it to reinforce the Imperial, in lieu of the Lombard army.
At Brescia,
Frederic was joined, as well by his other Ger.nan divisions, as by the Italian
Ghibelines, nobles at the head of their vassals, consuls of their townsmen
from cities that were enlier loyal or jealous of Milan, such as Favia>
Parma, Cremona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, and a few more—or frightened by the
Imperial power, as Asti, Vercelli, Ravenna, and several Tuscan towns. An army,
thus heterogeneously composed, required to be governed by very stringent laws;
and the Emperor accordingly put forth a code of strict discipline, to which he
required the assent of the prelates present with him, and an oath of obedience
from every one else. By this code he established tribunals for the decision of
all Digitized by Microsoft®
quarrels
amongst the troops, thus to obviate private feuds ; and denounced regularly
graduated punishments, from arrest and fines up to mutilation and death, for
every offence in due proportion, from marauding and simple pillage of the
peasantry, to wanton devastation, incendiarism, and every species of outrage.
The proof was always to be, if possible, by witnesses, and only in their
default, by judicial combat for the free, by ordeal for the non-free, whose
punishment was always heavier than that of the free for the same crime. (2)
Naturally the code was severe.
Still all was
not ready for the commencement of operations. Frederic learned that
considerable uneasiness pervaded his host touching the object of the
expedition; the Germans fearing to be led against either the Romans or the King
of Sicily, in the remote provinces, and the—to them—deleterious climate of
southern Italy. To allay these apprehensions and stimulate the zeal of the
vassalage, he assembled the leaders of all degrees, together with his best
counsellors, and jurists learned in the law, in numbers as large as hall or
church could contain, and addressed them ina speech that Radevicus—who extols
the majesty, tempering youthful animation, which made the Emperor beloved and
feared by all—has preserved. The wording may, perhaps, be the old chronicler’s
own, but even so it is still characteristic of Frederic and his times. It runs
thus: “To the King of kings I owe high thanks, for that, having placed me as
his minister at the helm of state, he has given me such confidence in your
judgment and your prowess, that I trust easily to suppress whatever disturbs
the common weal of the Roman Empire, of which the business rests with me, the
dignity with you as the Princes of that Empire. The evils of war are too well
known to me to allow of my beginning hostilities out of ambition, arrogance, or
cruelty. It is Milan that, by her insolence and audacity, has torn you from
your patrimonial hearths, from the arms of your families. You will undertake
this war, therefore, neither in cupidity nor in cruelty, but for the sake of
peace, that the audacity of the wicked may be coerced, and the fruits of good
discipline enjoyed. Should we tamely endure the insults Milan has offered us,
instead of being lauded for patience and Digitized by Microsoft®
\
clemency, we
should be blamed for negligence and indifference to our duty. Ministers of
justice, I call for your suffrage; injustice we do to none, but ward off from
ourselves, and herein it beseems you to assist me with your utmost energies.
You will therefore, I well know, make every exertion, cheerfully bear every
privation, rather than suffer this rebellious city to boast that she has found
us degenerate, that she has with impunity despoiled me of rights that my great
predecessors, Charlemagne and Otho., gained for the Empire.”
This speech
awoke the most enthusiastic spirit of martial loyalty. The clash of arms, the
old German expression of approbation^3) re-cchoed through the hall,
and every hearer shouted in his own mother tongue his eager concurrence in his
Emperor's views. Ail impetuously clamoured to be led to the attack. But in
those chivalrous days, notwithstanding the seemingly almost reputable
existence of robber-knights, and all that is related of violence and outrage,
respect tor lawT was a prevalent feeling, at least since the
before-mentioned revival of the study of the system of Roman jurisprudence.^)
Proficiency jii that study already ranked high in public esteem, and Frederic
was attended upon his expedition by learned jurists, who affirmed that Milan
must not be condemned unheard. Incensed as he was, the monarch, at the head of
a numerous army eager to engage, admitted the justice of the allegation; and
the Milanese were summoned to appear before their Emperor and the Princes of
the Empire, in order to explain and, if they could, vindicate their conduct.
Accordingly, a deputation of jurisconsults appeared before this kind of
extemporaneous Diet, and pleaded skilfully in behalf of Milan; but the
Imperialist lawyers refuted their arguments, and the assembled princes
pronounced the Milanese plea invalid. The deputation then offered pecuniary
compensation, which, as before, was disdainfully rejected., and Milan was
formally laid under the ban of the Empire.
The army now
marehed to execute the sentence of the Diet, but its progress was not
(uninterrupted. To cross the Adda was indispensable; but the river was swollen
with recent heavy rains, and the bridge at Cassano, the
only one the
Milanese had left standing, was strongly guarded. The Emperor halted, and
ordered the banks to be explored. The Bohemians, led by their King, discovered
a place where the water seemed shallower, and boldly plunged in. They found the
stream both deeper and more rapid rhan they had supposed; two hundred of them
were swept away and drowned; and though the passage was achieved, it was
through such dangers, by struggling against and surmounting such difficulties,
that Vladislas knighted upon the spot the first man who presented himself upon
the sight bank of the river. The result of the exploit amply compensated the
loss. The Milanese, taking fright at the appearance of Imperialists on their
side of the Adda, abandoned the bridge, and fled to Milan. The Emperor now
crossed at the head of hi* forces ; but, even undefended, the bridge proved
nearly as perilous as the ford. It broke down under the weight of men, horses,
and baggage, crowding to get over; numbers perished in the river, and a
considerable delay ensued ere the accident could be remedied, and the troops remaining
on the left bank brought over. But Frederic turned even the delay to account.
He employed it to possess himself of a well-fortified Milanese castle, named
Trezzo, in which he placed a German garrison.
From this
acquisition, Frederic, at the prayer of the plundered and exiled Lodesans,
moved to w hat had been Lodi, when, under his eye, the foundation of a new Lodi
svas laid in a stronger site ; and here, amidst the ruins of a prosperous town,
devastated by ruthless ambition, amidst the lamentations of the victims of that
ambition, amidst all that must needs stir up every heart against the authors of
so much misery, was the Emperor visited by a new deputation from Milan. This
arrogantly contumacious city, startled by the passage of the Adda and the capture
of Trezzo, now sought to pi’opitiate, if possible, her acknowledged sovereign,
to apologize for, rather than justify her conduct. But time and place were
against her. Her envoys, without being admitted to the Imperial presence, were
dismissed by the Archbishop of Ravenna, i 1 these words : “ Ye have destroyed
Goti’s churches and the
Emperor’s
towns; and with the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to
you again.”(5)
Dejectedly
the deputation returned to Milan, to breathe their own despondency into their
fellow-citizens, many of whom had already begun to shrink from the conflict
they had wantonly provoked. But i the rash outbreak of a young Austrian noble,
Egbert Graf von Buten, who, at the head of a thousand youths as foolhardy as himself,
dashed off from the army, and galloped tauntingly up to the very gates of
Milan, as though expecting to carry the city by what would now be called a
Cossack hurrah, served to revive their spirits and brace their nerves. For the
whole burgher host thronging forth to repel the affront, fell with such
immeasurably superior numbers upon this handful of hot-headed boys, that they
were at once routed, and slaughtered or captured. Whether their leader fell in
the affray, or being taken was tortured to death within the walls, seems
doubtful; only his death being certain. The Emperor, in:hgnant at thisidle
waste oflife,put forth a proclamation, denouncing the pain of death against
whoever should fight without orders, even if victorious.
The following
day, August 6, 1158, the Imperial army amounting to 100,000 men, or perhaps
100,000 foot and 15,000 horse,(6; besides numerous artisans for
machine- building, peasants for trench-digging, &c., appeared before Milan,
marched with all the “Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war” round the
city, and encamped in allotted posts for the siege. Frederic, well aw;:re of
the extraordinary strength of Milan's defences, the result of the recent
exertions of her citizens, chose rather to trust to rhe slower process of a
blockade than to lavish the blood of his subjects in desperate assaults. He
accordingly divided his army into seven corps, under separate leaders,
directing each to pitch and intrench his camp before one of the seven
'•ity-gales, so as to be able to watch it, and prevent the introduction of
provisions. And whilst the Emperor thus awaited the operation of famine, the
virulently resentful Pavians and Cremonese, profiting by this opportunity of
avenging their own wrongs, strove to perpetuate the evils inflicted upon Milan,
bv destroying
11 GO]
DESULTORY
HOSTILITIES.
9
not only the
growing crops, but the vineyards, orchards, and olive plantations of the
Milanese, whose farms and villages they burnt. The wild Bohemians, who had no
such injuries firing their blood to vengeance, indulged their plundering
propensities, and are accused of violently carrying off the peasant girls ;
whom the captor’s compatriot prelate, Daniel Bishop of Prague, when he found
his prayers unavailing with these members of his own flock, to procure their
release, purchased, and sent, thus ransomed, home to their parents.
The Milanese
strove to defend themselves by becoming the assailants. They noted the
especially insulated position of the camp occupied by two of the youngest and,
consequently, least experienced of the German princes, the Duke of Swabia and
the Rhine Palsgrave, and attacked it by night. Troops and leaders alike were
surprised unprepared, and, although despite their disorder they fought
gallantly, great confusion ensued. The result must have been serious had not
their more vigilant neighbour, the
ry ■
veteran King
of Bohemia, heard the tumult and hastened to their relief; when the united
forces of the two camps presently drove the Milanese back into the town. In
retaliation of this attack, Palsgrave Otho one night set fire to the gate
committed to his observation, which, with some adjacent wooden buildings, he
burnt, but gained no further advantage. And again the Milanese tried a nocturnal
sally, selecting upon this occasion for assault the Duke of Austria’s camp. But
the old Crusader was not to be surprised like his nephews, and they were
repulsed with the loss of their favourite leader. Alany individual challenges
were given and accepted; and in almost all the single combats thus occurring,
the Germans gained the victory. A small tower serving as an outwork was early
mastered.
But it was
not to such insignificant triumphs, it was to hunger that the Emperor looked
for success; and hunger, thanks to the numbers who had crowded into the city
for protection, was within the month w’orking his will. Provisions had even in
this short space of time reached a price beyond the means of the lower orders;
and the more moderate among the higher, who thought the sufferings
of so painful
a struggle a price beyond what getting quite rid of the easily evaded yoke of a
distant monarch was worth, availed themselves of the growing dissatisfaction.
The Conte di Biandrate, about the most considerable of the nobles enrolled
amongst the citizens, who had fought valiantly in every skirmish, and was
universally esteemed by the Ghibelines and the Emperor as by his, townsmen,
addressing the famished multitude, reminded them that Milan had always been
part of the holy Roman Empire, and as such had always owed allegiance to the
Emperor, whether he were an Italian or a German: whence he inferred that there
could be no disgrace in submitting to their lawful sovereign. lie added that,
however desirable, however glorious, were the independence, the self-government,
the sovereignty for which they had striven, to struggle against overwhelming
force, in fact against fate, was irrational, and could produce only utter ruin.
For these reasons he exhorted them to seek a reconciliation with the Emperor,
concluding with these words:—•“ No one can suspect me of thus advising through
cowardice. No ! For myself I am ready to die for my fellow-townsmen—for my
city. Joyfully have I, joyfully will I, shed my blood for your safety.”
This harangue
wrought the effect the speaker had hoped. A negotiation was opened, and as
Frederic never sought more than what he deemed just, whether right or wrong in
his standard of justice, the terms of surrender were soon adjusted. These were,
a confession of their guilt on the part of the Milanese, and a petition for the
Emperor’s mercy; the acknowledgment of the perfect independence of Lod:
and Como, with the single exception of the spiritual dependence of their
bishops and clergy upon the Archbishop of Milan, as metropolitan; the taking
the oath of allegiance by every male Milanese between the ages of fourteen and
seventy; the renunciation of all pretension to the right of coining, imposing
taxes, and a few more royalties; amongst others which they were held to have
usurped, the right of sporting; the rebuilding the Imperial palace which they
had destroyed; the payment of 9000 marks of silver, whether as a fine or as due
for the coronation progress; and, finally, the ' Digitized by Microsoft®
delivery of
three hundred hostages, to be selected by the Marquess of Montferrat, the Earl
of Biandrate, and the Archbishop, and to include, if the Emperor so pleased,
three consuls present or past. These hostages were to be dismissed when all the
conditions should be fulfilled; and the Emperoi in return recognised the right
of the Milanese to elect their own consuls for the future, with the reservation
of his o\wi right to approve and confirm them, when coming to receive their
office of consul from him.(7) He further promised to grant the
allies of Milan the same terms, and not to risk disorders by permitting his
troops to enter the town. In compliance with this promise, the Imperial camp
was immediately removed to a greater distance from the city gates.
The next day,
the 8th of September, the Milanese came forth to humble themselves before the
throne of the Emperor, lay themselves at his mercy, and take the prescribed
oaths. They walked in procession. The Archbishop led the way, attended by all
the clergy, secular and regular, bearing crucifixes, censers, and other emblems
and implements of worship in the Roman Catholic Church. Next came the consuls,
municipal officers, nobles, and knights, barefoot, with their naked swords
hanging from their necks. Last in the train appeared the whole male population,
rich citizens, shopkeepers, handicraftsmen, and the like, similarly barefoot,
and with ropes about their necks. They passed along the lane formed by the
army, drawn up in two lines for the occasion, until the foremost ranks reached
the steps of the throne, upon which sat the Emperor, encircled by his princes,
prelates, and nobles. Then Milan, in the mass, sank prostrate in the dust
before him.(8)
The
Archbishop first broke the awful silence, imploring mercy for his flock. The
Emperor gave him the kiss of peace, with a sign to take his place amongst his
ecclesiastical peers. Oberto del’ Orto, one of the consuls who upon the
previous expedition had, whether purposely or not, so egregiously misled the
Imperial army, and who again held that office, spoke nest, saying: “We have
sinned against you, Lord Emperor: we have acted wrongfully, and pray for your
pardon, laying our swords at your Digitized by Microsoft®
feet, our
lives in your hands.” This humi’iation of the arrogant Milanese awoke general
sympathy, and Frederic answered: “ It joys me that the Milanese at length
prefer peace to war, and spare me the painful necessity of harming them. How
much evil had been averted had the citizens earlier chosen this better path ! 1
would reign over willing, rather than over coerced subjects; would reward
rather than punish. But none must forget that I am more amenable to obedience
than to force; that every froward fool can begin a feud, but that the issue
rests writh the ablest and bravest. In trust, however, that Milan
will henceforth persevere in the right path, she shall experience only my
clemency and favour, in lieu of my severity and power.”
The ban of
the Empire was then in due form revoked, and Frederic, after receiving the.
homage of the Milanese magistrates and nobles, gave them the kiss of peace. lie
withdrew his troops yet further from the city, and all seemed harmony; though
many were the heart-burnings caused within the walls of Milan by the sight of
tbe Imperial flag floating from the cathedral tower. But of this the Emperor
appears to have been unsuspicious. As though all the difficulties of his
enterprise were conquered, and so puissant an army no longer wanted, he
permtted those princes whose presence at home was urgently required, as the
King of Bohemia, the Duke of Austria, the Archbishop of Mainz, and others of
less dignity, to depart, taking with them a very considerable portion of his
German forces. His next measure was to improve the efficiency of those he
retained, by dealing his camp of the worse than useless camp followers, whose
very admission, interfering with the observance of his code of discipline, was
by it prohibited. That done, he proceeded with his diminished army to enforce
submission throughout Lombardy; and, in token of his recovered sovereignty,
was nowr crowned with the iron crown at Monza, upon which occasion
he liberally recompensed the loyal Lombards.
In the mouth
of November, 1158, the Emperor again held a Diet upon the lloncaglia plain, for
the avowed purpose of permanently restoring peace to Italy, by the
publication
of a code which should determine and proclaim the relative rights and duties
of sovereign and subjects. This Diet was attended by twenty-three prelates, by
princes, dukes, marquesses, and earls in considerable numbers, and by the
consuls and other magistrates of most cities in Lombardy and central Italy, including
Oberto del’ Orto and, his colleague now as before, Gherardo Negro. Thither, to
assist in the concoction of the proposed code, Frederic, who, if his ideas of
the rights of a sovereign were somewhat despotic, never sought to usurp a
prerogative that he did not believe to be lawfully vested in his high office,
summoned the four most celebrated professors of jurisprudence from the school
of law at Bologna. They were named Bulgaro, Martino Gossia, Jacopo, and Ugone
da Porta Ravegnano. And with these Professors or Doctors of Law,(9)
lest their doctrines should be thought to savour of partiality or undue
influence, the Lombard cities were permitted to associate as assessors or
assistants, twenty-eight lawyers selected from their municipal councillors. A
striking instance of the degree to vtliich the republican aspirations of the
cities had, in their search for legal grounds upon which to rest their
pretensions to self-government, promoted legal studies. This committee of
jurists and the subject of their deliberations the Emperor announced to the
Diet, by a speech, in which he assured the assembled Estates, more especially
the Italian Estates of the Empire, of his desire to rule by law rather than
arbitrarily.
That Frederic
Baibarossa herein spoke his real sentiments need not be questioned; but
neither had he to apprehend modern constitutional restrictions from Bolognese
professors. The mere recollection that the system of civil law taught at
Bologna bears the name of the Emperor Justinian, induces the certainty that it
must have assigned authority to the sovereign far more absolute than any
feudal monarch dreamt of exercising. One of the four doctors, indeed, Gossia,
is said to have advocated the right of mankind to liberty, but his three
colleagues adhered to Justinian’s principles. The decision given was, that to
the Emperor alone belonged the right of granting principalities: of appointing,
with
the assent indeed
of the people, consuls, judges, and all other city magistrates and officers;
and that the other rights and royalties, of which his predecessors had suffered
themselves to be lawlessly robbed, he ought to resume. These royalties included
the imposition of taxes, tolls of every description, and tines; confiscation of
forfeited, and occupation of lapsed fiefs, coining, mines, salt springs, mills,
fisheries, chases, free quarters for his army upon the Coronation Progress,
with many others of less moment, which it were tedious to enumerate. It may,
however, be worth noticing that one main cause of Milan’s discontent was the
restraint upon the citizens’ enjoyment of the pleasures of the chase,—the
exclusive privilege, it will be iemembered, of the nobility, save as their
villeins may, by the assistance theyrendered in its exercise, have shared in
it.
This decision
appears to have very unexpectedly extended the rights of sovereignty, but
without exciting any ;dea of resistance to the opinion of the learned expounders
of law. The Archbishop of Milan, instantly upon hearing it, offered the
restitution of all rights and privileges usurped by his predecessors; and hi,i
example was followed by nearly all the similarly circumstanced Italians
present. Frederic, overjoyed at the prospect of such an accession to the
ever-exhausted Imperial exchequer, promised in return, to confirm to the
actual possessors, whatever royalties had been fairly granted by any of his
predecessors.
The Emperor
next proceeded to legislate, with the advice of the Bolognese professors and
the concurrence of the Diut, upon some matters of scarcely minor importance.
He so restricted and regulated the right of private warfare, determining as
well the circumstances that should authorize, as the mode of waging it, that
his laws, could he have enforced the observance of them, had been a great step
towards the annihilation of this highly prized right itself, towards
superseding feudal by civil law. He ordered quarrels between cities or vassals
to be referred to proper tribunals, which he instituted where, deficient, and
imposed heavyfines, both upon the transgressors of this law, who would not
submit their differences to these tribunals, and upon such tribunals as should
fail to do justice
between the contending
parties ; and he prohibited, under similar penalties, all confederations and
conspiracies. He further prohibited: 1st, all division of duchies, margra-
viates, and counties, sanctioning such a parcelling out only in minor fiefs;
2dly, the transfer, whether by gift or bequest of any fief to the Church,
without the consent of the immediate feudal superior—the first attempt at
restricting gifts in mortmain ;(10) and 3dly, the disposal, in any
way, of any subfief, without the consent of the mesne lord. He further
commanded the reservation, in every oath of fealty, of the allegiance due to
the Emperor.
It may
perhaps chill the sympathy of modern cosmopolite philanthropists with the
Lombards’ struggle for liberty, to learn that, of all these laws, the restrictions
upon the right of private warfare was the most offensive to the cities. Their
anger was not, however, betrayed at the moment. All present swore, without any
apparent hesitation, to obey all these la'ns; nor need this excite surprise.
Many circumstances tended to moderate the Guelph movement. The growing
democratic tendency of the towns had, in fact, made the higher classes very
generally Ghibeline, even such as were most indisposed to the sovereignty of a
German emperor. Nor had the Popes as yet so decidedly placed themselves at the
head of the Guelphs as to counteract this sort of caste inclination. On the
other hand, not even the boldest and most republican cities seem to have
hitherto dreamt of advancing any pretension to independence of the Empire and
Emperor. What they really desired was to enjoy the rights and privileges of the
great feudal nobles. Frederic, moreover, now allured them to loyalty, by
generally granting them, in consideration of an annual rent, impost, or
tribute, those royalties which they had usurped, and of which they were in
actual possession. The loyal sentiments of the higher classes he sought to
confirm and recompense by divers favours, some of which may appear inconsistent
with feudal pride; as, e.g., he decided in the case of the nobles of Asti, that
they should not derogate from their nobility by taking part in mercantile transactions.
Whilst these
legislative labours were in progress, and
• .
even prior to
their commencement, Frederic, assisted by the Bolognese jurists, had sat to
administer justice. But such was the incredible number of prosecutions and
disputes brought before him, that he declared a whole life would be inadequate
to decide the quarrels of such intolerable law breakers as the Italians, fie
accordingly, by the advice of these, his legal counsellors, devolved the
ungrateful task upon especial judges, to be appointed by himself or his
Imperial Vicars. As a security against any unfair partiality on the part of
these judges, it was ordered that they should never be selected from the native
place of either plaintiff or defendant. The title of Podesta was given them;
and this is the first mention that occurs of these singular magistrates,(n)
always aliens to the town over the tribunals of which they presided, to which
they were not allowed to bring a single member of their family, or in which to
choose a wife, or to accept or give a dinner; and who, appointed merely as
judges, gradually drew the whole authority into their hands, though still
subjected to the same restrictions.
The Emperor
rewarded the services of the Bolognese doctors, and testified his value for the
learning that had proved so useful, by raising the high school of Bologna to
the rank of an University, which he endowed with various privileges. Among
these were, to all ;ts members exemption from military duties, to
the professors judicial authority within the University, and permission to the
students, even in criminal cases, to choose whether they would be tried by the
ordinary courts of justice, or by their own acadcmic, and, it might be
supposed, partial tribunal. It is to be observed, however, that the professors
found this prerogative of exercising judicial authority over their students so
burthensome, that they speedily resigned it to the municipal magistrates; and,
until the second quarter of the next century, never even sought to resume it.
The Emperor’s
grand object seemed now to be attained. The turbulent Lombards—whom, as really
constituting the kingdom of Italy, he deemed more peculiarly his subjects —
appeared to be brought into their proper position. Venice, the most nearly
independent state in northern Italy, had previously acknowledged his
sovereignty, by
paying her
allotted contribution towards the Coronation Progress. Her rising rival, Genoa,
had indeed resisted his demands, and fortified herself; but a short negotiation
ended in her acknowledgment of the Imperial sovereignty, whereupon the Genoese
consented to pay a sum of money in lieu of military or other service, and took
the oath of allegiance.
Frederic
next endeavoured to enforce those rights, now recognised by the Roncaglia Diet
as the Emperor’s, over the estates of the Church and the dominions of the Normans,
as far as Calabria ; thereby, of course, offending both the Pope and the King
of Sicily. William the Bad was just then in a position that enabled Adrian to
place some reliance upon his support. Maione’s brother, Stefano, had lately
gained a brilliant victory over the Greek fleet, making the commander, Michael
Ducas, with other personages of consequence, his prisoners; and this disaster
of his army had determined Manuel to conclude a thirty years’ truce v. ith the
King of Sicily. The pacification was as important to Adrian as to William; for,
thoroughly aware that the Romans were well nigh as much gratified as the
Emperor himself with the legal decision assigning, in some measure, universal
sovereignty to the monarch, who derived his supremacy from theirs, he knew7
they were little likely to prove tractable ; but felt himself strong in the
deliverance of his royal vassal and ally from foreign war, and consequent
ability to afford him support. Frederic, pursuing his triumphant career,
further irritated the Pope and provoked the enmity of many vassals, greater and
lesser, as well as of many cities, by the investigation which he at the same
time set on foot respecting Countess Matilda’s heritage. Although he had
granted that heritage with the title of Duke of Spoleto to his uncle Welf, he
had been able to give the grantee possession of only a very small portion of
that princess’s dominions. During the troubles that had prevailed since her
death many towns had emancipated themselves from all mesne suzerainty, becoming
free, viz., immediate vassals of the Emperor—if the word vassal may, for want
of another, describe this condmon of towns; and separata districts had been
usurped by divers princes, prelates, and Digitized by Microsoft® .
nobles; the
Pope leading the way. Hence it was now often as difficult to ascertain what had
and wliat had not formed part of those; dominions, as to distinguish her
legally lapsed fiefs from her allodial possessions.
Sardinia and
Corsica were the portion of this heritage respecting which the chief contest
arose between Adrian and Frederic. The Emperor claimed them doubly, both as
fiefs that had lapsed to the Crown upon Matilda's dying childless, and in his
character of heir to her heir, Henry V 5 and he demanded her heritage for his
uncle and vassal, the Duke of Spoleto, to whom he had granted, if not actual
possession of these islands, at least the suzerainty over them. The Pope,
whilst he denied the Imperial suzerainty over any part of the property of the
Church, Sicily and Apulia included, claimed Sardinia and Corsica as such upon
two grounds; the one, that they were comprised in the gift of either
Charlemagne or Lewis the Pious, or jn both; and the second, the Papal right of
sovereignty over all lands recovered from misbelievers: hence he argued that
Matilda had held these islands in vassalage of the Popedom, not of the Empire,
wherefore, upon her decease, leaving no child, to the Popedom and not the
Empire had these fiefs of hers lapsed.
To these
great subjects of contention, others of less moment—some personal, some
regarding the relations, rights, and prerogatives of the Church and the Empire
respectively—were superadded. The Archbishopric of Ravenna, Just then falling
vacant by the death of the German Anselm, Guido d’ Biandrate, son of the Conte
di Biandrate, was, by the clergy and laity of the province, lawfully, if
through Imperial influence, elected to the see. But Guido was a subleacon of
the Roman Church, and neither the members of the Roman clergy, nor the ecclesiastical
officers o: the Roman see, could, without the Pope’s express permission, accept
office or dignity in any inferior church or diocese. Adrian professed a value
for his subdeacon, that made it impossible, even at Frederic’s earnest
entreaty, to part with him; and he refused the indispensable permission. Upon
grounds diametrically opposite he refused to sanction the election of
Frederic’s able and active chancellor, Reginald, to the then vacant
11 GO]
FKFDERIC AND
ADRIAN.
19
archiepiscopal
see of Cologne. Then reviving some of the pretensions to which the Calixtine
Concordat had put an end, he insisted that the Italian bishops, though they
swore allegiance to the Emperor, should neither do him homage nor be obliged to
receive his envoys into their palaces. To the first of these pretensions
Frederic replied that jf the Italian bishops would, according to the proposal
of Pope Pascal II, renounce their temporalities, he would never claim homage
from them, but that whilst they held fiefs of the Empire, they must, for those
fiefs, do homage to the Emperor. To the other demand he said that he would
never require his envoys to be received into episcopal palaces standing upon
purely episcopal land, but that from any palace forming part of a fief of the
Empire he could not suffer them to be excluded.
The
irritation generated by these dissensions was further exacerbated by petty
annoyances. The Pope, in writing his complaints to the Emperor, besides giving
his own name precedence, adopted for himself the sovereign formula, the
plural, we, whilst addressing his Imperial correspondent in the singular,
thou. The Emperor vindicated his equality by employing in his answer the same
sovereign formula, which Adrian angrily resented. (12) In his wrath
he again sought to excite the German prelates against the Emperor, and
addressed an epistle to the three archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and Cologne
(then not yet vacant), in which he asserted the supremacy of the Church over
all temporal princes, and dilated upon the humble position of the German
monarchs, until Pope Leo III bestowed the Empire upon Charlemagne. The answer
of the archbishops showed him that from the German hierarchy, the members of
which both dreaded and gloried in the power and greatness of the Emperor,
nothing was at that time to be hoped. Frederic was, on the other hand, encouraged
to persevere by congratulatory addresses from the am i Papal Romans.
In fact, the
relative position of the parties was in many respects reversed since the days
of Henry IV and Gregory VII; and it was to Lombardy, not Germany, that the Pope
was now to look for support. Hence the illusory phenomenon of Mediaeval Popes
appearing as the Digitized by Microsoft®
friends and
champions of liberty. Those Popes used the republican aspirations of the
Italian cities as they did the monarrhial aspirations of the German princes, to
support and advance the interests of the Papacy, by weakening the Empire, in
utter indifference as to the consequences to the aspirants of either class; if,
lideed, the most ambitious of the pontiffs did not contemplate the subsequent
sub- j ugation of those same cities when they also should be weakened by
severance from the Empire, by insulation, and by enmity amongst themselves.
This change in relative position Adrian speedily discovered, and concluded an
alliance with Milan for the maintenance of their several pretensions against
the Emperor, which inspired both contracting parties with confidence. For
Milan was again incensed against her liege lord, both parties again being in
some measure in the right and as much in the wrong, whilst each asserted, and
probably believed, that the other was wholly the aggressor. Of the origin of
the quarrel a curious account is given by Yincentius Pragensis, a pnest of
Prague,(13) who appears to have accompanied the army in the train of
the Bishop of Prague, the benevolent redeemer of the Lombard peasant girls. He
states that, prior to the breaking up of the Diet, Frederic consulted the
Milanese Consuls as to the means of holding the Lombard cities in subjection;
to w hich they, thinking only of >val towns, not of their own, answered: “
By appointing their magistrates yourself, as the doctors of law.have decided to
be your right.” The Emperor, whilst rewarding the fidelity of Pavia, Lodi and
Cremona, with grants of liberty to elect their own magistrates, acted upon the
advice of the Milanese Consuls with respect to other cities, including Milan.
In the Ghibeline cities his podestas and consuls were cheerfully received; not
so at Milan. The Milanese averred that the Emperor, upon their submission, had
specifically conceded to them the right of electing their own magistracy, in
reliance upon which concession they had, at the usual time, elected new
consuls, of whom they required the Emperor’s approval, He injudiciously,
whether or not legally, affirmed that the laws subsequently enacted by the
Roneaglia Diet to which the Milanese Consuls, as representatives of their city,
had
sworn
obedience, and upon which laws they had advised him to act, superseded the
terms granted Milan at her surrender; and he sent his former commissioners in
Italy, Archbishop Reginald and Palsgrave Otho, with a third associate, Earl
Gozwin, to that ever-refractory head of Lombardy, there to appoint and instal
consuls. The existing magistracy opposed their operations ;(H) the
Imperial Commissioners persevered, perhaps offensively in manner; the business
soon became public, and the populace took the settlement into their hands.
They rose tumultuously, rushed to the abode of those whom they esteemed deputed
usurpers, broke their windows, and threatened their lives, with loud yells of “
Death ! death !” In vain Biandrate, with other men of sense, who were usually
influential, interposed. When did an excited multitude listen to reason?
Nothing could appease their fury; and the Commissioners were glad, through the
help of the baffled mediators, to escape with life from Milan.
The fugitive
commissioners hastened to report their discomfiture to the Emperor. He was at
that moment holding a Diet at Bologna; amidst the effervescent loyalty temporarily
there produced by the pride and gratitude of the schools, for their exaltation
to the dignity of an university; surrounded by embassadors from France,
Constantinople, and Hungary, sent apparently to congratulate him upon his
success, in reducing mutinous Italy to obedience. So situated, he was not
likely to show himself peculiarly tolerant of insubordination and insult. He
addressed a vehement speech to the Diet, calling upon all present to assist in
chastising Milan. All blamed the violence of the Milanese, and expressed
sympathy with his resentment. The Bishop of Piacenza, to whose lot if fell to
reply in the name of the whole assembly, fully concurred in the general
indignation ; at the same time reminding the Emperor of his avowed desire to
rule not arbitrarily, but by law; he prayed that now, as upon the former
occasion, the Milanese might be heard prior to being condemned. To this prayer
Frederic at once assented, and the Milanese were summoned to appear before the
Diet. Again the Milanese obeyed, sending a deputation, at the bead of which
they placed
their
Archb’shop. But the prelate disliking the office of
endeavouring
to vindicate conduct which he himself might possibly, as rebellious, deem
criminal, withdrew from it by the way; and his colleagues appeared without him
before the Emperor and the Princes. In satisfaction of the conduct of their
fellow-citizens, they pleaded the terms granted them at their surrender, and
the harsh treatment they had since received from the Emperor, who had released
Monza aud some other places from subjection to Milan, and had dismantled her
dependent ally, Crema, as the penalty of an assault upon Cremona. The pleas
were rejected, the acts complained of being all in conformity to the laws
published and sworn to at Roncaglia; by which the Diet, like the Emperor, held
that the terms previously granted to Milan were superseded, since these laws
the Milanese had, through their consuls, bound themselves to obey. It is
alleged by Ghibeline historians,that the Milanesedeputation, rendered
desperate, then said: “ We did indeed swear to obey those laws, but we never
engaged to keep our oath :”(13) and they add that the indignation
provoked by this open avowal of perjury was unbounded. Nevertheless, no
immediate step either in chastisement or in revenge was taken; time for
reflexion w as allowed ; another day being appointed upon which the Milanese
deputation might again appear, and either amend their plea, or express their
repentance. Even when upon that day no deputies presented themselves—they seem
to have gone home, either for fresh instructions, 01 in anger, and to mark
their rejection of the Diet’s decision—another delay was granted, another day
for their appearance appointed.
1’poii this
second day, the lfiih of April, 1159, the Milanese again failed to appear ; and
the Diet temporized no longer. The refractory city was now unhesitatingly laid
under the ban of the Empire, as the due punishment of contumacious non
appearance—which always seems to have been held the highest of
crimes,—oi’riot,andof treason. This sentence at once consigned the persons of
the inhabitants to slavery, their possessions to plunder, and the town they
inhabited to destruction. The Milanese, who were perfectly aware of what must
necessarily be the consequence of their pertinacity, had not awaited this
final sentence, but proceeded to hostilities before it was pronounced.
They had
fallen suddenly upon the Castle of Trezzo, and, by an attack undreaint-of in
the midst of profound peace, surprising the German and Italian garrison, which
the Emperor had placed there to secure the Cassano bridge over the Adda, easily
mastered the place. The latter portion of the garrison might have made a more
desperate resistance had they anticipated the fate to which their countrymen
had doomed them. All the Lombards, all the Italians found there, were
massacred, as traitors to the common cause; the Germans, as the natural
subjects of the Emperor, were merely detained as prisoners of war. The castle
itself, in which, as a secure stronghold, Frederic had deposited most of the
money paid him by the Lombard cities, was plundered, burnt, and completely
destroyed.
But if Trezzo
was successfully surprised, Frederic was not. lie had foreseen the impending
insurrection, though where the first blow would be struck he could not foresee,
and had already despatched messengers to Germany for reinforcements. He had
written to his Empress, whom he had left at home, to join him with as large a
body of vassals as she could collect; to his Lion-kinsman to hasten his
promised expedition to Italy ; to his uncle Welf and many princes and nobles,
calling upon them to support their sovereign according to their respective
means. But these reinforcements were as yet beyond the Alps, and for the moment
he was unequal to repressing rebellion. He marched indeed for Trezzo, upon
hearing that the direction taken by the Milanese forces seemed to threaten it;
but the place was lost long ere he could reach it, and again he withdrew to
Bologna.
The Milanese,
emboldened by success, by the retreat of the Emperor, and by their alliance
with the Pope, now, in conjunction with the Cremascans, attacked New Lodi. But
they no longer had the advantage of surprise; the citizens not having forgotten
their treatment when vanquished, defended themselves stoutly, and repulsed
their assailants. The Erescians, whom subjection had not rendered loyal,
having ia like manner made an inroad into the territory of Cremona, were m like
manner repulsed and driven away. When Frderic learned these new outrages upon
the faithful portion of Lombardy, he again marched, Digitized by
Microsoft®
again to
arrive too late; but this nme the disappointment was agreeable ; his arrival
being only too late because he found the rebels already defeated. He,
nevertheless, judged expedient to strengthen the fortifications of New Lodi;
and whilst this work was in progress, remained in the immediate vicinity for
its superintendence and protection. During this tirne he ravaged the lands of
the Milanese, partly in chastisement of their rebellion, and partly to impede
the victualling of Milan, which he proposed to besiege when in sufficient
force, and again wished to reduce rather by famine, than at the cost of the
blood of his more loyal subjects, or even that of the rebels.
Whilst the
Empeior lay encamped near Lod:, two inci- - dents occurred, which
are viewed under very different aspects by Ghibeline and by Guelph writers. A
man of uncommon size and personal strength, really or seemingly insane,
visited the Imperial camp, where he became the butt and laughing-stock; of the
soldiery; still but too commonly the treatment to which those unfortunates who
have lost the distinctive characteristic of human nature are liable from the
uneducated. Being apparently harmless, he was suffered, for their amusement, to
wander about freely. But one morning, Frederick coming alone out of his tent,
which w'as pitched upon the bank of the Adda, met this seeming maniac,
"who, no longer harmless, instantly sprang upon him, and endeavoured to
fling him into the river. Frederick resisted vigorously, whilst shouting for
help. But the man was either a maniac, having the strength of madness, or had
been chosen for his bodily prowess; and those, who flew to the rescue of their
sovereign, found him upon the ground still struggling with his gigantic
antagonist, upon whom, overpowering him by their numbers, they at once
inflicted the fate to which he would have subjected the Emperor. The whole army
was firmly convinced that the man was an assassin, employed by the Milanese to
rid them of their sovereign and conqueror ; and that he had feigned madness in
order to facilitate the executionof his nefarious purpose. '1 he ground of this
persuasion, beyond the well-known inveteracy of ihe Milanese against Frederic,
are now’here clearly stated; and the Guelphs, affirming the man to have been
really Digitized by Microsoft®
insane, would
fain represent his death as an act of brutal vengeance on the part of the Emperor;
though even if the assailant were mad, it was surely a venial impulse of
passion in those who saw their beloved monarch’s life endangered by a powerful
maniac, to fling that maniac into the river. They do not appear to have waited
for orders.
Subsequently
to this attempted regicide, an anonymous letter was received, announcing the
visit of a Saracen or Spaniard—meaning, it may be presumed, a Spanish Moor—a
Milanese hireling, whose personal appearance was minutely described, who would
offer for sale wares so impregnated with poison, that to touch them with the
bare hand would be death ; and who would, moreover, be provided with an
envenomed dagger, with which to insure the success of the mission, in case the
Emperor should refuse to examine his merchandise. A man answering to the
description presented himself, and was of course seized. VV'hether any
experiments were tried upon his goods or his dagger, does not appear; but the
Emperor promised him a full pardon if he would confess ; threatening him, in case
he denied the imputed crime, with torture to extort confession, followed by
death. The reader who shudders at such arbitrary and cruel proceedings, must
recollect that such was the usual course of criminal prosecutions in those
days, and as late as the eighteenth century, ay, even in the nineteenth, was
not altogether obsolete upon the Continent, where confession must precede execution,
and the burthen of proof—the proof of a negative !— is still very commonly
thrown upon the accused. 'J he man asserted his innocence, and derided all
menaces, averring that in virtue of his powers of sorcery, if he were executed,
the Emperor’s life should end simultaneously with his. It may be that Frederic
had, as his enemies affirm, dreaded the supposed death-fraught trinkets, or
more likely the dagger, whether envenomed or not; but at the prisoner’s threats
of sorcery he laughed; nor did such a boast tend to weaken the general belief
in his murderous intentions. He w as ordered to-be executed, and died
steadfastly deny- :ng the criminal design laid to his charge. The
guilt or innocence of the Milanese in this last, perhaps in both affairs, can
be judged only by the degree of credit to which VOL. ix. 2
the anonymous
letter was entitled—such letters were not as common then as now. But after an
interval of eight centuries, what means can there be of forming an opinion upon
this question, further than that it is difficult to conceive any motive for
anonymously writing such intelligence, if. false. There could be no need of exasperating
Frederic against Milan, even supposing any one to have an interest :n
so doing. However, whether fp.lse or true, these accusations are equally
illustrative of the feelings, opinions, and habits of the age, harmonizing well
with the ever- recurring surpicions of poison. And indeed the fictions of
history are, at least to the psychologist, well nigh as instructive as its
truths.
Germany,
meanwhile, hud been preparing to obey her Emperor’s call. Of the manner in
which the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria had employed the delay allowed him, the
accounts are not very clear. That his power was already very formidable, and
daily increasing, is indisputable ; not so how far his ambitious projects were
as yet matured, or even developed in his own mind. It should seem, however,
that, the accession of Waldemar to the crown of Denmark had induced him to
suspend, at least, his progress in the North; since he had professedly
contracted a friendship with his royal neighbour; cemented by the betrothal of
an infant daughter of the Lion’s to the infant heir of Denmark. What is
certain, is that, w hen he was about to redeem his plighted w7ord by
leading his vassals, at his Imperial kinsman’s summons, to Italy, Waldemar paid
him a visit, and requested him to check the acts of piracy committed by his
tributary Slavonians upon the Lanes; and, according to report, at the same time
offered him a sum of 1000 marks, either as the price of such complaisance, or
as an Imperial vassal’s contribution towards the Emperor’s Italian wars. Henry
promptly complied; accepted the money, if offered to equip his forces, summoned
his tributary or vassal, Niklot Prince of the Obodrites, to attend him, and,
when he appeared, enjoined him in Waldemar's presence, both to abstain from all
piratical attacks upon the Danes, and in proof of his intention to abstain, to
deliver up to him his ships of war. Niklot offered no opposition to tiiese
commands of his acknow
ledged feudal
superior; he promised obedience, and at Liibeck, delivered over a number of
piratical vessels to the Danish officers sent to receive them. The Earl of
Holstein, who was about to march for Italy with his mesne Lord, the Duke of
Saxony and Bavaria, required and obtained from Niklot, a similar engagement to
respect his lands and vassals, during his absence.
Henry now
proceeded to assemble his forces; Beatrice was occupied in like manner; but it
was Whitsuntide ere either of them was ready to move. They then united their
troops, and in company they crossed the Alps. The Duke of Spoleto was detained
some weeks longer in Germany, after which, he too led a body of vassals over
the mountains, and joined his two nephews. Divers nobles, separately or
conjointly, obeyed the Imperial summons. Thus recruited, the Emperor began
active operations; but, instead of at once forming the siege of Milan, as might
have been expected, he contented himself with further ravaging the territories
of that city, at the head of half his army, whilst he sent the other half to
besiege Crema. This last step was taken at the urgent prayer of the Cremonese,
who were intent upon avenging Crema’s transfer of her fealty from Cremona to
Milan, and therefore offered to defray a considerable portion of the expense ;
which offer is represented by the Guelphs, as bribing the Emperor wantonly to
destroy Crema. But it is not unlikely that Frederic may have adopted this line
of conduct, if partly to gratify the loyal Cremonese, much more through a wish,
by the display of his power against a less important town, to induce Milan to
surrender, and thus spare him the necessity of injuring, if not actually
ruining, the very gem of Lombardy.
Crema, though
situate in a plain, was esteemed a strong place; and was amply supplied with
water. To the east it is covered by the river Serio, to the south by tho
Travacone, and an impassable morass: the northern and western sides, being
destitute of such natural protections, Mere abundantly defended, according to
the system of fortification of the age, by a wide ditch, and by double walls, well
furnished with towers, constructed under the direction of a celebrated
engineer, namtd Marsilio or Marchese, who had acquired his ski'l in the East.
Milan and Piacenza
sent succours
as soon as Crema was known to be threatened; and so confident were the
Cremascans in the impregnability of their city, that the women went about the
streets singing in chorus songs, the purport of which was— Frederic shall be
driven away ingloriously, from before Crer.ia as was Lothar twenty-seven years
ago.
The siege
was, in a manner, begun upon the 3d of July; but the Cremascans stood their
ground without their walls until the Emperor himself assumed the command. They
were then quickly driven into the town, and the siege proceeded in earnest,
not by blockade, but after the established fashion of active besieging measures
in that age. Month after month the besiegers battered the walls with their
engines; built their moveable towers, with parapets and loopholes, whence
unexposed, the archers aimed their shafts; with machines for launching masses
of stone and rock into the town : with drawbridges, for the passage of storming
parties on to the walls. The besieged, directed by Marsilio, as busily
constructed machines for hurling at these towers retaliatory masses of stone,
that damaged their engines, crushed theiv parapets, and broke down their
bridges; besides which offensive measures from within, they made frequent
nocturnal sallies to set the hostile machinery on lire. The Milanese attempted,
whilst avenging the devastation of their own territory, to relieve Crema by a
diversion of the imperial forces ; to which end. they ravaged the lands of
several Ghibeline cities, and attacked the cities themselves. But Frederic was
not to be thus diverted from his object. He knew that under the. circumstances,
these attacks had l'trle chance of success ; and the common evils of war, such
as these ravages, his faithful subjects must endure as their share of his
toilsome as hazardous enterprise. And he persevered.
■
Meanwhile the exasperation between besiegers and besieged daily increased,
giving birth, now to feats of heroic valour, now to acts of ferocity at which
the heart sickens, but such as too often disfigure the lofty character of early
times. With which party they began is another disputed point. Radevicus says,
with the Cremascans; whilst Guelph writers give the following account:—Upon
Frederic’s leaving his camp to pay a short visit to his Empress, who
was
sojourning at Pavia, or some other Ghibeline city, the Cremascans took the opportunity
of his absence, to make one of their nocturnal sallies, in which they were
unusually successful. The Imperialists, infuriated by their losses, and
unrestrained in the Emperor’s absence by his authority, decapitated all their
prisoners, to play at football with their heads, in full view of the citizens
upon the walls. The Cremascans, infuriated in their turn, retaliated by
bringing all their prisoners on to the walls, and there hacking them to pieces;
after which they hung the mangled limbs and heads outside of the external
wall, there to offend the eyes of their comrades, and be further mangled by
their battering engines. Whether this were an act of aggression or of
retaliation, the ghastly sight greeted the Emperor, at his return, and naturally
filled him with indignation ; and would still have done so, even if he were
informed of any previous Ghibeline outrage, that had provoked Guelph
vengeance. His indignation produced one of the very few acts of real cruelty
that can belaid to hischarge. He gave the Cremascans notice by a herald, that
henceforward no prisoner’s life would be spared. In consonance with this
notice, he ordered the Milanese prisoners, taken in repulsing their recent
incursions, to be brought to his camp, and there hanged, together with,
according to Guelph accounts, some hostages in his hands: and he likewise
ordered several Cremascan captives to be affixed to the various engines; or
rather it appears hostages were thus cruelly, if more rationally used, since it
was not, as might be supposed, for the purpose of being projected amongst their
fellovv-townsmen, but as a measure of defence, as shields, to prevent the
besieged from longer aiming at his engines, which they had materially damaged.
For a moment the horror-stricken Cremascans stood motionless. But one of their
leaders reminded them that all were alike bound to peril their lives in the
great cause, and again they worked their engines, wounding, maiming, crushing
their exposed fellow-citizens, the children of those fellow-citizens, and their
own, amidst the shrieks of parents and friends; ■whilst one father is
reported to have shouted to his thus exposed child. ‘‘Fear not to die for
liberty, my boy. Thy mother and I will soon follow thee. ’’
Enough of
horrors! Suffice it to say that Palsgrave Qjtho was here, as usual, the most
daring warrior, the most distinguished leader; and that during the siege, the
Sghly valued Marsilio deserted Crema to attach himself to the service of the
Emperor, and ■ mpart new efficiency to what may be called his battering
train. After a desperate assault which, repulsed and renewed, was continued
throughout the day, the besiegers remained at night masters of the outer wall;
and now, towards the end of January, 116‘0, the Cremaseans, despairing of
relief as of ultimate success, offered to capitulate under the mediation of the
Patriarch of Aquileia and of the Duke of’ Saxony and Bavaria. The Emperor, as
usual, required a surrender at discretion. They could stiuggle no longer, and
submitted, merely protesting against being again subjected to Cremona, whose
vindictive anger they dreaded. The Emperor put an end to further protest or
prayer by pronouncing, then and there, what seems to have been the ordinary
doom. “The Cremaseans shall retain their liberty, but must quit the town with
their wives and children, taking with them as much of their property as they
can individually carry.” To this he added, “ the Milanese and Brescian
auxiliaries must lay down their arms.”
Twenty thousand
Cremaseans thus abandoned their homes, followed by their disarmed confederates;
and an incident of the evacuation is related, which may serve to show that
Frederic’s severity was the offspring rather of his ideas of the inflexibility
essential to justice, than of a harsh temper. A sickly old man from sheer
weakness falling down amidst the mournfully self-engrossed throng, the Emperor
sprang forward, and raising him with his own hands, led him so far apart from
,the crowd, as enabled him to proceed on his way unjostled.(lb) It
is reported that upon this occasion a woman, leaving all property behind,
carried away her severely wounded husband.
The
evacuation completed, the Emperor presented the arms and military engines left
at Crema to the Cremonese and Lodesans, whom he commissioned to fill up the
ditch and demolish the walls, a commission which they executed with right good
will. The city itself he gave up to
be sacked;
and in the wild recklessness of these, actually and metaphorically,
intoxicating orgies of war, it was, casually or wantonly, set on fire and burnt
to the ground. The Emperor, as before, returned to Pavia, but now rather to
exert himself in business of a different kind, than either to celebrate his
triumph, or enjoy a short repose with his consort.
CHAPTER V.
FREDERIC I.
Death
of Adrian IV—Double Papal Election—Council of Pavia —Hostilities in
Lombardi/—Surrender and Doom of Milan— Affairs of Germany—Henry the Lion and
the Slavonians —His Quarrel with his Bishops—Negotiations touching the Schism—Polish
Affairs—Renewed Struggles of the Slavonians. [1159—1U)3.
During the seven months that the siege of Crema had
lasted, changes and events had occurred to share the Emperor’s attention with
that operation. At a very early period of the siege, the Imperial camp had been
sought by another embassy from the Roman Senate. Its object is not positively
known; but, the Romans being again at variance with the Pope, is not unlikely
to ha\e been a renewal of the former invitation, to rescue Rome from priestly
thraldom, and restore her to her proper station, as metropolis of the world, by
making her the seat of his Imperial government. Frederic, whatever were the
message and his answer, appointed Palsgrave Otho and the Earls Gozvvin and
Biandrate as his representatives to accompany the return of the Roman
deputation; charging them apparently, in addition to their mission to the
Senate, with some proposals to the Pope at Anagni, whither he had again deemed
it expedient to retire. These proposals were, of course, designed to avert the
sentence O' excommunication, which, as an irresistible instrument of
compulsion, Adrian was understood to be now upon the point of pronouncing
against the Kmperor. The negotiations with the Holy Father, whatever might be
their purport or lature, were abruptly broken off by death. Adrian IV expired
at Anagni, September 1st, 1159.
The body of
the deceased pontiff was carried to Rome for interment; and even before the
obsequies were performed, the Cardinals, twenty-three in number, appear to
have been seized with apprehensions of a schism, and to have taken measures, as
they hoped efficacious, for averting the danger. They entered into a w'ritten
agreement that the ensuing election, to be valid, must be unanimous; that a
single dissentient voice should annul it, unless the objector could, by
negotiation, be induced to revoke his dissent. But party spirit ran too high to
render the required unanimity possible. In spite of the compact, a double
election occurred, and is, as usual, contradictorily described by the writers
of the opposite factions; whilst, if the previous compact w'ere of any value,
it is self-evident that both elections were null and void. As regards the blame
of the double election, that appears to be pretty equally divided between the
parties; the Guelphs having been guilty of the first violation of the solemn
engagement, the Ghibelines of the first intemperate conduct. The facts appear
to be these.
After three
days’ deliberation, and vain struggles for the proposed unanimity, fourteen of
the twenty-three Cardinals fixed their choice upon the Chancellor of the Roman
See, Rolando Bandinelli, Cardinal of St. Mark; the very individual Prince of
the Church who had so deeply offended the Emperor and the Princes of the Empire
at Besangon. This choice was in itself unobjectionable, Rolando Bandinelli
being a man of great abilities, who had earned the cardinalate by
distinguishing himself as Professor of Theology at Bologna.(17) But
against it the remaining eight Cardinals protested, as invalid for want of
unanimity; and as necessarily so offensive to the Emperor, that it would be
likely to produce noxious dissensions between the two Heads of Christendom. The
fourteen persisted nevertheless; and in utter disregard of their signed and
sealed compact, pronounced Cardinal Rolando a lawfully elected Pope. He, on his
part, declined the honour tendered him; but whether merely in the established
nolo episcopari form, or honestly, either out of respect for the compact he had
signed, or because really shrinking from so arduous an
■ i/(>Y OS l 0 s '
office as the
Papacy must be, asserted and exercised as it was in his principles and his
nature to assert and exercise it, is problematical. His party, equally
regardless of his refusal as of their own plighted word, proceeded, with a sort
of gentle violence, to invest him, despite his resistance, with the Papal
mantle; when Ottaviano, Cardinal of Sta. Cecilia, a noble Roman and a
Ghibeline, interposed, exclaiming that no man could be made Pope against his
will. The remaining seven cardinals of the minority now, emulating the fault of
their opponents, proclaimed Ottaviano himself Pope, and he at once accepted the
nomination. A very :iidecorous scuffle for the Papal mantle ensued, the Cardinal
of St. Mark’s not choosing to part with the insignia of the Papal office that
he had refused to undertake. Ultimately, the prize remained with the Cardinal
of Sta. Cecilia, whom Guelph chroniclers accuse of having, with his own hands,
violently stripped it from his rival’s shoulders. The doors of the conclave
were then thrown open, and a crowd of armed Ghibelines poured in, greeting
Ottaviano—whose Roman birth made him the favourite of the Roman people and
clergy—as Pope. He assumed the name of Victor IV, and was forthwith installed
in the Latc-ran; whilst his opponent, who entitled himself Alexander III, and
his Cardinals, were detained in captivity. In this state things remained for
twelve days, during which the ardently Guelph family of the Fraugipani laboured
to excite the populace against Victor IV, who was warndy supported by the
Senate. The Frangipani so tar succeeded, that upon the thirteenth day, by means
of a popular commotion, they effected the release of Alexander and his
cardinals, who immediately fled from Rome to Anagni. The rival Popes then proceeded
emulously to excommunicate and anathematize each other.
This double
election, with its consequences, was speedily announced to the Emperor in his
camp before Crema. A moden. politic sovereign might probably have rejoiced in a
schism that must weaken the usually encroaching Papacy,and have left the two
Popes and their Cardinals to fight out their own quarrel. But to Frederic
Earbarossa, the eiection of the supreme pontiff was matter of deep religious
interest, even more than of political importance. Digitized fry
Microsoft®
A schism in
the Church was, in his eyes, a serious misfortune; and, though his judgment
must needs have been biassed by resentment against one of the pretenders to St
Peter’s Chair, and knowledge of the friendly sentiments of the other, he
endeavoured by the best means in his power, to ascertain which of them was the
true Spiritual Head of Christendom. Affirming that upon the Emperor was it
incumbent to provide against the dangers that the Cardinals, “ for their own
ends, and disregarding the will of God,” had brought upon the whole Church, he,
by the old prescriptive Imperial right, if long disused, never renounced, even
by Lothar, convoked a General Council, to meet at Pavia in the ensuing month of
January, in order to examine and decide which of the two claimants was the
lawful Pope, lie addressed letters to all the prelates of Christendom,
individually inviting them to constitute this Council; and others to all
Christian potentates, entreating them not to declare themselves for either
competitor until this indispensable Council should have decided between the
two. And finally, he summoned both the elected pontiffs to appear before this
General Council, the only tribunal authorized to judge between them. But
notwithstanding Frederic’s professions of impartiality, and doubtless honest
endeavours to act up to those professions, his wishes and inclinations were
betrayed by the very superscriptions of these last two summoning epistles. The
one was directed to “ Victor, Roman Bishop, and the Cardinals who have elected
him;” the other to “theChancellorRolando and the Cardinals who have elected
him.”
To this
summons Alexander haughtily replied, that the lawful successor of the Blessed
Apostle could acknowledge no jurisdiction of Emperor or Council; it was his to
summon, not to be summoned, to judge, not to be judged; and he took no further
notice of summons or Council. Victor, on the contrary, of a more pliant temper,
either conscious of his own weakness, or relying upon the Imperial summoner’s
disinclination for his rival, immediately repaired to Pavia, where he exerted
himself still further to conciliate the goodwill of the Emperor and his court,
as also that of the prelates as they arrived.
Frederic, at
the neriod he had originally named for the
opening of
the Council, was still detained, if not engrossed, by the siege of Crema. When,
released by its fall, he returned to Pavia, he found this important business
awaiting him, and lost no time in endeavouring to forward it. Not above sixty
or seventy prelates, and these mostly Italians and Germans, appear to have been
present; but with this attendance, upon the 4th of February, he pro ceeded to
open the Council. He is said to have briefly addressed the fathers of the
Church as follows:—“Not only the old Roman emperors, but also Charlemagne and
Otho the Great, convoked Councils of the Church, to decide weighty questions. I
presume not to pass judgment between the rival claimants of the Papal See, but
desire to be instructed by holy and learned men, such as I see before me, which
of the two Popes, elected in opposition to each other, I am to obey as head of
the Church. l)o you, without reference to me, thoroughly investigate and decide
this momentous question, as you will answer it to God.” Having thus spoken he
withdrew, taking with him all the laity.
During seven
days the Council deliberated. All were disposed to pronounce Victor the Supreme
Pontiff, propitiated most likely by his prompt recognition of their authority;
but the Lombard Bishops were reluctant to condemn the Roman Chancellor unheard.
Against this reluctance Alexander’s adversa -es represented that his being
unheard wras entirely his own fault; to which the German prelates
added, that it were hard to allow the wilful obstinacy of one of the candidates
for the tiara to render the expense and inconvenience occasioned them by a
summons to Italy, unavailing. Ultimately, intercepted letters, written by
Alexander and his Cardinals, were laid before the Council, from which it was
evident both that prior even to Adrian’s death they had conspired to prevent
the election of any Pope who should not be of their own faction, and that they
had now confederated with Milan, and the other insurgent cities of Lombardy,
against the Emperor. The Council was satisfied, and proclaimed Victor IV the
true Pope.
The doors
were then thrown open and the decision was announced. The Emperor and Princes
declared their Digitized by Microsoft®
approbation
and concurrence; and the assembled people, being thrice asked whether they
acknowledged Victor IV as Pope, thrice assented with loud exclamations. The
next day Victor was brought in state from a monastery where he had taken up his
residence. He came, clad in the papal vestments, and riding a white palfrey.
The Emperor awaited him at the door of the cathedral, held his stirrup whilst
he alighted, and led him by the hand to the high altar, where he knelt to kiss
his slipper: all present followed his example. As Pope, Victor then celebrated
high mass, after which he solemnly excommunicated the refractory Anti-pope,
and, as the sentence was pronounced, the torches were emblematically
extinguished. The Emperor, considering all doubts and difficulties to be
removed by this solemn recognition of Victor, despatched embassadors, in
company with the Papal Legates, to the several European courts to make known
the decision of the Council, and urge the acknowledgment of the true Pope.
Alexander III
lost no time in retorting the excommunication of his triumphant rival;
including in his anathema, the ecclesiastical adherents of that rival and his
lay supporter, the Emperor, whose subjects he at the same time released from
their oaths of allegiance. He likewise sent legates forth, to counteract,
throughout Europe, Victor’s legates and Frederic’s embassadors; and he drew yet
closer the bonds of alliance with Milan.
Again the
period of feudal service had expired, and again the Emperor had no right to
detain the German princes; as little had they to detain their vassals in Italy,
even if themselves willing to remain there. Frederic therefore dismissed the
greater part of his German host with thanks, rewards, and exhortations to
return next year, bringing fresh troops. His brother, the Rhine Palsgrave, his
cousins, the Duke of Swabia and the younger YVelf, son to the Duke of Spoleto,
Palsgrave Otho, and a few more, would not desert him; and their vassals, imbued
with their spirit, remained with them. But this addition to his Italian army
was not sufficient to enable him to do more, during the year 1 lO'O and the
early portion of 11(31,
than repress
the attempts of Milan against the loyal cities,
3a oy ten '■
and carry on
desultory hostilities, which, being retaliated, were productive of no result
beyond much suffering1 on either side. Evils from which, however,
young Wolf, who seems to have enjoyed full authority over so much of his
father’s Italian doir.arns as were really in the Duke’s possession, found means
to protect those domains.
In the summer
of llGl Frederic received reinforcements from Germany; but lie, upon whom he
was most entitled to rely, was not amongst the leaders, his warriors swelled
not the ranks of those reinforcements. The Duke of Saxony and Bavu ia alleged
the necessity he was under of punishing the Slavonians, who, durhig his last
absence in Italy, had disobeyed his commands to respect the property of the
Danes: and it may be suspected that he did not much regret the necessity,
which, by weakening his Imperial kinsman and liege lord, might prolong the
detention beyond the Alps, of him from whom alone the Lion could apprehend any
check to his ambitious schemes. Still, if less numerous than Frederic had
hoped, the German troops that joined him were sufficient to render >t, at
the first blush, matter of some surprise that again this year he should have
contented himself with checking the incursions of the Milanese upon the loyal
Lombards, ravaging their own territories, obstructing the introduction of
provisions into Milan, and puuishing, in the sanguinary spirit of the times, by
blinding, cutting off the nose, or the like, those peasants who, for the chance
of obtaining scarcity-prices, attempted to carry their produce thither in
defiance of his prohibition ; an act of rebellion against the'r acknowledged
sovereign, be it remembered. But the surprise felt at such apparently desultory
measures vanishes upon consideration, It was evidently his object to reduce
Milan by a species of blockade, the evils of which would press upon the
Milanese alone; thus sparing the lives of the loyal and of the rebels likewise,
since with themselves it would always rest to end those evils by submission.
The summer
was thus occupied; at the close of autumn the Emperor again dismissed the
German vassals whose term of service had expired. But while so doing he took,
in their presence, a solemn oath, never to quit Italy till he should be master
of Milan. And m further proof of his Digitized by Microsoft ®
sense of the
arduous, and possibly hazardous character of the task to which he thus pledged
himself, he provided for the contingency of his own death during its execution.
Deeming the times probably too troublous for the reign of a child with a
regency, he made no mention of his own infant son as his successor; but
designated as such, in the first instance, his brother Palsgrave Conrad, and in
his default, his cousin Henry Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, of whom, however
disappointed in the exertions he had hoped from him, it is clear he as yet
entertained no mistrust. After the departure of the Germans he fixed bis
winter quarters at Lodi.
It may seem
strange to modern readers that a blockade so imperfect as that which has been
described should have answered its purpose; but early in U62, whilst Frederic
still sojourned at Lodi, the wisdom of his seeming procrastination was made
manifest. Hunger for the second time conquered Milan. The Consuls, presenting
themselves before him at Lodi, offered to capitulate; the Emperor, as was his
wont, refused to admit rebels to a capitulation, insisting upon a surrender at
discretion ; and the Consuls, exclaiming that death was preferable, returned
home, to “ die among their neighbours.” But, as usual, the populace, who, by
their intemperate violence, had provoked the vengeance hanging over them,
lacked fortitude to endure the consequences of their own outrageous conduct,
the calamities in which they had involved themselves and others. A struggle in
arms might have excited them; but they were intolerant of the evils of
scarcity, which indeed pressed more heavily upon them than upon the wealthy,
and they compelled the Consuls to comply with the Emperor’s demands.
What was to
be the fate of the vanquished remained as yet wrapt in mystery. The Emperor
required, in the first place, as upon the former occasion, complete and entire
submission. To mark this, the ceremonial of the surrender was performed with
prolonged formalities. Upon the 1st of March eight consuls and as many knights
repaired to Lodi, there, in the name of Milan, to surrender at discretion,
laying themselves and their fellow-citizens
at the
Emperor’s mercv. Upon the 3d, three hundred
L SystiZvV Dy v1' " - ■ • ' 7
knights laid
their swords, with the keys of the city and of her castles., and thirty-sis. banners,
at the Emperor’s feet. Lastly, upon the 6th, all who had been consuls during
the last three years of rebellion, with a body of the burgher troops escorting
the carroccio, and ninety-six more banners, proceeded to Lodi. When the
mournful procession came in sight of the Emperor, the trumpets of the carroccio
sounded for the last time, the strain dying away as the mast,—upon which
appeared, beside the crucifix, the figure of St. Ambrose in the act of giving
his blessing,— sank, as if spontaneously. Then the trumpets, with the banners,
were thrown at the feet of the victorious sovereign. The carroccio was broken
to pieces and its attendants feH prostrate crying for mercy.
It is said
that Frederic, dreading the influence of his tender-hearted consort over his
sterner mood, had forbidden her presence at this scene. But the roughest
warriors were moved. Biandrate, who since his reconciliation with the Emperor,
had fought as gallantly against, as previously for, his insurgent
fellow-citizens, stood forward to add his supplications to theirs ; and almost
all present shed tears. Frederic alune sat unaltered in countenance. At length
he spoke. “ Such mercy as is compatible with justice, shall be yours. By law,
you have all forfeited your lives; but, your lives I give you, and will subject
you only to such measures of rigour as are necessary to prevent the repetition
of your crimes.”
What those
measures should be, was reserved for discussion in a Diet to be held at Pavia.
Thither Frederic, after despatching six German and six Italian commissioners to
Milan, to receive the citizens’ oaths of submission and allegiance, removed
with his court, and also with the Milanese knights, now increased in number to
400, whom he detained as hostages. At this Diet were present, the Italian
nobles and prelates, with the Consuls of all the loyal cities. Among them,
Milan had few friends. Pavia detested her long triumphant rival; and all the.
Italian Ghibelines, nobles and eit zens alike, wished the arrogant city to be
disabled from annoying and oppressing her neighbours. The personally insulted
and threatened commissioners, Archbishop Reginald, and Palsgrave Otho,
would hardly
plead in her favour. The Rhine Palsgrave is said to have been the inveterate
enemy of all Lombard Guelphs, whilst Lodi and Como must have been on fire with
impatience to see their tyrant treated as she had treated them. This last
proposal, as most consonant with Frederic’s notions of strict justice, was the
course adopted. The Milanese were commanded to quit their native city, and
build themselves, for their future abode, four villages ; (18) each
two miles distant from Milan, and at least as far from each other, to each of
which he named a governor Their moveable property, the citizens were allowed to
take with them, or at least, as usual, what they could carry ; (19)
but the walls and fortifications, and according to some writers, the buildings,
with the exception of the churches, were to be demolished; and the ditch
filled.(20) This work of destruction he committed to Lodi, Como,
Novara, and other cities that had smarted under the yoke of Milan, and joyfully
did they undertake it. Whether Milan was, or was not sacked, is as much a
disputed question as the degree to which it was destroyed. Plundered it certainly
was, a proof that a limited portion of their property only was to be carried
off by the inhabitants; but plundered, it should seem, in orderly manner for
public account, since one tenth of the booty was assigned by Frederic, to
divers Italian and German cloisters.(21) A piece of the booty upon
which he set especial value, was the shrine containing the relics, genuine or
supposititious, of the three Kings who, supernaturally guided, visited
Bethlehem to worship the infant Saviour. This he presented to his Chancellor
Reginald, for the Cathedral of his See, where it is still exhibited. Upon the
26th the Emperor entered Milan, in triumph, not by one of the gates, but over
the filled-up ditch and razed wall, hastily prepared for his passage.
This
destruction of Milan is the act generally selected, as one of unprecedented
barbarity, to brand Frederic with tyrannical inhumanity ; and Tiraboschi, who
admires the grandeur of his character, thinks he must have blamed hi'oself for
suffering any provocation to impel him to such cruelty. The republican
Sismondi, it has been seen, regards it in a different light:(“) and although
the act is unDigitized by Microsoft <& ■
questionably
repugnant to modern feelings, yet amidst the massacres, tortures, and other
horrors, narrated and to be narrated in the present pages, it is difficult to
discover any very extraordinary inhumanity or tyranny in disabling rebellion
(as he hoped), by merely retaliating upon Milan, somewhat less barbarously, the
treatment she had wantonly inflicted upon Lodi and Como. Nor did Frederic
himself apparently, or contemporary Ghibelines, ever consider the doom of Milan
as obnoxious to censure, the latter habitually boasting of it as a glorious
instance of retributive justice. When the Imperial Court was so moved by the
distress of the Milanese, a sentence of death for all the leading men, and of
utter spoliation for the rest, was probably anticipated.
The Emperor,
when his officers were so grossly insulted at Milan, had vowed never to wear
his crown till the guilty city was subdued. For three years he had faithfully
kept this vow; and when, upon the 1st of April, a.d.
1162, he returned to Pavia, there to celebrate simultaneously his
triumph and the Easter festivals, and appeared in public with his Empress, both
having their crowns on their heads, the clamurous enthusiasm that greeted them,
made the welkin ring. Prelates, nobles, consuls, and podestas, thronged around
him with congratulations. Brescia, and other confederates of Milan, hastened to
earn their pardon by assisting in her demolition, paying- heavy self-imposed
fines, receiving consuls and podestas of Imperial nomination, and promising on
oatft to supply ample contingents for tne Emperor's wars, against Home, Apul:a,
or other rebellious towns or provinces. The previously loyal Bologna alone,
made a show of resistance, that brought the Imperial forces down upon her; when
in alarm she deputed the four Doctors who had attended at Roncaglia, to plead
in her favour. For their sakes she was pardoned, upon submitting like the rest.
But, if 1
rederic punished severely, he liberally rewarded, lo Pavia, Lodi. Cremona, and
Como, he granted or confirmed the privilege of electing their own magistrates.
The Pisan municipality, in recompense of Pisa's staunch loyalty, he invested
with the county, or more properly with an Earl’s privileges and rights, over a
number of Tuscan
towns. Genoa
had no such claims, having received Pope Alexander with great honours, only
turnirg against, and, in fact, expelling him, when alarmed by the fall of
Milan. But Genoa was forgiven and permitted to earn future rewards. Frederic
negotiated with both Pisa and Genoa, for the use of their fleets, and for other
services beyond what was feudally due, in his projected war with King William ;
and by some chroniclers, is said to have promised them not only a share of the
Sicilian booty, royal treasure included, but the island itself, in vassalage.
When Milan w as at length fairly subdued, however, he did not hold it expedient
to remain in Italy, merely to make war upon William the Bad. His most important
business he now judged to be healing the schism in the Church ; and the
negotiations to accomplish that object, as well as the affairs of Germany,
recalled him north of the Alps. But prior to accompanying him on his return, it
will be desirable to see w hat the state of Germany had been during his
prolonged absence in Italy.
Of the
several princes who forsook the Emperor amidst his Italian troubles in 1159,
one had returned to forward his own ambitious schemes of aggrandizement, during
so favorable an opportunity; another to receive, unjustly, the punishment he
had justly incurred by his previous treachery. Their acts and their fate are
the most memorable events of these years in Germany; and the last named, as a
more distinct transaction, less involved with the continuous history of the
period embraced in these volumes, may take precedence.
The prince in
question was Arnold Archbishop of Mainz, whose unprincipled superseding of his,
whether innocent or guilty, confiding predecessor. Archbishop Henry, the reader
will not have forgotten. (23) It might be anticipated that the man w
ho had so basely attained his temporally, as well as spiritually, important
office, would not be likely so to exercise the authority committed to him, as
to win the love and respect of his flock or of his vassals. He is said, indeed,
to have been even ascetically austere in his habits of life, and very
charitable to the poor; but this eulogy is more than qualified, is well nigh
neutralized, by the addition, that he was arrogant, harsh, violent in temper,
and carried Digitized by Microsoft®
to
exaggeration most of the faults imputed to his predecessor. His defence of the
most extreme I hurch pretensions was characterized by a relentless fierceness
that exasperated all opponents; especially after he had himself been irritated,
by the condemnation which the Emperor and Diet pronounced of all parties, in
his quarrel with the Rhine Palsgrave, Hermann von Stahleeke. Hence, prior to
his attending the Emperor into Italy, dissensions of various kinds had arisen
between him arid his flock; these Frederic, to whom both parties appealed, had
appeased ; and he had been moreover evidently prepossessed in favour of the
prelate, by the apparent—possibly real—clemency of his request, that the
rioters should merely be sentenced to repair the damage they had done.
What had
since occurred to enrage the Mainzers seoms doubtful; but Arnold had, upon his
road home, received more than one hint of danger awaiting him. The saintly
Abbess Hildegard warned him of what he had to cxpect, clothing her intimation
in words that betrayed the indifferent opinion she entertained of himself. She
wrote to him:—“ Turn thee to the Lord, for the hour of death s at hand !”
Arnold, his natural arrogance inflated by past success, scornfully observed,
“The Mainz dogs bark, but dare not bite.” This comment was reported to the holy
Abbess, and again she wrote, “ The dogs that will rend thee piece-meal, are
unchained.” Incensed rather than alarmed, the Archbishop hurried forward to
punish the mutineers; and when he reached Mainz, resolved, not in fear, but as
a mark of his displeasure, instead of entering the refractory city, to take up
his abode at the Abbey of St. James, situated without the walls. There he
required the citizens to wait upon him, make their submission, and give him
hostages for their good conduct and h:s safety, before he would condescend to
set foot amongst them. Having sent this message, he appears to have awaited the
answer, without taking any measures of precaution : and in this state of
inconceivably supine security, the insurgents, having ascertained, possibly
through some of the monks, that he was very slenderly escorted, surprised and
murdered him. Then, alarmed at the sacrilege they had committed, the citizens
of Mainz sought to gain a protector
by raising a
brother of the Duke of Zaringen to the archiepiscopal see, in contempt of the
rights of the Chapter; the lawlessness of which proceeding they endeavoured to
disguise, by presently terrifying the Canons into electing their nominee. It is
reported that, in addition to this measure, they violently seized the church
treasure, in order, almost avowedly, to assist threats by bribery. The Pope naturally
refused to sanction such an obtrusion of a prelate upon a Chapter by laymen,
and those laymen murderers; whilst, even before this refusal was known, the
illegally elected prelate had been rejected. The Emperor had sent his brother,
the Rhine Palsgrave, and their brother-in-law, Lewis, Landgrave of Thuringia,
who had married a daughter of Frederick the One-eyed, into Germany, to hasten
the march of his anxiously expected reinforcements; and these princes were
actually holding a Diet at the moment of the Mainz catastrophe. That Diet,
declaring its horror of the whole transaction, of the sacrilegious murder and
the audacious usurpation of the rights of the Chapter, annulled the pretended
election, and substituted as irregularly, though by what form or process is not
exactly known, Christian von Buch, Dean of Merseburg, for the intended
Ziiringen prelate. Both appealed to the Emperor and his Pope, Victor, who
pronounced both elections alike invalid, because alike uncanonical, and
conjointly named Conrad von Wittelsbach, Otho’s brother, Archbishop of Mainz.
The ambitious
deserter of his sovereign was Henry the Lion. He, upon reaching his favourite
duchy, Saxony, was met by the King of Denmark’s complaints of Obodrite
insincerity. The vessels Niklot had delivered up, proved to be old hulks, no
longer seaworthy; and the Danish merchants had suffered, as before, from
Slavonian pirates. Waldemar more than insinuated suspicions that the Duke, who
received, under the name of tribute, a share of the profit of these piratical
expeditions, had connived at Niklot’s conduct; suspicions corroborated by the
fact that the similar promise made at the same time to Henry's vassal, the Earl
of Holstein, to spare the Ilolsteiners, had been religiously kept. The Lion’s
answer was a profession of lus abhorrence of such equivocation, such really.
rJ
“ ■' I " S£. t? U 1jy f if f i L X '
direct
perjury, as characterized Niklot’s conduct, and of his. determination severely
to punish the offender, in fact, the accusation was clearly welcome to him;
whether he had or had not connived at Niklot’s breach of his engagement, he at
once perceived that the punishment to be inflicted offered him the opportunity
he wanted to complete the subjugation of the Slavonians, or at least of the
Obodrites. This duty, to wit, that of thus redeeming his plighted word, was the
plea upon which he had evaded his other duty, of hastening, as a loyal vassal
and grateful kinsman, to the assistance of the Emperor in Lombardy.
Henry
accordingly summoned Niklot to his presence to explain his conduct. But the
Slavonian prince, either conscious of disobedience, or apprehensive of being
made the victim ofhis Lord’s policy,instead ofobeying, attempted again to
surprise Lubeck, which town, extorted, whilst still in ruins, by Henry from the
Earl of Hostein, in exchange for some other, locally less valuable, was now a
thriving seaport. Niklot’s scheme was foiled, and he himself, in the war that
ensued, falling into an ambuscade, was slain. He was the last Slavonian prince who
struggled with any degree of success or reputation to avert the complete
subjugation of his compatriots, and consequent extirpation of hit, religion, in
Germany, although neither the last Slavonian prince, nor the last prince of his
race who attempted it. For the moment, however, hostilities ceased upon his
death, and the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria granted part of his principality, in
stricter vassalage, to two of his sons, Pribislaf and VVertislaf, jointly. A
third sen, Pritzlaf, had honestly embraced Christianity, and, obtaining a
sister of Waldemar’s in marriage, appears to have been domiciliated in Denmark.
Why he v.as excluded from any share of his father’s heritage—to even a
disproportionate share, his conversion and his matrimonial alliance would,
under the circumstances, have seemed to entitle him—does not appear. It is
related, in proof of this convert’s genuine Christianity, as ir might be in
proof of what was then the prevalent idea of Christianity, that being seated at
his royal brother-in-law’s festi’.e board w hen the tidings of his ' Digitized
by Microsoft®
father
Niklot’s death arrived, he dropt the morsel he was conveying to his mouth, and
covered his face with his hands; but, after a minute’s reflexion, lifted up his
head, said, “ The contemner of the True God must needs perishand, having thus
conquered all filial regrets, resumed the business of the hour, his repast,
with his previous diligence and cheerfulness. Those lands that Henry withheld
from the Slavonian princes, he granted in fief to Saxon nobles, or kept as
private ducal property.
The peace,
thus seemingly re-established, was shortlived. Pribislaf and Wertislaf were
dissatisfied with obtaining a part only of their father’s possessions. The
Slavonians in general had lost little or none of their old hatred of Christian
laws and institutions, especially the payment of tithe, to them a novel and
thence more odious institution, as it had been of yore to the Saxons themselves;
whilst those who were subjected to Saxon nobles or to ducal officers, were
further irritated at the treatment they received from their new masters. Nor
can their insurgent propensities be blamed, if the general conduct of their
German masters towards them be judged from that of one individual; recorded by
contemporary chroniclers, without any apparent disapprobation, simply as a
matter of fact. They state that Gunzelin Earl of Schwerin, in order to check
the depredations of Slavonians upon his German settlers, authorized these last
to hang, without further form or inquiry, any Slavonians whom they might find
upon a bye-path or off the public roads (per avia incedentes).
Is it
possible to withhold sympathy from a people struggling to preserve or to
recover their liberty from such alien conquerors, who, without a shadow of
right beyond superior power, had subjugated, in thralled, and oppressed them ;
their faith from converters who could teach a Christian son to regard his
father’s death,and as he believed, eternal perdition, as just now described?
Can it be matter of surprise, to be told that after their subjugation all the
vices inherent in the Slavonian character, were moe fully developed, whilst all
the virtues were extinguished^24) And with many of the vices
incident to a savage state, more than its usual virtues had previously been
ascribed to them. They
r s j
are said to
have heen industrious; so hospitable that robbery, if indispensable to the
entertainment of a guest, became a venial offence; and their women to have been
invariably chaste, although so enslaved, so harshly used by the men, that
mothers killed their new-born daughters, out of pure love, t,o spare them a
life of misery, even as some of the aboriginal American women are reported to
have done.(25)
Pribislafand
Wertislaf—confident of the support of their countrymen, as well of those
forcibly severed from their authority as of those still their subjects, and
concerting their measures with their neighbours the Pomeranian Princes—rose
against their conqueror. But too many enemies were united against the
Slavonians of Germany, to leave them a chance of success. The Duke of Savony
and Ba\aria attacked them by land, as did, farther eastward, the Margraves of
Brandenburg and Misnia, whilst the King of Denmark, accompanied by Pritzlaf,
appeared on the coast with a fleet, and burnt ltostock. 1 nder these
circumstances, resistance became hopeless, and the subjugation of the
Obodrites was consummated. Henry d;d not, indeed, dispossess the brother
princes, but he rendered their vassalage more galling, granted more lands to
Saxon nobles, and invited more settlers from Flanders and Zealand to occupy
the uncultivated districts, as rent-paying land-holders, with great privileges.
Moreover, he appointed bishops without reference to the Emperor. Waldemar
reduced the Prince of Riigen to the condition of a Danish vassal, and the
Margraves appear to have acquired considerable additions to their several
dominions. The Slavonian concerns of his duchy thus tully, and as he hoped,
finally settled, the Lion turned his attention to other affairs; and
pre-eminent n importance amongst these was the Schism. He had, in submission to
the authority of the Council, acknowledged Victor, of course requiring all his
vassals to do the same ; he now concurred with a Legate of this Pope’s in
removing from his see, Ulrijh Bishop of Ilalberstadt, who, alone of Saxon
prelates, had declared for Alexander, and substituting Gero Dean of the Chapter
for the deposed Ulrich. Henry then repaired to Bavaria, where opinions were
more divided upon this question; and there, as if to Digitized by
Microsoft®
prove that he
was no warm partisan of Victor’s, he attacked the Bishop of Ratisbon, who had,
like himself, accepted the Council’s -decision. The grounds of the attack are
uncertain. Accusations of unclerical conduct were long afterwards brought
against the Bishop, but never proved; and this seems likely to have been merely
one of the many feuds in which the Lion's domineering and ambitious temper was
incessantly involving him with his vassals and neighbours, spiritual and
temporal. Indeed the warmest admirers of this prince scarcely venture either to
limit his ambition and rapacity, or to deny the violence, the injustice, even
the craft, (for something of the fox mingled with and degraded his leonine nature,)
to which he occasionally had recourse, as often to accomplish some private
object of his own, as to advance the prosperity of his dominions. But whatever
were the motive of Henry’s aggression, the venerable Archbishop of Salzburg,
though himself a partisan of Alexander’s, interposed for the protection of the
Bishop of Ratisbon, or to speak correctly, the represssion of the attempt at
ducal interference with episcopal concerns; and his mediation had restored
peace about the time of the Emperor’s return to Germany.
Thus
Frederic, on his arrival found Henry the Lion very considerably increased in
power, and the murderers of Archbishop Arnold unpunished ; but Germany, for the
most part, unusually tranquil. The only existing symptoms of disturbance seem to
have been, the impunity of Mainz, the division of opinion touching the claims
of the rival Popes, and the assumption by the city of Treves, in humble
imitation of the Lombard cities, of the title of a community (commimio). The
schism, and the respective proceedings of the pontifical rivals, were the
business which the Emperor deemed principally, or at least primarily^ to
require his attention.
The Legates
of Alexander had, throughout Europe, successfully contended against those of
Victor; notwithstanding the support which the latter received from Imperial
Embassadors. Only in Denmark and Hungary, then avowedly vassal states, had
Victor been acknowledged as Pope. Lewis VII of fiance, and Henry II of
VOL.
II Digitized by Microsoft<p 3
England, had severally
assembled the prelates of their respective kingdoms, to investigate the
important question ; and both Synods, either convinced by the arguments of
Alexander’s Legates, or influenced by the jealousy both their Kings seem to
have entertained of the sovereign authority claimed by the Emperor, pronounced
Alexander III true and lawful Pope. The Envoys of Frederic aiul Victor
represented that a question so important to the w hole Christian world could
not be decided by the prelates of any single state; whereupon the two Kings
jointly convoked a Council to meet at Toulouse, to which they summoned all
Christian prelates, as well as the two pretenders to St. Peter’s Chair. But the
two Kings had no pretension to the Imperial right of summoning an cecumenic
Council; and if at Pavia only Italian and German prelates formed the
deliberative body, at Toulouse, it consisted solely of French and English. Yet
such as it was, with far less right than its predecessor, being equally
incomplete in the character of a representation of the whole Church, and not
convoked by lawful authority, this synod boldly assumed the style of a General
Council, and entered upon the investigation of the ciraunst&nces of the
double election.
During all
this time, Alexander had vainly endeavoured to establish himself at Rome. The
turbulent republicans speedily convinced him that any other residence was
preferable to- the Eternal City; and leaving the Bishop of Praeneste as his
deputy to continue the struggle for the proper Papal capital, he repaired to
Sicily, in vessels sent by the King to convey him thither. But Sicily wras
not the stage on which to contend for the Papacy itself, and he proceeded to
Genoa, where, as before said, he was, during the resistance of Milan, received
and entertained with great honours. The fall of the Lombard Queen so changed
the disposition of the Genoese as to alarm the Holy Father lor his personal
safety ; and whilst Genoa hastened to offer the Emperor and Victor every
atonement for her offence in entertaining Alexander, he betook himself to
France, where he hoped to find more decided support. Nor wras he
disappointed. He was received with all the demonstrations of leverence ever
rendered to popes: Digitized by Miqrosoft®
clergy and
laity, nobility and commonalty, flocked around him; and, what was of more
consequence, the Toulouse Council, rejected all the evidence invalidating the
election of the Chancellor Rolando, as undeserving of credit, because resting
upon the authority of his private enemies; and acknowledged him as the true
Pope.
This
flattering aspect of his affairs was ere long, indeed, in some measure
overclouded. But from this moment much discrepancy again exists between the
narratives of the transactions found in French and German, in Guelph and Ghibeline
historians respectively. From the comparison of these conflicting accounts, it
should seem that the original acknowledgment of Alexander by Lewis VII, a man
of weak character, usually ruled by the last speaker, was the fruit of the
influence of his second wife, a warm partisan of that pontiff. But the
influence proved transitory. This Queen, who, like Elinor of Aquitaine, gave
him only daughters, died early ; and, upon losing her, he selected, as her
successor and his third wife, Adelaide, sister of the Earl of Champagne, the
husband of one of his daughters by Queen Elinor. To the Earls of Champagne
Victor IV was distantly related, and Queen Adelaide naturally esteemed her own
kinsman the true Pope. Her royal consort’s faith in Alexander was shaken, by
her arguments, but he still received him hospitably. The wavering in the
monarch’s adhesion to the Pope of his first choice was increased by a warning
from the Emperor that his pontifical visitor was a needy man, who looked to
French money for relief from some pressing debts. That the Imperial suspicion
was not altogether groundless, the conduct of Alexander early proved, whilst
his arrogance ere long offended Lewis.
The King now,
if not earlier, authorized the Earl of Champagne to visit the Emperor in Italy,
and open a negotiation with him relative to the schism. As to the date of the
Earl’s mission, whether he were only despatched when the Pope had offended the
King, or upon his first arrival, opinions are divided. So are they with respect
to the extent of the powers intrusted to this doubly connected embassador.
Some writers say that the Earl was despatched early, v.itu very liraited
powers, afterwards
greatly
enlarged when Lewis was angered by Alexander’s haughty resentment of his
presuming to negotiate upon a subject, so far beyond the sphere of his
competence Others, who agree as to the date, affirm that the Bishop of
Soissons, then French Chancellor, from the first authorized the Earl to
overstep these limits, governing himself by his own discretion; and this
statement seems, upon the whole, most consonant with the course of events.
The Earl of
Champagne arranged with the Emperor that, for the solution of this important
question, he and the King of France should, upon the 29th of August of the current
year, 1162, meet upon the frontier of their respective realms; the place
selected being a bridge over the Saone, at St. Jean de Losne, which, as uniting
the two, was, or should be esteemed, neutral ground. That the two sovereigns
should be respectively' accompanied by their chief ecclesiastics and nobles,
and by the two Popes elect, the Emperor by Victor, the King by Alexander. That
there, in the presence of the two monarchs, the two claimants should, before a
mixed committee, partly lay, partly clerical, as thus best representing the
whole of Christendom, a sort of miniature (Ecumenic Council, and carefully
selected for the purpose, debate their respective pretensions to the Papal
crown. That, in this character, of the representative of an (Ecumenic Council,
the committee so 'selected should decide between them; that, should the
decision be adverse to Cardinal Ottaviano, the Emperor should immediately fall
at Cardinal Rolando’s feet, acknowledging him as Pope Alexander III; should it
be adverse to Cardinal Rolando, the King of France should, in like manner, fall
at Cardinal Ottaviano’s feet, acknowledging him as Pope Victor IV. The Earl
himself did not wait for this investigation, but took the opportunity of his
mission, to kiss the feet of his kinsman, as Supreme Head of the Church.
Why this
convention proved ineffective, where the fault of its failure lay, was the
grand subject of contention and contradiction at this epoch; but upon
deliberate consideration of the whole of the certain as of the doubtful
points, it seems to lie chiefly at the door of the arrogant
Alexander,
who treated the slightest hesitation as to his
papacy as
sacrilege, and a little at Lewis’s, the King not being ultrascrupulous in point
of veracity. The course of the transaction appears to have been as follows.
It is quite
certain that Alexander, as before, refused to argue his right, or submit it to
any sort of inquiry, asserting that Pope he was, and as such, supreme Judge,—
superior to all tribunals. Hereupon Lewis, partly awed by this haughty refusal,
partly influenced by his brother, the Archbishop of Eheims, and partly
frightened by his formidable vassal, Henry II, of England, both of whom were
then staunch adherents of Alexander, seems to have sought by equivocation to
disentangle himself from, or at least to deny, or evade fulfilling, the compact
concluded in his name. His Embassador, offended at such repudiation of his
work, indignantly declared, that if his plighted word were violated, he must, to
guard his own honour from stain, transfer his homage, and the allegiance of his
county of Champagne, to the Emperor. Such a loss was not to be risked, and
again it is certain that Lewis proceeded to St. Jean de Losne, but without
Alexander, whom he was pledged to bring thither; that he appeared the first
upon the appointed bridge, and after waiting a little while, washed his hands
in the river, in token of having performed his part of the compact. Having
thus, as he hoped, satisfied the Earl of Champagne, he hurried back to Dijon.
Victor
meanwhile, upon learning his opponent’s refusal to attend, as arranged, had
strongly objected to submitting his claim, already sanctioned by two Councils—a
second had sat at Lodi, which confirmed the decision of that held at Pavia—to
further investigation. But he had yielded to the remonstrances of his Imperial
protector, and accompanied him to the bridge, which they reached shortly
aft"r the French King’s departure. The Emperor caused representations to
be addressed to the King—who was exulting in his skilfully achieved
triumph—upon the absurdity of considering a treaty, made for an object so
momentous as the prevention of a schism in the Church, void, because one of the
contracting parties might be casually so delayed as to present himself an hour,
or even a day later Digitized by Microsoft®
than that
appointed, at the plane of meeting; and the Earl of Champagne openly declared
that his honour could not be so satisfied. Frederic is stated by French writers
to liave been followed to the bridge by a formidable army, intended to compel
the acknowledgment of Victor, without further inquiry; which coercion Lewis
only escaped by his early retreat. Italian Guelph writers add, that the design
was to make both Alexander and Lewis prisoners; a nefarious scheme, foiled
solely by the approach of Henry II with an army as large as the Emperor’s.
Attended by numbers of great vassals, lay as well as spiritual, the Emperor
would unquestionably be; partly for state at such a meeting, partly to select
from amongst them his portion of the mixed committee; and these princes would,
moreover, in their turn be attended by their own vassals. It is likewise
certain that many had repaired to Dole— whither Frederic had gone to be near
the place of meeting —upon business totally unconnected with that meeting; as
e. g., Waldemar King of Denmark, and Raymond Earl of Provence, who came to do
homage, the one for his kingdom, the other for his county; the Archbishop of
Lyons, who sought his sovereign’s protection against hi3 Chapter, ike. &c.;
and all these might be i:*vited to stay and accompany him, in order to enhance
the; solemnity, the (rcumcnic character, of the proceedings. It :s
likewise very possible that Lewis, who had no such body cf potent vassals to
oppose to them, and still more, Alexander, might naturally, if groundlessly,
conceive some apprehension from the proximity of so considerable a force. But
had Frederic designed to take any unfair advantage of his preponderance in
force, there was nothing to prevent him from crossing the bridge and executing
his treacherous purpose in France, as Henry II was not at hand at the first
failure of the meeting. He did nothing of the kind; and surely a Prince who
professed to be governed solely by justice, and whom scarcely any, even of his
bitterest enemies, charge with habitual disloyalty, is not, because an
antagonist was idly frightened or idly suspicious, to be accused of such gross
perfidy, without a shadow of proof; it might be further said, without even the
allegation of any rational motive; since it is Digitized by Microsoft®
self-evident
that such a compulsory recognition would not only be revoked the moment the
coercion was withdrawn, but must shock and alienate all who yet hesitated
between the competitors.
However this
may be, Leu is now' desired and, after some negotiation, obtained a further
delay, and a term of three wTeeks was agreed upon, at the end of
which the monarchs, the rival pontiffs, and the Committee, should meet as
before proposed. Alexander is said to have caused the interposal of the delay,
in the hope of meanwhile procuring, from the King of England, such succours as
would make his party more a match for the Emperor’s. It answered his purpose,
though in a different way, giving him time to guard against the apprehended
defection of Lewris. Very early in the three weeks, Frederic’s
large company or army had consumed all the provisions within convenient reach
of Dole—the Arelat chancing that year to suffer from dearth—and was therefore
obliged to remove to a greater distance. Lewis repaired to the appointed place,
again without Alexander, and upon this occasion, at least, it seems to be
admitted, before thf appointed hour; but w:hether or not having
previously again formally acknowledged Alexander, and thus, as far as in him
lay, stultified the projected investigation and decision, is one of the many
contested points in this transaction. Upon the bridge Lewis certainly found,
not Frederic, but the Archbishop of Cologne, with whom he speedily got into
altercation ; when Reginald, incensed at what he deemed the French King’s
equivocations and evasions, boldly asserted, that the decision in a disputed
papal election was as much the exclusive right of the Emperor, as that
respecting the disputed election of any French prelate was the French King’s,
and that the reference to an (Ecumenic Council had been a voluntary concession
of Frederic’s. Whether this were meant as a taunt, or as a claim seriously
intended to be revived, may be doubted, when it is recollected that the
Emperor’s sanction was, till Gregory VII’s time, indispensable to a papal elec-
i.ion. Be that as it may, Lewis took fire at this pretension; the Earl of
Champagne avowred his honour satisfied, and the French party rode
off. Alexander was now Digi 'zed by Microsoft®
undisputed
Pope throughout France, as he had for some time been in the donrnions of the
King of England.
The schism
remained unhealed, and the rival Popes excommunicated each other as before. It
is said that Waldenaar of Denmark’s chief advisers, his foster-brother Bishop
Absalom, and Archbishop Eskil, favoured Alexander ; and that the Danish
monarch, inclining the same way, left the assembly when Victor began to
anathematize bis rival. If this were so, and Frederic at such a moment sufiered
so offensive a demonstration of independent and oppos-ing opinion, it is strong
evidence of the fairness of his intentions >u regard to the bafHed
deliberative interview.
Upon the
failure of this projected meeting, with its anticipated important results,
Archbishop Reginald, who had been awaiting it in Frederic’s court, as of course
to be one of the judges, repaired to Cologne. He had not visited his see since
his return from Italy, and now carried thither the precious shrine presented to
him at Milan by the Emperor. This he deposited with all due rites and
ceremonies in his Cathedral; and the wealthy commercial city gloried in the
appropriate, hallowed guerdon of her prince-prelate’s abilities and zeal;
whilst her loyalty was confirmed by gratiiude for a gift that tended yet
further to enrich her, through the numbers of pilgrims attracted thither by the
highly prized relics of the three Kings From Cologne, the Archbishop returned
in all haste to Italy, to watch over his master’s interests there.
Frederic now
visited divers parts of Germany, settling disputes, repressing encroachments,
and fostering industry. Amongst other matters, he ordered Treves to annihilate
its new-fangled Communio, which, whether so designed or not, sounded to his
ears like Lombard republicanism and sedition. But Treves, true to the loyalty
of German cities, unseditiously obeyed.
Ever
indulgent to Henry the Lion, Frederic now supported his suit to Victor for a
divorce from their common cousin, Clementia of Ziiringen, who had been some
fifteen years his wife, and whose wedding portion, consisting of Swabian fiefs,
he had exchanged with the Emneror for Digitized by Microsoft®,
other fiefs
in Saxony, as a convenient concentration of property for both, and these fiefs
he retained. The plea of the Duke was, of course, consanguinity—in the present
case indisputable, they were first cousins, which was, however, as well known
when they married as now—his real motives are unknown. His admirers conjecture
her sterility to have been the principal; but the word can be used only in an
extraordinarily modified sense, for if Clementia had not made him the father of
a son, she had given him two daughters, both affianced brides; the eldest, of
the Duke of Swabia, the youngest, still an infant, of Waldemar’s infant son and
heir Canute; and as he had now established the right of daughters to inherit
duchies, it might have been supposed that the prospect of his grandson’s
uniting Swabia with his own Saxony and Bavaria, which from his superior power
enabling him to dictate the terms of union, must have absorbed the third duchy,
would have been satisfactory to his ambition. But whatever were the Lion’s
object, he obtained his divorce, and returned a bachelor to Saxony to prosecute
his various schemes of aggrandizement. The repudiated Duchess some little time
afterwards gave her hand to a Comte de Maurienne; perhaps an indication that
the Duke was actuated by jealousy; since he did not, by any apparent haste to
marry again, confirm the idea that he was particularly impatient for male
heirs.
The Emperor
next turned his attention to the Mainz crime. A diet held at Erfurth had
already denounced against the murderers of the Archbishop, and against the city
that harboured them, all the heaviest dooms of Imperial justice, viz., the Add
and Oberacht, that is to say, the ban of the Empire and some kind of enhancement
of that sentence of outlawry. The sentence had as yet been little more than
minatory; but early in the year 1163, Frederic proceeded to Mainz, to put the
decree of the Diet in execution. At his approach, murderers, rioters,
accomplices, all fled, and within the city only one individual implicated in
the outrage could be found for punishment. Without the walls, the Abbot of St.
James’s and his monks stood their ground, trusting that their complicity, if
complicity there were, was unsuspected. But the accusation
was brought
against them, and they were unable to clear themselves. he Abbot was in
consequence deposed and expelled, whilst the monks were, in a manner,
imprisoned in their monastery. They seem to have become actually frantic with
terror, for which no adequate cause, unless the consciousness of guilt, can be
discovered; and many perished by leaping from the walls, or in other, absurd as
unsuccessful, attempts to escape. Those who, submitting to their doom, remained
quietly in their cells, were in due time released. The Emperor then turned his
wrath, as usual with him, against the city itself; which he treated, if far
less rigorously, yet after the fashion in which he had treated Milan. He
deprived Mainz of those advantages which as he conceived intoxicated the
inhabitants with ideas of their owrn strength and power. He
cancelled all its chartered rights and privileges, razed the walls, filled up
the moat, and levelled the houses of the fugitive criminals with the ground.
The rich citizens thereupon quitted the degraded city, its commerce perished,
and Mainz is said to have been for years a desart, the haunt of banditti and of
wolves.
A more
pleasing task was, if not quite to redress, yet to alleviate the wrongs
suffered by kinsmen - and faithful friends. The Polish Prince, Yladislas, had
again been despoiled. Boleslas, taking advantage of the prolonged absence of
his brother’s Imperial protector in Italy, had again seized his duchy of
Silesia, and Vladislas himself had died an exile. But his sons, Fredcric’s
cousins, had done good service in the Italian wars, and the Emperor was anxious
to reward them. All that their father had been robbed of he could not, hampered
as he was by the schism and the still disturbed state of Italy, hope to recover
for them; and indeed to their father’s suzerainty, which, appertaining to the
eldest of the family, was now rightfully vested in Boleslas IV, they could have
no right; so that one great difficulty was removed by the death of Yladislas.
The Emperor, therefore, instead of invading Poland, opened a negotiation with
Boleslas; who, weakened by foreign and civil wars, now offered Silesia, as a
vassal duchy, to his nephews in full of all their claims. The nephews gladly
accepted it, and divided this portion of their patrimony . Digitized by
Microsoft®
into three
separate duchies of Northern, Middle, and Southern Silesia. They thus resumed
their station as Princes of Poland; but though they and their descendants
continued for a time to bear that title, to be summoned to Polish Diets, and,
as Poles, to attend them, their German connections, inducing German education
and German marriages, gradually alienated Silesia from Poland, more and more
strengthening the tie that attached it to the German Emperor, the acknowledged
Lord Paramount of all the Polish duchies. For the same weakness that had
compelled Boleslas to do this imperfect justice to his nephews, and his
continuous broils with them and with his brothers, prevented any attempt on his
part to shake off the Imperial suzerainty.
In this
negotiation, and in the menacing demonstration that had facilitated it,
Frederic was zealously aided by the Margrave of Brandenburg. To him the
weakness of the Polish princes, who contended with him for dominion over the
Slavonian tribes occupying what is now Pomerania, Pomerelia, and Western
Prussia, was matter of supreme importance; and the severance of Silesia from
the principal duchy of Cracow, therefore, a welcome lessening of his most
formidable rival.
But at this
period such chief German interests, as were not individually the Emperor’s,
turned upon the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. Eagerly he returned from his
southern to his favorite northern duchy, the intended nucleus of his kingdom;
if, as seems likely, a kingdom, whether independent or not, he did now project
for himself. Upon his arrival he found the Obodrites again in arms. Prince
Wertislaf had thrown himself into Wurle, sa a strong fortress; and there his
obtrusive mesne Lord, Henry, besieged him; with his superior forces, speedily
reduced him to extremities; and then, by a promise of personal safety as to
life and limb, prevailed upon him to surrender. But he compelled him, together
with all the inhabitants of Wurle, to implore pardon barc-foot, bare-headed,
with ropes round their necks; in short with every circumstance of humiliation,
for which Henry’s Guelph and liberal partisans so bitterly condemn Frederic in
the case of Milan, where it was not inflicted Digitized by Microsoft®
upon an
hereditary Prince. And further, as his promise had not included liberty, he
carried Wertisiaf in chains to Brunswick, leaving a German Burgrave as master
of Wurfe. Pribislaf, in alarm lest any act of hostility ou his part, should
cost his brother his life, laid down liis arms, abandoned his hereditary
principality, and took refuge In Pomeraniy,.
The Duke next
addressed himself to the decision of a dispute about tithes, between the Bishop
of Lubeck and his scarcely half converted or civilized flock. This was quickly
settled, but well nigh as quickly did insurrection revive amongst the
inthralled Slavonians.
Henry appears
to have relied upon Pribislafs fraternal affection for restraining his warlike
spirit, his patriotic aspirations. But if the self-exiled Prince, however weary
of banishment, endured it for the sake of his brother, so valueless did the
captive feel his actual existence, that by message he exhorted Pribislaf not to
place his single life in competition With the deliverance of their country and
the re-establishment of the religion or their forefathers. Thus stimulated,
Pribislaf sounded the inclinations of his former subjects, and of his hosts,
the Pomeranian Princes. The Gbodntes were sullenly enduring the yoke, cr champing
the bit, of the Saxons ; the Princes saw that they must be the next victims.
Those armed at his call, as did these to support him; and at the head of nearly
all the Slavonians of northern Germany, Pribislaf confronted the Lion.
The Duke was
surprised unawares. Mecklenburg, and some other fortresses held by the Saxons,
fell ere any steps could be taken for their relief. But hastily the Lion
summoned his vassals, commissioned those nearest the scene of action, as the
Earls of Holstein, Ditmarsen, Oldenburg, and Schwerin, to check the progress of
the rebels, whilst lie was collecting his more remote forces, conjointly to
crush them. And he concluded a new treaty with Waldemar, by which it was agreed
that all Slavonians resident beyond the Peene (which seems to designate the
Pomeranians to whom other princes laid claim), and especially all the islands
upon the coast, should be
allotted to
Denmark. Waldemar, who at Dole had ob-
tained from
the Emperor a somewhat indefinite grant of Slavonian territory, hereupon
assumed the title of King of Denmark and the Eastern Slavonians.
The Earls
executed their commission to all appearance very completely. Not only did they
check the progress of the insurgents, they drove Pribislaf, in seeming despair,
back into Pomerania, where he remained totally inactive. Waldemar co-operated
by sea, and now the Duke, advancing with a second army, laid siege to Malchow,
one of the strong places recovered by the Slavonians. He at the same time,
whether in a burst of anger, or as a measure of intimidation, in utter
disregard of his own solemn promise, which had in no way been made contingent
upon the conduct of others, hung his unfortunate prisoner, Wertislaf, before
the face of the garrison. But the death of their prince, fear for whose life
might, had he been preserved as a hostage, have been a restraint upon them, in
lieu of intimidating, fired the garrison to vengeance. The town was fiercely defended,
and the enraged Lion swore never to stir from before the walls until it should
be his.
Meantime the
four Earls, deeming Pribislaf cowed into complete submission, disdained to use
the most ordinary military precautions. Without scouts or even outposts they
lay encamped, as if in profound peace, waiting till the Duke should join them
to advance with his whole force into Pomerania. But the inaction of Pribislaf
was a stratagem, intended to lull his enemies into such security; and having
succeeded, he now, burning to avenge his brother’s murder, prepared to take
advantage of his success. He proposed to surprise the Earls and their army
asleep in their beds; and, but for the merest accident, in this also he would
have succeeded. A party of non- f’ree Saxons having been ordered overnight to
fetch provisions from a distance, siarted before daybreak, and had not
proceeded very far on their way, when they descried the Slavonian host
advancing. Some of the party ran back to alarm their own camp, whilst others
hurried to the Duke’s, there to give notice of the danger impending over this
division of his force. The menaced troops had barely t'mt to startfrom sleep,
snatch up their
weapons, and
meet their assailants; none to clothe themselves t.htir armour, seemingly a
tedious operation. Their defenec, though hrave and resolute, was disorderly;
they were overpowered, and the Earls of Holstein and Ditmarsen slain; the
Slavonians gaining a complete victory, had they known how to use or to secure
it. But they fell to plundering the camp; the routed troops rallied, and joined
the Duke, who, upon this emergency breaking his vow, hastened to the support of
his incautious vassals. He arrived, if too late to prevent the disaster, yet in
time to remedy it, and evening saw the victory as completely his, as morning
had seen it Pfibislaf’s.
The Obodrite
struggle was over, and the land as far as the Peene, that is to say the whole
of what is now Mecklenburg, the Lion’s. Henry then joined Waldemar, who had
landed at the mouth of that river, and was subjugating the districts to the
east of its course, without encountering such desperate resistance as the Duke
had found to its west, and therefore without devastating them. When the ducal
forces joined the King’s, the conquest proceeded w'ith increased rapidity; but
Henry did not long co-operate with an ally whose aid he no longer wanted. The
Duke of Saxony and Bavaria was sudden'y recalled to Brunswick to receive an
embassador from Constantinople. It is however somewhat difficult to conceive
that the pompous the East Roman Empire should condescend to honoui with an
embassy a mere prince of the Empire, whose power it had no means of
appreciating; to which consideration two others may be added, namely, that the
Chronicler who records the embassy does not state its purpose, and that it is
never mentioned again. Hence a suspicion cannot but arise of the fox’s nature
just then prevailing over the lion’s, of the announcement being a device of
Henry’s to excuse his deserting a neighbour, as powerful as himself, whom he
had no desire to see master of any part of the now sufficiently debilitated
Slavonian district. He returned to Brunswick to occupy himself with granting
new fiefs, colonizing, and further settling the territory of the Obodrites.
FREDERIC I.
Affairs
of Lombardy—Frederic’s Third Italian Expedition— Affairs of Sardinia—Of
Germany—The Schism—Henry II of England and Alexander III— Wurzburg Diet—Affairs
of Papacy and the Sicilies. [1163—J166.
Whilst the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria was aggrandizing
himself in Germany, the Emperor’s presence was again urgently needed in Italy.
The imperially appointed Consuls and Podestas were too generally intoxicated
with power, for the exercise of which they held themselves responsible to a
distant master only, upon whose favour they relied. Some of them either lacked
the temper and policy requisite to bear, and with mild firmness repress, the
provocations that in many cities were offered them, or deemed it needless to
exercise those qualities if possessing them; whilst others were deficient in
strength of principle adequate to control their own passions, when in a
position to command their gratification. By arbitrary exactions, by wanton
tyranny, or by audacious profligacy, these officers in many places envenomed
the ill-will already borne by all who aimed at independence and dominion, to
the Imperial authority, as to the yoke of a foreign monarch. At Milan and
Bologna they were murdered by the exasperated people. Archbishop Reginald, upon
his arrival, assumed a sort of viceroyalty over all these petty despots, but
whether his government was or was not exempt from the vices fatally blighting
theirs, is another point in dispute between writers of Ghibeline and of Guelph
prepossessions. The strict impartiality, however, with which, in obedience to,
and sympathy with Frederic, he adminis- Oigiiized by Microsoft ®
tered
justice, is admitted by all. But it failed to reconcile Lombard minds to German
rule; was disregarded by the hostilel}r disposed, as insufficient
compensation for subjection, whilst tending to alienate the previously loyal.
These, presuming on their services, had fully relied upon permission to trample
at their pleasure upon their vanquished enemies, and resented the restraint
laid upon their revenge. In illustration of the degree of licence in which the
Ghibelines had expected to be indulged, it may suffice to say that, the Emperor
having authorized the Pavians to render Tortona innoxious by razing the walls,
rebuilt contrary to his commands, they demolished the town itself as well as
the walls. Equality before the law, and liberty without licence, were ideas not
yet conceived ; and those who revelled in such retaliatory excesses naturally
looked upon every attempt to curb the absolute freedom of their vindictive
will, as an encroachment upon their rights.
In the autumn
of 1163, Frederic again crossed the Alps, but upon this occasion without an
army, relying upon the general recognition of his sovereign authority for
remedying the ills to which hi.s absence had given birth. But his Chancellor’s
obnoxious government being the fruit of his injunctions, his own was too much
akin to it to satisfy those, who fancied that their fidelity gave them such
claims upon his giatitude, as must entitle them to unlimited and irrational
indulgence, or in other words who would have had him, as the Guelphs chose to
consider him, the Head of the Ghibelines, not the impartial Lord of all. Thus
hisi justice disappointed and therefore offended the loyal, whilst his clemency
was Insufficient to conciliate the disloyal. He had already spontaneously
released all the Milanese hostages except one hundred; their fellow-citizens
iiow solicited the liberation of that hundred; and they obtained it when the deputation
presented their petition, as the Emperor required, upon their knees. That the
Milanese deeply resented as a humiliation this, then customary, form of seeking
favours at the hand of a sovereign, shows the progress which their republican
spirit had by this time made towards real republicanism.
In the
following Arjril, 1 lf)4, occurred an event that Digitized by Microsoft®
might have
relieved the Emperor from the chief difficulties of his position : this was the
death of Victor IV, at Lucca. The Archbishop of Mainz strenuously advised that
this opportunity of closing the schism, by acknowledging Alexander, should not
be missed. Frederic felt the force of his arguments, and despatched a messenger
to the Archbishop of Cologne, with orders to make no move in the matter until
he, the Emperor, should have had time for deliberation upon the momentous
subject. But the two survivors of the Cardinals who had elected, and adhered to
Victor, Guido di Crema and Giovanni di Santo Martino, with the Lombard and Tuscan
bishops of that party, and some of their German brethren who chanced to be
present, including, it is said, the Archbishop of Cologne himself, individually
hopeless of obtaining their own pardon from Alexander, were determined to
commit the Emperor to their support. Without waiting for instructions from him
therefore, in two or at most three days after Victor’s death, they proceeded to
a new election. The papacy, or rather anti-papacy, their proceedings being
clearly illegal, whether Alexander’s tenure of his high office were so or not,
was first tendered to the acceptance of the Bishop of Liege, who prudently
declined it; whereupon Cardinal Guido di Crema was chosen. He at once accepted
the hazardous dignity, took the name of Pascal III, and neglecting all
customary ceremonial, was hastily consecrated by that same Bishop of Liege, who
had shrunk from personally incurring the obloquy heaped upon the Head of the
Schism. Rightly had they judged Frederic Barbarossa, whose messenger at his
arrival found Pascal III installed as the successor of Victor IV. However
anxious to close the schism, however detrimental to his own interests this
crafty precipitation, he held himself bound to support his faithful adherents,
and acknowledged Pascal as Pope. But even in Germany numbers of both clergy and
laity saw that, though doubts had existed as to which of Alexander or Victor
was lawfully, or rather least unlawfully placed in St. Peter’s chair, there
could be none touching the utter invalidity of Pascal’s pretended election by
one Cardinal, and prelates who had no right of suffrage.
In Lombardy,
the aspect of affairs had bv this time
Digitized
by Microsoft ®
become
less favorable to Frederic. The fear, the envy, and the hatred cf Milan, that
had attached her prospective as well as her actual victims to him, had expired
with her preponderance; and the Emperor began to take her place as the object
of the fears, as his deputed officers very generally did of the hatred, she had
previously excited. Even Venice, after promoting and exulting in the ruin of
Milan, as the riddance of a detested rival, now began to look uneasily at his
growing power. The Emperor of the East Romans could never be cordially and
permanently the friend of his brother Emperor of the West Romans; and Manuel
stimulated to the utmost all these apprehensions, acting upon Venice, through
able diplomatists ; amongst the wavering Lombard cities, bj gold lavishly
distributed. With the nearest of these waverers, as Verona, Vicenza, Padua,
Treviso, and some others of the Veronese and Trevisan marches, Venice now
formed a confederacy, professedly religious, and solely for the support of Alexander
against anti-popes; but which presently assumed a menacing attitude towards the
Emperor, even whilst all avowed themselves his subjects, avowed the obedience
and service paid by their ancestors to Charlemagne to be his right. •
Frederic
assembled an Italian army and marched against the confederates; but he found
them stronger than he had expected, and, what was worse, he saw reason to
distrust the fidelity of his own troops. Reluctantly he acknowledged the
mortifying necessity of immediate retreat, and of abstaining from any attempt
to strike a blow, until he should be joined by a German army in which he could
confide. That he and his still loyal Lombard vassals might be able so to wait,
he fortified and garrisoned several castles and towns, and sought the
friendship of the rival of Venice, Genoa; whilst he endeavoured to keep
waverers, both cities and noble vassals, steady, by grants of divers
favours,—to towns frequently the right of electing their magistrates.
The Emperor
had, repeatedly but vainly, endeavoured to reconcile Genoa and Pisa,
admonishing them to refer their quarrels, more especially that relative to
Sardinia, to a judicial tribunal, as enjoined by the laws enacted at Digitized
by Microsoft® .
the Roncaglia
Diet. It seems to have been in obedience to this injunction that
representatives of both parties attended at an Italian Diet, wheu an
application for the dominion of the island in question, perhaps as independent
of both cities, was made to him. To explain the transaction will require a few
words relative to the previous history of Sardinia.
This island
had, prior even to its subjugation by the Arabs, been divided among four
hereditary princes, entitled Judges—a denomination that becomes less strange
when it is recollected that to preside over an Imperial tribunal of justice was
the original business of the Comes, Graf, Comte, or Earl; whence Judex (judge)
might be deemed a synonymous title with Comes; in Lombardy, indeed, Comes-
judex seems to have been the proper title.(27) Under the Moslem
rule, these hereditary Judges retained their titles, though not their
authority. (2s) When the Pisans and the Genoese jointly planned the
recovery of Sardinia from the Arabs, prospectively arranging their shares of
iheir future acquisition, the Genoese, probably not anticipating complete
success, chose the booty, abandoning the island to their allies. The conquest
was completed; the Genoese were perforce content, professedly at least, with
the booty they had bargained for, and under the sovereignty of the Pisans the
Judges again reigned. When a Pisan noble succeeded to, or supplanted one of the
old lines of princes, no unfrequent occurrence it may be presumed, he assumed
the same title of Judge. Sardinia thus constituted, had, as a Pisan
dependency,—Pisa itself, being included in the duchy of Tuscany—been a subfief
of Matilda’s: but in the contention for her heritage, to which her death gave
occasion, the Popes claimed it, upon the plea that all lands reconquered from
misbelievers, were reconquered for the See of Rome. Meanwhile the island had
become both a subject, and a theatre, of war. When Genoa saw Pisa mistress of
Sardinia, she quickly repented and recanted her injudicious preference of booty
to territory. The Piouns refused to admit the recantation, and war ensued both
for and in the island; the several Judges owning vassalage to either city, as
their individual interest dictated, or as the preponderance of either coerced
them, Digitized by Microsoft
To this war
had for some years been added a sort of subsidiary civil war amongst t'ue
Judges themselves, who reciprocally usurped each other’s dominions.
It was one of
these insular princes, Barasone (29) Judge of Arborea, professedly a
vassal of Genoa, who now solicited of the Emperor a grant of the whole island
as a vassal kingdom, for which, in the shape of a feudal due or tribute, he
offered to pay him 4000 marks of silver. Through how many'degrees of vassalage
Barasone proposed to hold his crown, does not clearly appear; nor did he
probably wish that it should. He could not, by seeking to disown the suzerainty
of Genoa, risk losing her protection, upon which he relied for support, and
which she could only be expected to give, in order to acquire the real
Suzerainty of the whole, through her vassal’s kingship. Neither could he, while
soliciting a favour of the Emperor, acknowledge a wish to despoil that
monarch’s uncle, Welf, of the suzerainty, which he held only by Sardinia’s
being, through Pisa, a Tuscan dependency.
The Emperor
lent a willing ear to the request, but in so doing discovered no disposition to
rob either the faithful Pisans, or, through them, his uncle, of any right they
might have. The sccne as dramatically described by the old annalist^3*)
shows that i. was to them he in the first instance proposed the office of
conveying Barasone to Sardinia, and establishing him there as king. The Pisan
deputation not only refused so to do, but objected to such an exaltation of
Barasone, which would, they averred, be injurious as well as disgraceful to
Pisa. The Emperor was displeased with the answer; although, considering the
candidate for royalty’s connexion with Genoa, he might have foreseen the
probable tenor; and turning to the Genoese, inquired: “ Can you, and will you
execute my commands, whether the Pisans will or not ? ” And eagerly the Genoese
replied, “We can and will execute your commands, in spite cf the Pisans.” The
head of the Pisan deputation, startled at this aspect of the affair, now
exclaimed: “Lord Emperor, with due reverence be it spoken, how can you give
away the property of others ? Sardinia is ours, granted us by Pope Innocent II.
Neither Digitized by Microsofttv
should you
give crown and realm to an ignoble servant (ministerialis) of ours, unworthy of
such dignity.” His Genoese rival as vehemently retorted: “ Barasone is not of
ignoble, but of noble birth; many Pisans has he in his service, and Sardinia
belongs rather to Genoa than to Pisa.” The dispute went on in the same strain,
until the Emperor ended it by saying to the Pisans: “ I do not recognize your
pretensions to Sardinia, which the Popes had no authority to give you; and he
whom I, concurrently with the Diet, exalt to the dignity of a King, cannot be
your vassal.”(31)
At Pavia, the
Emperor accordingly crowned Barasone King of Sardinia, and as such the Bishop
of Liege anointed him. But the 4000 marks were not forthcoming, and the new King
was in some danger of being dragged away to Germany as a hostage for its
payment. From this fate he was rescued by Genoa’s advancing the necessary sum;
but he merely exchanged a northern for a southern prison. Genoa detained him in
captivity as her debtor, whilst in his name she now carried on the war with
Pisa for Sardinia, and strove to exercise his newly acquired, royal rights.
And here, as
well as elsewhere, may perhaps be inserted a Genoese anecdote of those times
alike characteristic of their romantic, and sensuously(32)
impressionable temper, and calculated to show how little the liberty then so
passionately sought by the Lombard cities, resembled the staid liberty—ensuring
security of person and property, with equality before the law—enjoyed by free
states in modern times.
Genoa had
long been distracted by the fierce enmity of two families, the Voltas and the
Avogados, which many atrocious outrages, even ending in violent deaths, had confirmed
in hereditary virulence. The members and partisans of these races habitually
waged war upon each other in the streets, and assailed each other’s fortified
mansions, to the no small annoyance of neutrals, if in those days any such
pacific natures there were. The evil at length became so intolerable, that the
aged Archbishop plotted with the Consuls a coup de theatre that should force a
reconciliation upon the hostile factions. They issued their orders accord-
4 LJIyi ' - e.c ( I ■J y *
!/l»i iit i
ingly; and in
the dead of the night the citizens were startled from sleep by the sound of the
bell used solely to convoke the General Assembly. All hurried forth in alarm to
the usual place of meeting, the Piazza in front of the Cathedral, there to
learn the cause of the unwonted summons. This none could tell; and whilst every
man gazed in perplexity at his neighbour, as perplexed as himself, a solemn
procession, lighted by torches, was seen advancing. At its head walked the
venerable Archbishop, with the relics, supposed, if not genuine, of St. John
the Baptist borne immediately before him, and attended by the whole body of the
Clergy, in full canonicals, with waving censers, &c. After the clergy,
walked the Consuls and the other Magistrates, carrying Crucifixes. Upon
reaching the centre of the Assembly, the prelate staid his steps and spoke. He
adjured the leaders of the opposite factions, in the name of the God of peace
and mercy, of the salvation of their own souls, of their country and of her
liberty, which their dissentiens were destroying, to lay their hands upon the
Gospel, and upon the hallowed relics now brought before them, and so to swear
reconciliation, peace, and oblivion of all past wrongs whatsoever. When the
Archbishop ceased speaking, the Heralds solemnly approached Orlando Avogado,
the only one of the leaders present, and called upon him to comply with the
prelate’s exhortation. The people with loud cries repeated and inforced the
words of the Heralds, and even some of his factious kiadred, touched by the
effective scene, added prayers to the same purport. Avogado, overpowered by
conflicting emotions, flung himselfs in a paroxysm of passionate
agitation, upon the ground, rent his clothes, and invoked the spirits of the
dead whom he had sworn to avenge, who would never suffer him to forget their wrongs.
But the Archbishop, the Consuls, the Clergy, and the Magistracy, pressed around
him, exhorting, admonishing, imploring, and loudly supported by the crowd in a
sort of running accompaniment, till they fairly conquered his resistance,
dragged him to the shrine, and amidst the blessings of the whole people,
extorted from him the oath they hr.d demanded.
And now the
whole people escorted the again formed Digitized by Microsoft®
procession to
the mansion of the adverse leader, Inigo di Volta. They found his kinsman Folco
di Castro with him, and both deeply moved by the reports brought them of the
scene just described. In this frame of mind, and aware that their enemies had
yielded, their resistance was far les* obstinate than Orlando Avogado’s had
been, and the solicitations of the revered prelate, of the honoured
magistrates, speedily obtained from them the oath so hardly wrung from Avogado.
The kiss of peace was then exchanged between the hereditary foes. The bells now
rang a joyous peal, whilst the procession returned with the reconciled enemies
to the Piazza, where the Te Deum was chaunted by the clergy in the Cathedral;
and the entire population, thronging both church and Piazza, joined in the
solemn strain of thanksgiving.
The hopes
with which the Emperor had crossed the Alps, to wit, that he could govern Italy
by Italians alone, had been painfully disappointed. He had found the loyal
Lombards totally inadequate to the task he had assigned them; and now, having
made the best temporary arrangements in his power, he returned to Germany in
search of troops with which to reduce the refractory to obedience. But the
state of Germany had changed since his departure, and it was not calculated to
afford him, immediately at least, the needful support. It was even fuller than
usual of feuds, and since the election of Pascal III, much more divided than
before upon the question of the schism. He indeed found the potent kinsman, in
whose affection he still trusted, Henry the Lion, in untroubled possession of
his two duchies and of his Slavonian acquisitions ; as able as, he might well
hope, willing, to lend effective aid in subjugating and tranquillizing Italy.
But this was far from being the case with the rest of his relations and
connections. His brother, the Rhine Palsgrave, his brother-in-law, the
Landgrave of Thuringia, and his cousin, the Duke of Swabia, were all at war
with his Chancellor, the Archbishop of Cologne, who had returned to Germany
when his master went to Italy. The cause of this great feud is not positively
known; but it has been conjectured to have originated in a certainly somewhat
unwarrantable act of the Chancellor’s, though not of
■
lTDj ■ 7 J
recent date.
He had, during the blockade of Milan, made prisoners of a party of Milanese
Consuls, on their way, protected by a safe conduct from ihe Rhine Palsgrave, to
an interview with that Prince, the Landgrave of Thuringia, and the King of
Bohemia, whose mediation they meant to solicit. Whether the Chancellor so acted
in real or in pretended ignorancc of the Palsgrave’s safe conduct, or as
denying liis authority to grant one, is, and must remain doubtful, no time
having been allowed for explanation by the Milanese, who from their walls saw
the capture of their magistrates and rushed forth to recover them. If this were
the cause of quarrel, the loyal determination not to suffer private dissentions
to interfere with the success of the Emperor’s plans had induced them to defer
host'.'ties not only till Milan had submitted, but till after the Roncaglia Diet
and the suppression of the renewed troubles, including the second Milanese
rebellion. But whatever the occasion of their enmity, the Palsgrave and his
allies had invaded, and were then ravaging, the territories of Cologne.
The South was
disturbed by another feud, in which the Emperor’s paternal and maternal kindred
were opposed to each other: and which is memorable as first introducing into
history the ancestors of the two chief reigning families of Germany; then, as
almost ever since, opposed to each other, namely, those of Habsburg and of
Hohenzollern. The Swabian Palsgrave, Hugo von Tubingen, having surprised and
captured three robber knights, in the very act of plunder, dismissed two of
them, who proved to be vassals of his own, unscathed, whilst he hanged the
third, who was, like himself, a vassal of the Duke of Spoleto. The Duke
demanded satisfaction, which Hugo refused; secretly encouraged by the Duke of
Swabia, whose bellicose propensities were insufficiently occupied by his share
in the war with the Archbishop, and whose hereditary enmity to the Welfs does
not appear to have been mitigated by either the Emperor’s Welf blood, or his
own marriage to the Lion’s daughter. The Duke of Spoleto, foreseeing that this
feud was likely to spread, summoned his son Welf from Italy, as of fitter age
than himself to undertake its conduct; whilst he, the father, supplying his
son’s , Digitized by Microsoft®
place south
of the Alps, should enjoy a more genial climate, if not a more tranquil region.
Welf the younger, upon his arrival, summoned the friends and allies of his
family to his assistance, and his call was obeyed by the Duke ofZaringen, the
Margraves of Baden and of Voh- burg, the Bishops of Augsburg, Worms, and
Spires, and the Earls of Feringen and of Habsburg; the last being, both by
blood and by marriage, allied to the Duke of Zaringen. These allies are
reported to have brought Welf some 5000 horsemen. Palsgrave Hugo, thus seriously
threatened, called upon his friends and allies; at whose head is found the Duke
of Swabia, amongst them an Earl of Zollern or Hohenzollern, an ancestor of the
royal house of Prussia. Hugo’s forces were still very inferior to Welf’s; a
disparity 'uhich they compensated by posting themselves in the strong castle of
Tubingen. Welf rashly assaulted it, and was repulsed with the loss of lJ00
men, left prisoners in Hugo’s hands, he himself escaping with difficulty.
In addition
to these most important and extensive feuds, the Bishops of Munster, Minden,
and Paderborn were at war with the fratricidal Earl of Arensberg, who, after
illegally imprisoning his own brother, had either caused him to be murdered in
his dungeon, or had starved him to death in it. The Bishop of Utrecht was at
war with the Earl of Gueldres for the Stewardship of his See ; which office
having been granted hereditarily was claimed by the Earl of Gueldres in right
of his wife, the only child of the last Steward, and held as much by force of
arms as by the favour of the citizens of Utrecht; whilst the new Bishop maintained
that a woman was incapable of inheriting an office that her sex disabled her to
exercise, and that the office and official fiefs had therefore lapsed to the
See. Other feuds amongst inferior nobles increased the disorder, but need not
be enumerated.
The Emperor
at once addressed himself to remedying these manifold evils, for which purpose
he summoned all the different parties to a Diet appointed to meet at Bamberg.
There he so impressively represented to Palsgrave Conrad and Archbishop
Reginald, the principals in the first of these fcudt*, that it was the especial
duty of his
VOL.
II. 4
brother and
of his Chancellor to preserve the peace of the Empire, and set an example to
all others of obedience to the laws, that they renounced their enmity and embraced,
The reconciliation of their respective allies followed of course. He next
compelled the Swabian Palsgrave to make due compensation to the Duke of Spoleto
for selecting his vassal as the sole sacrifice to the violated laws, whilst he
pardoned his own, and to release his 900 pri soners without ransom. Then
proceeding to feuds in which he was less personally interested, Frederic
obliged the Earl of Arensberg to satisfy his episcopal adversaries, by
submitting to whatever penance they might see fit to impose, in expiation of
his crime. And he persuaded the Earl of Gueldres to pay the Bishop of Utrecht a
sum of money, in consideration of his being permitted to retain his
stewardship. In like manner, in various ways, by force or by persuasion, he
quelled or appeased the miner feuds.
In the first
two of these decisions the Emperor has been taxed by some modern writers with
sacrificing the interests of his paternal relations to those of his more
favoured maternal connexions; although it may be observed, in regard to the
first, that no Welf was concerned in that feud, and if Conrad were sacrificed,
it was to the Chancellor, Archbishop of Cologne, and an act rather of policy
than of affection. But though it seemed right to mention this imputed offencc,
being mentioned it may be left to refute, or be refuted, by the other
accusation, more perscveringly brought against Frederic Barharossa, to wit,
that of malignity towards, and jealousy of, the Head of those maternal
relations, the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, w'hom he had so freely permitted to
make himself a formidable rival, even to the Head of the Empire.
The temporal
affairs of Germany were thus quickly and easily arranged by the energy of
Frederic; the papal schism was beset with greater difficulties, and caused him
more anxiety. But even in this thorny business, about the beginning of the year
1165, he had reason to hope for a great increase of strength to his party; had
reason to hope for the adhesion of the powerful King of England anr of half
France to h<s Pope.
It cannot be
necessary to remind the English reader that fierce dissentions broke out
between Henry II and Thomas a Becket, as soon as the King had made his
Chancellor and boon companion Archbishop of Canterbury; that the gay gallant,
the bold monarchist statesman, instantly addicted himself to asceticism, and
asserted Church pretensions in the very spirit of Gregory VII. But the
immediate connexion of these dissentions with the rivalry of the contending
Popes may hardly be quite as familiar to every English reader’s mind. It was in
the beginning of the preceding year that Henry extorted from Becket his assent
to the Constitutions of Clarendon, which the prelate afterwards retracted and
fled. Alexander III, in order to secure the constant adhesion of so potent a
sovereign, had in the first instance sanctioned these new laws (of the tenor of
which he seems, indeed, to have been then ignorant), and blamed Jiecket’s
opposition to them. But when he learned from the fugitive Primate their
tendency to subject the clergy to the state, and to emancipate the English
Church from Papal control, amidst all the perils and embarrassments still
surrounding him, the Pope boldly condemned the Constitutions of Clarendon,
whatever were the risk, and relieved Becket from his oath of assent.(33)
In so doing he threw himself upon Lewis VII alone for support; and for
obtaining it trusted to the French King’s acrimonious jealousy of his
formidable royal vassal, a much stronger sentiment with him than any fear of
papal encroachment.
Henry II,
indignant at being thus, as he thought, deserted by Alexander,—who can, as yet,
hardly be taxed with desertion, having simply withdrawn a sanction given under
a mistake—immediately made overtures to Frederic, tending towards his, in his
turn, deserting Alexander and acknowledging Pascal. Frederic, to improve this
favourable disposition of so important a potentate, eagerly despatched
Archbishop Reginald to England, to ask the hands of two of Henry’s little
daughters ; one for his own son and heir, Henry, still an infant; the other for
his cousin, the divorced Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. He relied upon the address
and the eloquence of his Chancellor, when thus brought into relation with the
English
King for
confirming his alienation from Alexander, and obtaining even a declaration of
adhesion to Pascal. The proposals of marriage appear to have been accepted; for
though that with the future Emperor, Ilenry VI, did not ultimately take effect,
the English Princess Matilda, some years later, when of fitting age, became the
wife of Henry the Lion; and if Reginald did not obtain the desired declaration,
he was, at his return, acc ompanied or followed by English Envoys, commissioned
to attend and take part in the deliberations of the Imperial Diet upon this
momentous question.(31)
The Diet in
which the schism was to be discussed, and, if possible, decided, was that
convoked for Whitsuntide,
1165, at
Wurzburg. This Diet was numerously attended, and the Envoys of Ilenry II were
present. Frederic in person explained to the assembly the pains he had taken to
have the facts relative to the double papal election carefully and impartially
investigated, stating further that such evidence of the illegality of Cardinal
Rolando’s election had been laid before three Councils, two that had sat in
Italy and one in the Arclut, as had fully convinced those Fathers of the Church
of its nullity. Hereupon the Archbishop of Cologne, starting up with his usual
impetuosity, required, in his double capacity of Arch-Chancellor ofr Italy
and of acting Chancellor of the Emperor Frederic, an oath from Emperor,
Princes, and Prelates, never to acknowledge as Pope, either Cardinal Rolando or
any one hereafter e.ected by his faction ; ar.il another from the Princes and
Prelates, never to elect an Emperor who would not pledge himself to maintain
this German view of the Papal question. Against whoever should dare to violate
these oaths he denounced forfeiture, if a layman, of his fiefs and allodial
property; if an ecclesiastic, of his ecclesiastical dignity likewise. He
himself immediately, with all appropriate solemnity, took both the oaths upon
the Gospel.
The
abruptness of this requisition, and the violence of the measure proposed,
appear to have startled the Diet, and given rise to taunts and recriminations
amongst the members. These did not, however, prevent Reginald’s example from
being followed. The Emperor, the lay
Princes, and
most of the Prelates, took the first of these oaths; and so did the English
Envoys, whether empowered so to do, or carried away by Reginald’s influence and
by momentary sympathy. But two of the greatest among the prelates refused thus
to pledge themselves; namely, the Archbishop of Mainz, Palsgrave Otho’s
brother, and the newly elected Archbishop of Salzburg, uncle to the Emperor,
and a brother of Henry Duke of Austria. The former, who perhaps resented the
neglect of his advice at the epoch of Victor’s death, is averred to have
already privately acknowledged Alexander, prior to the meeting of the Diet. At
all events he secretly withdrew from Wurzburg the night after the scene just
described, to join that pontiff in France; a transfer of his spiritual
allegiance that earned him a cardinal’s hat. But yet more painful to Frederic
than the desertion of Conrad von Wittelsbach, was that of his uncle : and
during many months continuous endeavours were made by his Imperial nephew
himself, and by Henry Jasomir, the prelate’s own brother—Bishop Otho was
dead—to win him back to the side of Pascal. Henry the Lion alone seems to have
taken the Archbishop of Salzburg’s part, justifying his attachment to Alexander
upon the ground of Alexander’s really being the lawful Pope; a plea somewhat
inconsistent with the oath of inviolable adherence to Pascal, which he had so
very lately, and to all appearance unhesitatingly, sworn at Wurzburg; but well
agreeing with much of his subsequent conduct, and with what his biographer (35)
asserts of his real opinion upon the subject. The assertion of this eulogist of
Henry the Lion being, that his hero had from the first believed Alexander to be
the true Pope, and had acknowledged Victor against liis conscience, entirely
upon political grounds. Neither such worldly motives, nor remonstrance or
representation could influence the Archbishop ; and a Diet held in the spring
of 1 lG(j, pronounced, in imperfect conformity to the recently taken oaths, the
forfeiture daring his life of all the temporalities of the see, which, a3
usual, were to revert to it at the death of the prelate who had incurred the
punishment, but did not presume to depose that prelate. The execution of the
sentence was committed to pri'ices and nobles his, neigh
Lours,
amongst ■whom his spoils were prospectively allotted, as stimulants and
rewards of their zeal. The archbishopric is said to have been cruelly ravaged
in consequence of the fidelity of the vassals to their ecclesiastical prince.(36)
With regard
to the more important see of Mainz, the course was easier to all parties. The
prelate being less dear to the Emperor, and his disobedience more flagrant,
Pascal, conjointly with the Diet that had so solemnly bound itself to his
cause, deposed Conrad von Wittelsbach ; and Christianjvon Euch, whom the Diet
had formerly appointed Archbishop of Mainz, and Frederic, in obedicnee to his
own Pope, rejected, was again proposed. Pascal had previously objected, not to
himself, but to his utterly illegal nomination; and now willingly joined with
the Emperor, who had found Christian alike active and able in his service, in
recommending him to the Chapter. He was unanimously elected, and presently
recalled from Italy—where, at the head of a small army, he was conquering one
town after another of the Papal States for Pascal—to be installed in his see.
But the new Archbishop becomes, a little later, so leading a personage in the
history of the times, and is so strikingly mediaeval a character, as to claim a
few words of description.
Of the
Priest, Christian von Buch seems to have had little, save great diligence in
saying Mass—which never, tinder any circumstances or in any emergency, did he
neglect—a habit of animating his troops to battle with hymns and psalms rather
than martial songs, and a degree of learning, then pretty much confined to the
clergy, and rare even amongst them. He spoke six or seven languages, viz.,
Latin, Greek, German, Flemish, French, Lombard,—meaning; probably, the as yet
unwritten, uncultivated jargon, erelong to be developed into Italian,—and
according to some writers, Chaldaic, or the language of the Syrian Christians.
As a statesman and a soldier he was inferior to scarcely any of his
contemporaries. Endowed .vith a powerful intellect, and upright in his
intentions towards all parties, he was at once a zealous champion of the
Imperial authority against ecclesiastical encroachment, and a good feudal Lord
to his Ecclesiastical Principality, whenever the Emperor’s need of his
service
allowed him leisure to attend to its interests. He as vigorously defended the
just rights of his vassals and of his flock, as he actively fostered their
prosperity. An instance of his merits in this line may be mentioned in his bold
and successful appeal to the King of France, for justice to some Mainz
merchants, who had been plundered by the Comte de Macon, “ whilst French
traders,” the Archbishop observed, “ are protected in Germany.” His services to
the Emperor and to different Popes will be seen in the course of the
narrative. A stalwart warrior, he appears to have habitually worn armour under
his episcopal vestments, and in action to have wielded a sort of triangularly
headed mace, or club, with which he felled many a foe, and knocked out it is
said the teeth of nearly two hundred individual Lombards, besides crushing,
maiming, and grievously wounding a hundred rebels in one particular battle
fought near Bologna, to say nothing of his feats in many other engagements. So
that in his hands the club hardly seems to have answered the purpose for which
it was customarily borne by martial ecclesiastics; namely, by not piercing the
flesh, to enable them to indulge their pugnacious propensities without
disobeying the letter—whatever might be the case as to the spirit—of the
Church’s prohibition of bloodshed to her sons. Christian’s armies are said to
have usually swarmed with women of a description that the hallowed character of
the priestly General should naturally have banished. But the Archbishop did not
suffer any superrefined scruples to rob him of success. He dreaded by the
exclusion of these polluted and polluting camp-followers to disgust and
alienate the lawless mercenaries and other wild bands that thronged to his
standard, and he chose rather to turn a necessary evil to account. He had these
wretched women drilled and trained to arms; a scheme which answered so well,
that he is said to have been indebted to his regiment of amazons for the
capture of two castles.
But to return
to the Wurzburg Diet, or rather its immediate consequences. Whilst the
negotiations with the Archbishop of Salzburg were pending, the Emperor had kept
his ■.’hristinas at Aix-la-Chapelle; where, by his
desire, and
in the name and by the authority of Pascal; the Bishop of Liege canonizcd
Charlemagne; that prototype, upon whom Frederic strove to model himself. Part
of the ceremony consisted of the exhibition of the exhumed bones of the dead
hero, adorned with the crown and other ensigns of sovereignty, to public
veneration. Need it be said that this canonization by the authority of an
anti-pope is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church ?
The greater
part of the year 1166 Frederic devoted to the concerns of Germany. He appointed
the autumn for the assembling of another army destined to reduce the insurgent
Lombards to obedience, and actively occupied the intervening months. lie
compelled Hungary again to pay her discontinued tribute; appeased feuds,
regulated the tolls upon the Rhine, the mode of ensuring the preservation of
its banks and those of other rivers, and the like, devoting much attention to
the general business of administration.
Henry the
Lion rright by this time very fairly have been ar. object of anxiety to him, if
not of positive jealousy. By his progressive accumulation of fiefs, whether
held as ducal territories, or in vassalage of any prelate, and his Slavonian
additions to Saxony, combined with his casual occupation of the temporalities
of the archbishopric of Bremen,—forfeited for the prelate’s life by his
default at Roncaglia—his possessions were very supe rior to those of the House
of Ilohenstaufen. Bat the great power of the kinsman he loved appears to have
created no uneasiness whatever in Frederic’s mind. The only act of his that can
at all be considered as indicating a shadow of reserve or caution in respect to
this highly favoured Welf relation, is his constant refusal to give him Goslar,
the strongest place in Saxony, in exchange for any of hi? Swabian domains.
The Emperor
now felt himself adequately prepared for his fourth expedition to Italy: but
whilst he had been fully occupied in Germany, Alexander III, as compensation
for the seemingly imminent loss of England, had recovered the proper seat of
the papacy, Rome. All the agents he had employed in Italy were dextrous, and
the
chief of
them, Giovanni Cardinal de’ S.S. Giovanni e Paolo, was a man of extraordinary
address. By working upon the passions of the Romans and by a profuse distribution
of money, he, after clearing the Senate of schismatics, introduced into it so
many creatures of his own, that at length prevailing, he obtained the despatch
of a deputation to France, whose business was inviting and pressing the Pope’s
return to his capital. The invitation was not, indeed, couched in the most
flattering or the most encouraging terms; inasmuch as it ended with a threat,
that if he, Alexander, were not in Rome by Michaelmas 1165, the Romans would
acknowledge Pascal as Pope. Alexander felt little confidence in his inviters;
but his position in France was unsatisfactory. Henry of England avowedly
hesitated as to which Pope he would acknowledge. The constancy of Lewis VII was
evidently shaken; and he pressed Alexander, with a warmth that betrayed
impatience to be freed from an inconvenient guest, not to risk the loss of such
an advantage over his rival as the possession of Roine would give him. Under
such circumstances, it was with less alacrity than might have seemed
appropriate to the occasion, that Alexander and his Cardinals prepared for
their return home.
Nor, indeed,
did their voyage thither promise more security than their residence in the
Eternal City. One or other of those virulent rivals, Genoa and Pisa, was almost
certain to be active in the Emperor’s service; and upon this occasion it was
the latter, recalled to her habitual loyalty, by the imprudent rapacity of the
Genoese. They had treated their insolvent royal debtor, Barasone, so harshly,
had sought to subject him to terms so oppressively burthensome, that he had
had recourse to the rival city, offering to transfer his homage to her. And
Pisa, repenting, perhaps, of her opposition to his exaltation to the title of
king, now gladly accepted him as her royal vassal. Thus reconciled to the
Emperor and his Pope, Pisa sent out ships to intercept Alexander; but her ships
attacked the wrong vessel, and captured only a party of Cardinals, whom they
immediately released. Alexander after escaping this danger prosecuted his
voyage in safety,
but did not
immediately make for Home. He first visited
Sicily, where
he relied upon the ill-will borne by the Jiorman monarchs to both Emperors,
eastern and western alike, for ensuring him support. Nor was he disappointed,
although the island since his last visit had been convulsed with change.
Maione’s head
appears to have been completely turned by his success against the Greeks; and
now, not contented with the absolutely despotic authority that he owed to his
King’s weakly fond affection, he had plotted against the life of that confiding
monarch, from whom he had by his wanton, or as has been thought,(37)
his far-sighted tyranny, alienated all classes of his subjects. The plan Maione
proposed to the malcontent nobles was, to murder the King, and place his minor
son, Prince Roger, upon the throne, making the Queen-mother Regent. The nobles
were pleased with the idea of a minority, and if any among them aspired to the
regency, they kept theu wishes to themselves, till a favourable opportunity
should offer. It :s averred, they proposed to creatc one, by making Maione the
next 'victim to the King, either as an accident in the riot, or openly, as the
punishment of his regicide. As for Maione, knowing his influence over the Queen
to be unbounded,(38) he might well have been content with the
prospect of her regency, as indeed he might have been with the position he
ahead} held. But his despotic power had intoxicated him to an actual extinction
of common sense; explicable only by the blind infatuation, which conscitus
suneriority to all around them, together with constant success, often induces
in really able men. Not only did he habitually risk offending the Queen, if her
paramour he were, by his innumerable infidelities,—no beautiful woman could, it
is alleged, preserve her purity from his snares or his violence,—it is asserted
that he designed to make the princely boy’s substitution for King William a
mere stepping-stone to his own usurpation, and fancied he could prevail upon
the haughty nobles, who seldom mentioned him but with contemptuous anger as
“the oilman’s brat,” to bend the knee to him as king.
Circumstantially
to track the foul labyrinth of Maione’s complicated intrigues, against the
master whose offences Digitize1 by Microsoft 3
he of all men
was least entitled to punish or to judge; against his fellow-conspirators, when
they awoke mistrust; and of those fellow-conspirators against each other, as
well as against him, would be revolting, and is, fortunately, not an
indispensable task. Altogether omitted indeed they cannot be, being essential
features, characterising the age, at least in that country. Moreover, the realm
in which they were conceived and executed—though no member of the Holy Roman
Empire, and only occasionally involved or connected with its history—before the
close of this current century formed part of the dominions of the Emperors of
the House of Swabia. But a succinct sketch will sufficiently enlighten the
reader upon the irksome topic.
When
treacherously, or in the audacity of tyranny, Maione had imprisoned, blinded or
mutilated, all whom he feared as rivals, he seems to have momentarily
interrupted the treasonable plots, he had for some time been carrying on, in
order to revel, without a thought of self control, in the fulness of absolute
power and of licentiousness. In fact, he had conceived a hope of effecting his
usurpation more easily, and had employed one Matteo, a Palace Notario or
Secretary, to negotiate with Alexander a transaction similar to that between
Pope Stephen II and the Frank Pepin. But Alexander scornfully rejected his
bribes ; whilst at home Maione found the inevitable result of his recent
conduct to be general dissatisfaction, even amongst his fellow-conspirators,
which the sharp-witted upstart failed not speedily to disover. This
dissatisfaction appeared most openly in Calabria, and he looked round for an
emissary to treat with, and win back these malcontents, whilst he himself should
resume his suspended machinations at Palermo. The diplomatist he selected upon
this occasion was Matteo Bonello, a young man of high birth and large fortune,
related to almost every noble family in Calabria, who was endowed with
brilliant talents, and had acquired military fame, but was deficient in
firmness of purpose. Bonello was in love with, and beloved by, Centessa Cle-
menzia di Catanzaro, an illegitimate daughter of the late King; yet Maione, who
admired his abilities and longed
for such a
confederate, honed to bind him to his interests
i/it, izet
■ d-
by
crossing his marriage with Clemenzia, and offering him the hand of his own sole
child and heiress. And, strange to say, Ronello, unsuspicious of course that to
Maione his disappointment in regard to Countess Clemenzia was due, proved the
instability imputed to him by accepting the offer. _ t
The result of
his mission was not what Muione intended and expected. Bcnello repaired to
Calabria, found the discontented nobles, for the most part friends and
relations of his own, assembled, and exerted his utmost eloquence to reconcile
them to Maione, by vindicating his administration. But it was a task of less
difficulty to the insurgents to refute his aiguments, and convince the embassador
of the cruel tyranny exercised by the low-born despot for whom he
pleaded,—especially in one point, to wit, invariably preventing heiresses from
marrying, until they attained an age that would nearly ensure their dying childless,
and the consequent lapse of their fiefs to the crown. It is said the insurgents
likewise convinced Eonello that Maione alone had prevented his marriage with
the Countess, which they undertook still to effectuate. Bonello joined the
anti-Maioue confederacy, and returned to Palermo its agent and instrument.
Whilst this
was passing in Calabria, in 0 icily Maione had quarrelled with the ablest of
his fellow-conspirators, Ugone Archbishop of Palermo, respecting the regency
during the intended young King’s minority. Each now, setting the Queen aside,
insisted upon it for himself. Maione, annoyed at this rivalry—which foreboded
invincible opposition to the subsequent assumption of the crown that he
meditated—proceeded to rid himself of opposition, by causing a slow poison to
be administered to the ecclesiastical wouid-ba Regent. At this juncture,
Bonello presented himself. Maione had heard of h:s defalcation; but
the noble subaltern, by reports, boldly mendacious, of his negotiation, and by
vehemently pressing for the immediate celebration of his promised nuptials with
the omnipotent favourite’s daughter, succeeded in duping his able patron.
Meanwhile, he arranged with the prelate, then lingering upon a sick-bed, from
the effects of the drug that Maione, as the sufferer Digitized by
Microsoft
was well
aware, had contrived to give him, the assassination of “ the Oilman’s Brat,5’
whom they both abhorred.
Partly with a
view to avert suspicion, partly in order to repeat the dose, Maione visited his
victim. He came, affectionately bearing in his hand a medicine, particularly
recommended by skilful leeches in maladies resembling the Archbishop’s. Warmly
the invalid thanked his considerate friend, and evaded for the moment taking
the potion, by alleging an utter inability to swallow. He put it by, for the first
moment at which he should feel the power of deglutition restored; and he
entreated this solicitous friend to remain with him, listen to some
difficulties that had occurred to him, as likely to impede the execution of the
regicide as projected, and discuss the remedy. Maione, hoping to find a moment
in which he might persuade his friend to swallow the poison he had brought,
assented; whereupon the prelate secretly despatched a messenger to Bonello, to
say that Maione should be so detained till dark, and bid him make his
arrangements accordingly. Maione was thus detained till nightfall; then, having
satisfactorily planned the murder of the master who owed his surname of the Bad
mainly to his intending assassin’s seductions, he received his congenial ally’s
promise to swallow the dose he had brought him as soon as he should feel it
possible, and took his leave. He quitted the episcopal palace with attendance
provided only for daylight, and suddenly found himself waylaid, surrounded, and
attacked by armed men. His servants fled from superior numbers, and the Lord
Grand-Admiral fell under the sw ords of his assailants.
But his
enemies had little cause, immediate or ulterior, to joy in their triumph. The
King and Oueen deeply resented the assassination of their favourite. Bonello
fled to a fortress for safety; and the Archbishop, without taking the second
dose so kindly brought him, died of the poison he had imbibed before his
suspicions of his fellow- conspirator were awakened. In vain the courtly
members of the confederacy strove to reconcile the monarch to the loss of
Maione, by revealing the traitorous schemes of the unworthy object of his
regret; the discovery of which they represented as 'heir sole .native for
taking his life Digitized by Microsoft®
But at
length, when reasoning and evidence had proved equally unavailing, the
production of a crown and soeptre, found amongst Maione’s treasures, convinced
the seemingly imbecile William of the truth of their accusations ; whilst his
cupidity was tempted with the confiscation of the unpreeedentedly enormous
wealth that the Oilman’s Brat had amassed. It was confiscated; Bonello was
recalled and treated with apparent friendliness at Court; the people well-nigh
deifying him, as their deliverer from intolerable oppression.
But again Mai
one’s partisans, supported by the Queen, who, it is affirmed, regretted her
paramour, whether guilty of purposing regicide or not, won the King’s ear. The
palace eunuchs, who had been his accomplices in conspiracy, and mistrusted those
fellow-conspirators who had turned against him, persuaded William that the
crown and sceptre had been designed for a new year’s gift to him, and were thus
evidence of Maione's faithful attachment, not of treasonable projects. They
then found little difficulty in persuading him further, that for his fidelity
alone had , he been thus treacherously murdered. Bonello now met with studied
slights, was required to pay an old, forgotten debt to the treasury; and though
his popularity prevented any open attempt upon his life, he saw good cause to
apprehend imminent danger. A new conspiracy was hereupon organized by him and
his friends, not, indeed, to murder but to depose and confine the King,
proclaim his son Roger in his stead, and appoint a regent during the young
monarch’s minority. In this less sanguinary plot, William’s 'illegitimate
kindred, namely, his half-brother Conte Simone, and his nephew, Tancredi Conte
di Lccce, a natural son of his eldest brother, Prince Roger, joined. It was
successfully executed as soon as attempted, and Conte Simone was Regent for his
royal nephew. But the victors had shamefully abused their victory; not only
plundering the palace, but, when they had placed the Queen in honourable
custody, brutally outraging its female nhabitants, the ladies of her Court
included; whilst the extreme ease with which they had accomplished their
design, led the triumphant confederates to neglect precautionary measures for
their security. Bonello, who Digitized by Microsoft ®
alone amongst
them might have been capable of directing the storm he had raised, left
Palermo; and, in his absence, the people were, by the third day of the new
reign, thoroughly disgusted with his accomplices. The opposite faction, seizing
the propitious moment, by a sudden attack mastered the palace, released all
captives, and reseated William upon the throne. The boy-usurper W'as casually
wounded by an arrow during the affray, but so slightly, it is said, as not to
prevent him from waiting upon his father, with congratulations upon his
recovered liberty and power; when a kick from the irritated parent so injured
him, as erelong to cause his death. This fearful consequence of his ebullition
of ungoverned passion was quite unforeseen by the King, who met the royal
mother’s sorrowful reproaches with a burst of sobbing tears.
The whole
band of conspirators effected their escape, and the loss of their intended
minor sovereign, far from damping, served rather to stimulate their energies.
The manner of the young Prince’s death rendered the father yet more odious to
his subjects than before ; and a younger brother was left, whose minority
would, of course, last still longer for the benefit of the regents. Plots,
therefore, incessantly succeeded to plots, and once more roused the King to momentary
exertion. At length the royalists succeeded in capturing Bonello, who was
looked upon as the soul of all the conspiracies. He was blinded and thrown into
prison, where he presently died, as was generally believed, a violent death.
William then, esteeming Sicily secure, passed over with his whole force into
Calabria, where rebellion, excited and guided by the vindictively mourning
Clemenzia, was raging. He was too powerful for her; he crushed the rebellion,
and cruelly punished the rebels, his half-sister included. This achieved,
William returned to Palermo, and committing the government to Richard Palmer,
Bishop of Syracuse, an Englishman, highly praised by Italian writers, and to
Maione’s worthy creature, the Notario, Matteo of Salerno, he sank again into
his former lethargy of voluptuous indolence. It is even positively averred that
he actually forbade the disturbance of his repose bv the communication of any
disagreeable Digitized by Microsoft®
intelligence;
and the disheartened faction, deprived of Bonello, and of the Conte di Lecce,
who fled to the Greek empire, suffered him to drone away his existence.
It was upon
Maione that Alexander had hitherto relied, and his object in visiting Sicily
might be to ascertain the probable effect of the all-powerful favourite’s fall
upon liis own prospects. In these he found 110 change. The King roused himself
in some measure from his state of Sybarite indulgence, to receive the l’ope
with the deferential honours due to the Lord Paramount of the Sicilies and the
spiritual Head of Christendom. He ordered a body of troops into the Papal
dominions to support him against the Pascalites, and even against the Romans,
should need be; and he sent a Sicilian squadron, to escort him to Ostia.
This was the
last act of William the Bad’s life, unless his summoning the historian
Romoaldo, a member cf the royal family and Archbishop of Salerno, may be so
called: an incident at least worth naming, because the prelate was fully as
much celebrated for medical as for theological science ;(s9) and it
was for the relief of the body, and not of ihe soul, of the royal patient, that
his aid was required. In the month of May, 1166, William I died, and was succeeded
by his only surviving son, William II, a boy about twelve years old. The Queen-mother,
Margaret 01 Navarre, was named Regent, and whatever may have been her previous
fault3 and frailties, her administration awoke hopes of better days.
Conciliation appeared to be the object and rule of her conduct. Political
offences she judged leniently, and Immediately released all prisoners, recalled
all exiles, sentenced for crimes of that nature. She further restored
confiscated fiefs, and repealed an oppressive tax; and the tranquillized
kingdom cheerfully swore allegiance to William II.
To return to
Alexander III. At Ostia he was met by the Roman nobility, magistracy, clergy,
and such a body of the people as could scarcely be called a deputation; by all
of whom he was, on the 23d of November, 1165, conducted in triumphal
procession to the Eternal City, and installed in the Lateran. Established
there, he saw his prospects gradually brighten. Ilis presence and hi? sanction
gave a semblance of truth to the religious tinge Digitized by Microsoft®
which the
Venetian Confederation, assuming for itself, had imparted to all recent Lombard
movements. Since the departure of Christian von Buch, the Emperor’s able substitute
for Archbishop Reginald, as his vicegerent in Italy, to take possession of his
see, the Imperialists had been inactive, or were weakly commanded; and
Alexander’s newly supplied army of Sicilian troops easily recovered for him the
conquests of the absent Archbishop.
CHAPTER VII.
FREDERIC I.
Frederics
Fourth Expedition to Italy—Lombard■ League — Frederic and Pascal at
Rome—Disasters—Affairs of Germany—League against Ilenry the Lion—Ilis
formidable ipower-—State if Schism—Archbishop Christian in Italy— Siege of
Ancona. [1166—1174.
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 snbjects. He evidently desired rather to alarm
by the display of his power, and so influence, than to coerce by its exercise.
IIi3 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 ot 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 Latevan, by engaging in hostilities
that raight prove tedious. He advanced pacifically to Lodi, where he spent the
short remainder of 1166', in the administration of justice and decis-ion 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 Miake. Pending the
inquiry, he ordered the prisoners on both sides to be released; a command x*hich
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 purp'ose 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 haited, and laid siege to
it. To this measure, which, by delaying his advance upon Rome, y itized
by Microsoft >
proved in the
end it calculably prejudicial to some of hit* views, he was probably impelled
as much by hJs knowledge of the negotiations then in progress between Manuel
and Alexander, as by his own ch’valrous spirit.
The
Constantinopnlitan Emperor, though brave as brave may be, had more of the
politician than of the knight in h;s nature. His great ambition was
to recover the Sicilies for the Eastern Empire, and in Frederic, as German
Emperor, he saw the chief obstacle; l*i
the friendship of the Fope, if obtainable, the greatest possible furtherance
to his attainment of that object. -Ic had, therefore, for years assiduously
encouraged and fomented with gold, every Lombard tendency to insurrection ; he
sought for influence >n Home, 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 entangle ment which such
a disposal of the crown of the Western Empire, lawfully placed on Frederic’s
brow by his predecessor, Adrian 1 -, must create. But he made use of the
negotiation to obtain more Greek subsidies for hia Lombard allies, and thus to
determine and expedite theii 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 mis-
government;
and frequently did they suffer misgovern- ment from arbitrary or repacious
German governors, -who disregarded the commands of their habitually distant
Lord.(40) 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.(41)
Upon the 7th
of April, 1167, deputies from Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua, Ferrara, the longdoyal
Crernona, 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 modern 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.(42) 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 com- Digitizad by Microsoft®
merce with
foreign states^43)—an anomaly, whjch 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. Tc 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
restora'ion of Milan. For this purpose it was Essential that the dispersed M;lanese
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 n 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 wras passing, when the pseudo-maniac whispered
the appointed day in his ear.(41) 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 cut 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.(45) 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 cf 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 Gliibeline 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 w hose 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 destioyed 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, w ere 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 reservaiion 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, gt,:n:ng adherents to their Pope on their way, gaining
him some even within the Malls 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 hi.n, 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 comumed 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 ; chusing rather to
indulge then 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 adord. 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.(46)
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 tbe 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.(47)
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 mast be
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 iime occupied the mouth
of the Tiber; and the reunited Imperial army encamped before Home
Eut
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 r.ot to
interfere, promising moreover, upon its satisfactory completion, to release
the prisoners, and restore the booty taken before Tus- oulumto the Romans. It
seems hard, that the prince who proposed this compromise should be represented
as the per- vicacious adherent of anti-popes as such, and instigator of their
election. ri he 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 were again seized with their frequent
longing for Digitized by Microsoft®
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. Theyrepeated 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 Ibis oatli.f4*)
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 camp- followers 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 rresistible
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 naited; 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, theSignori or Lords of Belforte, Leprio and Mar-
tesano, with the Magistrates of Pavia, Novara, Vercel’i and Como, appear to
have constituted the assembly, in whose
presence, and
with w hose 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 (49) 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 Digitized by Microsoft®
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, ana resolved again to seek support in Germany. He left Archbishop
Christian, with the major part of the small residue cf his army, to re-occupy
Rome and her territory when the season should render a southward move feasible.
But the
Lombaids, well aware of the object for which he then desired to 'isit Germauy,
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
Alauri- er.ne, 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
Mauri- ennc ia his designation, as indicative of a more extensive principality,
bargained with the Marquess of Montferrat, to keep this road open to his
so\ereign, upon receiving a sum of money.
Frederic,
with forccs reduced indeed, quitted Pavia, and marched with all convenient
speed for Susa, a large Lombard annv threatening to intercept him. As a
measure of prevention that should deter hostility, he ordeied 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 't 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.(5ft)
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,(51) 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
hit> escort was now too weak to encounter the citizens even of Digitized
by Microsoft®
a single
town, he left Susa secretly, attended, the better to avoid observation, by only
five persons, and began the ascenl of the mountain at dusk. Those of his suite
who remained behind kept up the appearance of the Imperial .service, ti>
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 Hermann’s 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
coarse set at liberty ; but the conquerors, far from being softened by the
recovery of their friends unharmed, massacred the whole garrison. (52)
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 m 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
Moutferrat and the city of Pavia, alone in Lombardy, remained loyal. Milan was
now completely fortified, the League further organized, .ind every pretence of
continued allogiar.ee 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 jeaious. 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
Digitized
oyMicrvsoft 0 5 ^
sovereign
beyond the Alps, immersed in Italian politics, in the struggle against I talian
rebellion, than the Margraves of Brandenburg and Misnia, the Landgrave of
Thuringia, the Archbishop of Magdeburg, wit!' o.her 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 ’.iim the preceding year, had stimulated Pribislaf; to
whose support the Danes hastened on one side as did the Pomeranians 011 the
ot’ner.(53) All seemed to prosper with the allies. The Landgrave
surprised and took Ilaldensleben: 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. (54)
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
nsurrection, as fomented and aided by Denmark, he deemed the most fraught with
peril; and with it therefore he began, dealing with it hi the latter
character. A quarrel with Norway dividing Waldemar’s attention, prevented his
supporting Pribislaf 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 Prihislaf 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 Pribislaf 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 Digitized by Microsoft®
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 Ilartwig, 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 11(38,
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 contejmpt 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 com
manded the
restitution of all conquests on both sides, and the re-establishment of the
status quo ante helium.
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 cf Dasemberg; and him, thus left single-handed in the struggle,
the Lion promptly obliged to follow their example. Tranquillity was liius
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 Riigen;
which various accidents, hits 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 po’nt 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 pnnces 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 Riigen 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 Pribislaf
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. Pribislaf 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, (55) to Hollanders, Flemings, and Frieselanders;
and the colonization of Slavonian lands with Germans, which had been so long in
progress, v^as 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,
endeavoui-ing 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 »}fforts> Digitized by
Microsoft
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 associates, 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 Saxon} and Bavaria;
coupling his request with a promise of bequeathing him his large share of the
Welf patrimony. Ilenrv 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, lludolph Earl of
Pfullendorf; who, ha\ mg 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 hi.s own fault. His resentment is said to have been attested
by a prohibition ever to give the, till then favourite, family name of Welf Digitized
by Microso f®
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. 11 (>9, the eldest, Henry, still
a child, was, upon the proposal of the Archbishop of Mainz, then in Germany,
elected King of the Romans ;(57) and, on the 15th of August, crowned
at Archen by Philip von Heins- berg, who had succeeded Reginald von Dassels as
Archbishop of Cologne. To the second son, Frederic, was assigned the Duchy of
Swabia, with the W elf fiefs of the Duke of Spoleto and the heritage of the
Earl of Pfullen- dorf; 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 Zaringen), and, according to some
writers, a promise of the kingdom of either the Arelat or Burgundy.(3S)
To the fifth son, Philip, then just born, a few lapsed fiefs 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 ir.
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 1ns
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 Digitized
by Microsoft®
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 .he princes so far to follow' his example in repressing
outrages obstructive of civilization and prosperity, as to impose heavy lines
upon such of t.heir knights as should plunder travellers At the same time he
encouraged and patronized to the uttermost the ReicJisritterschoft, or
immediate Chivalrj 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 law fully instead of unlawfully; and who offered
both an imperfect substitute for a standing army and the material out of which
one wTas 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 JDeputy-Stewards, responsible for their conduct
10 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 widow's in marriage.(39) 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 grauted fiefs,
angllci freeholders or franklins,—still, notwithstanding the progressive
changes, an important body—began to adopt the names of their Digitized by
Microsoft®
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.(60) 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 (01)—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 Truchsess, 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 Emperors.” 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; e\erywhere
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 ihat,
whatever Alexander’s election might have beer., 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, Courad 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 tbeir 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 his deceased uncle concerning the schism. He had,
immediately upon his election, applied to Alexander for consecration; had received
it, and appeared at Bamberg w earing the pall sent hirn 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 ar.d valuable friend of Frederic, to ■w hom he owed his royal
dignity. Subsequently the princely archbishop either changed his opinion upon
the schism question, or thought proper to submil to Imperial authority. He
renounced his spiritual allegiance to Alexander, acknowledged his rival, and
was invested with the temporalities of his archbishopric.
CHAPTER VIII.
FREDERIC I.
New
Anti-Pope—Ilenry II and Schism—Affairs of Italy— Siege of
Ancona—Failure of Henry the Lion—Emperor’s defeat at Legnano—Closing of the
Schism. [1168—1178.
Having
brought down the affairs of Germany to the close of Frederic’s seven years’
residence there, it now becomes necessary to turn back in point of time, and
take up those of the schism of Italy.
In September
of 1168, the death of Pascal offered another opportunity of closing the schism.
But the Cardinals of his party either were irrefragably convinced of the
invalidity of Alexander’s election, which it must be admitted could not be
altered by the deaths of his rivals ; or felt themselves too far committed
against him to be cordially forgiven ; or perhaps simply thought it would be
easier to negotiate, with a sacrifice to offer, than empty- handed. By whatever
motive they were actuated, they hastened to give their deceased pontiff a
successor in the Abbot Giovanni di Struma, who took the name of Calixtus III. The
Emperor, as before, at once acknowledged the new Anti-Pope, and, with the
co-operation of the King of England, hoped to be enabled ultimately to subdre
the hostile, and obtain the general recognition of a friendly, Head of the
Church.
But the
powerful ally upon whose assistance he reckoned was, if not already lost, yet
no longer in a condition to atford him effectual support. Henry II’s energies
were so absorbeil by his contest with the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which
he hourly found himself weaker, as to incapacitate him for taking any active
part in favour of Calixtus. Neither could he, how much soever he himself might
feel individually bound by the. oaths of his embas- Digitized by
Microsoft®
sadors, hope,
under such circumstances, to prevail upon his clergy to change their Pope at
his bidding, in opposition to their national head, the Primate, Thomas a
Becket. Nor did he, probably, at the moment very much desire it, since that
oath had seemingly induced Alexander to woo the continuance of his adhesion, at
the cost of some duplicity. He had, by letter, relieved Henry II from his
excommunication—then an object important beyond what in modern times it is easy
to imagine—and the absolved monarch was ignorant that Alexander had at the very
same time written to Thomas a Becket, authorizing him upon landing in England,
to launch the enathema anew, and rigorously inforce it. O'2)
Frederic receiv ed no more aid from England in the Papal question: for two
years later,—to anticipate a little in order to dispose of a somewhat
extrinsic branch of the Schism subject—a. d. 1170, the assassination of the
unmanageable Archbishop involved Henry II in such difficulties, that he found
himself under the necessity of not only acknowledging Alexander, but, in lieu
of selling his acknowledgment, of purchasing its acceptance and his own
readmission into the bosom of the Church. The price, in addition to pecuniary
contributions to the defence of Palestine, was both the performance of a
penance little less humiliating than that for submitting to which the Emperor
Henry IV has been so mercilessly condemned as mean spirited and dastardly, and
the degradation of admitting that he held England in vassalage of the Papal
Sea.(M) Frederic had either already seen reason to apprehend the
desertion of his ally, or learned from experience that the schism was a
millstone about his neck, of v.hich, even at the price of some sacrifice, it
was necessary to get rid. He now seemingly despaired of obtaining an
indisputably legal election by a joint abdication; and therefore, even whilst
professing adhesion to Calixtus, commissioned the Bishop of Bamberg and the
French Cistertian Abbots of Citeaux and Clairvaux to convev to Alexander an
intimation that, despite the Wurzburg oath, he was not unwilling to treat for
a reconciliation. They were to add a suggestion relative to the reciprocal
recognition and confirmation of each other’s ecclesiastical appointments and Digitized
by Microsoft®
regulations,
in case of Alexander’s being acknowledged by the Emperor. Alexander, his
natural arrogance inflated by the circumstances that somewhat embarrassed, if
they did not depress, Frederic, rejected the idea, refused to make any
contingent arrangement, and coldly said: “The whole world has acknowledged me as
rightful Pope; and when the Emperor, as in duty bound, shall have concurred
with the whole world, I shall, as is his due, honour him above all other
princes.”
Many things
occurred to confirm Alexander in his inflexibly obstinate refusal. Frederic’s
seven years’ absence from Italy had afforded the Lombard League time and
leisure to enlarge and strengthen itself. Milan, as a bulwark betwixt herself
and those whom she despaired of seducing from their allegiance, namely, the
Marquess of Montferrat, married to one of the Emperor’s Austrian aunts, and her
rival Pavia, had induced the Lombards to build a strong intervening fortress.
This fortress was now completed, fortified, and even abundantly peopled, inhabitants
flocking thither from all parts of Lombardy. To mark their sense of the
invaluable support received from Alexander, who appears to have been well-nigh
the very soul of this Anti-Imperialist Confederation, the Congress of the
League named the new city Alessandria, and made a gift of the sovereignty over
it to the Papacy; whilst they guarded against any risk of reconciliation
betwixt the Pope and the Emperor, by obstructing the Alpine passes, to prevent
or intercept negotiation. Alexander, in return for the gift, created his urban
namesake a bishopric, and granted the citizens by charter the right of electing
their own magistrates. The exulting League seems now to have entertained, if it
still did not quite publicly confess, a wish for real republican independence,
and Milan took a large step that way in forbidding all mention of the Emperor’s
name. The League meanwhile proceeded with its, as yet very imperfect,
self-organization, evidently contemplating a prolonged state of war, such as
must render personal service 'n the field very inconvenient to money-making
citizens. Preparation was made for avoiding this troublesome consequence of
war by engaging mercenary troops of infantry.
Of Mich
mercenaries the supply was, like the demand, .nereasing. Brabaneons are
mentioned in the civil war between the Empress Maud and Stephen for the English
crown, as employed by the latter; as they afterwards habitually were by Henry
II of England, to the defence of whose widely outspread dominions the limited
feudal service of vassals was utterly inadequate; and who, in his wars with his
Liege Lord, the French King, had not perfect confidence in the fidelity of his
own French vassals. In Italy, as far back as the year 1143, they appear to have
been employed by Venice, always deficient in land forces, and acquainted w ith the
use of mercenaries through her intercourse with Constantinople, where they had
long been nearly the only troops. But now bands of Brabanjons, consisting for
the most part of idle vagabonds of all descriptions, intermixed with villeins
enfranchised by performing a crusade, and the like, officered, possibly, by
Robber-Knights, and by landless knights desirous of employing their “
bread-winner” (64) swords more lawfully, appear in the pay of all
wealthy Lombard cities, and w ill henceforward continue so to appear, though
not yet to the exclusion of burgher w’arriors- The Emperor found it necessary
to oppose the rebellious towns by similar means, and encouraged vassals to
commute their service for money, with which, besides remunerating poor knights
and vassals willing to prolong their service at his expense, he hired
Brabancons. His ariiiies in Italy were now no longer exclusively feudal,
though, as will be seen, too much so for success in hin objects.
The Lombard
League now invited all Italian cities to join it in resisting foreign tyranny;
and Alexander underhand excited them to accept the invitation. Many cities of
Romagna accordingly became members of the confederacy, whilst the Tuscan, with
a few rare exceptions, re mained lojal. Bat this presumptuous League had
little power beyond stirring up insurrection; so impotent was it to control its
own members, that, in the intervals of hostilities with the Emperor, in direct
contravention of the League laws, the confederated cities will almost as often
be found at war with each other, as with neutral or
Ghibeline
cities or nobles. And so little did the republican
Digihzeaoy
Microsoft it r
liberty, for
which they so passionately struggled, resemble what is now understood by the
words, that the only existing restriction upon the despotic authority vested in
the republican, that is to say popularly elected magistrate, whether Consul or
Podesta, lay in the insurrectional temper of the people. The magistrate who
gave offence, whether reasonably or not, was frequently murdered, occasionally
first tortured; and the Podesta, in whom was vested the power of capital
punishment, in token of which a naked sword was borne before him, knew no other
way of discharging the duty incumbent upon him of administering justice, than
to raise the obedient portion of the population in arms, and at its head wage
war upon the suspected malefactors.
In the autumn
of the year 1171., the Emperor sent Archbishop Christian again into Italy, to
pacify these feuds if possible, and again to support or re-establish the
Imperial Sovereignty. Upon the present occasion, however, this thoroughly
statesmanlike, if little clerical, prelate visited Italy, not at the head of an
army to punish the virtual disclaimer of all Imperial authority, but as Imperial
Vicar, to undertake the peaceable government of that portion of the Empire; and
he began in a style well becoming his proper character of a churchman. He took
his way by Genoa, where he was received with great honours, and his support
against Pisa solicited, in the continuous war for the suzerainty at least of
Sardinia.
Each haughty
republic now freely owned the Imperial suzerainty over Italy, and flattered
herself she had conciliated her sovereign by recognizing Barasone as King of
the contested island. The support requested the Archbishop promised, as far as
might be practicable without the use either of arms or of the ban of the
Empire, which, he said, were out of the question, his mission being to restore
peace, not to wage or to provoke, war. After his experience of Lombard
appreciation of just government, the Emperor could hardly hope thus to
conciliate the League. If either he or the Archbishop did entertain such a
hope, they were disappointed; for scarcely had Christian passed on to Tuscauv, ere
the confederates made an unsuccessful attempt, to punish Genoa bv famine, for *
■ * ■ ■ • "
the honours
paid the Imperial Vicar. Milan forbade the ■sale of food to the offending
Ghibeline city.
The
Archbishop did not for this change his measures. In March, 1172, he held a Diet
at Sienna, for the purpose of administering justice amongst the several
belligerents His summons was now, as Reginald of Cologne’s before, obeyed by
almost all Ghibelines, of course, and by a few Guelphs; at least by some
members of the Lombard League, adherents of Alexander. But Pisa, usually so
loyal, refused to plead against Genoa before the Diet, alleging that how much
soever the presiding prelate might intend to be impartial, he was too much
prepossessed in favour of her antagonist to judge between them fairly. In this
refusal she obstinately persisted ; the Diet commanded the hostile cities to
make peace upon certain terms; again Pisa refused; and now the Archbishop,
notwithstanding his previous protestaiions, laid the refractory city under the
ban of the Empire, a sentence always to be enforced by arms. But to this
extremity it came not. Pisa, if distrustful of the Imperial Vicar, and still
more of the Diet, meant not to brave the Emperor; and now made peace with
Genoa, upon the previously rejected terms prescribed by the Diet.
But again
Archbishop Christian, like Archbishop Reginald, found it impossible to pacify
Italy by governing with the perfect impartiality befitting an Imperial
vicegerent. Again, the administration of equal justice alienated the
Ghibelines, without conciliating the Guelphs. Divided as Italy was into
factions, and subdivided by feuds within those factions—whilst still courted by
the Constantinopolitan Emperor, who, intent upon his own views and indifferent to
republican impertinence, lavished money and promises for the promotion of those
views—nothing could unite the discordant members, save hatred of the Head
claiming their obedience. And, on the other hand, the Italian Gl'i- belines
still wanted a Ghibeline Emperor, under whom they might trample upon prostrate
Guelphs. Christian, erelong, deemed it necessary to adapt his conduct :n
some degree to their expectations. He now favoured the Ghibelines ; held the
Guelphs, as far as might be, in check, by obtaining hostages from them ; and
resolved to besiege Dig 1 by Microsoft
Ancona, as
the focus of Greek intrigue. In this last measure Venice concurred, and
renouncing the Lombard League—as the political interest of the moment dictated—
offered her hearty co-operation.
The present
motive impulse of this truly independent, this already puissant republic, was
resentment against the Court of Constantinople. After years of intimate intercourse,
during which Venice had nearly monopolized the commerce of the Empire, she had
offended the Greek Emperor—who claimed her gratitude for the advantages she had
enjoyed in his dominions—by trading with the Sicilian and Apulian Normans,
whom, as usurpers of his provinces, he abhorred, and feared as enemies. As
Venice would not restrict her mercantile transactions to please one of her
customers, alternations of wrangling and amity, of war and peace, ensued, in
the course of which the maritime city had wrested Ragusa on the Adriatic and
Scio in the Archipelago from the Eastern Empire. The end of the whole was
Manuel’s suddenly imprisoning all the Venetians at Constantinople, and confiscating
their ships and other property. Remonstrance proving of no avail to obtain
redress, the Doge Ziani entered into alliance against Manuel, first with the
Regent of Sicily, and now with the Archbishop of Mainz.
In the spring
of 1174, the prelate, at the head of an army composed of the survivors of those
Germans who had remained sick in Italy after the last expedition, of loyal
Italians, and of mercenary bands, marched for Ancona, and besieged it by land,
whilst by sea a Venetian fleet took up a blockading position. The citizens
defended themselves as vigorously as they were attacked: but,strange to say,
the most especial feats of valour recorded ;Te ascribed to what was naturally
the most unwarlike portion of the inhabitants. For instance, during one of the
besiegers’joint attempts, by land and by water, to storm the place, a priest
named Giovanni sprang into the sea, swam — a very target for his enemies—to
their Admiral’s ship, and cut her cables; thus both interrupting her hostile
efforts, and causing her to drift into such dangerously shallow water, that the
terrified crew lightened her, by
Again, by
land, a widow named Samura or Stamura.i60) one night arming herself
with a sword and a. torch, sallied forth from the town alone, crept
undiscovered to the battering train of the besiegers, and set the engines on
fire.
This stout
resistance determined Christian to convert the siege into a blockade. From the
numbers who had crowded into the town for protection, symptoms of scarcity soon
appeared there, and the Magistrates made overtures for a negotiation. They
hoped to persuade the Archbishop, by appealing both to Lis clemency and to his
reputed love of money, to raise the siege upon some kind of convention. It is
by no means clear, by the way, that'such a stain really did rest on the
prelate’s character, that laic reputed love of money was anything more than a
strong sense of its indispensableness to the execution of the Fjmperor’s
designs. Be this as it may, the negotiat:on was conducted in a style
somewhat different from that of modern diplomacy. To the offers of the Ancona
deputation, Archbishop Christian answered: “Once upon a time a lioness, chased
by hunters, both dogs and men, into an extensive forest, turning upon her
pursuers wrought them great damage, killing many. At length they blocked her up
in a cave, and she, reduced by hunger to extreme weakness, offered them, as the
price of her liberty, the claws of one foot. Should you have advised the
hunters to accept the offer?” The principal Envoy rejoined, "We should
have so advised, my Lord Archbishop, provided she would have added the tip of
her ear; for he that can obtain a grasp of both extremities will easily master
the whole body. But permit us further to reply to you with another apologue. A
fowler could once have ensnared seven pigeons that had flown into his
well-arranged toils: but many birds were singing upon the neighbouring trees,
and he forbore to secure Ins prey till those also should be underneath them :
presently some hawks flew over the spot, scaring away not only the birds upon
the trees, but the p'geons upon the ground likewise; and the fowler went home
empty-handed.”
This
allegorical negotiation came to nothing. The Archbishop insisted upon the
town’s surrendering at discretion ; and this the men of Ancona, encouraged by \ Digitized by Microsoft®
Greek
promises of succours, resolved at least to defer till the last moment, seeking
aid meanwhile everywhere. That last moment seemed fast approaching in the shape
of scarcity, when three of the principal citizens offered to go in quest of
help. Furnished with money and full powers they were despatched in quest of
allies ; and embarking one tempestuously dark night, in a small boat, they
slipped unnoticed through the Venetian fleet, and made for Ferrara, where they
landed. Here they applied to Guglielmo degli Adelardi de’ Marcheselli, a noble
and influential Ferrarese, for relief to Ancona, in one form or another; and
having received his promise to raise troops for this purpose, they proceeded
into Romagna to the powerful Countess Aldonda di Bertinoro, with a similar
request. She, by birlh a Frangipani, was quite as willing as Adelardi to check
the progress of the Imperial arms; and both separately set forward at the head
of their forces, to raise the siege, if possible, and at least to introduce provisions
into the place. Upon his way Adelardo, at the junction of two roads,
encountered a relation of his own, named Traversario, leading a body of troops
considerably more numerous than his own, to join the Imperialists. Adelardo,
seeing that he had no chance of victory by arms, had recourse to stratagem.
Observing to Traversario that kinsmen, even if they chanced to take opposite
sides, should be loth to injure each other, he proposed to negotiate, when it
was finally agreed to disband both corps, leaving Ancona and the Archbishop to
themselves. Traversario honestly performed his part of the compact and was
presently left alone. Adelardo likewise dismissed his men, but at the same time
craftily remarked to them that they had sworn to relieve Ancona, and as he was
no Pope to dispense with an oath, it was for them to consider whether they were
or were not bound to proceed with the enterprise to which they had pledged
themselves. His brother, loudly declaring that the duty of keeping an oath
could not be matter even of question, took his place ; the whole band adopted
this opinion, and the path being open by the dispersion of the obstructing body
of Ghibe- lines, he led them to the appointed rendezvous with the
Countess. The
united bands proceeded to effect their purpose.
At Ancona
meanwhile, scarcity had become famine, and even the most disgusting substitutes
for wholesome food were exhausted. Mothers, whose milk inanition had dried up, are
said to have opened their veins to nourish their children with their blood:
whilst one gave the nutriment provided by nature for her moaning babe, to a
fainting warrior, to enable him to defend the town. A large body of women
presented themselves to the magistracy, with the proposal that they themselves
should be killed, and the citizens, by feeding upon their flesh, prolong their
more valuable lives, and recover strength to fight for their native city; or if
such anthropophagism were too repugnant to their feelings as Christians, that
they, the women, should be thrown into the sea, 111 order, at least, to save
for the fighting men the portion of loathsome aliment which, if alive, they
must consume. Neither offer was accepted; but that the idea could occur, shows
both the spirit in which this really civil war was fought, and the extremity to
which Ancona was reduced before her friends appeared. At length the signal
fires of those friends were descried, and hope revived in the starving town.
But the combined vassalage of Marcheselli and Bertinaro was inadequate to
attempt relief by force; and again was recourse had to stratagem, but this time
to one of more lawful nature. By kindling numerous fires at night over a w„de
circuit, they completely deceived the Archbishop as to their numbers, and
awakened apprehensions of an attack, in order to repulse which, his troops
must be concentrated. He did thus concentrate them upon the side that seemed
threatened, and an abundant supply of provisions was immediately thrown into
Ancona from the other side. The prospect of an early surrender from famine was
thus indefinitely postponed, whilst the advancing autumn—the month of October wTas
in progress—show ed that the position taken up by the Venetian fit et could
not long remain tenable. Christian, baffled and mortified, was obliged to
confess that the Ancona apologue was appropriate. He found himself under the
necessity of
raising the siege just when circumstances rendered such a disappointment most
galling. He had hoped to greet the Emperor’s fifth appearance in Italy with the
keys of this important city; and instead of triumph, that appearance was met by
the painful news of his retreat from before Ancona.
Whilst the
warlike prelate was anticipating success, the Marquess of Montferrat had, with
Pavia—ever loyal at heart, even when by coercion a member of the Lombard
League—been urging the Emperor to return, and reduce that rebellious League to
obedience. He needed not much pressing to undertake the task which he esteemed
his bounden duty; for which he had been organizing an armament nearly ever
since he had sent Christian to Italy. His preparations for this task had begun
in the Diet held at Worms in 1172. From this Worms Diet the mighty vassal and
kinsman upon whom he was wont most to rely, was indeed missing. The Duke of
Saxony and Bavaria had selected this time, when the Emperor so much needed his
support, and when he himself v as hoping for an heir from his young and royal
Duchess, to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the head of 1200 knights and
men-at-arms. But in his absence Frederic, by revealing to the German Princes
the intrigues of Manuel with Alexander and with the Lombards, for robbing the
German Emperors of the Imperial crown, had roused them to indignation. They at
once decreed a new expedition to Italy, but required two years to make the
requisite previous arrangements; within which delay they moreover reckoned upon
the return of the Lion from Palestine. Nor in this were they disappointed,
though much so in the expectations they built upon it. The Duke of Saxony and
Bavaria came home, and had much intercourse with the Emperor at Augsburg, and
at several Diets held, for his convenience seemingly, i.i Saxony. But he
refused to join in the expedition to Italy, alleging that after his tedious
pilgrimage his presence in his own duchies was indispensable. Nor was it
singly he deserted the Emperor, as might be expected from the reason alleged
for his absence : not a Saxon, not a Bavarian swelled the Imperial ranks. It
can hardlvbe doubted Digitized by Microsoft® “
that by this
time Henry the Lion did meditate a kingdom of northern Germany; and was
unwilling to weaken, in his Imperial kinsmen’s Italian wars, the force that
should enable him to accomplish the scheme; so was he to relieve Frederic by a
loan of troops, from the embarrassments which must hamper him in his
opposition to such a project, when it should become manifest.
At the head
of an army, far less numerous, therefore, than he had hoped, the Emperor began
his march in September 1174. Pasuing through Burgundy, he crossed Mount Cenis,
in order to appear in strength there, where he had been seen a fugitive, and
chastise the town in which, not only had his authority been insolently defied,
but his life traitorously threatened. The inhabitants, shrinking from the
resentment they had provoked, fled. Susa was evacuated, taken, and, according
to Frederic’s custom, burnt, apparently without opposition on the part of the
Earl of Savoy, who professed great loyalty, and was in nowise 'mplicated in the
crime of the Susans. Frederic next marched to besiege Asti, which he likewise
mastered, after a short resistance. The Marquess of Mont- ferrat hastened to
join him; Pavia joyfully sent him her contingent; Turin, and some other
Ghibeline cities, eagerly threw off the yoke of the League; and about the end
of October the triumphant Emperor, seemingly well able to dispense with the
Duke of Saxony and Bavaria’s forces, prepared to besiege the new-built
Alessandr'a. Here his prosperous career first met with a check.
To undertake
a siege at this late season was an act of imprudence into which Frederic was
probably betrayed by the idea that the unfinished state, of the new town’s
fortifications must render its capture easy. He forgot that this recently
founded city was as yet a sort of outwork, or military colony, in which none
but the boldest spirits, the most enthusiastically rebellious, would
domic" iate themselves. The Alessandrians made a resolute defence, as was
to be expected from such a population; and the siege lingered through the
winter, causing more sufferin'" to the besiegers than to the besieged.
But whatever the evils of the winter siege, the Emperor’s position was still
favourable. His army was still strong and well Digitized by Microsoft®
appointed.
Archbishop Christian, though foiled before Ancona, maintained the upper hand in
Central Italy, and a change favourable to the Imperial interests had taken
place at Rome. Alexander was no longer there. lie had, in 1172, when Christian
was in Germany, purchased readmission into his metropolis and the expulsion of
Calixtus at a price disgraceful to the holy office he claimed. The Remans,
joyously as they had received Pascal and hailed the election of Calixtus, were
by that time weary of the dominion even of an anti-pope. They now demanded, as
the price of their acknowledging and receiving Alexander, the Papal sanction
to such a dismantling of Tusculum, as should render its future resistance to
Roman tyranny impossible. This Alexander, it is to be hoped unwillingly, gave,
and was thereupon installed in the Lateran, but gained little beyond this
installation by thus befouling the title of Holy Father. Two years had not
elapsed ere the Romans were as impatient of his authority as they had
previously been of his rival’s, and he was now again expelled by his turbulent
flock. These circumstances appear to have so far depressed the hopes and
spirits of the Lombard League that, when, in the spring of 1175, they were
called upon by Alessandria to raise troops for her relief, although the
Congress of Rectors complied with the requisition, the Milanese, through some
influential noblemen, made overtures to Frederic. He met them frankly;
professing willingness to accept, as far as might be without prejudice to the
Imperial rights, the arbitration of honourable men.
Whether these
overtures were honestly meant, or only a device to gain time, Lombard troops
were assembled, during •the negotiation that ensued, and in Passion week were
known to be approaching Alessandria. And now occurs the first and only charge
of actual breach of faith which even Guelp 1 historians have ever ventured to
bring against Frederic Barbarossa, and which Ghibelines positively deny. The
facts upcn which both parties agree are these: the besiegers proposed to enter
the city at night through a mine, carried, by the Thursday of Passion week, far
enough within the walls to offer hopes of surprising the greater part of the
garrison, u e.} the inhabitants, in bee) , Digitized by
Microsoft ®
and asleep.
The Imperialists passed through and opened it; but the. wary Alessandrians were
not all asleep; a part kept watch, and, underground work being heard, they had
assembled near the mouth of the mine. They cut down the first Imperialist who
appeared, drove back the rest, blocked up the nnne, and in a sudden furious
sally set the battering machinery on fire. The disputed addition to these facts
by some of the fiercer Guelphs and the modern AntiImperialists, is that the
Emperor had made a truce, professedly in order to allow the solemn observance
of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, during which truce this attempt was
perfidiously made less partial writers, including some Guelphs, make no mention
of any truce,(cr) and Ghibelines denied its existence as soon as it
w as asserted; (6B) ■whilst professedly impartial modern
historians aver, that, although he had made no truce, he relied upon diminished
vigilance during days that ought to be kept holv.(69) The
watchfulness of the besieged certainly doe.3 not look like the careless repose,
to which a state of truce, after long exertion and w7ant of sleep,
would invite.
The failure
of his mine and the destruction of his engines apparently determined Frederic,
upon the plea of the actual state of the negotiation, to abandon this unfortunate
enterprise. Upon Easter Sunday, April 14, he raised the siege of Alessandria;
and the next day signed a convention with the Lombards, by which a truce was
made in order to allow of arbitration: to this end it was likewise settled,
that, during the truce, each party should name three arbitrators, to whom, in
case of the six pro\ing unable to agree, the Consuls of Cremona should be
joined as umpires. Further, as if taking it for granted that the truce must produce
a peace, this convention ordered both cr.nies to be disbanded.
Amongst the
names of the Rectors of the League signing this convention, are those of two
powerful Lombard nobles, whose descendants w ill often be mentioned; they are
Anselmo di Doaro, and Ezzelino da Romano, called by some writers the first, by
others the second, and even thmlC70) of his name, and more
specifically distinguished as the Stammerer. The founder of the Italian family
had, as a simple knight, with a single horse, attended the
Emperor
Conrad II into Italy, where he so signalized himself, that the Emperor rewarded
his services with the fiefs of Romano and Onaro in the Trevisan March. The
situation of these fiefs, upon the roots of the Alps, had enabled his
descendants not only to preserve som_ degree of knightly independence, but even
to inthrall some of their weaker neighbours; not, however, to exempt themselves
from enrolment amongst the citizens of Vicenza. Thus, with, it is believed,
still Ghibeline propensities, Ezzelino the Stammerer, who had acquired a
brilliant reputation under Conrad III, in the second Crusade, became a Rector
of the Lombard League.
To return to
the convention. The Arbitrators were immediately named and the armies disbanded
; the Lombards betaking themselves to their near homes, whence a day or two
could recall them; the German vassals returning to distant Germany. Pending
the arbitration, the Emperor fixed his quarters with his family at his
favourite Italian residence, Pavia. Thither, to enhance the hopefulness of the
moment, came, at his invitation, Legates from Alexander to treat concerning the
closing of the schism; and thither, where it was trusted that all the feuds
distracting Italy were to be adjusted, came likewise embassadors from the
Regent of Sicily.
The first
incident that slightly overshadowed these smiling prospects was the arrogant
demeanour of the Legate, the Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia and Velletri. Received
by the Emperor with due courtesy, he haughtily declared, that the Emperor’s
sins forbade bis greeting him as Emperor. Frederic was by this time too well
accustomed to the insolence of the Papal Court, to discover any sense of the
insult thus offered him, and quietly directed the new xVrchbishop of Cologne,
Philip von Ileins- berg, to confer and treat with the Cardinal. The next
threatening cloud arose at Cremona; where, in a sudden burst of popular frenzy,
the mansions of the Consuls who had been selected as umpires, were attacked,
plundered, and burnt, the Consuls themselves expelled, and others substituted
in their office. These substitutes, whether or not they might have been
originally accepted as umpires— and so chosen they are likely to have been
factious men —
(3
§
by the tenor
of the convention, succeeded the deposed Consuls in that capacity, and the
negotiation proceeded.
But soon was
the utter hopelessness of all these diplomatic labours apparent. The Luinbards
insisted upon the recognition and ratification of their League with all its
provisions, upon actual independence; with nominal allegiance, and some few
contributions and services during both the coronation progress and any peaceful
sojourn of the Emperor in Italy. Alexander demanded an unconditional
admittance of the validity of his election, and submission to all his past
ecclesiastical measures. The Emperor, on the other hand, required the acknowledgment
of the decrees promulgated by the lloncaglia Diet, as part of the law of the
Empire; and from Alexander, as the price of his sacrificing the Pope he
supported, some concessions, especially the confirmation of his ecclesiastical
nominations. Between such contradictory pretensions only the sword could
decide. The negotiations were broken off; the Lombards quickly reassembled
their army, hoping to surprise the Emperor defenceless ; and he wrote urgently
to Germany for reinforcements, sending the Archbishop of Cologne thither, to
promote and hasten compliance with his demands.
But the
period was now amved, at which the hitherto almost as successful as heroic
Frederic Barbarossa was to learn the taste and K the uses of
adversity;” to feel, perhaps, the sharpest pang of which the human heart is
susceptible,—disappointment in those most loved and trusted. The vassals of
Cologne arid of Mainz armed at their Prelate-Princes’ bidding. The Archbishops
of Treves and Magdeburg, the Earl of Flanders, with many Prelates and Princes
of the Ehine, were roused by the dishonourable conditions Alexander and the
Lombards would have imposed upon the Emperor, and prepared to march with Archbishop
Philip. But, in other parts of Germany, excuses were sought and found for
evading obedience to the Imperial summons:—and amongst the defaulters was he,
the mightiest of the German vassal potentates, made so by the incautious
friendship of his now imperilled kinsman, Liege Lord, and Emperor. The Duke of
Saxony and Bavaria, Lord cf Mecklenburg, refused Dignized by Microsoft t
to lend his
distressed Imperial relation the solicited aid, alleging that his advanced
age—he was forty-six years old, Frederic fifty-four—unfitted him for the
fatigues of a campaign ; that he had changed his opinion as to the invalidity
of Alexander’s election, and could not oppose the Pope; that his fears of the
hostile designs of his neighbours rendered his leaving home impossible. Strong
surely must be the Guelph bias that can here acquit Henry the Lion of
ingratitude, and impute the blame of the subsequent rupture and his spoliation
to Frederic. Even writers who hardly do the Emperor justice, here condemn the
Duke’s heartlessness.
But Frederic,
who would not suspect Henry of ingratitude, unprincipled ambition, or
selfishness, imagined that difficulties, to his mind futile, must needs be the
offspring of misapprehension, and yield in a personal interview between old
friends and relations. Pressingly therefore he invited the Duke to a meeting
either at Chiavenna, or at Partenkirch, a Bavarian town; the larger, northern,
or German portion of the Tyrol then forming part of Bavaria, as did the
southern of Lombardy. Henry accepted the invitation, and one of those
towns—which seems doubtful—was the theatre of the extraordinary scene now to be
related, as it well deserves, circumstantially ; even as given by contemporary
German chroniclers.
In an
assembly consisting of some of the chief vassals on both sides, and at which
the Empress was present, the monarch, after attentively listening to Henry’s
arguments upon the point in dispute, and refuting them, proceeded thus to
address his cousin: “Thee has God exalted in riches and in power above all the
Princes of Germany; to all the rest, therefore, must thou be an example; therefore
through thee must the tottering Empire be re-established, as chiefly through
thee I joyfully acknowledge that it has been hitherto upheld. Reflect that I have
never denied thee aught, have ever promoted thy greatness and honour, have
never suffered foe to stand against thee. And couldst thou now desert me ? Now,
when the reputation of the Emperor, the honour of Germany, the great object to
the attaining of which my whole life has Digitized by Microsoft®
been devoted,
are at stake? I will not urge thine oath of allegiance, I ■will only
remind thee how sacred are the ties of blood, which should hold fast when all
others fall into dissolution. Now, only now, in this one strait, assist me with
thy w’hole force; me, thy sovereign, thy kinsman, and thy friend ! Only this
once, and be assured thou shalt always find me ready and willing to comply with
thine every wish.”
Thus
passionately entreated the Emperor: but the Duke, forgetful of the favours
showered upon him through so many years, and devoted to h'.s own ambitious
schemes, or as some writers have asserted, (71) wrought upon by
Alexander’s intrigues and by Lombard gold, persisted in his refusal. Still
Frederic solicited, and at length Henry offered a trifling pecuniary assistance
as the price, of Goslar; which strong fortress, as giving a great hold upon
Saxony, had always, it will be remembered, excitcd his cupidity.
To this
proposal Frederic, who, as Head of the Empire, was requiring from Henry the
service of a vassal of the Empire, would not listen. He now saw, it may be presumed,
that Henry must not be further strengthened, and would not, he said, barter and
bargain with his cousin, like two traders trying to overreach one another; yet
so urgent was his need, so mighty, to his mind, were the interests depending
upon the result of this interview, that he judged it a duty not to omit any
possible means of acting upon his selfish relation’s feelings. The Emperor rose
from his seat, and bending his knee before the Duke, in that posture renewed
his entreaties.
Henry,
startled and shocked, endeavoured to raise the kneeling Emperor, but persisted
in his refusal, save upon his own terms. One of his vassals, Jordan Truehsess,
L e., the Sewer, had the insolent audacity to exclaim, “My Lord, suffer the
crown that shali speedily adorn your brow, to remain at your feet!” To which
another v: his train anxiously subjoined, “ My Lord ! my Lord ! beware lest it
crush you!” Still the Emperor knelt before his stubborn vassal, and breathless
silence prevailed. But now the Empress arose, approached her kneeling consort,
and with womanly tenderness softening and enhancing her womanly dignity, said,
“Rise, dear my Lord, rise !
God will
surely grant thee the aid thou shalt ask of him in remembrance of this day, of
this heartless arrogance !” The Emperor rose at her bidding; the Duke mounted
his horse and rode off with his train.(72)
This failure
of his mainstay was as severe a blow to the power of the Emperor in Italy, as
to his heart. He returned to Pavia, there to await the more loyal Germans; and
summoned Archbishop Christian, who throughout the winter had successfully
carried on a partisan war in Central Italy, to join him. In the spring of 1176,
the Archbishop of Cologne set forward with those loyal Germans ; and, avoiding
the customary Alpine passes, which the Lombards occupied in great strength,
made his way by the unguarded Grison Alps and Chiavenna, to the lake of Como.
The Emperor, informed of their line of march and anxious to be at their head,
collected what troops he as yet had at hand, and, without waiting for the
i\iainz prelate, left Pavia for Como. Carefully avoiding, with so small a
force, the vicinity of Milan, he crossed the country undiscovered and happily
joined his reinforcements. Como, with her wonted loyalty, furnished her
contingent; but whether any other Lombard city would follow her example was
doubtful; and still Frederic had but a part of his army about him. He felt the
urgent need of a junction with Christian, as yet only on his march to Pavia;
and broke up from Como in order to expedite so important an operation by
meeting him halfway.
Meanwhile
the Milanese, despite the precautions of the Germans, had learned their arrival
and position; and lost no time in preparing to encounter the Emperor, before
the whole of his forces should be united. They called upon the Lombard League
to assemble its utmost powers. At home they formed the flower of their
citizen-soldiers into two cohorts (independently of their regular contingent),
respectively named the Cohort of the Carroccio— consisting of 600 men of the
first families in Milan, who swore to shed the last drop of their blood in
defence of this highly valued standard—and the Cohort of Death, 900 strong,
bound by oath to die for their country rather than give way. Their Lombard
Confederates, having recalled the guards of the Alps, quickly ioined them, iu
ft * 3CrSs - J ’
numbers far
supeiior to the division of the Imperialists as yet with Frederic; and eagerly
they marched forth in search of him to whom as yet they scarcely disowned
allegiance. They encamped at Legnano.
Upon tjje
29th of May, the Emperor, informed of the position and numbers of the rebels,
deliberated in a council of war, whether to attack them, notwithstanding their
numerical advantage, or to avoid a battle until joined by the Archbishop of
Mainz. All opinions concurred in preferring the latter course, to which
Frederic advanced no other objection than that it was contrary to his honour.
But whilst they were still discussing the question, a casual affray between the
scouts of the respective armies superseded all deliberation, by giving lise to
an unpremeditated general action. In this battle occurred one of those
perplexing revulsions of fortune, so frequent in military history, viz., a
seeming victory abruptly transformed into a defeat. Frederic, when called into
the field with the whole of his small army to support his scouts, who, worsted
by double their number of Lombards, were flying in disorder, was immediately
confronted by the whole Lombard army. He directed his efforts chiefly to
seizing the Milanese Carroccio; succeeded in dispersing or slaying the Cohort
devoted to its protection, and thus obtained possession of this far-famed
standard, now .the recognized standard of the Lombard League. At the same time
one division of his forces routed the division opposed to it, pursuing the
fugitives with Inconsiderate ardour. He thought the day his own, notwithstanding
the disparity of numbers. But the Cohort of Death bad not yet engaged. Headed
by their colossal leader, Alberto Giussano, they now with resistless impetuosity
charged the Imperialist captors of the Carroccio. The imperialist standard
bearer was sldn, and as be sank to the earth, his standard for the moment
disappeared from the field, just as the Emperor, his horse being billed under
him, was involved in the fall of the animal. When the hero, general, and
sovereign, thus simultaneously with his standard, vanished from the eyes of the
combatants, the alarm and bewilderment were universal: A rumour of Frederic’s
death Digifizea by Microsoft I1
spread like
wildfire; despondency chilled every heart, and resistance was no more. Before
the Emperor could be thoroughly disengaged from the dead charger, and remounted
on a fresh steed, to show himself to the dispirited army, dispersion and flight
had, despite the strenuous exertions of his leaders, become general and
irremediable. The proud hopes of the Lombards were justified ; the day was
theirs. The first use the victors made of their victory, was to massacre, with
unrelenting fury, all who remained alive and within their reach of the Comascan
contingent; for the Lombards were barbarous beyond most of their contemporaries
in their treatment of prisoners of war: partly it has been supposed from the
anti-chivalrousness of the commercial and democratic spirit; but more it may be
conjectured from their enemies being for the most part their neighbours, and
the bitterness already noticed as characterizing such neighbourly hatred.
Frederic
had not reappeared after his fall with his dead horse ; having discovered,
before he could do so, that all was lost, all further struggle to avert defeat
impossible, and his own safety, for the moment, the primary consideration. For
this he provided by carefully avoiding observation, and leaving the scene of
disaster in a direction different from that taken by his flying army. Hence
proceeded a report of his death, which was everywhere received as true ; and
now the exultation at Milan was indeed unbounded. So was the grief at Pavia,
and at Como, where the Empress, who had been there left, put on widow’s weeds.
The former feeling produced two effects, both favourable to Frederic ; to wit,
an enhancement of Milanese arrogance that offended the other members of the
League, and a sense of security that at once dispersed the confederate army.
The theatres of rejoicing and mourning were suddenly exchanged. Frederic, having
eluded the insurgents by a circuitous course along bye-paths, in a few days
made his appearance at Pavia, and all calamities were forgotten in the joy of
his survival. ■
But the
raptures of his wife, his court, and his camp, could not blind the Emperor to
the real posture of his affairs, and he was convinced that this defeat was
fatal to his hopes of enthroning his own Pope in Alexander’s stead.
This was the
seventh German army lost in Italy; and he well knew that the superstition of
the survivors, who had fled homeward, would again ascribe their misfortunes to
their support of an anti-pope against the true successor of the Apostle,
disseminating these ideas throughout Germany. He knew too, by painful
experience, that from him, who could best help, no help was to be expected ;
and might now perhaps feel some misgivings as to his long-trusted kinsman’s
proceedings in • Jennany. It has been alleged that he now repented of his own
opposition to Alexander. (?3) That he should deem criminal, and,
therefore, repent of a line of conduct adopted under the sanction of a Council,
and of more than one, of two if not three Councils, is very unlikely; but he
may have been conscious that, since Victor’s death, his popes were to the full
as illegally elected as Alexander; and that if Alexander was still in the
wrong, he was no longer in the right. Some such apprehension seems indeed to
have suggested his proposal of a joint resignation in 1167. But, however
influenced, he now resolved to achieve at all costs a reconciliation with the
generally acknowledged, if Illegal, Pope.
To this end
the Emperor despatched the Archbishops of Mainz and Magdeburg, nith the Bishop
of Bamberg, to Anagni, where the Papal Court then resided, bearing such
overtures as might, he hoped, separate the Pontiff from the Lombards. But
Alexander was too good a politician to be tempted, by the chance of any
apparent individual and, perhaps,momentaryadvantage,thusto strengthen his adversary,
He declared, that he neither could nor would treat otherwise than conjointly
with his allies, the Lombards, the King of Sicily, and the Greek Emperor.
For the
theatre of this general negotiation, Venice was, after much mistrustful
wrangling, selected. Alexander, cautious as usual, after he had obtained from
the Doge, and twelve Venetian nobles, an oath not to admit the Emperor into the
city without his express permission, repaired in Sicilian vessels, and
accompanied by Sicilian embassadors, to that seat of maritime power. There Lombard
and Imperial deputies met him, and, with the exception of a Constantinopolitan
representative, all parties were assembled; but, upon Manuel’s concurrence the
Pope D'gitizea by Microsoft ®
seems no
longer to have insisted, and negotiations began. The Emperor, annoyed by the
delays resulting from his remote position, presently took up his abode at
Chiozza, and the proceedings were expedited. But still no one receded from the
irreconcilable pretensions that had hitherto prevented the conclusion of a
treaty ; the negotiation proved difficult, and for awhile little prospect cf
peace appeared. Gradually, however, circumstances occurred to soften the
obstinacy of some of the belligerents, by alarming them. Discord broke out in
the Lombard League; and the naturally Ghibeline towns sought to detach
themselves from it. Cremona set the example; and the Emperor rewarded her
repentance, by granting the citizens the privilege of electing their own
Consuls. Even the Guelph towns, Tortona and Ravenna, upon this condition,
declared for the Emperor. The Venetians were shocked at seeing the mighty
potentate, whom they occasionally acknowledged their liege lord, and just then
found it for their convenience so to do, banished to a sort of suburban
fishing village; and Alexander, alarmed at their evident uneasiness, hourly
dreaded to hear that they had installed his enemy in the ducal palace.
The enemies
of the Emperor thus becoming as impatient to conclude the war, as he had long
been, it was suggested that the seemingly insuperable difficulties might be evaded
by a long truce between the Emperor and the League, reserving the questions in
dispute for future discussion and decision. The Lombards, fearing new
desertions, were glad thus to elude the obstacles to accommodation, and
Frederic, after repeatedly rejecting such half measures, at length assented.(74)
And now, although the conditions upon which he was to acknowledge Alexander
were not yet finally arranged, the Pope gave the desired permission for the
Emperor’s presence in Venice. No sooner had the Doge obtained it, than he
despatched the state barges to Chiozza; and, upon the 24th of June, they
brought the Einperor and his court with all fitting ceremoniousness to Venice.
The Pope sent his Nuncio to meet, and relieve him from excommunication, ere he should
land; preparatory to which rehabilitation, Archbishop Christian, in the
Euiperor’a name, disowned the three Anti-Popes, the dead Digitized by
Microsoft®
as well as
the living. His readmissicn into the bosom of the church thus completed; the
Emperor was received at the landing place of the PiazzeUa cli San Marco by the
Doge, attended in state by all the members of the already com plicated Venetian
government, and escorted in procession to the great door of St., Mark’s
church. There the Pope, \vith all the clergy then in Venice attending him, and
the Sicilian embassy, awaited his imperial, penitent, pseudo-prodigal son. The
Emperor paid his Holiness the usual honours paid by emperors to popes.
Alexander shed tears of joy (75) as he gave him the kiss of peace;
and together the reconciled Heads of Christendom proceeded to the high altar,
where solemn thanksgivings for this reconciliation were offered to Heaven.
The manner of
the meeting, as above portrayed, is consonant with the account given by the
Pope himself, in an extant epistle of his ;(76) which may be
admitted as satisfactorily refuting the extravagant arrogance of presumption
imputed, by some writers, to the Head of the Church upon this occasion—as,
e.g., trampling upon the Emperor’s neck; though not out of keeping with his
demeanour as Papal Legate at Besungon—and the equally extravagant meanness of
humiliation they impute to the Head of the Empire. Those stories have
accordingly been rejected by the most anti-imperialist later Italian historians,
as Romish or monkish forgeries, long subsequent to the transaction. Part of
their tale might, nevertheless, as consonant to the temper of the parties, be
accepted as probable. It seems far from unlikely that the haughty Emperor!
should, whilst kissing the Pope’s slipper, have said, “Non tibi serf Petro ”
(as, indeed, a monarch ought to say, when paying such nomage); and that the yet
haughtier Pope should retort, tf Et mihi et Petro.” But the incidents
immediately ensuing render even this improbable.
After this
public solemn reconciliation, the Emperor and the Pope had frequent
unceremonious private interviews ; and appear, duly appreciating each othf f’s
lofty character, to have become as cordial friends, as was compatible with the
clashing interests of their relative position. In such intercourse, and in the
discussion of the various points of the several treaties pending, passed the
month of July. At
length, on
the 1st of August, a full assembly was convened in the palace of the Patriarch
of Aquileia,' the Venetian Primate. The Pope was seated upon a raised throne,
with the Emperor upon his right hand ; llomualdo Archbishop of Salerno, as the
representative of the King of Sicily, upon his left ; whilst princes, prelates,
nobles, and city deputations filled the spacious hall. The Pope formally
expressed his satisfaction at the closing of the schism in the Church ; the
Emperor explained the grounds of his previous dissent; and then the treaty just
concluded was read aloud. It was to the following effect:
The Emperor
acknowledged Alexander III as rightful Pope ; he renounced in his favour all
royalties in the Roman territories, the nomination of the Prefect of Rome included,
and he pledged himself to render him all services that preceding Emperors had
rendered preceding Popes; to restore to the Church all her possessions, and
make due compensation to despoiled ecclesiastics. The Pope, on his part,
confirmed all the imperially appointed prelates in their respective sees,
especially Christian von Buch in that of Mainz; his own Archbishop, the long
expelled Conrad von Wittelsbach, getting Salzburg in its stead— Prince
Adalbert, M ho had successively offended both parties, being temporarily
sacrificed, till something should offer for him. The Anti-Pope Calixtus was to
receive an abbey upon renouncing his pretensions, and all his Cardinals—Mho
were few, the anti-popes having been singularly moderate in their
creation—were to be provided for. The Emperor w as to retain the Matildan
domains fifteen years; all disputes were to be referred to arbitration; and a
general amnesty was to be granted by both Pope and Emperor. Truces were
concluded for six years between the Emperor and the Lombard League, for fifteen
between him and the King of Sicily; during which periods no change of any kind
in the position and relations of any of the parties, was to be attempted,
unless by way of negotiation, compromise, or arbitration. To this treaty swore
not only the Pope, the Emperor, or Graf Heinrich von Dessau in his name and on his
soul, the Sicilian Embassador, and the Lombard Deputies, but likeM’ise the
Empress, the young King of the Romans, the Cardinals,
the Roman
ai:d other Italian Nobles, the German Princes, anil the Lombard Consuls.
The Italian
parties to the truce were, on the side of the Emperor, the Marquesses of
Montferrat, Guasto, aud Boseo; the Earls of Biandrate and Lomcllino, with a few
inferior Nobles; and the Cities, Pavia, Cremona, Genoa, Savona, Tortora, Turin,
Asti, Alba, Acqui, Ivrea, Ventimiglia, Monvelio, Albenga, Imola, Faenza,
Ravenna, Forli, Forlimpopoli, Cesena, Rimini, Castrocaro, and a few places of
less note. On the side of the League. :ts members. Milan, Treviso,
Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Bergamo, Brescia, Lodi, Como (which must have ratted
after the disaster at Legnano), Novara, Vercelli, Alessandria, Piacenza, Parma,
Mantua, Ferrara, Bobbio, Reggio, Modena, Bologna, with other towns of less
note; anil, its allies, Marquess Obizzo Malaspina and some inferior Nobles.
Venice appears to have signed as a common friend and mediatrix.(") In
honour of this reconciliatiun, the Pope is said to have presented the Doge m
ith a ring, which he employed to wed the Adriatic. P)
Another month
the reconciled enemies spent together at Venice. In September they parted. The
Pope had, upon this happy riddance of his rival, been invited by the Romans to
return to his proper home amongst them; and, having obtained from them an oath
to restore his usurped rights and prerogatives, to allow or even compel all
Senators upon their election to do homage to him, and never to invade his
liberty or that of the Cardinals, he now returned to his metropolitan palace,
to which he was escorted by Senate and people. The Emperor, upon quitting the
Queen of the Adriatic, travelled leisurely homeward with his wife and son,
visiting Tuscany and Genoa. The Imperial family was everywhere received with
demonstrations of joyful respect, and from Genoa passed into the Arelat. I
here they remained many months, that Frederic appears to have devoted to
settling the affairs of that realm. And there he is still found the 30th of
July, 1178, upon which day, at Arles, he and Beatrice were crowned Kuig and
Queen of the Arelat. After this ceremony they returned through the county of
Burgundy into Germany, where again serious business awaited the Emperor.
FREDERIC I.
Fall
of Henry the Lion—Affairs of Germany—Affairs of Italy —Death of Alexander
III—Lucius III—Peace of Constance —Affairs of Sicily—Alarriage of the King of
the Romans — Urban III. [1178 — 1186.
Upon
the present occasion the business awaiting the Emperor was as painful as it was
serious. During the war and the negotiations in Italy, the Duke of Saxony and
Bavaria had as usual been at feud with his neighbours. Whether he had or had
not meditated actual rebellion against his Imperial liege Lord and kinsman, is,
and will probably ever remain, an unresolved question. But that, although
engaged in war with some still unconquered Slavonians, he was much occupied
with intrigues calculated to produce troubles in Swabia, seems tolerably
certain. From both he was startled by the unexpected news of the reconciliation
between the Emperor and Alexander. Upon hearing such tidings he sought the
alliance and friendship of Casimir IV of Poland ; an able prince, who, upon the
death of his eldest brother, Boleslas IV, superseding an intermediate brother,
Mieczyslaf, had just succeeded as Duke of Cracow, and as Grand-Duke over his
eo-Dukes. He applied likewise to Waldemar—now his near connexion by the actual
marriage of the Crown-Prince Canute with Kichenza, the widowed Duchess of
Swabia—for aid against his various enemies, against the Emperor should need be.
This last the King of Denmark would agree to afford him only if he, the Duke,
first made compensation to, and peace with the prelates whose possessions he
had wrongfully seized ; observing, “ It was always ill fighting the Emperor;
and with Heaven angered, would be impossible.” Digfiized by Microsoft®
But, as it
was against those very prelates that the Lion wanted auxiliaries, he rejected
the conditions upon which alone could this aid be hoped for, and all he could
obtain from Waldemar was a promise to keep his refusal secret. Upon the
strength of this secrecy, when three of the offended bishops invaded his dominions,
he ventured to encourage his friends and vassals, and to alarm the prelates,
with the prospect of Danish, and also of Polish succours, which last were as
little forthcoming as the first.
The origin of
this Saxon civil war may be briefly stated. Gero Bishop of Halberstadt, whom
Her>ry had placed in that see, when with or without the Emperor’s
concurrence he had expelled the Alexandrian Bishop Ulrich, was one of the few
German anti-papal prelates, not confirmed by the treaty of Venice. Alexander
formally deposed him, reinstalling Ulrich, who at once cancelled all Gero’s
acts, including his grants of episcopal fiefs; some of those grants having been
to his Ducal patron. The Lion immediately concluded a peace with the
Slavonians, to turn his full force- against Bishop Ulrich. Upon this fresh
outbreak of civil war, other Saxon Prelates and Nobles revived their old claims
and complaints, which the Emperor had rather suspended, as the punishment of
their attempted self-redress, than rejected. The Bishop of Munster joined
Ulrich in arms. The Archbishop of Cologne, upon his return from Italy in the
autumn of 1177, demanded in addition to the immediate evacuation of his
principality, compensation for inroads upon the territory, and oppression
exercised upon the vassals, of his see. It was refused, and the Archbishop
joined the two Bishops. These were the prelates with whom the Duke now had to
contend, and they are accused by Guelp’ns of having marked their invasion of
the duchy by sacrilege as well as by great cruelty. (79)
In this state
Frederic, upon his arrival, found the affairs of the Duke of Saxony and
Bavaria; and he did not immediately interfere; whilst the Duke so fully relied
upon the dread he inspired, or still perhaps, even after the scene at Fartenkirch
or Cliiavenna and its melancholy consequences, upon the Emperor’s regard, that
he boldly attended the first Diet, held at Spires, to complain of
aggression
upon himself. He was met. by counter-complaints from the invaders, from their
allies, and from divers prelates and nobles whom he had in some manner wronged
or injured. As a sample of these counter-complaints, that of the Bavarian
Bishop of Freising, though not relating to one of the Lion’s most recent
outrages, may be given. It was, that the Duke had, without provocation or
notice, in the midst of peace and friendship, surprised his town of Veringen bjr
night, burnt bridges and houses, seized his great salt magazine, destroyed liis
salt works, made prisoners of all his salt manufacturers, and dragged them away
to Munich, thus to transfer the salt trade from the episcopal to the ducal
domain. A nearly similar outrage he had perpetrated years before at saltworks
belonging to the Earl of Holstein : but for that some sort of compensation had
ultimately been made, and the Earl now acted as his faithful vassal, instead of
appearing amongst his enemies. But against accusers and accusations, Ilenry
could not now, as of yore, reckon upon a protector, kind as powerful, in the
Emperor, who, if he laid no offence to his charge, certainly forbore to shield
him.
From the
accusations of his enemies, the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria was required to
vindicate himself at the next Diet, appointed to be held at Worms, in January
1179- The Diet wa£ so held, but the Duke did not appear. In fact, whilst his
pride revolted from owning the Princes of the Empire as his peers and judges,
he \as conscious of having provoked the ill will of so many of them, as left
him little hope of favour to temper justice. The Princes were wroth at his
non-appearance; but the Emperor listened to a plea advanced on his behalf; to
wit, that princes of the Empire could be judged only in their own country; and
he gave him a second chance, by summoning him to the Whitsuntide Diet,
convoked, conformably to this pretension, to meet at Magdeburg, in Saxony.
Again, at
this Diet, Henry the Lion appeared neither in person, nor by deputy, envoy, or
advocate, sent thither to plead his cause: and now the number and virulence of
his accusers increased. The Margrave of Landsberg came for
ward to
charge him with having incited Slavonian tribes to ravage his Lusatian
margraviate; and he offered to maintain the truth of this and the other charges
in single combat. To have accepted the challenge would have been to own the
Margrave his peer, and the Duke took no notice of it But to allow of his
accepting this trial by judicial combat, if so minded, the investigation of the
complaints was deferred to a third Diet, convoked to meet agair m Saxony, at
Goslar.
During the
interval between the Magdeburg Diet, and that appointed to meet at Goslar,
Henry sought to profit by those old feelings of kindred and friendship that he
had himself so rudely wounded. He solicited a secret interview with the
Emperor, who consented, aud privately met him at Haldensleben. Rut the Duke
would make no concession. He would neither agree to pay the fine of 5000 marks
demanded by the Emperor, rather in acknowledgment of his default, than as
damages for the calamities that default had eauscd, nor submit his various
quarrels to the decision of the Diet, or even to the arbitration of the
Emperor. The interview had no result.
At Goslar
Henry no more appeared, either in person or vicariously, than at the preceding
Diets; and now the Emperor formally put the question : “ What is the punishment
denounced by the law s of the Empire against him, who, thrice regularly
summoned by the Diet, refuses to appear, thus scorning the jurisdiction of the
Estates of the Empire?” The original question here, as on former occasions,
merging, as it were, in this contumacy, which was held to imply a greater
crime—i.e., revolt against the authority of the Emperor and the Diet. The
answer was prompt and decided. “The ban of the Empire !”—AnglicZ, “outlaw ry,
forfeiture of fiefs, loss of dignities.” The Duke’s partisans in the Diet
protested against this sentence, and urged that Henry, being of Swabian
descent, could only in Sviabia be judged; a sort of corollary from the former
admitted plea. The Diet rejected it, nevertheless, as an absurd innovation ;
and one of the members offered to prove again, in single combat, that the
Emperor and Diet of the Empire conjointly, could try, and, if comicted, condemu
any prince, at any place within the realm. As before, no
notice was
taken of the challenge. But still the Emperor delayed to ratify the sentence of
the Diet. Bent upon giving his refractory kinsman every possible chance of returning
to his duty as a vassal of the Empire, he resisted the importunity of the
Lion’s enemies, and summoned him for the fourth time to appear, in person or by
proxy, before an Imperial Diet, now to sit at Wurzburg in Franconia, in
January 1180, and there vindicate his conduct. Diets were likewise convoked to
meet at Ulm, and at Ratisbon, but respecting these Diets some obscurity
exists. Whether they were convoked simultaneously with, or, as is more likely,
subsequent to the assembling of the Wiirz- burg Diet, whether they were
Imperial Diets, there held either to comply with every imaginable claim of the
Duke’s, or in order to dispose of fiefs within the states to which those fiefs
appertained, or were merely Provincial Diets of Bavaria and Swabia, as forms
indispensable to the contemplated changes, appears to be altogether uncertain,
and luckily is not very material.
The enemies,
with whom the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria had surrounded himself, waited not for
the further proceedings of these later Diets. The chief of these enemies,
theLandgrave of Thuringia,the Archbishops of Cologne and Magdeburg, and the
Bishop of Halberstadt, impatient of the Emperor’s delays, and mistrustful of
some lingering cousinly regard, now took the execution of the Diet’s unratified
sentence into their own hands. Upon the rising of the Goslar assembly, they
invaded Saxony in concert, and were joined by offended Saxon vassals; when
again the invaders are said, especially the troops of Archbishop Philip, to
have wrought unspeakably atrocious and sacrilegious destruction in the duchy (so):
an accusation too often repeated by the partisans of Henry the Lion, to be
fully credited, at least as meaning anything beyond what was then unhappily
usual. But all the princes together were no match for the Lion, so truly
formidable had he made himself. They were unsupported by the force of the
Empire, and he speedily cleared his dominions of them.
The fourth
summons, the Di'ke, elated by his triumph over those whom he .was entitled to
regard as the Diet’s
VOL.
II. 7
officers,
slighted, as he had the three preceding The Pope and the Kings of England and
France now interposed in his behalf; but in vain. The pa ence of the Emperor
was exhausted, and he gave way to the indignant Princes; at another Wiirzburg
Diet, the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria was formally laid under the ban of the Empire.
But the laws of the Empire allowed the prince under its ban a period of grace,
during which he might by submission, if not quite avert, yet greatly alleviate
the confiscation that sentence imported. But the period of grace elapsed, and
still Henry stood in haughty defiance of the Emperoi and the Empire. His
forfeiture was now complete; such contumacious resistance to the sentence, as
should render arms requisite for its inforcement, adding, ipso facto, the
forfeiture of allodia to that of fiefs.
At the Easter
Diet, held this year at Gelnhausen, a
favourite
residence of Frederic’s, this final forfeiture was
pronounced,
and the possessions lost by the Lion were
ordered to be
assigned anew. But the Emperor, much as
Guelphs
execrate his malignant enmity to the head of the
Welfs,
forbore to execute the sentence in its full severity;
and still,
whilst he disposed of the forfeited duchies and
fiefs, left
the princely outlaw a chance of redeeming his
allodial
property. Taught by biiier expedience the danger
of making any
prince formidably powerful, the monarch,
with the
concurrence of the Diet, not only severed, but
diminished
the two duchies, ere granting them anew. The
fiefs
situated within the province of Cologre, that is to say
the
Westphalian fiefs, he granted, with ducal rights over
Westphalia,
to Archbishop Philip, to be permanently
attached to
that archiepiscopal see. The Landgrave of
Thuringia,
the Archbishops of Magdeburg and Bremen—
the
defaulter, Hartwig, was dead, and his successor,
Baldwin, of
course, entitled to all temporalities—the
Bishops of Minden, Halherstadt, Hildesheim, Verden,,
Paderborn,
with other prelates and nobles of less note,
severally
recovered whatever had been wrested from
them, with
additions. The Dukes of Mecklenburg—
the now really
Christian sons and heirs of the Heathen
Obodrite
Princes—and ,the Earls of Holstein, were
raised to the
rank of -mmed.iate vassals of the Empire ;
> r j
Lubeck, and a
few other thriving towns, to that of Free Imperial cities. The duchy of Saxony,
thus curtailed, but retaining some of its Slavonian acquisitions, and still
powerful, the Emperor assigned to the descendants of the eldest of the Billung
co-heiresses, Elike. Her son, Albert the Bear, had died in 1170, dividing his
dominions between his sons,—unluckily for German nationality, a then growing
practice;—he left his margraviate to his eldest son Otho; Anhalt, with his
Slavonian conquests upon the middle Elbe, to the younger, Bernard. To have
re-united the margraviate and the duchy would have been to reconstruct such a
power as had just been found noxious: and the Emperor, therefore, so far
modified the law of hereditary right, as to invest Bernard with the duchy of
Saxony, attaching to it the Imperial household office of Arch-Marshal; that of Arch-Chamberlain
being already assigned to the Margraves of Brandenburg, now the more powerful
princes of the two (sl).
The affairs
of Saxony thus ordered at Gelnhausen in Thuringia—still part of Saxony, though
the Landgrave seems a very great prince to be under a duke—the Emperor
proceeded to hold a Diet at Ratisbon, probably that alreadj7
mentioned, for the regulation of those of Bavaria; and this already curtailed
duchy he in like manner further diminished. To Carinthia and Styria,
independence of the Dukes of Bavaria was severally assured, with ducal rights
and title to the vassal prince of each. He granted some southern Tyrolese
countics to the Bishops in whose dioceses they lay, to prevent their absorption
by Lombardy; and others, more considerable, to the Earls of Andechs, descended,
like the house of Wittelsbach, from the Scyren, or Schyren; and, upon this
augmentation of their already extensive, though most inconveniently scattered,
dominions, he authoiized the Earl’s retention of their unauthorizedly assumed
title of Duke—an assumption requiring some words of explanation. An Earl of
Dachau, taking part in a civil war 'n Hungary, had, as the reward of his
assistance, been created Duke of Dalmatia by Boris, the pretender he had
served. But Boris proving unsuccessful, the Earl lost Dalmatia; and, returning
to
Germany, a
Hungarian Duke without a dukedom, his new
title was not
recognized by tlie German Diet. Upon the death of the last of these Dachau
Dukes, leaving neither child nor brother, the son of his sister,—who had
married an Earl of Andechs,—succeeded to his county and empty ducal title,
which, in this series of changes, was now sanctioned by the Emperor and Diet.
The Earls henceforward law fully entitled themselves Dukes of Meran ; having
still, it might almost be said, only a dukedom in nartibvs, since it has never
been clearly ascertained where Meran is, or, rather, of what Meran they were
dukes.(82) To return to Frederic’s operations in the Ratisbon Diet.
He added a few fiefs to those of the Duke of Spoleto, with which (whether here
or at Ulm seems doubtful) he incorporated all those remaining to the Lion in
Swabia; he made Ratisbon, and a few other towns (in Bavaria, Swabia, and
Franconia), immediate, or Free Imperial cities; he then invested his tried
friend and champion, Gtho von Wittelsbach, with the duchy. Is it worth
mentioning that this Otho is a lineal ancestor of the Elector Palatine, husband
to Elizabeth cf England, and thus an ancestor of the present sovereign of the
British Empire ? The Bavarians exult- ingly hailed the representative of one of
their oldest families, the Scyren, as their Duke; and Otho, upon acquiring the
higher dignity, transferred his Bavarian palatinate to his younger brother.
Finally, the bur- graviate of Nuremberg was given to the Earls, of Zollern, or
Hohenzollern, and if not from the first hereditary, was soon afterwards made
so. The army of the Empire, destined to effect all these transfers and changes,
was appointed to assemble upon St. James’s day, in the ensuing month of July.;
the princes and nobles who were to profit by them of course supplying a large
proportion of the force.
But the Lion
had not waited to be attacked. Upon receiving information of the sentence
pronounced against him, and the allotment of Saxony, which he did soon after
his repulse of his first invaders, he resumed hostilities. He surprised and
burnt llalberstadt, numbered the Bishop amongst his prisoners; and constrained
him to sign a treaty, which was afterwards cancelled by both Pope and Emperor.
He took ai.d burnt Nordhausen, defeated the
newly
invested Duke of Saxony, captured the Landgrave of Thuringia, and laid siege to
that object of his ambition, Goslar, after destroying all the mining and
smelting establishments located under its protection. During these operations,
his faithful vassal, Adolph Graf von Holstein, was gallantly and successfully
doing battle with the invaders, and driving them out of the western provinces
of the duchy. Not a single advantage had those enemies gained; and Henry,
though he left Goslar untaken, returned to Brunswick, his favourite residence,
crowned with success and glory. But, in the exultation of triumph, the Duke
forgot that his whole strength lay in the fidelity of his vassals. He quarrelled
with the greatest of them, the Earl of Holstein,—who had nearly exhausted his
own resources in his zealous service of his liege Lord,— respecting some
prisoners of war taken by the Earl, but whom, or whose ransom, the Duke, as his
suzerain, claimed, and the Earl refused to surrender (83). He next
accused the Graf von Ratzeburg of plotting the assassination of himself and his
Duchess. Once more, however, his great abilities and leonine daring gave
success to his irrational presumption; he expelled Earl Adolf from Holstein,
threw the Earl of Ratzeburg into prison, and triumphed in the possession of the
fiefs of both.
Thus,
throughout the year 1180, Henry was victorious; but it was for the last time.
During the period in which he had thus prosperously maintained his position
against his brother princes, and increased his power by seizing the possessions
of his vassals, the Emperor, occupied by the settlement of Bavaria, had, in
Saxony, left the execution of the Diet’s decree to those who wrere
to reap the benefit, but who proved unable to cope with the Lion. In the course
of the following year, 1181, he took it in hand himself, and the scene changed.
He fixed a day, Martinmas, upon or before which all Saxon vassals must submit
to the decree of the Diet, or be declared traitors, and forfeit their fiefs, At
the head of an army of the Empire, unaccompanied by any troops of his own, he
then entered the duchy. And now7, whether influenced by respect for
the Head of the Empire enforcing the known will of the
Empi e, or by
anger at the deposed Duke’s treatment of
1 J ■ zt a by 1 rosoii
the Earls of
Holstein and Ratzeburg, Henry’s hitherto staunchest adherents, with scarcely an
exception, fell off from hi>n. His strongest towns and castles surrendered
almost as soon as summoned; llatzeburg was, upon Henry’s leaving it, recovered
by the friends of the imprisoned Earl in his name; the Imperialists took
Bardewyck and Haldenslebeu by storm, and besieged Brunswick. The young Duchess,
Matilda of England, was in the town, still confined to her bed by the
sufferings entailed upon maternity, and she sent a request to the Emperor, that
wine, for her use, might be permitted to enter. He not only granted the
request, but added to h'is permission a complimentary message, that, rather
than disturb a lady in her critical condition, he would make her a present of
Brunswick. And he instantly raised the siege.
Frederic’s
chivalrous courtesy did notfurther interrupt his victorious career. The only
power from which, as an ally of Henry’s, he apprehended serious opposition was
Denmark; Waldomar having faithfully kept his promise not to make his purposed
neutrality public. To conciliate this connexion of the Lion’s, the Emperor now
proposed a marriage between two of his own sons and two of the Danish
monarch’s daughters. The proposal was thankfully accepted ; Waldemar visited
the Emperor in his camp, and all fear of his interposition in aid of his ducal
neighbour and connexion thus vanishing, Frederic proceeded confidently. With
the King’s consent he invested the Pomeranian Princes—who since the year 1108
had been Danish vassals—with their dominions, as Princes of the Empire; though
still it should seem, owing homage to the King of Denmark, as their mesne Lord.
He next laid siege to Lubeck. The citizens, through their Bishop, represented
to the Emperor that their city owed its prosperity, if not its existence, to
the deposed Duke of Saxony, who had annihilated Heathenism and established
Christianity throughout the neighbouring districts; and that they were bound,
by gratitude for such benefits, to defend the city for him to the uttermost,
unless authorized by him to surrender; wherefore they solicited permission to
communicate with him. The Emperor replied that the Digitized by Microsoft
deposed Duke
had held Lubeck as a fief of the Empire; and all his fiefs having, by his
Co-Estates of the Empire, been confiscated, as the penalty of his contumacy and
rebellion, it was wrong in the citizens of Lubeck to resist the Imperial
authority; nevertheless he granted their petition. The deputation, sent to
Henry, brought back leave from him to make terms for themselves, as he had not
the means of rescuing them. Lubeck thereupon surrendered, and became a Free
Imperial city, with all its chartered rights and commercial privileges
confirmed and augmented.
Henry had
retreated to Stade, a strongly fortified town, where he prepared for a
desperate resistance. But Frederic marched upon Luneberg, where the Duke’s
family then was; and the double fear of seeing his children in his enemies’
hands, and of losing the very cradle of his maternal Saxon ancestry, conquered
his stubborn resolution. He released the captive Landgrave of Thuringia,
requesting him to announce his submission to the sentence of the Diet, and
prepare the offended Emperor to receive him. Frederic, who apparently needed
little preparation, at the first word sent the repentant rebel a safe-conduct.
Protected by this Imperial document, the haughty Lion traversed dominions so
lately his own; and, in November, presented himself before the Diet, then
sitting at Erfurt. He fell at the feet of the sovereign, whom at Partenkirch he
had seen at his own, clasped his knees, and sued for pardon.
Frederic was
inly moved, and tears bedewed his cheeks, as he exclaimed: “ But thou thyself
hast been the sole author of thy misfortunes ! ” All who bore the Lion ill will
for past wrongs, and all who dreaded his ambition or his vengeance, trembled
lest this deep emotion should forbode a full pardon. But Frederic neither would
nor perhaps could, materially alter the sentence of the Diet; nor would he, now
that affection no longer hoodwinked hi« judgment, sacrifice the interests of
the Empire to his private feelings. lie contented himself with restoring to
llenry. in recompense of his final, however late, submission, the whole of the
allodial heritage of his two grand mothers, Wulfhilda and Richen/a, which his
contumacy
under the ban
of the Empire, had forfeited, together with some few of their fiefs, the title
of Duke of Brunswick, and such imperfect ducal rights as appertained to what
have been designated dukedoms in opposition to the original duchies, and even
to later duchies constituted by Emperor and Diet conjointly; the dukedom being
apparently what the Emperor could singly confer. The lands assigned the
Duchess on her marriage, as her dower, Frederic likewise assured to her. But,
either as a balance to these concessions, or to guard the new occupants of the
Lion’s late possessions from disturbance, till they could be somewhat securely
established therein, he banished the Duke of Brunswick from the Empire for the
space of seven years; a period which, at the intercession of Henry’s former
mediating protectors, the Pope and the Kbgs of France and England, he reduced
to three. The princes and prelates were again alarmed, and now obtained a
solemn promise from the Emperor to grant 110 further remission of the sentence
without their consent.
The following
spring, Henry passed over into England with his family, to spend the period of
bis banishment at the court of his royal father-in-law. Upon his road through
his forfeited duchy, he was far from meeting with the respect and consideration
due to his misfortunes—a proof as much of the harshness of his government, as of
the rudeness of the age. At Bardewyk—which owed him much, which, before he
obtained possession of Lubeck, he had endeavoured to exalt into a rival of that
thriving city, and where he now intended to rest for a night—not only were the
gates closed against him, but the citizens assembled upon the walls for the
purpose of grossly insulting him by an indecent exposure of their own persons.
The Lion swore that on his return he would make it impossible for the men of
Bardewyk again to insult a prince. An oath he did not forget.
About this
time Canute VI succeeded his father Wal- demar upon the Danish throne. The
Emperor summoned him to do homage, and required him to send, with her promised
wedding portion, the affianced bride of the Duke of Swabia, to be educated at
the Court; of her future mother-in-law, the Empress. Why he asked only for Digitized
by Microsoft®
one of the
little brides—whether the second was dead, or too mere a baby to be deprived of
maternal care—does not appear. Canute, who more than his father, seemingly,
sympathized with his Lion father-in-law, eluded or deferred the doing homage;
and though he sent his sister as required, he sent her so ill-equipped,
carrying with her so poor an instalment of her promised portion, that the
Emperor was scarcely less angered by this half compliance, than he might have
been by a positive refusal- Apprehensions were conceived that Canute meant to
arm on behalf of the Duke of Brunswick. Frederic, however, wished just then to
avoid a war with Denmark, and for the moment overlooked the affront; whilst he
suffered the matter of homage to remain in some sort in suspense. It is said
that, to avert the danger of his arming for his father-in-law, Frederic
encouraged Prince Bogislaf of Pomerania to attempt making himself master of
Riigen. Whether so stimulated or not, Bogislaf certainly did make the attempt,
and Canute’s arms were occupied in Slavonian wars.
Whilst these
things were passing in Germany, Archbishop Christian, whom the Emperor had
left in Italy to watch over and inforce the observance of the treaty, and to
maintain peace, had offered his services to the Pope. They were gladly
accepted: whereupon he had assisted Alexander thoroughly to subjugate the
Romans, and was next employed to extort the submission of the deserted AntiPope
; who even when given up by his only powerful supporter, still asserted the
legality of his own pretensions. Coerced by the Archbishop, Calixtus III now
presented himself as Giovanni di Struma to his triumphant rival. But Alexander,
however haughty, was wise enough to control his exultation; and unlike Calixtus
II, in similar circumstances, adopted every conciliatory measure that could
finally heal the schism, by winning the good will of his defeated opponents. He
received his forsaken and humbled competitor with all kindness; invited him to
dinner—thus, in papal etiquette, really treating him as ait equal—and,
conformably to his convention with the Emperor, provided liberally for him at
Benevento.
In March
1179, a general Council convoked by Alexander, had met at Rome, consisting of
three patriarchs, three hundred prelates, and crowds of inferior clergy. The
first measures of the Pope and his Council referred to the complete closing of
the schism. For this purpose most of the anti-popes’ eccle.-iiastical
appointments were solemnly confirmed; only such prelates as had si maniacally,'
or by other incorrect means, attained their dignities, being ejected; some of
the anti-popes’ regulations touching discipline were annulled, and others, of
which the Pope and Council approved, were rendered valid by a solemn sanction.
(It may be observed by the way that these deliberate sanctions go far to
acquit the better Romish authorities, of dictating the idle Romish
vituperation, that represents every anti-pope not merely as a lawless usurper,
but as an actual monster of vice and infidelity.) An attempt was made to
prevent future schism, by prohibiting sucli engagements, as those entered into
prior to the double election of Alexander and Victor; and by enacting that a
Papal Election by two thirds of the Cardinals should be valid, by less than two
thirds invalid, and a protest by no more than one third of the Conclave null
and void. The principal matter of discipline originating in this Council, was a
regulation of the expense to which a bishop might put abbeys and parish priests
in his visitation of his diocese. A sufficient escort he was bound to take, but
the attendance of a hunting establishment was forbidden, and his train was
restricted to forty or fifty horsemen.(*4;
Complaints
were laid before this Council of the prevalence of heresy, as well in northern
Italy—where it may have been connived at whilst the Pope wanted the support of
the Lombards—as in the south of France. Similar complaints appear to have been
previously made at the Council held by Alexander in France; but little attended
to at the time, engrossed as all then were with the schism. Now Pope and
Council were at leisure to attend to the doctrine of the Church, and a sentence
of excommunication was pronounced against heretics; but as no especial laws
were made respecting them, this may for the moment
be sufficient
notice, reserving all details for the chapter, which, early in the history of
the next century, must be devoted to the subject of heresy.
With this
general Council closed the pontificate of Alexander III, which was mainly
occupied by the contest with anti-popes. Shortly after the dissolution of the
Council, upon the 30th of August, 1181, he died, and was succeeded by Cardinal
Ubaldo di Ostia, who took the name of Lucius III. The new Pope was a worthy
man, of a ripe old age, and is by many held cheap; though deficient in
intellect he could hardly be, since he is said to have been habitually employed
by his able predecessors in the most ticklish affairs of the Church.(8S)
But he had none of the energy of those predecessors, and against him,
therefore, Roman turbulence broke out even more fiercely, more insolently than
usual; and the Pope, at once indignant and terrified, appealed to the
Archbishop of Mainz for protection.
That martial
prelate had himself been for some short time in trouble. Whilst actively
employed in reducing refractory portions of the Estates of the Church to obedience
under Alexander III, he had found himself vigorously opposed by Marquess
Conrad, a younger son of the Marquess of Montferrat. As no mention is made of
that loyal Marquess’s continued adherence to Calixtus, after the imperial
nephew of his wife had acknowledged Alexander ; or, of any enmity borne by him
to any Pope, save as to an enemy of the Emperor; it is to be presumed that his
son, who subsequently displayed in the East a very ambitious and adventurous
spirit, had engaged independently, as a leader of mercenaries,—perhaps the
first noble Condottiere—in the service of the papal rebels. But however that
may be, he defeated Christian, took him prisoner, demanded an exorbitant
ransom, and kept him in close custody till it should be paid. It appears that
neither Pope nor Emperor came forward upon this occasion, and the ingenuity of
modern historians has been tasked to discover the motive of their conduct. With
respect to the Emperor it may however be presumed that he, who was then
engrossed by the rebellion of Henry the Lion, deemed it the Pope’s business to
ransom a prisoner taken in hattle for Papal sovereign rights Digitized by
Microsoft®
against Papal
rebels, and saw no reason why he should pay Alexander’s debt.(86)
Why Alexander did not ransom his valuable champion, it is more difficult to
say: but, without adopting the suggestion that Christian’s services to himself
had not quite obliterated those to his rivals, it may be conjectured that he
had served him too well for his further service, at least w hile the Romans
were amused with the Council, to be worth so heavy a drain upon an exchequer
exhausted by war and intrigue, as the large sum Marquess Conrad demanded. Soon
after Alexander’s death the Archbishop managed to ransom himself; and
immediately was again at the head of an army. Nor does he appear to have
thought that he had any ungrateful neglect to resent, for he hastened to obey
the call of Lucius, and once more reduced the Romans to submission.
In Lombardy
affairs now began to assume an aspect more decidedly favourable to the Emperor.
The exasperation generated by long-continued hostilities had had time to
subside, leaving room for calm reflection. Venice had never heartily joined the
League, and did not renew the connexion after she broke it to co-operate in the
siege of Ancona. Some of the members held to be most innately Guelph, even
Alessandria, sought the Emperor’s favour by entire submission. And gradually
the Heads of the League, Milan herself included, reluctantly admitted an
apprehension that, without a prospect of support fro:n either the Pope, the
King of Sicily, or the Greek Emperor, or some chance of such a diversion in
their favour as had arisen from the self-wiHed obstinacy of the Duke of Saxony
and Bavaria, they could not really hope to triumph over the German Emperor. Of the
last, there was now no German prince powerful enough to afford them a hope;
Lucius III Was as unable, as WTilliam II was unwilling, to engage in
war with Frederic Barbr.rossa; and the able, powerful, and enterprising Manuel
had ceased to exist, leaving no successor who could carry out his plans.
By his first
marriage Manuel had only a daughter, Maria, who had grown up to womanhood as
his presumptive heir, when her mother’s death, and his second marriage with
Maria of Antioch produced a son to cut her out. Manuel had appointed liis widow
and a cousin, named Alexius Dig' ed by Microsoft®
Comnenus,
regents for his minor son; but his daughter, and her husband Rinieri, a son of
the Marquess of Mont- ferrat, contended with them for the supreme authority;
and when overpowered, invited the exiled Andronicus Comnenus, the ablest
perhaps, and certainly the most unprincipled of the family, to join them.
Andronicus had been a favourite companion of Manuel’s in their youth, and the
confidant of his transient illicit amours. A rivalry in some of these had
alienated the kinsmen ; and Andronicus became a traitor. For two plots against
Manuel’s life, and a treasonable correspondence with the King of Hungary, he
was arrested, escaped from prison, and fled to the Russian principality of
Halitschj where he managed to render Manuel some service that induced his
pardon and recall His subsequent adventures belong rather to the history of the
Syro-Frank States, where they will find their place. They had ended in his
confinement to a town on the shore of the Euxine. Thence he hastened at the
Princess’s invitation; accused the Regents of a treasonable correspondence
with Bela III of Hungary, who had married Princess Agnes of Antioch, the
Empress- M aria’s sister; convicted them by a sort of trial, and doomed Alexius
to blindness. None would sentence the Empress mother; but she was found one
morning a corpse on the sea-shore. The Princess Maria and Rinieri were soon
afterwards poisoned, and Andronicus remained Regent. His government
disappointed the Greeks, his abilities being smothered, apparently in cruelty,
tyranny and profligacy. Neither during the struggle, nor as acknowledged
Regent, did he seem to care for the recovery of Italy, and the League speedily
saw that from Constantinople there was nothing to hope.
This view of
their position induced the Lombards, for the sake of perpetuating the
advantages which they then enjoyed, to drop some of their most republican
pretensions, and thus to convert the truce into a permanent peace. On the
other hand, Frederic’s resentment, amidst the affairs in which he was immersed,
had similarly had leisure to subside; and be too, perhaps, bad reluctantly
confessed to himself, that the attainment of his ideal, the perfect
re-establishment of the Empire of Charlemagne,
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was, for the
moment at least, impossible. He saw the German princes daily more averse to
Italian expeditions, success in which would strengthen the Head of the Empire
against their own ambitious aspirings; whilst his son, the King of the Romans,
who shrank from finding his accession embarrassed by apprehensions of a civil
war, perceived in existing circumstances such an opportunity of recommending
himself to Italy, and even to the Pope, as might secure the support of both to
the Empire, and the Empire uncontested to himself.(&7) Henry
therefore zealously interposed his mediation to effect the object that the
Lombards now desired, namely, such improvement of the truce into a peace.
The
fruit of all these altered views vtas the memorable Pcace of Constance, signed
in that city upon the 25th of June, 1185, which long remained the basis of
public law in northern Italy. Its leading provisions were, that, reserving the
right of investing and confirming Consuls and Podestas to the Bishop, wherever
he had habitually exercised that right, to the Emperor and liis Vicars
elsewhere, (and the right of confirming must needs include that of rejecting
whenever there was power to assert it,) it allowed every town to elect its
magistrates, and to purchase all other rights and royalties for a yearly
payment of 2000 lb. of silver into the Imperial treasury, which payment,
should if be proved exorbitant, the Emperor promised to reduce. The
contributions to the Emperor’s Italian expeditions were definitively settled.
The vassal’s oath of allegiance was to be taken by all Vassals (Consuls and
other Magistrates included), the citizen’s oath by all male inhabitants between
the ages of seventeen and seventy, and both oaths were to be decennially
repeated. All classes were further to swear to respect and preserve the
Emperor’s fortifications, and to maintain his Imperial rights against the
world, The citizens in return were authorized to wail and otherwise fortify the
towns; to raise troops, and to form confederations; this last, a privilege
which, as an adjunct of what he was constantly labouring to repress, viz., the
right of waging private war, Frederic was always relujtaut to grant, and which
in his German charters he habitually withheld. An appeal lay Digitized by
Microsoft® '
to the
Emperor from all Italian tribunals, and a supreme Imperial Judge was appointed,
to hear and decide upon such appeals when the Emperor should be in Germany.
This treaty, granting all that the Lombards had as yet learned really to
desire,(88) was received with unbounded delight in Lombardy, and the
idea of an independent, federal republic, seems for a time to have died away.
The Peace of
Constance was signed as before said, June 25, 1183, and as though he had lived
only whilst the Emperor wanted his military services in Italy, that day two
months Archbishop Christian died, probably of a fever; and the marvel seems to
be that his German constitution had so long borne such an active life in a
southern climate. Conformably, however, to the usual accusation in such cases
of premature decease, contemporary Chroniclers affirm that the Romans poisoned
the prelate to deprive the Pope of his championship. And it must be confessed
the charge is somewhat corroborated by the fact that the Romans were no sooner
relieved, whether by the course of nature or by their own crime, from all fear
of this formidable antagonist, than they again rose against their pontifical
sovereign. Without his deceased protector, he was again unequal to the contest;
and though he could not be compelled to yield to their demands, he could be,
and was,'again driven from Rome.
The see of
Mainz did not lose much in its warlike Archbishop, whom it rarely beheld, and
whose place was immediately supplied by the re-instalment of his formerly
successful competitor, Conrad von Wittelsbach. To the Emperor and Empire the
loss of such a public servant was grievous. In Italy, indeed, it was very much
compensated by the gain of a race that was daily rising in power. Ezzelino da
Romano, who had commanded the forces of the Lombard League against the Emperor,
now solicited a reconciliation with him, and became thenceforward the Head of
the Italian Ghibelines.
In Germany,
some disturbances had arisen from an attempt of the new Duke of Saxony to
tread in his predecessor's footsteps, in regard to vassals and neighbours. But
Bernard was as deficient in the immense power
and the
influence arising from >ld habitual relations of
■ c
By i
sovereign and
vassal, as in the lofty qualities that had enabled the Lion to trample on all
around him. Neither the great Saxon vassals nor Lubeck would submit to his
pretensions; and the Emperor’s intervention between Duke, vassals, and Free
Imperial City, was required to quell the troubles, and reconcile all parties.
He judged all to be, one way or another, in the wrong, and lined the opposers
of ducal usurpation for having taken redress into their own bands, whilst he
forbade the Duke again to encroach upon their rights.
Peace now
reigned throughout the Empire, and Frederic Barharossa resolved to celebrate it
by a festival of such Imperial magnificence as had not been seen for centuries,
and should strike his contemporaries with admiration. The occasion he selected
for this festival, was the tournament proclaimed to celebrate the knighting of
his elder sons ; and he appointed for its tims and place the Whitsuntide Diet
of 1184, to be held at Mainz; as the solemn restoration of that city to its
original rank, after undergoing the due punishment of its crimes, in years of
desolation and desertion.
There, at the
appointed season, the princes, prelates, and nobles of Germany, Italy, and
Burgundy assembled ; the laity accompanied by their wives and daughters, and
all attended by trains calculated to display their wealth and consequence. That
Philip Earl of Flanders led thither (iOO knights, has been carefully recorded
by Flemish chronicles ; though we might conceive they should rather have
suppressed such a proof of his inferior power; inasmuch as the trains are
reported to have amounted in many instances to HX)0 knights, in some to 4000;
the largest, the Archbishop of Cologne’s, it is said, to 40(i0. Thither also
flocked princes, nobles and knights, from England, France, and Spain, from
Illyria, and many Slavonian states, attracted by the fame of the tournament at
which the Emperor’s sons were to win their golden spurs, and when they should
have received, to approve themselves worthy of them. Troubadours, scalds,
bards, minstrels cf all countries presented themselves to enliven the banquet,
and to sing the praises of the victor in the lists. According to the lowest
computation i0,000, according to the
highest
70,000 knights of all ranks were here gathered together; of the number of ladies,
“ whose bright eyes rained influence,” no estimate is given; and of the lower
orders, the throng attracted by curiosity and cupidity is described as
innumerable. It being evident now, as it had been some sixty years before, at
Lothar’s election, that Mainz could not lodge such a host, accommodation was
provided without the walls. A pleasure house, with an adjoining chapel, was
built for the Emperor upon the bank of the Rhine, environing which arose
analogous dwellings for the princes, and, further off, tents for the lesser
nobles, till a goodly city appeared to have been created by the touch of a
fairy’s wand. Measures had been taken for ensuring an adequate supply of
provisions by the river, and this entire multitude was entertained, with due
distinction of ranks and tables, at the Emperor’s expense, as long as the
festival lasted. Whilst in the temporary Imperial palace the chief Princes of
the Empire, in proof of the supreme dignity of the Emperor (89),
performed the functions of their several household offices: the Rhine
Palsgrave as Arch-Sewer, the Duke of Saxony as Arch-Marshal, the Margrave of
Brandenburg as Arch-Chamberlain, and the King of Bohemia as Arch-Butler or
Cup-bearer. Whatever they had been before, these offices were now inseparably
annexed to those titles and principalities.
Some public
business was necessarily transacted at so grand a Diet: but none, it should
seem, worth mentioning except the determination taken to enter Poland in arms,
and forcibly reinstal the supplanted elder brother, Mieczyslaf, in his duchy of
Great Poland and his suzerainty. The execution of this decree was to be the
first adventure of the young knight, Henry King of the Romans. And this
expedition may at once be preliminarily disposed of, by stating that Kasimir,
upon hearing that it was projected, hastened to do homage to the Emperor, and
acknowledge the authority of the Diet; whereupon the Princes of the Empire
contented themselves with obtaining from him a younger brother’s appanage tor
Mieczyslaf; who, some years later, upon Kasimir's sudden death, recovered his
birthright.
The real
business of the Mainz assemblage was the
tournament.
Tilt.n»s, joustings, the melte, under the eyes of the Empress, and the ladies
forming her court, occupied the mornings: when the lists glittered with golden
or gilded shields, armour, and helmets, radiant with precious stones, as if ir
emulation of the silks, satins, and jewellery of the admired and admiring, if
anxious, spectatresses. In these chivalrous past'ines, Frederic himself took
part, and the elder three of his sons, Henry, Frederic, and Conrad,
successfully exhibiting their prowess, received knighthood from the hand of
their Imperial father. Magnificently profuse banquets refreshed the tourneyers
after the fatigues of the mimic war, and, 111 the evenings, minstrelsy and gay
dances closed the pleasures of the day.
The
splendours of this festival, and the presence of the noblest as of the most
poetical of the votaries of the Muses and of the patrons of those votaries, are
believed to have awakened the genius of some at least of those German bards,
who then, or soon afterwards, began to draw the attention of their nation to
vernacular poetry, and who will be more particularly noticed in a chapter
dedicated to t.heprogressof the age in intellectual culture and civilization.
It is al»o believed and averred that these splendours have remained pretty
nearly as unparalleled as they were unprecedented. Frederic Barbarossa’s was,
from his own character, a chivalrous magnificence, and the age was one of
profusion, if not of real luxury.
Only one
incident threatened to mar the harmony of the good meeting with what would
indeed, in modern days, be “ most admired disorder,3’ though nothing
extraordinary in the. Middle Ages. At the very opening of either the Diet or
the festival, some solemnity having congregated the magnates present in the
Cathedral, the Emperor took his seat, and the Princes were arranging themselves
in proper order, the Archbishops of Mainz and Cologne upon his right and left,
when the Abbot of Fulda stood forth to oppose the latter prelate. Ile’asserted
that the place on the Emperor’s left hand belonged at Mainz, by prescription of
centuries, to the Fulda Abbot, and had been unjustly usurped by the Archbishop
of Cologne. Frederic, well aware that the Abbot had right on his side,
requested the Archbishop, as a tried and valued friend, to give way. But this
was
too much for
Philip von Heinsberg. Starting up in wrath, he said, that he yielded to his
sovereign’s wish, but requested permission at the same time to withdraw from
the court festival. As he spoke he was departing, followed by his vassals,
amongst whom were the Duke of Brabant, the Earl of Nassau, and even the
Emperor’s brother, Rhine- PalsgraveConrad, who,as he rose, said, “I am the
Cologner’s man [*. e., vassal], and, with your leave, Lord Emperor, bound to
follow him/' The Landgrave of Thuringia, a vassal of Fulda, cried sneeringly to
the Earl of Nassau, “Well have you earned your fief to-day, Sir Earl!” “ I
have,” retorted the Earl; “ and, if need be, yet better will I this day earn
it! ”
Under Henry
IV, such a broil had led to bloodshed; and from the temper displayed by Philip,
and the numerical strength of his vassalage and train, a similar result might
well be apprehended. The alarm was general, when the young King of the Romans,
springing from his seat, clasped the angry Archbishop in his arms, and implored
him not thus at once to destroy all the enjoyment anticipated at the festival.
The prelate, in reply, exclaimed against so ungrateful a return for his many
and arduous services, as the exaltation of a monk over his head. The Emperor
himself now came forward, to assure the Archbishop that he had so acted by no
means through favour to his antagonist, but regretfully, and solely from his
knowledge that the Abbot’s claim was well-founded; and he was lifting up his
hand to attest the truth of this assertion by oath, when the Archbishop, whom
such Imperial condescension had at length appeased, stopped him, saying the
Emperor’s word was equal to any oath. He was now about, in compliance with the
request that had so enraged him, to take a lowlier seat, when the Abbot,
satisfied with this public recognition of his right, gave way, yielding the
contested place to the Archbishop, and tranquillity was restored.
The festival
over, the Emperor wished to revisit Italy; and, considering Germany in a
perfectly satisfactorj’ state, committed the government north of the Alps to
the young King of the Romans, who seems, in truth, to have had little of youth
about him except its physical advantages- Digitized by Microsoft®
His
government, though, upon this occasion, short, was not, however, wholly
undisturbed. A feud presently broke out between Conrad Archbishop of Mainz, and
Lewis Landgrave of Thuringia, upon the old quarrel, touching the archiepiscopal
claim to tithes and other ecclesiastical (lues, in Thuringia. King Ilenry
wished to arbitrate between them, and assembled them, with many more princes,
prelates, and nobles as assistant arbitrators, in the Chapter House at Erfurt.
It had not, apparently, been built with a view to such uses, and, in the midst
of the discussion, the overweighted floor of the hall where they sat gave way,
precipitating great part of the company into a drain underneath. Henry and the
Archbishop, chancing to have been placed upon firmer beams or joists, escaped
the general disaster, and the Landgrave was safely extricated; but
scmeprincesand nobles were actually crushed or smothered. Henry had, it may be
presumed, already discovered that the idea of compromising the quarrel was
hopeless: so, affecting to consider the accident as a divine warning against
interference, he abandoned the attempt, and the feud proceeded.
A double
election to the metropolitan see of Treves had occurred upon the death of
Archbishop Arnold, in 1183,and, according to the Calixtine Concordat, been
referred to the Emperor, who ordered a new election. But Foicmar, one of the
pretenders, who was accused of having siuioniacally obtained the votes given
him, appealed to the Pope: and King Henry, whether in resentment of this
attempted evasion of the Imperial authority, or in punishment of his alleged
simony, attacked his partisans, expelled them, and seized their lands. But the
most serious tiouble of the young King’s administration was a quarrel with
Archbishop Philip. This self-willed prelate, in wanton revenge, rather than
retaliation, of some offence given him in times long past at Augsburg, ordered
his people to fall upon and plunder a company of Augsburg travelling merchants.
The unlucky traders appealed to the King, who desired the Archbishop to procure
the restitution of the stolen property. Philip refused, and Henry in arms
extorted compliance. The Archbishop thereupon, as if to mark a withdrawal from
worldly
concerns, undertook a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas a Becket, at Canterbury.
In England he was honourably received by Henry II, and reconciled to his old
enemy, Henry the Lion. It has been asserted that he negotiated a treaty of
marriage between a daughter of the Emperor’s and the heir of England, Normandy,
Aquitaine, Anjou and Poitou, Richard Coeur de Lion(90) ; but, as
Richard was then affianced to Princess Alice of France, if the prelate proposed
anything of the kind, it must have been an unauthorized scheme, designed either
to give himself diplomatic consequence in England, or to increase his power in
Germany, by the appearance of influence in England.
Frederic
meanwhile had crossed the Alps in the autumn of 1184, but without an army;
Lombardy was pacified, and he went as undisputed Sovereign amongst vassals and
subjects. At Verona he was met by Lucius III, in the character of a suppliant
for Imperial assistance against the insurgent Romans; who, since his expulsion
from his pontifical residence, had ill-used many of the clergy, had,
accidentally meeting a party of priests, put out the eyes of all but one,
leaving that single one his, to guide the rest to their master the Pope. As far
as Imperial influence might act, the request was readily granted: but the
Emperor had no German troops with him to lend the Holy Father, and could hardly
feel such confidence in the Lombards, as should induce him to raise an unmixed
Lombard army for his service. Nor was he, it may be conjectured, very anxious
to see a Pope, of the disposition presently discovered by Lucius, in
undisturbed possession of the Papal sovereign power. For, when this pontiff was
disappointed of the effective protection upon which he had calculated, divers
irreconcileable differences arose between the two Heads of Christendom. This
really helpless Pope proved yet more intractable than his predecessor. He
refused to confirm any ecclesiastical appointment by an anti-pope, except
those of the deceased Christian to the see of Mainz, and of Philip to that of
Cologne. He refused to admit the Emperor’s right of interference in the double
election at Treves, arbitrarily adjudging the. see to Folcmar. He refused to
sanction, even to pardon, King Henry’s coercion of the Archbishop of Cologne,
in Digitized by Microsoft®
behalf of the
plundered Augsburg traders; and finally he refused to crown the son unless the
father first abd; cated the Empire. Frederic was indignant, and though he did
not break otf the negotiation, he suffered it to languish, whilst he made trial
of the temper of his now reconciled subjects, the Milanese.
Eagerly were
they, the Milanese, expecting the promised Imperial visit; and when the Emperor
appeared, delighted with the confidence he placed in them, they receive i him
with the highest honours, with all imaginable demonstrations cf the most
devoted loyalty. It might almost seem that a real attachment hud sprung up
between the sovereign and the subjects who had so long opposed each other in arms.
He granted them additional privileges, amongst others that of electing their
own Podesta, whom they continued nevertheless to consider and to treat as an
Imperial officer; he freed them from all those restrictions upon the sports of
the field, which had ever been such a topic of complaint and irritation; and
yet further, he gratified them by consenting to the reconstruction of Crema.
The Milanese, enchanted with his condescension to their wishes, swore in return
to assist him in upholding ■and recovering all Imperial rights,
especially in regard to the Matildan heritage; the conflicting claims to which
were esteemed a main ground of papal enmity. Lucius, on the other hand,
persisted '11 all his refusals, notwithstanding Frederic’s conciliatory
overtures and visits to the Holy Father at Verona, where, during his exclusion
from Rome, he had fixed his residence.
It was not
without sufficient cause that the Emperor was now endeavouring to conciliate
the Pope, whose good or ill will might prove of great importance to the project
then occupying him. He was negotiating a marriage for the King of the Romans,
which, if Lombardy frankly acknowledged her vassalage, would unite the whole of
Italy indissolubly with Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, and which, therefore,
could hardly fail of being distasteful to the Pope. But prior to explaining
this scheme, it will be well to learn the condition of Sicily and Apulia under
William II.
The lenient
measures of the Queen Mother had tran- D'giiized by Microsoft ®
quillized
the country, and her regency was unstained with blood; whilst, Alexander Ill’s
constant need of Sicilian support against anti-popes and the Emperor rendering
him more indulgent than he would naturally have been, he had closed his eyes to
her offenceful conduct, in causing her son to be crowned without reference to
his paramount authority. Both mother and son remained his faithful allies and
partisans. But Margaret’s government, if bloodless, was far from untroubled,
her court and council being distracted with ceaseless cabals. Her French and
her Spanish kinsmen—as a Princess of Navarre she had both—intriguing against
each other and against her ministers; her ministers against each other and
against both parties of her kinsmen; whilst all combined against Pietro
Gaeta—one of those Harem guardians already mentioned as habitually employed in
the royal household of Sicily—who possessed her entire confidence. These cabals
ended in the flight of Pietro Gaeta to seek an asylum in Morocco; leaving his
chief rival, the English Bishop of Syracuse, master of the field, as far as he
could be so whilst the crafty Matteo retained his influence, and his post of
Vice or Sub-Chancellor, from which he is said to have been subsequently
advanced to that of Proio-Notajo: whilst Margaret increased the general
confusion and exasperation by making a French cousin Grand-Chancellor aud
Archbishop of Palermo.(91)
Other
cabals succeeded, and continued to do so after William II had himself assumed
the government. To such a degree did they harass both court and country, as not
only to prevent the King taking any active part in the general affairs of
Italy, but to determine his French preceptor, Pierre de Blois, though
sincerely attached to his royal pupil, to decline the highest ecclesiastical
dignity in the kingdom, and take his chance as a Professor at the High School
of Paris. lie subsequently, as a learned man, obtained the archdeaconry of
Bath, with the chancellorship of the see of Canterbury; and being thus settled
in England, negotiated the marriage of the Sicilian monarch with Henry II of
England's third daughter, Joanna, a.d. 1170. But the union proved unfruitful,
and
•ntrigues.
now relative to the succession as well as for
present
power, multiplied around William, an apparently amiable but weak prince, who
yielded unresistingly to all priestly encroachment; whence, perhaps, as much as
in contrast to his father, his surname of the Good.
It has been
seen that, from the vague, the indefinite, state of the law in regard to
collateral succession, the failure of royal children habitually produced
conflicting pretensions, and consequent civil war. Upon the present occasion
the cabals to which the prospect of William’s dying childless, however
remote—he was still in the prime of life—gave occasion, were prosecuted the
more unscrupulously, because the now only legitimate heir of the once numerous
house of Ilaute' illc was a female. There were indeed lawful descendants of
llobert Guiscard, through Bohemund at Antioch; but they seem to have been
considered from the first as an illegitimate branch. The heiress in question
was Constance, a posthumous daughter of King Roger, by his third wife, and aunt
to William II. Originally, when there was no fear of any deficiency of heirs,
she had been destined for the cloister. But whether she had, or had not,
entered even upon her novitiate, whether in short any step towards fulfilling
this destination beyond placing her for education in a nunnery, had been taken,
and even whether she were so destined and educated, were and are questions much
disputed by the partisans and the enemies of her son.(92) But as
even Cardinal Baronius admits that she never had actually pronounced her vows,
so much may be accepted ascertain. Upon Princess Constance (although no longer
in the bloom of youth—she was then 31 years of age—and the illegitimate sons of
her father, and of her brothers, were by no means disposed to acknowledge her
birthright), Frederic had fixed for the consort of his son.
Lucius III,
naturally endeavoured to prevent a marriage calculated to inclose the papal
dominions within those of the Swabian Emperors. He fomented the opposition
offered to it at Palermo, by the illegitimate princes and their faction ; but
does not appear to have had resource to extreme measures; and’pending the
matrimonial negotiations, in November 1185, he died. His successor was Uberto
Crivelli, a Milanese by birth, and Archbishop of
Milan; who
took the name of Urban III, and as Pope chose to retain his archbishopric. This
clearly not altogether disinterested pontiff bad not, with his fellow
citizens, changed his old hatred of the Emperor into love; and prepared, with
every prospect, as he hoped, of success, vigorously to obstruct the marriage
treaty. The Sicilian Court was in fact much divided upon the subject. The
proposed nuptials were violently opposed by Maione’s creature and, in some
measure, successor, the ViceChancellor, Matteo di Salerno, the craftily
factious partisan of the illegitimate pretenders to the succession ; but were
favoured by his own superior, Gualtiero della Pagliara, Bishop ofTroja, and
Grand-Chancellor. whom Alatteo most especially hated, and by the Archbishop of
Palermo, seemingly another Englishman, and as such patronised by Queen Joanna,
herself a warm friend of the Princess. Before Urban had time to set his engines
in action, this party had persuaded William, both to accept the Emperor’s
proposals for the hand of his aunt, and to cause her, ere she left Palermo, to
be formall}’ recognized as his heir, in case he should continue childless. The
Princess was then despatched to journey—the humiliating course which few Queens
or Empresses escape—to her expecting bridegroom. J'he was altended by 150
sumpter cattle, carrying her wedding portion, and was ceremoniously conducted
to Milan. There the Emperor and the King of the Romans received her;—the
Empress Beatrice had died since the Mainz festival—and there, to the rapturous
delight of the now loyal Milanese, the wedding was solemnized upon the 27th of
January, 1180. Upon this occasion the Arelat Archbishop of Vienne crowned the
Emperor; the Patriarch of Aquileia, King Henry; and a German Bishop,
Queen Constance. A general amnesty was proclaimed in honour of the bridal,
which was celebrated with festivities of all descriptions then usual. German
Princes, Siculo-Norman Barons, Italian Ghibeline Nobles, and Lombard
Consuls, revelled together; and such was the throng of visitors that,
as at Mainz, wooden houses were constructed without the walls for
their accommodation.
Frederic had
flattered himself, that when once his soil
and
the Norman heiress were indissolubly united, the Pope, seeing the perfect
harmony that reigned between him and the Milanese, would desist from his
opposition and enmity. But Urban individually hated him, in resentment' of the
evils suffered by some of his family at the fall of Milan. He now solemnly
deposed the Patriarch of Aquileia, and all the other prelates who had
officiated at either the conjoint marriage and coronation ceremonies, or at
Henry's subsequent coronation with the ;ron crown of Lombardy, at
which the same Patriarch is said, m defiance of the Papal prohibition, to have
officiated^93) Urban further made bitter complaints of the detention
of the Matildan heritage—although the period of occupation conceded by the
treaty with Alexander III had not yet expired—and of divers alleged Imperial
encroachments upon episcopal, monastic, and other ecclesiastical privileges.
He stirred up rebellion against the Emperor in Italy, and found in Tuscany
materials ready prepared to his hand. Florence, emulating Milan, had now
subjugated so many of her neighbours, and so tyrannized over the inthralled,
that a Tuscan deputation, headed by envoys from Sienna, had waited upon the
Emperor at Milan, with complaints of her aggressions, and he had pronounced her
charters' forfeited. Florence, Irrit ated by the sentence, hardly required the
spur of Papal encouragement, to revolt.(M) In Lombardy, by stimulating
Crenionese jealousy of the favour shown to Milan, especially in the rebuilding
of Crema, he, who called himself the spiritual father of all Christians,
excited the habitually Ghibeline Cremona to follow the example of Florence. In
Germany he at least stirred .up broils: and in despite of all remonstrances,
and representations of the Imperial rights as confirmed by the Calixtine
Concordat, he took upon himself to consecrate Folemar, the pretender whom the
Emperor the most decidedly rejected, to the see of Treves.
Frederic
saw that the master's hand was wanted on both sides of the Alps; and now
committing to his son the government of Italy, and the contest with the Pope,
he returned to Germany. Henry, who to the energy and much of the ability of his
father, united the inordinate Digitized by Microsoft® .
ambition, the
implacability, and ruthlessness, falsely as- scribed to that father, performed
the part assigned him so far successfully, that he held Urban blockaded, and
well- nigh a prisoner at Veronal where this Pope, like his predecessor, had
established his court, for so long as Rome should be inaccessible to her
pontifical sovereign. These audacious operations, and yet more, perhaps, the
harshness of his language and demeanour, exasperated the halfcaptive Pope
beyond all bounds; and he was proceeding to excommunicate both him and his
father. But the Veronese declared that no such sentence against the Emperor
should be fulminated within their walls; and, for the moment, the sole object
of Urban’s thoughts was how to escape from Verona without falling into Henry’s
hands.
In Germany,
Frederic found Henry the Lion, his reduced term of exile having now expired.
But whether his leonine temper were partially tamed by past calamities, or
that he were silently preparing to avenge them, he appeared to be quietly
residing at Brunswick, engrossed by the business of his restored property, and
uninterested in the feuds or the intrigues around him.
The Emperor’s
first measure was to convoke a Diet at Gelnhausen : in which, by reasoning and
remonstrance, by a detail of Urban’s hostile conduct and usurpations, and
somewhat by concessions,(a3) he won back most of those, most even of
the bishops, whom the Pope had excited against him. Then, sanctioned by the
Diet, and secure of the fidelity of the chief temporal princes, he proceeded to
compel the obedience of the few7 still contumacious prelates.
Amongst these, with painful surprise,-he found the much favoured Archbishop of
Cologne ; who, unable to forgive his coercion by King Henry, had returned from
England a thorough Guelph, and instantly declared for Urban against the
Emperor. The defalcation of a prelate upon whose active loyalty he had long
relied, grieved Frederic, but could no otherwise alter his course, than by
adding to his labours. He first expelled Folcmar from the archiepiscopal palace
and see of Treves, as wrongfully occupying them, and installed in them his
rival, rejected (by the Pope) Rudolph. He then turned his arms Digitized
by Microsoft®
against Archbishop
Philip; laid an embargo upon the Rhine, and was proceeding to yet stronger
measures of hostility ; when tidings arrived from Palestine, such as, in all
European heads and hearts, whether clerical or lay, superseded every thought,
alien to what seemed, at once, the sole and the common concern of Christendom.
Jerusalem had
surrendered to the Moslem ! The Holy Sepulchre, so arduously recovered, was
again in the hands of the enemies of God ! Private and public hatreds and
rivalries were forgotten. A new Crusade was, or seemed to be, the one business
of life.
BALDWIN
III AHALRIC.
Baldwin's
Military Success—Noureddin’s Plans—Syro-Frank Dissentions—Egyptian Affairs
—Amalric’s Accession—His Wars—Saladin in Egypt—Christian and Moslem Internal
Dissentions. [ 1152-1 l6y.
Ere the consequences of the great misfortune that had
just befallen Christendom (a misfortune that might long have been foreseen) are
related, it will be expedient to take a retrospective survey of the faults and
follies which had preceded, and at least contributed to produce that unfortunate
triumph of Moslem valour and ability. In other words, to inquire into the
fortunes of the Syro-Frank states, during the third of a century, that had
elapsed since the second Crusade.
When the
condition and prospects of those states were last considered, Baldwin III and
Noureddin were the rival occupants of the stage, and of these the Turk was by
far the more distinguished character. El Malek el Aadil Noureddin Mohammed—his
more correct denomination— was indeed the very ideal of a Moslem hero. Tall,
handsome, and even fair, excelling in martial exercises, and valiant as active
in war; just, merciful, and liberal in peace, he was as scrupulous in obeying
the precepts of Islam as he was zealous in propagating its creed. He caused the
dust gathered by his feet in bis Holy Wars— i. e., those against Christians or
Idolaters—to be collected and preserved for his pillow in the grave. Four days
in every week he sat, in Oriental fashion, at his gate to administer justice,
accessible to all, listening to all, unbiassed by distinction of persons,
country, or even religion. Appropriating the whole of the public revenue to the
public service, he lived upon his private fortune, Digitized by
Microsoft®
and of that
gave away so much in charity that he had little left for household expenses,
and allowed his wife— the expression, which repeatedly occurs, looks as if he
was satisfied with one—only twenty gold pieces a-year for her dress. To her
complaints of her unprinpelr apparel, he would answer: “ Of my own I have no
more; of the wealth of the Faithful I am but the Treasurer; and I cannot incur
eternal perdition to trick thee out more showily.” In public concerns he w'as
no niggard of the public money: everywhere he repaired walls and improved
fortifications, built hospitals, mosques with schools attached to them,
libraries, baths, and fountains. Amongst his troops he enforced the strictest
discipline ; but, though he gave them no land, saying, “The camp must be the
soldier’s home/’ he was most generous to them, taking charge of the families of
all who fell in battle.
But the
dangers to be apprehended from this formidable enemy were not immediately
apparent. Noureddin had some respect for the military prowess of the
Syro-Franks; more for that of the monastic knights and t he crusaders ; and,
therefore, fully* adopting his father's policy, he saw that he must at least
reconstruct Zenghi’s now subdivided mass of dominions and power, before he
could, with any prospect of success, attempt to clear Syria from intrusive
Christians. Whilst thus preparing for the conflict, to avoid premature
hostilities with the Christians was an essential element of his policy.
As yet
Jerusalem entertained no fear of him, and the belligerent propensities of her
youthful monarch, though often betraying him into rash or ill concerted
enterprises, seemed to have temporarily regenerated the nation. Even the
disasters occasionally resulting from Baldw in’s temerity, as they called forth
his higher qualities, invincible resolution, and fortitude—seemed, by exciting
affection for the young King, to raise the character of his subjects, whilst
they gradually so matured his own that he ultimately commanded the respect of
both friends and foes. About this time, a most unlooked for victory, and a
subsequent conquest in the South, nearly the last won by the Syro- Franks, in
some measure counterbalanced , the recent losses in the North.
In the end of
the year 1152, a wild horde of Turcomans, carefully avoiding to trespass upon
the territories of Noureddin, poured into Palestine. The King and his
Councillors, deeming fortified towns unendangered, as impregnable by such
barbarians, collected the troops before the unwalled and therefore imperilled
Neapolis, which lay in the direction they seemed to be pursuing. But the object
of the Turcomans was Jerusalem, which their ancestors had, in the eleventh
century, torn from the Fatemite caliphate; and, again avoiding an encounter
with the prepared foes, whose prowess they feared, and taking a line that,
being thought secure against them, had been left unguarded, they reachcd the
Holy City, and encamped upon the Mount of Olives. This profanation of a hallowed
spot fired the Jerusalemites to an utter forgetfulness of caution. The few
knights remaining in the city, gathered together what men and arms they could
muster, rushed out, and fell with such impetuosity upon the abhorred Turcomans,
that they defeated and routed them; then, as impetuously pursuing, they
actually drove them out of Palestine, without the aid, or even the knowledge,
of the royal army.
Encouraged by
this success, Baldwin led his forces southward, once more to besiege Ascalon.
The Saracens defended themselves resolutely, and despatched messengers to the
Sultan of Damascus, and to the more distant Noureddin, soliciting succours. But
the Emir, Atabeg, or Sultan, Anar, was dead, and his nominal master, or
successor, the imbecile Modjireddin Abek, being now in fact tributary to
Baldwin, would not, whatever he may have vaguely promised,take arms against the
Christian neighbour whom he dreaded. Thus disappointing the energetic Noureddin
of the expected co-operation, and even opposing his passage, he foiled all
measures projected for the relief of the besieged city. For months did Ascalon,
daily expecting the promised succours, hold the force of Palestine at bay. At
length the besiegers were joined by a band of armed pilgrinjs from Europe,
amongst whom there chanced to be an able engineer. The battering train was
immediately improved, and one of the usual movable toners built and brought up
to the attack. The Saracens
managed to
set it on fire ; but the wind at that moment shifting, drove the flames over
upon the town, and a portion of the wall was burnt. The breach thus made was a
full equivalent for the loss of the tower; and Ascalon, !t is averred might
upon the instant have been taken, but for the insolent rapacity of the
Templars, whose faults now often endangered the kingdom of which their valour
was the mainstay. They, headed by their Grand-Master, Bernard de Tremelai, were
the first to storm the breach, where some of their body are reported to have
remained stationary, in order to exclude their fellow soldiers, and monopolism
the booty. This attempt at monopoly is denied by the partisans of the Templars,
(96) ancl if the offence were true, fearfully was it punished : for
it is very certain that they only, or with very few companions, had entered the
tow n, when the Saracens, recovering from the momentary torpor of
consternation, surrounded, with overpowering numbers, tlieii handful of
enemies, and after a sharp struggle cut them down to a man; whilst those who
could not find room to take a share in the conflict, were hastily obstructing
the breach and repairing the damaged fortification. They hung the bodies of the
slain out over the wall, as if in mockery of the besiegers.
This
disaster, including the loss of the Grand-Master of the Templars, following
upon the loss of theis tower, so discouraged Baldwin and his Baronage that they
proposed to raise the siege. The humiliation of such a step was averted by the
vehement exhortations of Kaimond du Puy, Grand-Master of the Hospital —eager
perhaps to exalt his own Order at its rival’s expense—and of the centenarian
Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fulcher, to whose eloquence the revival of the King’s
spirits is mainly ascribed. A few days afterwards, the troops, called upon to
avenge the Templars, renewed the assault so vigorously, that Ascalon, now
despairing of efficient succours from without, offered to capitulate. The only
condition granted was a safe conduct for the inhabitants and their movable
property to El Arish. They evacuated theii native place accordingly, and were
duly escorted the covenanted distance on their way. But no sooner had their
Christian guard left them, than a Turcoman band,
their own
paid auxiliaries, turned upon the exiles, attacked, plundered, and routed them,
putting numbers to death. Meanwhile the banner of the Cross floated over
Ascalon, and the whole army sang the Te Demn. The kingdom of Jerusalem had now
acquired the historic boundaries of the Holy Land.
But
Noureddin’s power was increasing far more rapidly and materially. He had long
looked to Damascus, as the fulcrum, upon which the lever, destined to overthrow
Frank usurpation, must rest: and Modjireddin’s paltering about the relief of
Ascalon, offered him a plea to his conscience, for incorporating it with his
own dominions. Upon this occasion he is charged with having employed, in
dealing with his co-religionists, craft to prepare the way for force; a
proceeding which he might deem lawful to spare the shedding of Moslem blood, if
his stratagem were really calculated so to do. According to some accounts, his
emissaries merely induced the Emirs to desert their Sultan for him, by working
upon their horror of Modjireddin’s connexion with the Christians; according to
others he had recourse to far different, and far less lawful means. They charge
him with having contrived to render the first citizens of Damascus, objects of
suspicion to the Sultan; in order that the acts of violence and cruelty which
that suspicion engendered, might exasperate the inhabitants to such a degree as
should render the task of winning them to desire Noureddin as their sovereign,
in preference to their incapable tyrant, easy. Either way the hearts of the men
of Damascus were already his, when the Atabeg sat down before their walls, and
they speedily compelled Modjireddin to capitulate. Again Noureddin is taxed
with not having faithfully executed the terms granted ; with having offered the
Sultan, in lieu of Emesa for which in his capitulation he had stipulated, some
remote and insignificant lordships, and when he refused to accept them as an
equivalent for Emesa, having given him nothing. That this was not an age of
scrupulous veracity has already been observed, and it is by no means
impossible, perhaps not even unlikely, that Noureddin, however honourable,
having promised anything to get Damascus bloodlessly, did not chuse to risk
the Mohammedan
cause by intrusting a city, important as wasEmesa, to hands whose incapacity
had been proved.
Noureddin, by
this acquisition, in a manner turned the flank of the Christian Kingdom, and
looked confidently forward to its subjugation. For the present he made Damascus
his capital, as the seat of his government. He improved the defences of this
already strong city; and he adorned it with baths and fountains, as well as
with mosques and the schools usually attached to them, with colleges and
libraries; and hence lie prepared to wage regular war against the intrusive
Franks.
Those Franks,
occupied with their increasing internal disorders, were hardly even thinking of
preparations for defence. At Antioch, the widowed Constance, after refusing
several suitable proposals of marriage, fell in love with a mere adventurer.
This was Kenaud de Chatillon ; a knight indeed, and a bold one, of great
prowess in firms, but of the lowest order of nobility; who having been brought
to Syria by Lewis VII, had remained there to seek his fortune. And he found it;
for him, despite the strenuous opposition of the Patriarch, the sovereign
Princess wedded ; and to him she transferred her whole authority. Rapaciously
and tyrannically he used it: of which his treatment of the Patriarch, whom he
"hated as the opponent of his marriage, will be a sufficient instance. He
first demanded a large sum cf money from him ; which being refused, he ordered
the aged prelate to be seized, and after his bald head had been well smeared
with honey, placed under a south wall, in broiling sunshine, amidst swarms of
insects, until the insupportable torment drove hnn to purchase his release by
the surrender of all his hoarded treasures. He was no sooner at liberty, than,
distrusting the professions of the Prince of Antioch, as Chatillon was now
entitled, the plundered Patriarch fled from his station and his duties, to
Jerusalem.
Within the
kingdom itself, dissentions,beyond Baldwins power to appease or repress,
prevailed. The Templars and Hospitalers, if valiant as ever, were no longer
single-minded, military monks. Already had wealth lowered the original spirit
that produced this peculiar species of chivalry. Many knights were engrossed by
the care of the ample
estates of
their several Orders; whilst others m
ere habitually detained in Europe by the service due for fiefs. Still valiant,
they fought the infidels as gallantly as ever; but they now looked for profit
in so doing, and sold their arms to the King of Jerusalem, as though he had
been a foreign prince. Pride and ostentation had already superseded simplicity
: and the Hospitalers, no longer worthy of that name, are said to have even so
early devolved their original and especial office, the tendance of the sick,
upon their serving-brothers and their chaplains. Both Orders were at open
enmity with the hierarchy; the Clergy had always very reluctantly admitted the
exemption from episcopal control, as from payment of tithes, and the other
spiritual privileges granted them by the Popes, as to the champions of Christendom.
They now refused to acknowledge the validity of those grants, and the Knights
of St. John, as the Hospitalers ought, perhaps, henceforward to be called,
resented this attempt to dispute their prerogatives, by misusing them. They
made their chaplains administer the rites of the church to excommunicated
persons ; they made them perform divine service in places under interdict ;
not as before, quietly in closed chapels, as for their own private worship, but
with chiming-bells, open doors, and all the pomp of publicity. These indecent
hostilities reached their climax at Jerusalem ; where, whilst the aged
Patriarch Fulcher was preaching in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Raymond,
Grand-Master of St. John, ordered such a clatter of bells in their adjacent
Hospital, or convent, as completely drowned his voice; whilst one of the
Knights actually entered the church, his bow ready bent in his hand, to shoot
arrows amongst the congregation. The Patriarch, notwithstanding his hundred
winters’ snows, repaired to Italy, attended by several prelates, to lay his
complaint before the Pope. This was in the year 1154: and he found Adrian IV
too much occupied by his own concerns with the Homans, the Emperor, and the
King of Sicily, to bestow upon the ecclesiastical concerns of Palestine such a
degree of attentive consideration as would have afforded a chance of
counterbalancing his natural disposition both to maintain the acts, grants or
other, of his predecessors, iad to favour Orders so immediately
attached to the
papacy, as the Templars and Hospitalers. The Patriarch accused the Pope of
being bribed, or at least prejudiced, and returned unsuccessful; his defeat
naturally inflated the arrogance of the Knights of St. John.
If the
Templars were less embroiled with the Palestine clergy, they, about the same
time, most offensively, even as the story is told by their friends, displayed
that thirst for gold which, disgracing their chivalrousness, almost renders
probable some of the charges subsequently brought against them. The tale
requires a glance at Egypt.
There, it
will be recollected, the Fatemite Caliphs had suffered the whole power of a
despotic sovereign to pass into the hands of hereditary Sultan-Viziers, whose
regular succession was however occasionally interrupted by murder. The policy
of the Sultan-Viziers was essentially pacific, because war must have obliged
them either to intrust an army to a leader, who might use it against
themselves, or to head (heir troops in person, thus leaving the palace open to
a rival. Whilst Ascalon was Egyptian they had trusted in its strength for
defence against the Syro-Franks; upon its fall they offered to purchase peace
by paying tribute, and Baldwin, whose exchequer the long siege had drained,
gladly replenished it by the transaction.
But
the reigning Caliph Dhafer, in the indulgence of his extravagant as disgusting
appetite, had grossly insulted the son of his Sultan-Vizier Abbas. Abbas, who
had shown himself not particularly chary ol' human life— having obtained his
high office by the murder of his-- predecessor, the father of one of his own
wives—caused the royal offender to be assassinated. Then, accusing the dead
Caliph’s three brothers of his own act, he procured their judicial murder,
whilst he proclaimed an infant heir Caliph. But a harem domestic had been a
secret witness to the sinful retribution of sin; he revealed the truth, and the
people rose against the Suitan-Vizier. Abbas flung large sums from his palacj
windows amidst his assailants ; and whilst they were fighting for the booty,
with his son Nasireddin, and the bulk of his treasure, effected his escapa by a
back door. Escorted by his own guards he fled, making; for Palestine. When they
reached 6 Digitized
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the
territories of his Christian ally, Abbas deemed himself safe; and so he might
have been had he thrown the whole of his hoards amongst the Cairo rabble. But
the sight of the wealth he had brought away proved irresistible to the party of
Templars resident near the frontier. They attacked the little band, overpowered
it, seized the tempting prize, and massacred all its defenders except
Nasireddin, who saved his life by professing a desire to be instructed in
Christianity. Him they took home with them as a prisoner, and their chaplain
expounded the Gospel to him. He declared himself a convert, but had devoted to
the investigation more time than he had to spare. He was only preparing to
receive baptism, when the triumphant and still vindictive Egyptian rivals of
his father offered 6000 gold pieces for the person of the son. Again the temptation
proved irresistible. The Templars accepted the money and delivered up their
neophyte to his enemies, to be dragged back to Cairo, and there tortured to
death for a deed not his. All that the advocates of the Templars can allege in
extenuation of the undisputed fact, is, that Nasireddin merely pretended
conversion to avoid death, wherefore they delivered him up as a hypocritical
blasphemer.
It should
seem as if these nefarious double gains of the Templars had excited the
cupidity of Baldwin, beyond the power of respect for his plighted word to
control. Although he had, in December, 1156, concluded a truce with Noureddin—a
truce for a definite number of years was the nearest approach to a peace that
bigotry on either side could endure—in January, 1157, he perfidiously surprised
some nomade Turcomans, who, in reliance upon the truce, were depasturing their
numerous herds of horses and kine in the neighbourhood of the frontier
fortress, Paneas; slaughtered the owners, and carried off the cattle.
Noureddin, irritated by this treacherous robbery, renewed the war.
It was waged
with fluctuating success, but upon the whole to the disadvantage of the
Christians ; and Baldwin had little cause to rejoice in having provoked it. The
petty Moslem states, alarmed by his threatening movements, sought security in
voluntary submission to Nou- ° uigitizeaby Microsoft w
reddin’s
sovereignty: whence the consolidation of h:s power, which had hitherto appeared
to divert his attention from his grand object, was so far consummated as to
allow of his seriously beginning his Holy War. The capture of Paneas, as the
strongest eastern bulwark of the kingdom, he judged the first step towards the
expulsion of the Franks; and to this fortress he laid siege.
Paneas was
held in fief by the Constable de Thoron, who applied to the Templars for
reinforcements. According to their new custom they bargained for payment of
those services, which their vow bound them to render gratuitously; and Thoron
was obliged to promise them half his town. It is difficult to regret that the
corps, sent to earn this reward, fell into a Saracen ambuscade on its road, and
suffered so severely as to be reduced to an utterly insignificant aid. The town
was burnt, and the castle, defended by the Constable and his son, was at the
last gasp, when Baldwin came to its relief, in such force that Noureddin raised
the siege at his approach. But if foiled 1:1 this attempt, the Atabeg was
neither defeated nor disheartened; and he prepared an ambuscade, into which
Baldwin, returning towards Jerusalem with the carelessness inspired by
success, fell in his turn; and despite the prowess which the Syro-Franks,
however degenerate, stijl boasted, was completely defeated. He himself hardly escaped
by flight; numbers were slain, and Bertrand de Blanquefort, Grand-Master of the
Templars, with eighty of his knights, and some of the principal Palestine
Barons were taken. Again Noureddin besieged Paneas, and again it was reduced to
the last extremity, when again Baldwin, now cordially assisted by the Prince of
Antioch, relieved it.
During this
operation he was joined by his half-sister's elderly consort, the Earl of
Flanders, who now visited the Holy Land upon his third crusading pilgrimage.
His appearance, coincident with a severe illness of Noureddin’s giving rise to
a report of his death, cheered the spirits of all; and it was resolved to
besiege Csesarea, which the Atabeg had lately conquered from the principality
of Antioch. The Mohammedans, already contending- for the heritage of their dead
or dying hero, had no leisure
to attempt
raising the siege; and Caesarea was nearly taken, when, again to baffle the
besieger’s hopes, the fable of selling the skin of the live lion, was enacted.
The Earl of Flanders, still hankering after Asiatic dominions, demanded
Caesarea for himself, to be held of the Crown of Jerusalem. Renaud insisted
that a fief, which had always belonged to Antioch, could be held onlj of that
principality ; but the Earl would not condescend to be the man of any one less
than a king, and thought foul scorn to be asked to do homage to a person by
birth so much his inferior, as the matrimonially exalted Chatillon. The consequence
of these dissentions was that Caesarea still held out, when Noureddin,
recovering, marched to relieve it; and to raise the siege became unavoidable.
The following year, 1158, Caesarea was retaken by the Christians, and restored
to Antioch ; and this, with the capture of another fort, and a victory, barren
of fruit, over Noureddin himself, formed the sum total of Syro-Frank success.
In 1159,
hostilities were interrupted by an alarm in which, strange to say, Baldwin and
Noureddin for a moment sympathized. The Emperor Manuel was reported to be
leading an army through Asia Minor; and, whilst the Moslem dreaded an
overwhelming union of the Con- stantinopolitan with the Syro-Frank forces, the
King of Jerusalem, though married to a niece of Manuel’s, feared the strenuous
assertion, by the strong hand, of the Eastern Empire’s pretension to
sovereignty over Oriental Christendom. But Manuel was not just then at leisure
either to protect Jerusalem, or to claim its sovereignty. His business was with
vassals who had acknowledged themselves such, or had done so till very lately.
A few words will explain the matter.
Those
conquests of the first Crusade in Asia Minor, which had been freely ceded to
the Greek Empire, had been formed into the government of Cilicia, of which an
Armenian, royally descended, whether of the reigning, or of a deposed race in
his native country, was named Governor. Favoured by the mountainous nature of
the country, its remoteness from Constantinople, the variety of interests
distracting that Court, the Governor and his sons speedily transformed themselves
from Imperial
Officers into
hereditary vassal Princes. A change which, since they acknowledged the Imperial
sovereignty, was connived at, as, under the circumstances, perhaps irremediable.
(97) But, emboldened by such connivance, the then reigning Prince,
Toros, grandson of the first Governor, renounced his vassalage, and proclaimed
h.mself King of Lesser Armenia, which name he gave his realm in honour of his
own Armenian descent. This was overstepping Manuel’s powers of toleration; and,
being personally engaged with more important concerns, he sent his cousin,
Andronicus, then in recovered favour after his flight to Halitsch, with an army
to put down this revolt. Rashness and unsteadiness more than counterbalanced
the talents and courage of Andronicus: he was defeated by Toros, and Manuel
called upon the Prrice of Antioch, as his vassal, to quell the revolt of his
neighbour—the frontier of Lesser Armenia was barely twenty miles from Antioch.
Renaud, in
whose character the knight-errant and the as yet unknown condottiere were
blended, was ever ready to make war on any one, provided he saw a prospect of
advantage to himself. He bargained for money to defray his expenses, and for
possession of the vassal state to be conquered; undertook the adventure, and defeated
Toros, expelling him from his usurped kingdom. But, whether purposely or
accidentally, his recognition as Prince of Lesser Armenia, or Cilicia, by the
Constantinopolitan government, did not immediately follow apon its conquest ;
and even of the pecuniary condition the fulfilment was delayed. For this
annoying delay, Chatillon, who was always in want of money, took it upon
himself to obtain compensation, together with revenge for the Emperor’s
default. He equipped a fleet, put to sea, and without any sort of warning
attacked the Greek island of Cyprus, then committed to the government of a
nephew of Manuel’s. The surprise rendered success easy and complete. He
carried off4 the Greek Prince as his prisoner ; he ravaged the whole
island, plundered high and low, clergy and laity; churches and cloisters, as
recklessly as pdaces and private houses. He practised the most abominable
cruellies to extort money, and abandoned
Heaven-consecrated
virgins to the outrages of his piratical followers.
It was to
chastise the Prince of Antioch, and to recover his authority over Lesser
Armenia, where, since the departure of his conqueror for Cyprus, Toros again
reigned independently, that Manuel now visited Asia at the head of an army. In
both objects he succeeded. Toros at his approach fled to the mountain
fastnesses, and he resumed full possession of the province. The Prince of
Antioch durst not confront the Imperial power; but, accompanied by the Bishop
of Laodicea, and attended by Antioch vassals and knights, hastened to meet the
Emperor at Mamistra, and implore his pardon. Barefoot and bareheaded, in
woollen garments, the sleeves of which reached only to the elbow, with every
one a rope about his neck, and a naked sword depending from that round Renaud’s
—much as the vanquished Milanese presented themselves to Frederic—did the
reigning Prince of Antioch and his company of nobles traverse the streets of
Mamistra to the palace. There they were long kept waiting ; and, when at length
admitted to the Imperial presence, in the face of the assembled troops, they
all knelt at the foot of the throne; the Prince offering his sword, which he
held by the point, to the Emperor, and, thus humbly awaiting his pleasure ; he
was forgiven.
Baldwin had
been considerably alarmed by the appearance of the Eastern Emperor in arms,
advancing towards the Syro-Frank States. But, how mistrustful soever of
Manuel’s designs, he thought it best to display confidence, and was the next
to arrive at Mamistra. He came, was received as a king and a nephew; and prevailed
upon the Emperor to pardon Toros, as ever a valuable ally to Jerusalem,
restoring him Armenia in vassalage. In company with both these Princes, he then
attended the Emperor to Antioch, where the Imperial sovereignty was asserted by
the exercise of all its rights ; and where Renaud’s homage and oath of
allegiance for his wife’s principality were received. The character of sovereign
was not, however, the only one in which Manuel exhibited himself at Antioch.
Baldwin chanced one day, whilst hunting with him, to be thrown by his horse,
and Digitized by Microsoft®
break his
arm. The Emperor instantly alighted, with his own hands set and bandaged the
fractured limb, according to ths surgical skill of the day, and undertook the
entire care of his royal patient, until the cure was complete.
But from
Antioch affairs of the Empire, superior in importance to those of Syria,
imperatively recalled Manuel to Constantinople. Instead, therefore, of
overwhelming Nourcddin with the combined armies of the Empire and of the
Syro-JFranks, as the Atabeg had anticipated, he concluded a truce with him, the
main condition of which was the release of prisoners. By this convention,
Blanquefort and his eighty knights regained their liberty without breach of their
rules.
This
treaty appears to have been held little binding even upon the vassals of the
Emperor: for not only is Baldwin, who might esteem himself a free agent, found
immediately afterwards engaged in hostilities with Nou- reddin as before; but
Renaud, just received as a vassal, is marauding, as though no truce existed,
upon the Atabeg’s territories. In one of his expeditions of this nature, Renaud
was made prisoner by the Turks, and Antioch left to the mismanagement of
Constance. Baldwin hereupon interfered, whether as head of her family—her
mother, it will be recollected, was IMelisenda s younger sister—or as
sovereign, is not clear; deprived her of the authority she knew not how to
wield, and committed the regency, during the captivity of her husband, and the
minority of her son by her first marriage, to the Patriarch. The next year,
Manuel having lost his German Empress, sent an embassy to Syria to choose him a
bride amongst Baldwin’s cousins, the youthful Princesses of Antioch and of
Tripoli. Their choice fell upon the beautiful Melusina of Tripoli, whom her
brother, in ihe pride of his heart, equipped as might beseem an Empress, and
she embarked for Constantinople But either violent sea-sickness or an alarming
illness forced her to re-land, and the envoys waited awhile patiently for her
recovery, but relapse followed relapse, and Melusina lost her beauty. Then,
fearing that their choice could not now be satisfactory to the Emneror. and
irritated by the arrogance in r by
Microsoft<8>
which the
Earl, as brother-in-law to the Emperor, indulged, they abruptly declared the
engagement cancelled by the lady’s want of health, and repaired to Antioch,
whence they carried off the Princess Maria as their Empress. The Earl of
Tripoli, resenting the slight put upon his sister, sought vengeance in
piratical inroads upon the territories of the Eastern Empire.
In the year
1162, at the early age of 33, died Baldwin III, poisoned, according to the best
Palestine authorities, by the Arab physician of the Earl of Tripoli, at whose
instigation is not stated, the deed being apparently ascribed to bigotry;
meaning, the desire to free the Mohammedans from a dangerous enemy. Baldwin’s
merits were of the kind that insure popularity, and he was deeply regretted by
his subjects, whilst his enemies paid a tribute to his memory. Noureddin, being
urged to invade Palestine during this moment of confusion and depression, is
said to hive replied: “We must have compassion on the sorrow of the Christians,
for they have lost a King who had not his fellow.” A generous forbearance,
which surely acquits him of participation in the murder, if murder there were.
The
generosity was most chivalrous in the highest sense of the word, for the
opportunity was extraordinarily tempting. Baldwin had been preceded to the
grave by his mother Melisenda, by whose advice, as before said, he had been
mainly guided as soon as he ceased to be jealous of her authority; and, his
marriage having proved unfruitful, he was succeeded by his brother Amalric,
who, possessing few of his good qualities, but all his faults exaggerated, with
the addition of avarice, was as much disliked as the deceased King had been
beloved. Indeed, such was the aversion felt for Amalric that, at one moment,
his accession was likely to excite a rebellion : a calamity that was averted by
the earnest remonstrances of the aged Grand-Master of the Hospital, Raymond du
Puy, who represented to the malcontent Barons that a civil war must perforce
throw the kingdom into Nou- reddin's hands, and they would all be deemed
disciples of Judas. To this fear they yielded, and Amalric was crowned.
Hostilities
with the Atabeg—Noureddin never assumed a higher title, although disclaiming
any subjection to the Seljuk Sultan of Persia, he now acknowledged no sovereign
save the orthodox Bagdad Caliph—ere long proceeded as before. The Atabeg now
took Par.eas, of which Amalric’s parsimony prevented the active relief; but was
soon after* ards defeated by a body of European Crusaders and Templars, when be
himself escaped with some difficulty. Amalric neglected to profit by this
opportunity, and Noureddin, at the head of a fresh army, defeated the
Christians i*.i his turn, making Bohemund III of Antioch, who was now of age,
Raymond Earl of Tripoli, and Toros of Lesser Armenia, his prisoners. In all
this Amalric took little share, but he endeavoured to prove his energy by
putting to death not only the Governor of a castle that had surrendered to
Noureddin, but twelve Templars who had formed part of its garrison. He moreover
vehemently urged the Pope to preach a Crusade for his protection, calumniating
both the Emperor Manuel and the Syro-Frank great vassals. Wars with, or in
Egypt, were the chief business of Amalnc’s reign; but ere proceeding to them,
or the circumstances in which they originated, it may be briefly stated that
Baldwin’s Greek widow, Queen Theodora, early eloped with her profligate
kinsman, Andronieus Commenus, whose political crimes are known to the reader.
She eloped, not as his wife; for he had just married and deserted Princess
Philippa of Antioch, a sister of the young Empress Maria. As his paramour she
wandered with him from one Saracen court to another till they settled amongst
the Seljuks of Iconium. There Audronicus made himself so inconvenient a neighbour
to Constantinople, that Manuel endeavoured to have him kidnapped. He secured
only Theodora ; but to recover her, Andronieus ventured upon a return to the
capital, where, to propitiate the Emperor, he presented himself with a chain
about his neck; by which chain, at his earnest entreaty, his relation, Isaac
Angelus, a Commenus by his mother, dragged him to the foot of the throne.
Manuel again pardoned him, but relegated him to a town upon the Euxine, whither
Queen Theodora again accompanied him.
And thence it
was that Manuel’s daughter summoned him, as has been related, to her aid,
against her step-mother.
The degraded
state of Egypt, tributary to Jerusalem, and offering in its helplessness a
tempting prize to the rapacity of its neighbours, has already been mentioned;
and it only remains to explain how the position of the Sultan-Viziers created
the opportunity for which they were looking. Murder had, as usual, interrupted
the hereditary succession of these ministers. Soon after Amalric’s succession,
in 1163, the Sultan-Vizier Shawer—an enfranchised slave of the deceased
Sultan-Vizier llazik, who had obtained his former master’s office by the
assassination of that master’s son and heir Sultan-Vizier Adel— was violently
despoiled of his post, though not of his life, by another enfranchised slave,
named Dargam. The usurper followed up this unexpected symptom of bnmanity, by
inviting seventy of the principal Egyptian Emirs to a banquet, at which he had
them massacred. The new Sultan-Vizier was now uncontrolled master of Egypt and
of the Caliph Adhed; and he might perhaps have continued so to be, had he
neither spared his predecessor’s life, nor when slaughtering Emirs, rested
content with such half measures, but fairly extinguished the title in Egypt.
Whilst the
surviving Emirs were meditating retaliation, Shawer had fled to Noureddin’s
court, there to seek safety and vengeance. He offered the Atabeg, as the
guerdon of his own reinstalment in his post, one third of the revenues of
Egypt. Money was no temptation to Noureddin, yet was the offer irresistible. He
saw, in the possession of a controlling power over the rulers of Egypt,
prodigious additional facilities for the conquest of Palestine, which would
thus be open to his attacks from the South as well as from the East; and he
likewise saw in it a hope of recalling the Sheah country to the orthodox faith.
In this view the Caliph of Bagdad, to whom the proposal was communicated,
eagerly concurred. A compact was therefore quickly made with Shawer, and an
armament equipped to escort him back and expel his triumphant rival.
Whilst
Noureddin was deliberating and preparing, Amalric, allured by the prospect or'
possible conquest, and I '
almost
certain booty in a country so situated, put forward a claim to a large sum of
money, as arrears of the tribute promised his deceased brother, and as he
affirmed unpaid. Dargam denied that any arrears were owing; and Amalric uivaded
Egypt. The Sultan-Vizier was cf course coldly supported by the Emirs, who
detested him; and the invaders reched Belbeis, the ancient Pelusium, unopposed
: there Dargam met him, gave battle, and was defeated. Amalric then besieged
Belbeis, which he thought himself upon the point of taking; when Dargam, by
cutting down dykes and embankments, inundated that part of the country and
fairly flooded him out of his camp.(9>1) Amalric returned
disappointed to Palestine.
This was but
the prologue to the piece, during the performance of which, 5 oureddin’s army
had been in coursc of preparation; and being now ready, was placed under the
command of his best general, Shirkuh. But as this expedition produced the first
ascertained public appearance of one, among the most remarkable characters of
the epoch, who will for some time occupy the scene, a few words concerning his
origin may as well precede the narrative of the campaign.
Nojmeddjn
Eyub, a Kurd of the highest family, had, with his brother Asadeddin Shirkuh and
a body of their followers, some years back entered, the service of the Seljuk
Sultan of Bagdad, who rewarded their prowess with the Government of Takrit upon
the Tigris, "where, in the year 1137, Eyub’s son, Yussuf or Joseph, better
known as Saladin, was born. During the civil wars caused by disputed
successions amongst the Seljuk princes, the Kurd brothers had occasion to
confer a signal benefit upon the Atabeg Zenghi. Defeated, wounded, and a
fugitive, he came to Takrit, when they dressed his hurts and lent him boats to
carry bimse!/ and his people across the river, thus enabling them to escape
pursuit. In return, when, Shirkuh having in a fit oi passion stabbed a Cadi,
the whole family was obliged to fly, Zenghi, then a potent prince, received
them into his dominions and confidence, immediately appointing the two brothers
to the government of his most important towns. In all affairs requiring
prudence or valour they were thenceforward confidentially employed Digitized
by Microsoft®
bv him, and
subsequently by Noureddin. Once only was this high favour endangered. When the
report of Nou- reddin’s death awoke, as before mentioned, all subaltern Moslem
ambitions, Shirkuh is believed to have meditated possessing himself of
Damascus; but the prudence of Evub prevented any precipitate step, and the
Atabeg either did not hear of the project, or chose to appear ignorant of it.
At the moment when Shawer’s proposals were accepted, Shirkuh was employed in
conquering some Christian districts east of the Jordan; whence Noureddin
recalled him, to lead his army into Egypt; and upon this occasion Shirkuh desired
to be accompanied by his nephew Saladin. The young man, who is described as
delicately beautiful in person, prone to blushing and tears, was then leading a
very retired life, in his father’s house. In his adolescence he had been
addicted to sensual pleasures, even to hard drinking with his uncle Shirkuh;
whose Mohammedanism failed before the wine- cup, and whose military merits are
proved, by the austere Noureddin’s closing his eyes to such a transgression of
the laws of Islam. But, when the family became resident at the court of
Noureddin, if the uncle were incurable, the nephew seems to have been impressed
with such profound reverence for the ascetic virtues of his Prince, that he at
once renounced all vicious habits, all enervating indulgences, and became
truly, not hypocritically—his whole subsequent career refutes such a
suspicion—devout and abstemious, dedicating himself to study. This philosophic
or pious seclusion he refused to leave at Shirkuh’s invitation; but Eyub,
aware, it may be presumed, of his great abilities, was determined to force him
into active public life; and, in obedience to his father’s commands, Saladin
accompanied his uncle.(")
The object of
the expedition was easily accomplished: although, whether Shirkuh defeated
Dargam, or Dargam, Shirkuh, the reader may be surprised to learn, is a question
upon which Moslem historians differ amongst themselves. It seems, at the first
blush, one that the course of events must answer, but it was not to
victory that Shirkuh’s success was due. Dargam was assassinated; perchance by
a son or brother of one if the massacred Emirs;
and
Shawer—whether victorious or defeated, and whether he had or had not instigated
the murder, w;hich again is matter of dispute—profited by the crime.
He forthwith recovered his post.
This
reinstalment of the Sultan-Vizier took place a.d.
1163; but the auxiliary army did not withdraw upon accomplishing its
task. Shirkuh alleged that Shawer intended to defraud both the Atabeg and the
troops of their promised reward, and swore he would not stir without it.
Shawer, on the other hand, accused Shirkuh of meditating the conquest of Egypt;
and both parties are likely enough to have been in the right in thei." suspicions.
There is little reason to suppose Shawer particularly honest; and,without
accusing I\oureddin of having actually given instructions for the occupation of
Egypt, Shirkuh, in addition to the glory and the private gain he would
anticipate from such a conquest, must have known how much the acquisition of this
realm would promote his master’s views, as well patriotic as religious.
Upon the
ground of distrusting Noureddin and Shirkuh, the Sultan-Vizier now7
applied to the recent invader of Egypt, the King of Jerusalem, to protect both
him and the Caliph against the aliy to whom he owed the recovery of his
vizierate, offering liberal remuneration for the succours he solicited. The
request was most welcome; the Syro-Franks fully appreciating the danger with
which the addition of Egypt to Noureddin’s dominions was fraught to them;
inclosed as Palestine would then be within a crescent, resting upon the sea at
its southern extremity and nearly so at its northern, with Egypt menacing the
whole lii'.e of coast. The rapacious Amalric chose, nevertheless, to be well
paid for serving his own interest, and Shawer, ever lavish in promises, agreed
to his terms. The King now entered Egypt at the head of his army ; but he
distrusted the Sultan-Vizier’s word, and required, before he would strike a
blow, that the Caliph himself should ratify the treaty. This wras an
awkward demand ; inasmuch as the intense veneration due to the descendant of
the Prophet, which prohibited the disturbance of his repose by any kind of
worldly business, was the very foundation upon which the absolute power Digitized
by Microsoft®
of the
Sultan-Vizier rested. But fear of Noureddin and Shirkuh was just then
predominant; Shawer engaged that the Caliph should comply with the King’s
demand, and the Syro-Frank historian of the Crusades and of the Kingdom of Jerusalem,
subsequently Archbishop of 'l yre, and related, it is said, but not how, to the
royal family, has described the scene from the very lips of the chief Christian
actor.
Amalric,
whether from difficul'ies as to etiquette, or from fears for his safety should
he trust himself in the Caliph’s palace, did not, as might be expected, visit
in person the potentate he came to protect, and would not in person receive the
solemn personal pledge he required. He deputed Hugh Baron of Caesarea as his
representative, to perform that office ; and the Baron, as he told the
historian, was conducted through a seemingly endless display of the pomp and
wealth of the palace—he saw a pearl equal in size to a pigeon’s egg and an
emerald a palm and a half long—and of its strength—passing through a formidable
array of the Nubian and Saracenic guards. At the further end of the hall of
audience, when he entered it, hung a curtain, thickly wrought with gold and
pearls; it was drawn aside, and discovered the Caliph Adhed reclining upon a
splendid throne, half encircled by his household officers. When, amidst the
prostrations of his introducers, the bold warrior stated the demand of the King
of Jerusalem, that the Caliph should ratify the treaty by striking hands, a
cry of horror, at the idea of such profanation of the sacred person of the
Prophet’s descendant and representative, burst from the attendants. Adhed had,
however, been assured that only Amalric could save him from Noureddin, that
Amalric must therefore be satisfied; and with a smiling countenance he offered
the Christian his hand. But the hand was covered; and without touching it, the
Lord of Caesarea said, “ In striking a bargain all must bo frank and open. The
Christians will distrust the Cal'ph’s intentions if he plight his faith with a
shrouded hand.” The Commander of the Faithful, \\ ith a deep sigh, as if
despoiling himself of his high dignity, removed the covering, placed his bare
hand in the hand of the Christian Noble, and took the oath he dictated.
vm.
i, Q
The Caliph’s
submission to the pressure of necessity was repaid, and for two years the
designs of Shirkuh, if the Kurd really did then entertain any, were haified.
But it was suspected that, reluctant too early to end a war so pecuniarily
profitable, A malrio wilfully missed some opportunities of actually destroying
his antagonist. Neither friend nor foe of Shawer had decidedly the advantage,
and Alexandria, of which Shirkuh had obta'ned possession and committed the
defence to Saladin, though reduced to extremities by famine, still held out;
when the affairs of Palestine imperatively recalling the King, he made overtures,
and the three parties negotiated. Amalric and Shirkuh agreed simultaneously to
evacuate Egypt, both amply remunerated by the Sultan-Vizidr, the one for
coming, the other for his departure.
Upon this
occasion Amalric discovered a sense of honour and humanity, too rare
unfortunately among the Syro- Franks, whether monarchs or subjects, to be
omitted. Arab historians relate that when, upon the conclusion of the treaty,
Saladin opened the gates of Alexandria, he visited the Christian camp. Friendly
intercourse took place, and the King offered him the use of his ships to convey
the sick and wounded of the garrison to Acre, with a free passage through
Palestine when landed. The offer •was thankfully accepted; and Saladin, being
himself upon the sick list, embarked with them. To the Governor of Acre,
however, a batch of enemies, w hom a simple breach of faith w ould make his
prisoners, was a prize irresistibly tempting, and, as prisoners, he detained
them; hut the King, hearing of their capture, commanded their instantaneous
release, and safe escort to their own frontier.
Amalric was
not always as observant of his engagements with misbelievers, and of the three
parties to the treaty for the evacuation of Egypt, Shawer alone seems to have
meant lioneutly. The wealth and helplessness of the land were actual
invitations to the spoiler, and Amalric dreamt of a second kingdom and booty,
Shirkuh perhaps of the first for his master, certainly of the last for himself,
and perhaps of that only ; whilst the Atabeg, less amenable to worldly lures,
was urged by the orthodox Commander of the Faithful to extinguish the heretic,
Sheah Caliphate.
Amalric was
the first to act. He, like Baldwin III, was connected by marriage with Manuel,
to wed whose niece he had, at his accession, repudiated his wife, Agnes de
Courtenay, daughter of his unfortunate relation, Joselyn, the despoiled Earl of
Edessa, upon the usual plea of consanguinity. A true one, but an impediment as
well known at the marriage as at its dissolution. To his Imperial uncle, the
King now proposed the immediate joint conquest of Egypt; to which Manuel at
once agreed, promising the co-operation of a fleet and army. But the attention
of the Constantinopolitan Court was divided by the necessity of repulsing
inroads of northern tribes, of suppressing rebellions of Danubian provinces:
and at the time appointed, the armament was not ready. Amalric, who for some time
had been, in imagination, master of half Egypt, was impatient to realize his
dream, and yet more so to feel the wealth he had there seen his own; whilst the
royal impatience, which needed no spur, was hourly stimulated by Gilbert de
Sailly, or de Assalit, the new Grand-Master of the Hospital, a brave, generous,
but loosely principled man, who had involved his Order in debt, and hoped to
escape censure by satisfying the creditors out of his share of Egyptian
plunder, and adding Belbeis, of which he obtained a promise, to the possessions
of the offended Order. In vain the Templars, seized with sudden scruples,
refused to concur in a breach of faith, which they pronounced disgraceful to a
Christian King; to be committed, moreover, in order to embark in an enterprise
that, under the circumstances, was most hazardous. Amalric persisted. Without
Greek co-operation, w ithout support from the Templars, without a declaration
of war, merely alleging that the Sultan-Vizier was intriguing with the enemy of
Palestine, Noureddin, he, within three months after signing the convention by
which he quitted Egypt well paid, re-entered it as an invader. As usual, it was
defenceless, and the Syro Franks overran the land, ravaging plundering, and
burning, more like banditti than conquerors designing permanent acquisition. At
Belbeis—where, though on the 3d of November it fell, nearly unresisting, men,
women, children, babies, are. averred to have been massacred^"0)—they
captured a son and a nephew' uf Shawer's Fit, immediately offered for
their ransom
a sum large enough to tempt the cupidity of Amalric, by whom it would be
monopolized:—the Hospitalers appropriating to themselves a far larger portion
of the general booty than he thought their due. He demanded more, however, than
Shawer offered.
Shawer now
made difficulties, and dexterously prolonged the negotiation, in order to give
time for the arrival of succours from Damascus, ere hostilities should be
resumed, or the Christian army approach Cairo. The arrival of such succours he
confidently expected, because the form in which they had been solicited, made
it, amongst Mohammedans, disgraceful to refuse or to hesitate. The moment
Amalilu’s invasion was known, Adhed, again driven by desperation to steps
cruelly humiliating to the descendant of the Prophet, wrote with his own hand
to Noureddin, and inclosing in his letter locks of the hair of all his wives,
implored aid for their behoof and in their names. The habitual sanctity of the
harem—implied in its very name (101) —to which it is indecorous even
to allude ill conversation, renders the bringing wives thus forward in
extremity an irresistible adjuration. The rigidly orthodox Atabeg felt it so;
and now despatched Shirkuh to protect the heretic Caliph.
Shirkuh again
desired to be accompanied by the nephew he had found so valuable an assistant;
he again refused; and now the paternal authority failed to conquer his
resolution. Eyub had recourse to Noureddin; and against even his command,
enhanced by a gift of money to equip himself—the want of which had been one of
his excuses—Saladin remonstrated. He declared that the whole realm of Egypt
would be no compensation for what he had undergone in the last campaign, when
defending Alexandria against the Christians, and against a worse enemy—famine.
Noureddin insisted, feeling that to associate the ascetic nephew with the often
intoxicated uncle was placing some check upon the ant.-Moslem propensities
that, degrading his otherwise invaluable general, might afford the Sheahs a
triumph over the Orthodox. To the Atabeg’s repeated, positive commands, Saladin
ultimately yielded obedience, but often afterwards remarked: “ I went as to my
death.”
The drama was
now the same as before, with the parts
Digitized
by Microsoft ®
reversed;
Shirkuh and Saladin appearing as the protectors of their former adversary,
against his former protector. The contest was of shorter duration, Shirkuh not
having Amalric’s motives for procrastination ; and the forces of Jerusalem,
singly, being unequal to those of Noureddin and Egypt combined and ably
wielded. But let not the reader dream of the hundreds of thousands of modern
war. The usual army of Palestine consisted of ]5Q0 horse and 5000 foot, to
which Tripoli could add 600 horse and 2000 foot.(103) But whether
upon this occasion the Tripolitan forces were present, or, like the Templars,
wanting, may be doubted; and, at all events, of course the kingdom could not be
denuded of defenders for a foreign expedition. Thus so small was the invading
Christian army, that, notwithstanding the acknowledged individual superiority
of the Frank warriors, and although ShirkiiVs numbers did not exceed some 8000
men.(103) Amalric was so alarmed by the tidings of his having set
forth, that, without risking an encounter, he at once evacuated Egypt. Gilbert
de Sailly, as the main adviser of an enterprise which had proved as
unsuccessful as it was dishonourable and imprudent, was obliged to abdicate his
grand-mastership.
Over the
transactions of the next four months in Egypt considerable obscurity hangs, but
thus much is clear, that Shawer had little cause to rejoice in this rapid
success. Shirkuh, loaded with presents, and honoured with an audience of the
Caliph, discovered no intention of removing his camp from the environs of
Cairo. Before long he accused the Sultan-Vizier of plotting the murder of
himself, his nephew, and his Turkish Emirs, at a banquet to which he had
invited them. Some Arab writers admit the truth of this accusation, simply as
here stated; others add, that Shawer had imparted his design to the Caliph as a
politic mode of getting rid of troublesome, if not dangerous, friends, and that
the Caliph revealed it to the chief of the intended visitors; whilst others,
again, call it a calumny, devised by Sliirkuh, and approved by the Caliph, who
had long disliked Shawer, or who was then exasperated against him by Shirkuh’s
disclosure of the Sultan-Vizier’s having asked his assistance to dethrone Digitized
by Microsoft®
him, the
Cahph, supplying liis place by an infant. Whichever of these be the true
version of the accusation, the consequent catastrophe is thus related. Upon the
plea of the intended murder were based the orders that Shiikuh, when setting
forth on a pilgrimage to the not distant (omb of a Soonee Saint, left with Saladin.
In pursuance of these orders, when the Sultan-Yisier, ignorant of Shirkuh’s
absence, .visited the camp as usual, Saladin, in company with the chief Emir,
advanced respectfully to receive him. They managed to separate him from his
train, and then dragging h rn from his horse, made him a prisoner. His escort
took to flight. Shirkuh instantly returning to his camp, reported the seizure
and its motive to the spiritual and temporal Sovereign of Egypt, who, in reply,
far from expressing any resentment at this treatment of his prime-minister,
urgently recommended, if he did not command, his immediate execution. The
advice or mandate was welcome to Shirkuh, who, forthwith obeying, sent the
Sultau-Yizier’s head to the Caliph. Shawer’s sons,said to be their father’s
accomplices, and who w ere in Adhed’s, not Shirkuh’s power, disappeared
altogether. The end of the business was Shirkuh’s appointment as Sultan-Yizier,
by a document professing to be drawn up in the most honourable and flattering
terms ever employed for such a purpose, and conferring the amplest powers ever
held by \ izier.
Shirkuh did
not enjoy his exaltation more than two months, during which he left all the
duties and business of his office to his nephew. At the end of that time,
having, thus remote from Noureddin’s eye, indulged, ay, revelled, beyond all
bounds, in his besetting sin, he died its victim. Upon Ins death, the Caliph,
much to the dissatisfaction of the Egyptian Emirs, transferred the vizierate,
with the same extraordinary powers, to Saladin, who had, of course, succeeded
to his uncle in the command of theTurkish army. The honours and dignities
profusely showered upon him by the Sheah Caliph could not shake the new Sultan-
Vizier’s steady adherence to the Soonee creed, or the fealty he still professed
to Noureddin; who, upon this occasion, gave him the name of Salah-eddiu, or
Safeguard of the Faith, contracted by Europeans into Saladin.
The evident
danger to Palestine, from so prodigious an extension of Noureddin’s power as
this virtual conversion of a mighty, often hostile, realm, into a subordinate
ally, induced a revival of the project of a joint invasion of Egypt by the
Greek and Syro-Frank forces : Manuel’s own interest in the preservation of the
kingdom of Jerusalem, as an outwork of the Eastern Empire, inducing him to
overlook Amalric’s conduct upon the previous occasion,—his attempt to get
Egypt for himself. He even supplied him with money for his preparations; and
success was the more confidently anticipated, as the King had auxiliaries in
Cairo in the very palace of the Caliph. Egypt had latterly swarmed with
Nubians, some brought thither as slaves for sale, others flocking thither as
adventurers in search of fortune. By various arts, numbers of them, both
slaves and freemen, had risen to power; they formed a large part of the army,
they held some of the chief offices of the State, as well as of the Palace and
Harem. Saladin had offended the self-importance of these black dignitaries; who
thereupon made overtures to his Christian enemies, proposing to fall, 50,000
strong, upon the Sultan-Vizier’s rear, when he should be engaged with the
invaders. It seems so strange that Shawer, with such an army at his disposal,
should have felt the fate of the realm dependent upon Shirkuh’s 8000 men, that
it is impossible not to believe both that the Negro traitors exaggerated their
numbers to give themselves consequence, and that Oriental magniloquence has, in
recording it, exaggerated that exaggeration to exalt Saladin, by enhancing the
difficulties and perils of his position. However that may be, an intercepted
letter from the chief of the sable officials of the Harem to the King of
Jerusalem revealed the plot. Saladin ordered the ringleaders to be executed,
and the Negroes in general to be expelled the country. They resisted, and the
streets of Cairo presented the image of a field of battle. But in the end,
Saladin, with his 8000 Turks, Kurds, or Saracens, triumphed, and the Nubians,
everywhere defeated, were either slaughtered or driven out of Egypt before
their Christian allies were ready to profit by their revolt.
Amalric. upon
this occasion, again sought to obtain a Digitized by Microsoft® ■
crusade to
assist the projected nvasion, and despatched the Archbishop of Tyre to excite
one. But Alexander III was occupied with the schism, which alone would have
sufficed t<. prevent any European union or concert. Henry II of England and
Lewis YII of. France were engrossed with their own broils and contests: whilst
neither the latter monarch nor the Emperor Frederic had forgotten what they
deemed the treachery of the Syro- Franks, in their former crusade. Frederic
had, besides, too much upon his hands in his struggle with the Lombards and his
support of anti-popes, to have time or thought to spare for distant evils; and
in Sicily, the treatment of their dowager Countess by a King of Jerusalem, (m)
was angrily remembered; whilst William II was actually at war with one of his
proposed allies, Manuel. The embassy failed, and the 'nvasion was left to the
Greek Emperor and the King of Jerusalem
This time, it
took place as pre-concertcd, but the only result was increased alienation
betwixt the invaders. Manuel sent an army; Amalric headed his, and at every
move offended the Constantinopolitan general. He idly wasted the efforts of the
allied troops; lie made no exertion to promote the capture of Damietta, which,
by agreement, was, when taken, to belong to the Eastern Empire; and if he did
not, as the Greek alleged, accept bribes from Saladin to betray his allies, he
certainly neglected their interests and even those of his own kingdom, in his
anxiety, by shortening the campaign, to save pari of the Greek subsidy, as an
addition to his hoards. He retorted the accusations, and the allies, mutually
dissatisfied, again evacuated Egypt.
The remainder
of Amalric’s reign—the last two months excepted—was passed in constant dread of
subjugation by Noureduin. Protection he had none to expect; Manuel’s anger, at
the conduct and issue of the late campaign, overpowering, for the moment, his
politic desire to ma!;e a statesman’s use of the Syro-Franks. And the kingdom
of Jerusalem appears to have owed the prolongation of its existence to the
reciprocal distrust of Noureddin and Saladin, and the growing, but cautious, ambition
of the latter.
KINGDOM
OF JERUSALEM.
AMALRIC BALDWIN IV BALDWIN V----------- SIBYLLA
AND GUV.
Death
of Noureddin—Of Amalric—Dissensions of Mohammedans —Saladin’s concentration of
power—Sgro-Frank Dissensions—Death of Manuel— Invasion of Palestine—Battle of Tiberias—Loss
of Jirusalem. [ 1169 —1187.
Whether Saladin did or did not contemplate throwing off
his double allegiance to the Atabeg and to the Sheah Caliph, making himself
Sultan of Egypt, with no superior but the Soonee Caliph of Bagdad, is another
of the moot points of history. Christians, despite their eulogies, lay to his
charge both this scheme, and crimes perpetrated to advance it; and Noureddin
certainly suspected him of aiming at independent sovereignty. Arab writers
appear to narrate facts wirhout investigating motives or causes, and do not
even allude to a suspicion of the crimes denounced by Christians. The truth
seems to be that Saladin’s views were much akin to those of contemporary,
European, great vassals; that he thought not, as yet at least, of disowning the
Atabeg’s sovereignty, but aimed at securing to himself a real irremoveable,
uncontrolled, and hereditary viceroyalty. From Adhed he feared no attempt at
laying any restraint upon the authority of the acknowledged Sultan-Vizier;
but, with respect to him, there might be a conflict in his mind between
gratitude and orthodoxy. He was certainly very much gratified by receiving a
dress of honour, with the confirmation of his \izierate; frora the
orthodox Caliph; who, upon the virtual conquest of Egypt, had sent Noureddin
two swords, one for Syria, one for Egypt. But to the injunction accompanying
the Commander of the Faithful’s gifts, though
uiforced by
the Atabeg, he demurred. The injunction was to substitute the name of the
Soonee for that of the Sheah Caliph in public prayers. Not even his somewhat
fanatic zeal could prevent Saladiu’s shrinking from an act of such traitorous
ingratitude towards the prince to whom he owed his exaltation, as would be
this, his actual deposal. He paved the way, indeed, for obedience, by causing
Sootiee doctrines to be taught; but still hesitated to act, and remonstrated,
until, in the year 1171, Adhed’s death ended his difficulties with his
scruples. He mmediately ordered the Bagdad Caliph to be prayed for in all the
Mosques, and was mplicitly obeyed; the whole country thus at once abandoning
all heretical opinions to become orthodox. Adhed left no children : and without
troubling himself about collaterals, Saladin took possession of his harem,
thus, in Oriental fashion, stamping himself his successor; and he remained,
nominally at least, Sultan- Vizier to the Atabeg Noureddin. Frank authorities
so far alter this relation, taat they state the change to have been made during
a dangerous illness of Adhed’s: and that, upon symptoms of recovery appearing,
Saladin prevented Egypt’s relapsing into the Sheah heresy, by murdering the
Caliph and his children. It may be observed in behalf of Saladin’s
guiltlessness, that these degenerate Princes, hereditarily enervated by
voluptuousness, and :n- dividually exhausted by estcess, had for
generations died young, and not untrequently childless; a fate, which to the
Franks seemed too unnatural not to be due to crime.- At all events, Adhed was
the last Fatemite Caliph, and Egypt ceased to be Sheah.
i'iie
extinction of the schismatic Caliphate was likely, but for the unaccountable
perverseness of the Templars, to produce another result, alike beneficial and
unexpected. In the eyes of the Sheik of the Assassins it seemingly extinguished
the Sheah heresy, and with it the fanatic zeal of the branch of the Ismaelites
domiciliated in the Lebanon. Immediately upon learning the changes in Egypt,
the reigning Old Alan of the Mountain, who had been reported to have latterly
taken to studying the Bible, sent an embassy to Amalric, to say that he was
willing to receive baptism with all his people, in consideration of the
remission of an annual payment of 2000
gold pieces,
which the Templars levied as a sort of tribute from those of his subjects who
dwelt near their castles,(l05) Amalric’s delight at the prospect of
thus transforming a dreaded foe into a friend, and also of the glory with which
such a conversion would irradiate his reign, overcame his avarice; and he
promised the remission required, even should he be obliged to take the payment
to the Templars upon himself. But this arrogant confraternity appears to have
treated the offer as an offence to themselves. One cf their number, Gaultier de
Maisnil, who is described as a violent, one-eyed man, headed a party—whether of
knights or merely of Turcopoles seems doubtful—and pursuing the envoys on their
return, accompanied as they were by a messenger of Amalric’s, surprised and
actually murdered them. The King, enraged at a breach of the law of nations,
annihilating such bright hopes, ordered the Grand-Master, Eudes de St. Amand,
to punish de Maisnil. But Eudes, who is suspected of having authorized, if not
ordered the expedition,(10°) haughtily answered, that the King had
neither jurisdiction over Templars, nor orders to give a Grand-Master; that he
had done w'hat he judged proper, had imposed a penance upon the self-willed
knight, who had presumed to form, and to act upon an unsanctioned opinion, and
had commanded him to make a pilgrimage to Ilome, there to abide the Pope’s
sentenc3.(107) Amalric, bent upon exculpating himself in the Sheik’s
eyes, caused de Maisnil to be arrested at Sidon, and thrown into prison; but
other affairs diverted his attention, the Templar remained unpunished, and the
Old Man of the Mountain with his Assassins, instead of becoming Christians
themselves, were more inveterate than before against all who were so. It is to
be hoped that the Grand-Master, though grievously suspected, had no complicity
in the crime, shielding the criminal merely in maintenance of his Order’s
privileges ; for in other respects he acted up to its old spirit. Being
subsequently taken prisoner and an exchange proposed between h:m and a nephew
of Sala- din’s, then in the hands of the Christians, he refused; because a
Templar, who ought to conquer or die, must give only his knife and belt for his
ransom, whilst a large sum was demanded for the noble Kurd’s.
The tenor of
Saladin’s policy in his peculiar position, appears now to have been, to avoid
all disrespect and positive disobedience to Noureddin, but likewise to guard
against such an accession to the Atabeg’s power, and such easy communication
between his dominions and Egypt, as might enable him to displace h's Sultan-Vizier.
Keeping these objects in view, it became essential to prevent his conquering
Palestine, or even taking either of the two strong southern fortresses,—Karak,
Kerek or Krac, as it is variously written, a fief of the Constable de Thoron’s
and Montroyal, called by the Arabs, Shaubek,—both of which commanded the direct
road from Damascus to Cairo. He was also very anxious to have his father and
his whole family out of Noureddin’s reach, and in Egypt. The last wish had but
to be named, Noureddin not having apparently contemplated their detention as
hostages. With respect to the preventing such an increase of the Atabeg’s
power, as might, he was apprehensive, prove threatening to his own actual
position, Saladin managed, by representing the difficulties which beset his
task of changing the religion of the country, to keep such entire command of
the mode of his co operation in Noureddin’s campaigns, that, although he never
disobeyed his sovereign’s call, Palestine remained unconquered, Kerek and
Shaubek untaken, and his own expeditions were productive of nothing but booty.
Noureddin during this time is said to have first established a post, if it may
be so called, by carrier pigeons, to facilitate his intercourse with his
formidable Lieutenant.
Gradually, however,
the Atabeg began to see through the Sultan-Vizier’s manoeuvres; and by the year
1173, having grown thoroughly dissatisfied w ith his imperfect obedience, he
prepared to chastise it. He collected an army for the purpose; and in order,
by conciliating the Christians,'to prevent hostilities on their part during his
absence in Egypt, he permitted the Earl of Tripoli and some captives of
inferior note to ransom themselves.—Bohemund of Antioch he had previously
released as a compliment to that Prince’s brother-in-law, Manuel, when he
sought to avert the Emperor’s enmity. The necessary preparations were
completed ■n the month of May, and Noureddin was about to march for
Cairo, when,
upon the 22d of the month, at the age of fifty- seven, after a short illness,
most opportunely for Saladin, and yet—strange to say!—w ithout a suspicion of
poison, he died.
Amalric, less
generous than Noureddin on a correspondent occasion had shown himself, thought
to take advantage of the consternation and dejection consequent upon the
untimely loss of so able, so upright, and so revered a sovereign, to recover
Paneas. But his hopes were disappointed; a sum of money from the Moslem
Governor of the place, and the release of a few Christian prisoners kept there,
were the whole fruit of his enterprise. Upon his return to Jerusalem he was
taken ill, and, surviving Noureddin less than two months, he died July 11, in
the thirty-eighth year of his age.
Amalric left
three children, two by his first wife, Agnes de Courtenay; the eldest, a
daughter, Sibylla, and a son, Baldwin IV, then only 13 years old; and by his
second marriage with the Greek Princess Maria, a daughter named Isabel. Baldwin
IV was a fine boy, endowed with excellent abilities, trained in all knightly
exercises, and instructed, under the superintendence of the Chancellor,
afterwards Archbishop of Tyre, already mentioned as the celebrated historian of
Jerusalem, in all the learning of the age. But he was early threatened with a
disease that rendered his good qualities of no avail, even whilst it perhaps
promoted their early development; to wit, leprosy. As yet, however, Baldwin IV
was a minor, and a regency was by lawr necessary. For this office,
the Earl of Tripoli, and the Seneschal, Milo de Plancv, contended; as did the
boy- King for the full authority, the exercise of which he was willing to leave
to his father’s favourite, de Plancy. The murder of the Seneschal decided the
contest in the Earl’s favour; but so universally had the victim been hated that
no one dreamt of imputing his assassination to political motives, or to aught
save private enmity.
Noureddin,
like Amalric, had left a minor heir, a son named Malek-as-Saleh-lsmael, who was
at once acknowledged throughout his father’s dominions, Egypt included, as his
successor. The Emir Mokaddem assumed the government in th name of the r,en-year
old Atabeg; but
his
administration quickly excited general dissatisfaction Rivals arose amongst the
Emirs. Saifeddin, a nephew of Noureddin’s, and uuder him Emir of Mousul, made
himself master of the whole of Mesopotamia, which Mokaddem was unable to
recover. The want of a stronger hand was felt; and the Emirs invited Saladin to
undertake the regency; whilst an ambitious Chamberlain, named Gemushteghin,
carried off the little Atabeg to Aleppo, where he hoped to engross his favour
and confidence.
Saladin had
been occupied, during these disorders, in quelling an 'lisurrection in Upper
Egypt, and in repulsing a maritime attack upon Lower Egypt by the Sicilian
forces. He had succeeded in both; and, being now at liberty, promptly accepted
the invitation of the Emirs. Damascus joyfully welcomed him ; Noureddin’s widow
gave him her hand, and he declared himself the vicegerent of
Malek-as-Saleb-Ismael, the guardian of the rights of his benefactor’s son.
Gemushteghin, nevertheless, persevered in his course ; affecting apprehensions
for the safety of his ward, he closed the gates of Aleppo in Saladin’s face,
and applied to the Regent of Palestine for assistance against the dreaded
usurper. The Earl sent him a corps of auxiliaries; but they were few in number,
and the Kingdom was evidently so unable to afford the self- electcd
Guardian-Chamberlain efficient support, that he transferred his application to
the Sheik of the Assassins, who gladly despatched three of his disciples
against the destroyer of the Sheali Caliphate. The devoted emissaries made
their way into Saladin’s tent and wounded him. But he defended himself stoutly,
his guards rushed in, and his assailants were seized and executed.
A course more
contrary to the interests of the young heir than Gemushteghin’s could hardly
have been devised. Saladin, who, for aught that appears, had, when he assumed
the regency, meant fairly by him, at least mall save Egypt, and whose marriage
with the princely boy’s mother must have strengthened his loyalty, was deeply'
offended. A repetition of conduct so contrary to NoureddLi’s policy, so
absurdly hostile as well as, including the attempt at assassination,
unprincipled, further exasperated him; and be now abjured his subjection. He
dropped the addition of Digitized by Microsoft i
Yizier to the
title of Sultan, substituted, in the public prayers, throughout his own
dominions, his own name lor that of Malek-as-Saleh-Ismacl, and demanded of the
young Atabeg the cession of Damascus, which, in point of fact, was already his.
The demand w as refused, and the contest continued a while longer. Saladin now
signed a convention with the Earl of Tripoli, who pledged himself, on
condition of the Sultan's releasing the hostages given for the payment of what
was still due to Noureddin of Raymond’s own and his friend’s ransom, not to
interfere in his wars with Noureddin’s family. Saladin next defeated Saifeddin;
then, leaving the hostile kindred of the great Atabeg to destroy each other in
striving for his heritage, he led an army into the territories of the
Assassins. There he presently forced the Sheik to sue for peace; which, fearing
it is said to rouse the enmity of the whole confederation of Ismaelites, he granted
him on fair terms, and was thenceforward unassailed by his daggers. He then
placed his brother, Shamseddin Turanshah, as his Lieutenant at Damascus, and
taking with him a daughter 0f Noureddin’s—
■7 O O =
as naturally
accompanying her mother or step-mother, it may be presumed—returned to Egypt.
In commemoration of this triumphant expedition, he founded a hospital at
Cairo, which, with all its requirements of physicians, drugs, attendants,
&c., is said to be the first ever known there.(loa)
Whilst the
Mohammedans were thus divided, the kingdom of Jerusalem had been in no
condition to profit by their divisions. The constantly increasing leprosy of
the young King, yet more than his minority, unfitted him for action. Earl
Raymond, irritated by the opposition he at every move encountered from the
partisans of his dead rival, displayed little energy in his government, and the
Barons looked to Europe for help. Of a crusade they had learned there was for
the moment no hope; but Baldwin’s very malady, which almost precluded the idea
of h’.s marrying, gave them, they conceived, in the person of his eldest sister
and presumptive heiress, Sibylla, a bait, with which to allure some prince
capable both of ruling and defending the IIolv Land, and of interesting others
in its behalf.
The first,
upon whom with such views, they turned their
j
r 7 j
eyes, was
William, eldest son of the Marquess of Mont- ferrat, for his knightly prowess,
surnamed Longsword, whose near relationship to the Emperor and the King of
France, rendered him peculiarly eligible. To him they proposed the hand of the
Princess, with Joppa and Ascalon for her portion. Eagerly accepting, Marquess Wrilliam
hastened to the Holy Land, was approved by the Regent, and in 1176 was married
to Sibylla. The bridegroom, whose character seems to have been more German than
Italian, if he commanded the esteem of his brother-in -law’s subjects by his
valour and frank honesty, disgusted them by his intemperance and violence; and
what the results of the connexion might prove, seemed questionable. But
speculation was cut short; his virtues and his vices alike being rendered
immaterial to the kingdom, by his death within the year. lie left the widowed
Princess in a cond: :on that promised an heir.
But au unborn
babe was not the heir Palestine wanted, for her protection against a formidable
neighbour; and the Barons looked around for a second husband for Sibylla.
Philip Earl of Flanders, son and successor to the indefatigable old Crusader,
Earl Theodore, had just then, in expiation of divers sins, led a band of
gallant warriors to the Holy Land, as crusading pilgrims. Upon him all eyes
were bent, and at first he won the confidence of his cousin Baldwin; who was
now about seventeen, and had latterly begun to interfere much with public
business; thus gradually to assume the government and terminate Eail Raymond’s
regency. But Philip soon forfeited the good opinion of all, proving as artful
and impenetrable as William Longsword had been the reverse. He refused to take
part, or even advise, in anything, yet was offended when his counsels were
dispensed with; refused every command offered him, yet resented the appointment
of another to the post he had rejected. At length it appeared that for himself
the powerful Earl disdained Baldwin lV5s precarious crown, but
desired to obtain the hands of both the King’s sisters, for the two sons of a
great Flemish noble, who had engaged in return to surrender his Flemish fiefs
to him. In this scheme lie failed; but his manoeuvres perplexing; and baulinjr
all measures, prevented another
r
r o o 7
r, .
combined
attack upon Egypt projected by Manuel; nor was this the only mischievous result
of his presence in the Holy Land. By joining Bohemund of Antioch and Raymond
of Tripoli in an unsuccessful attempt upon Aleppo, he assisted them to provoke
a retaliatory invasion of Palestine from Damascus and Egypt. Baldwin rose from
his sick bed to oppose the invaders, and defeated even Saladin’s body guard of
Mamelukes,(109) who like other Oriental troops, could not stand the
charge of heavily armed knights, to which was habitually due the victory of
Europeans over Asiatics. He expelled the Mohammedans, and biought back some
booty from the pursuit. The Earl of Flanders participated not in this defence
of the Kingdom. He had returned from the foiled attempt upon Aleppo, to perform
his Easter devotions at Jerusalem, and then embarked for Europe, leaving
behind him a name the reverse of his father’s.
Baldwin,
disappointed in him, and rendered suspicious of his vassals by his frequent
physical inability to execute his own plans, now gave his confidence to another
Frank This was Renaud de Chatillon, w ho knew as well how' to worm himself into
the favour of an infirm boy-King, as into the love of woman, and his proficiency
in this last art he had now for the second time proved. The death of the
Princess of Antioch having left him a widower, he had obtained the hand of
Stephanie, heiress of Neapolis or Naplouse, and yet wealthier as the widow of
two powerful husbands, namely, the younger de Thoron, the Constable’s son, and
the murdered favourite, the Seneschal de Plancy. Upon the death of Princess
Constance, her son having attained his majority, he had lost his power in the
state, and the title of Prince of Antioch, but retaining that of Prince, is
thenceforward usually called Prince Renaud. He was certainly a brave warrior
and had gallantly assisted Baldwin to defeat the late invasion, but, from
intense selfishness, seldom appears to have used either royal favour or the pow'er
obtained through his wives, otherwise than injuriously, to the common weal.
Him, Baldwin now appointed Protector of the kingdom whenever he himself should
be incapacitated by illness for the discharge of his royal duties. An
unfortunate choice. Next to Digitized by Microsoft @
Chatillon in
Baldwin’s confidence ranked his mother and uncle, Agnes and Joscelin de
Courtenay; the latter he made Seneschal; the former had materially lowered her-
sell m public opinion by marrying Hugues de ibelin. immediately upon her
divorce, and haviftg lost him, she had j ist accepted, ass her third husband,
Reginald Prince of Sidon.
The urgent
need to the kingdom of Jerusalem of a powerful government, of a warlike ruler,
keenly alive to every opportunity of weakening its Moslem neighbours, was not
immediately so apparent as it afterwards became. Noureddin’s death, like
Zenghi’s, necessarily delayed the execution of the grand Moslem project, by
again dispersing previously concentrated dominions and power: and Saladin,
whilst fully adopting his predecessors’ plans, felt that he was in no condition
as yet to attempt their grand object, the expulsion of the Franks.
For some
years Saladin devoted himself to the task of preparation for this achievement;
and whilst he was so engaged, a truce with Baldwin suspended hostilities, save
when broken by the marauding disposition Prince Renaud had already betrayed at
Cyprus.(uo) This occurred but too often—that the truce, thus
wantonly broken, was most beneficial to the Syro-Franks hardly need be
observed— the possession of Kerek, acquired through his second marriage,
affording this truly rnbber-knight unluckily frequent opportunities of
surprising and plundering caravans, that; 'n reliance upon the truce, took the
direct line of communication between Cairo and Damascus. He seems to have
neglected few or none; and, success increasing his audacity, he at last, in
1182, had vessels carried across the desert by camels and launched in the Red
Sea; where he embarked with his rapacious followers, besieged a small town on
the coast, and threatened the very cradles of Islam, Mecca and Medina. Saladin
was then absent, subjugating Mohammedans in Asia; but his brother and
vicegerent n Egypt, Malek el Adel, equipped a fleet in time to engage Chatillon,
and by defeating him, rescue the Holy places of his faith from pollution. Many
of the invaders fell in the action, many were taken: but Chatillon flying with
a few others, as fortunate as himself, got back Digitized by Mfcmibft®
to Kerek. The
prisoners Saladin commanded his brother to sacrifice, some writers say, instead
of sheep, before the Kaaba. A strange story, but which cannot be rejected,
since resting upon Oriental authority, both Christian and Moslem. Even
Saladin’s letter containing the order, and explaining the necessity of such
unwonted severity to prevent the repetition of such an insult, is given(ln)
by Reinaud. That Saladin, when he gave such an order, was deeply exasperated
against Chatillon is indubitable ; but he did not suffer himself to be
diverted from his progressive agglomeration of lands and dominions, or hurried
in his operations by anger. In the process of thus augmenting his power, he
continued, however it might hamper him, scrupulously to respect the possessions
of Noureddin’s son, until the death of the young Atabeg, at the early age of
nineteen, leaving neither son nor brother, freed him from such restraint. The
deceased Atabeg’s kinsmen, Azzeddin and Emadeddin, contending for his
heritage, severally applied to the Christians for help; and Saladin,
representing such conduct to the Caliph as showing them unfit to reign, tore
from them even their own dominions(llz) and made them his
tributaries. In the course of the year 1183, he was master of all that had ever
been Noureddin’s.
During these
years the Syro-Frank states, occupied with internal broils, thought not of
counter-preparations. Raymond of Tripoli and the Seneschal de Courtenay were
battling with each other and with Prince Renaud for the exercise of the Royal
authority, during the periods of Baldwin’s complete incapacity; and Bohemund of
Antioch was at open war with the Church. Upon the death of the Emperor Manuel,
this thoroughly worthless Prince had causelessly repudiated his consort,
another niece of that sovereign's, to marry a woman whose low birth was rendered
more objectionable by her at best doubtful character ; and he obstinately
resisted the Patriarch’s admonitions to take back his lawful wife. The prelate
excommunicated him; and he in retaliation attacked the clergy, plundered
churches and cloisters, and besieged h’s reverend monitor, in a castle
belonging to the patriarchate. The principality was then laid under an
interdict. Baldwin, ‘lie Patriarch of Jerusalem, the two Grand-Masters, and
Bohemund’s step-father Renaud, endeavoured to mediate
peace. In
vain: Bohemund never performed the condition thej had agreed to in his name.
The interdict remained in force, and some of his best knights deserted his
service for that of the Prince of Armenia; whilst he absorbed in sensual
pleasures, unheeding the dangers of Palestine and consequently of Antioch,
never roused himself to action, unless tempted by the hope of some petty
addition to his own dominions.
At Jerusalem
the marriage of the widowed Sibylla continued for a v.hile to be the principal
concern. The Barons, whether with or without the Kings’ consent seems doubtful,
had commissioned the Archbishops of Tyre and Ca33area, when attending the
Later,an Council, in 1179, to seek her a consort, such as Palestine wanted. The
Princess had now given birth to a son and heir; which was felt an insuperable
objection by princes who aspired to the crown—’the case with those whom they
would have preferred. At the suggestion of the Earl of Champagne, however, they
opened a negotiation with his nephew, the Duke of Burgundy; but they had
nothing to offer for which he would leave cr hazard his duchy. Baldwin was
offended, as much perhaps at his Barons’ presumption ill intermeddling with a
royal marriage, and offering the hand of his sister and presumptive heiress,
whom he deemed well worth the wooing, as at the offer’s rejection ; and he permitted
Sibylla’s inclination to select the future ruler of Palestine. Her choice fell
upon Guy de Lusignan, a nobleman of Poitou, related, as was said, to the Earls
of Poitou, paternal ancestors of Elinor of Aquitaine. Having been deeply
implicated in an insurrection, m the course of which the Earl of Salisbury,
Lord Lieutenant—if the modern titlemaybepermitted—of Poitcu,was slain,he made a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as much to shun King Henry’s resentment as to expiate
his offence; and there, by his personal attraction, had captivated the
Princess. To him, a mere nobleman, and therefore, irt public opinion, an
unsuitable consort for the future Queen of Jerusalem, Baldwin gave his sister,
with the same portion as before; and, as though to increase the general
dissatisfaction, celebrated the marriage in Lent ; ls) a
precipitation so indecorously repugnant to the feelings and customs of the Digitized
by Microsoft®
age, as to
have given rise to surmises unfavourable to the reputation of the widowed
princess. He soon afterwards gave his half-sister, the eight-year old Isabel,
in marriage to Humphrey de 'l'horon, grandson to the late Constable —who had
fallen in one of the frequent marauding expeditions—and step-son to Prince
Renaud. These nuptials were celebrated at Kerek, and the whole festive
assembly, the little royal bride included, w ere nearly carried off by a band
of Saracens, or more probably Turcomans, through Chatillon’s neglect of the
most ordinary precautions. The noble company was saved at a heavy cost; by
ordering the bridge of communication with the castle to be destroyed during
the attack, he sacrificed the town and half his warriors, but rescued the
Castle and its occupants.
The weakness,
necessarily resulting from internal dissensions, was scarcely counterbalanced
by the conversion of the schismatic Maronites of Lebanon to the Latin Church;
although something was certainly gained, both in strength and reputation, by
their consequent intimate connexion with the kingdom of Jerusalem. But, on the
other hand, the death of the Emperor Manuel was a heavy misfortune to the
Syro-Frank states: for which he entertained a statesman’s value, but which
could hope for no support from Constantinople, even had his successors adopted
his views, amidst the distractions produced by the contest for the regency that
ensued. From their inconceivable supineness, or blindness to imminent danger,
the Syro-Franks were first startled,by Saladin’s return from the subjugation of
all Noureddin’s eastern territories, to possess himself of Aleppo. They now saw
that the storm, hitherto unfeared because its symptoms were unobserved, was at
hand. The Patriarch and the two Grand-Masters hastened to Europe again, to urge
a Crusade; and Baldwin assembled the nobles and prelates to deliberate upon the
measures of defence to be adopted. To all such, money was felt to be
indispensable, and in order to advise as to the means of obtaining it, town
deputies were admitted into this feudal assembly.(IU)
The result of
these consultations was the imposition of a property tax, without exemption for
nobility or clergy ; the details of which, in that age of undeveloped financial
Digitized by Microsoft
science, are
sufficiently curious to be worth recording. A property of 100 bezaunts or
byzantines, was to pay one per cent.; an income of the same amount, two per
cent.; smaller properties and incomes, less in due proportion; artizans one
half per cent, upon their earnings. Lords of towns and villages were to pay
further a bezaunt for every hearth upon their domains, towards which they were
allowed to make their vassals, &c., contribute. Four upright and
intelligent men were in every town to be appointed to assess the tax; and
whoever thought himself overcharged, was to tell these assessors upon oath what
would be his fail assessment. The assessors were sworn to secresy. This was not
proposed, as it would now be, as an annual tax, but as a single imposition, its
produce exclusively appropriated to the defence of the country. To insure this
exclusive appropriation, the sums received were to be deposited in chests
secured by three locks, the three keys being severally kept by two prelates and
the treasurer of the district, and the chests opened only in presence of all
three.
Tidings now
came that Aleppo was Saladin’s, and no longer might time be idly frittered
away. Baldwin was proceeding to assemble an army, when, at this critical
moment, his leprosy utterly incapacitated him for action. He therefore
committed the royal authority to his brother- in-law, Guy, first requiring from
him an oath, neither to aspire to the crown till it should be lawfully
Sibylla’s, nor to alienate any portion of the realm. He referred to himself
10,000 bezaunts a-year, with the regal title.
The Palestine
army was increased by the arrival of the Duke of Brabant and a few other
nobles, whom the Patriarch and the Grand-Masters, though . iisappointed of an
European Crusade, headed by a monarch, had induced to lead companies of
crusaders to the defence of the Holy Land. With the further reinforcement of
mariners from the Venetian, Pisan, and Genoese fleets that had brought these
crusaders—for the commercial republics of Italy in some measure compensated the
annoyance of their quarrels and their extravagant pretensions, by occasionally
affording efficacious assistance—it amounted to 1300 helmets and 1 <5,000
foot At their head Guy marched
in search of
Saladin, who was already ravaging the kingdom. But now broke out the hatred,
justly or unjustly, borne to Guy, to whom none denied the quality then most
valued, courage. Vinisauf, who knew him, says: “He deserved the crown by his
royal character and habits, but because simple-minded, and unversed in
political intrigue, he was held cheap.”(115) Guy’s real fault seems
to have been want of firmness in adhering to an opinion or plan; whilst his
exaltation above former equals and superiors was the real cause of the ill-will
borne him, and now so unpatriotically displayed. When the armies met, the
Barons refused to give battle, alleging that Saladin was too superior in
numbers, and too strongly posted. The hostile forces consequently remained
encamped, confronting each other, till, provisions failing, both withdrew, and
Saladin evacuated the kingdom without striking a blow. This, to effect which
would now' be thought judicious strategy, was then deemed such a cowardly
suffering the enemy to escape, that, although not disapproved, seemingly, by
the Grand-Master of the Templars, it damaged the reputation of Guy (upon whom
it was compulsory) at home and abroad. The very Barons, who had prevented a
battle, made Saladin’s escape, with his superior numbers, a ground for
demanding not only Guy’s removal from his high office, but the dissolution of
his marriage with the presumptive heiress of the crown.
Baldwin,w
hether willingly, through a mistrustful temper, or from the weakness of an
invalid, assented to their desires. He resumed the royal authority, declared
his nephew, Baldwin, Sibylla’s son by her first husband, his heir, caused the
five-year-old child to be crowned as his colleague, and directed the Patriarch
to dissolve the mother’s marriage with Guy. The ease tvith which such proposals
of divorce were entertained by Roman Catholics, notwithstanding the
indissolubility, in their Church, of marriage, as being a sacrament, may be
taken as a measure of the immorality of the Poulaitis, or Syro-Franks, amongst
whom the arehiepiscopal historian says, that hardly one chaste woman could be
found. Nor was the Patriarch Heraclms a man likely to work a reformation. He
was an adventurer from Auvergne, who had insinuated himself
first into
the favour of the King’s mother, through whom he got the bishopric of Cassarea,
and then so completely into the young King’s, that when he and the royal preceptor,
William, Archbishop of Tyre, were candidates for the patriarchate, to the
general amazement, Ilerachus carried the day. As Patriarch, he was now lhing in
such open adultery with the pretty wife of a grocer, that she went by the name
of the Patriarchess (Patriarchissa), and, as such, was her having given birth
to a son once publicly announced to him in the midst of his saccrdotal
functions.
Such a
Patriarch had no scruples touching the sanctity of wedlock, and a day was fixed
for legal proceedings. But Sibylla was faithful to the husband of her choice,
and fled with him to Ascalon, one of her dowry-towns, to avoid the compulsory
violation of her nuptial vow. Guy not appearing on the appointed day, his fiefs
were pronounced forfeited. Joppa was seized, and he was besieged In Ascalon.
But, whilst the siege was in progress, the Barons further required the
nomination of a Protector of the realm, the coronation of a child affording no
relief from the evils caused by the paralysing paroxysms of the King’s malady.
And now Baldwin, either conquering his long-nourished distrust of the Earl of
Tripoli, or dreading his enmity to a preferred rival, selected him for the ofrice.
The Earl, who knew himself an object of dislike to the Patriarch, to both
Grand-Masters, to Prince Renaud, and many others, refused to accept the post
unless invested with unusual powers, and fortified with unusual securities.
These were conceded, and he took the protectorate upon himself, the care of the
crowned heir’s person and education being simultaneously committed to the
child’s great uncle, the Seneschal. Scarcely were these arrangements completed,
when, in March 1185, Baldwin IV died; but the event being thus provided for,
the only consequent change was Earl Raymond’s being Regent for Baldwin V,
instead of Protector under Baldwin IV. Ilis unwanted powers and securities
remained as originally given.
The *irst and
almost the only business of Raymond’s unquestion« d regency was the relief of a
famine, under whichFalestine, from an extraordinarily continuous drought, and,
as some allege, from recent neglect of agriculture (116)
was then
suffering. To remedy tliis he purchased of Saladin, for G0,000 bezaunts, a
short truce, with free commercial intercourse. Egypt was untouched by either
noxious cause, and the Egyptians gladly sold the contents of their overflowing
granaries, together with their flocks and herds, for the high prices yet more
gladly paid by the starving Jerusalemites. By the time this relief was
effected, the little monarch, Baldwin V, died.
One of the
conditions, without which Earl Raymond had refused to undertake the
protectorate was, that in case of such death the question of the right of
succession—to modern apprehension no question at all—should be referred to the
Pope, the German Emperor, and the Kings of France and England, he retaining the
protectorate until their decision should be known. But Sibylla, the natural
heir of her brother in preference to her deceased baby son, was no party to
that compact; and neither she and her husband, nor Raymond’s adversaries,
designed to abide by it. Those adversaries were powerful and fiercely hostile,
the Grand-Master of the Templars, Gerardde Belfort, being personally so, upon a
quarrel of his youth. The Earl had prevented his marriage with a beautiful
heiress, a vassal of Tripoli. Belfort, upon his disappointment, became a
Templar, but never forgave the injury, and seems to have watched for an opportunity
to revenge himself. Few characters have been more contradictorily delineated
than Earl Raymond’s. He has been accused of ambition, of rapacity, of treason,
of having, in furtherance of some not very intelligible scheme of usurpation,
poisoned his royal ward, whose person was in the Seneschal’s custody, not his,
and whose life assured the supreme authority to him, as Regent, for many years.
But in those days a premature death could scarcely ever be believed natural,
and a similar accusation has been laid against the infant King’s step-father,
nay, even against his mother. By his friends, Raymond is, on the contrary,
represented as wise, disinterestedly patriotic, unambitious, and nearly a
pattern of perfection. An impartial inquirer of the present d£.y will perhaps
pronounce him able, ambitious, and tolerably honest, though not scrupulously
so; but arrogant, captious, and of ungovernable temper, offending all who had
to deal
VOL.
II. 10
with
him—Heraclius to such a degree that he also has been accused of poisoning the
royal child, merely to get rid of the Earl’s regency.
Such being
the state of parties, the Seneschal laid his plans for securing the throne to
his niece. He uuped the Regent into remaining at Tiberias, the property of his
Countess, till after the royal funeral; whilst he iijvited Sibylla, Guy, and
their friends, to Jerus&lem, to attend it. The obsequies were performed;
and then Sibylla, as lawful heiress, called upon the Patriarch to crown her. He
was willing, but the regalia were kept, like the produce of the property-tax,
under three different locks, the three keys of which were severally intrusted
to the Patriarch and the two Grand-M asters; of whom Desmuulins, then
Grand-Master of St. John, refused to concur in any breach of the compact with
the Earl of Tripoli. Negotiations upon the matter follow ed, and during the
delay thus occasioned the Regent summoned the Baronage and Hierarchy of the
kingdom to meet forthwith at Neapolis; whence those who attended sent to
Jerusalem a solemn protest against crowning Sibjlla. It acted as a spur to the
proceedings there. The key was coaxed or wrested from the conscientious
Desmoulins. The city gates were closed to prevent the possibility of
interruption from the Neapolis assembly, and all parties concerned repaired to
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There the receptacle was ceremoniously
opened, and two erow?ns drawn forth, which were deposited upon the
altar. With one of them the Patriarch crowned Sibylla; and then, saying: “Your
Grace is a woman, and the kingdom hasneed of a King;” presented to her
theother, which she instantly placed on the head of her kneeling husband.
Iloveden
gives a more dramatic account of the coronation, amusingly illustrative of
Sibylla’s conjugal fidelity, that must not be omi'ted, though it accords not
with the value believed to have been set by the Patriarch and the Templar upon
Guy’s persuadableness, calculated, they hoped, to leave all power substantially
in their hands. His story is that the Patriarch, and the two Grand-Masters, had
wrung from Sibylla her consent to a divorce, by pledging themselves to accept
as King w homsoever she should
afterwards
chuse as her husband; and that she outwitted them by thus chusing the divorced
Guy, to whom she now gave her hand for the second time, and with it the crown.
When tidings
of this decided step reached Neapolis, great was the indignation, and great the
confusion. Raymond asserted that it would be easy to dethrone the usurpers, as
he termed Sibylla and Guy; alleging that Sibylla, the child of a marriage
dissolved as illegal, was illegitimate, though her brother, the son of the same
marriage, and even her own child, had been acknowledged as legitimate heirs.
Upon this ground, he proposed to proclaim, in their stead, young Isabel and
Humphrey de Thoron. The idea was unanimously approved, and the next day
appointed for the proclamation. But Humphrey was not born for a ringleader of
rebellion; he took fright at the prospect, and, when the hour appointed for the
proclamation struck, the intended King was missing. He had made his escape in
the night, and hurried to Jerusalem, where he did homage to Guy. His absence
foiling the plan, Isabel was not proclaimed.
And now the
Barons, hopeless of success, gave way. In vain Raymond urged a reference to the
selected arbitrators, and even proposed to seek aid of Saladin. From this last
suggestion all revolted; and now leaving him, hastened to do homage to Guy;
all, except Baldwin of Ramla, and he permitted his son to accompany the rest.
But Guy refused to receive the son’s oath of allegiance without the father’s ;
and Baldwin, lest his fiefs should be considered as forfeited by the omission,
then attended, and took the oath; but took it in a form marking the temper in
which he did so. He said: “King Guy, I swear allegiance to you, as one who
desires no land of you;” and neither kissing the King’s hand nor doing homage,
bade his son do homage and receive investiture. He then withdrew to Antioch,
where Bohemund, glad to acquire so distinguished a vassal, granted him lands
more considerable than those he had resigned to his son.
The Earl of
Tripoli, though deserted, would not submit to his rival. But unable
single-handed to resist the whole kingdom, he, when threatened, as a rebel,
with a siege,
applied, as
he had previously proposed to his partisans, for aid to Saladin, -with whom the
truce, prolonged by Guy, still subsisted: and received a Saracen garrison into
Tiherias. The act naturally shocked his best friends, and lowered his
reputation.
The remainder
of this year, 1186, and the whole of 1187, were crowded with disasters to the
Syro-Franks; a few only need be particularised. The series began from another
breach of truce by Prince Renaud, to which he was, as usual, incited by his
rapacious temper, and which, ultimately, proved fatal to himself. The mother of
Saladin, travelling from one of her sod’s capitals to the other, and confiding
in the armistice, passed near Kerek; when Renaud fell by surprise upon her
escort, slaughtered nearly the whole, the aged princess escaping almost alone,
and seized her baggage. Before the outrage was publicly known, a caravan of
Damascene merchants, following the same route, was in like manner surprised,
plundered, and slaughtered or made prisoners. Saladin demanded restitution
which Chatillon refused. He offered to exchange for the. captives, thus
lawlessly seized, a band of pilgrims thrown by shipwreck upon the Egyptian
coast; and this exchange, the Robber Prince, who expected to wring a large
ransom from his prisoners, refused. The Sultan then appealed to the King to
punish, according to Christian law, these violations of public faith ; but
Renaud, having again wormed himself into royal favour, his influence over Guy
prevented the compliance due to this just requisition. And now Saladin solemnly
swore, that should the perfidious truce-breaker ever again fall into his
power, he should expiate these outrages with his life, taken by his, the
Sultan’s own hand. The armistice being ended by these lawless acts, Saladin
once more invaded Palestine.
The first
calamity consequent upon his idly provoked enmity is said to have been the
massacre of the shipwrecked pilgrims. The second befel the two Orders, and is
an adventure not easily intelligible to modern ideas. Saladin’s son Afdil, des
nng to effect a diversion in favour of his father’s warlike operations,
resolved to make a separate inroad into Palestine, and demanded of the ally who
had sought and obtained Moslem support, the Earl
of Tripoli* a
free passage through his and through his wife’s territories. It was an awkward
request; Raymond could not well refuse a free passage, or anything else, to an
ally whose troops garrisoned one of his chief towns; but he was unwilling to
betray his countrymen. To escape from the horns of the dilemma, he made it the
condition of his consent that the inroad should last only a day, and that,
content with ravaging and plundering the open country, the Mohammedans should
not attack walled town or castle. The condition was agreed to, whence it has
been inferred that the sole object of the Turkish Emirs was to indulge the
young prince in a frolic, which he took seriously. The Earl instantly made this
eccentric verbal agreement public; and the peasantry, with what property they
could remove, sought shelter behind walls. He likewise despatched a special
messenger to a party whom he knew to be upon their way, as mediators between
the King and himself, with a request that, suspending their journey, they would
halt wherever they happened to be, until this Moslem inroad should be over. The
party in question consisted of the Grand-Master of the Templars, the Archbishop
of Tyre, the Prince of Sidon, Sibylla’s step-father, and Balian de Ibelin,
second husband of her step-mother, Queen Maria, Amalric’s Greek widow The last
three complied; but the Templar—strange to select as a mediator Raymond’s
personal enemy!—would not recognise any such anomalous private convention as
restrictive of the two Orders’ vowed hostility to the Mohammedans. He called
upon the neighbouring Hospitalers for a reinforcement, and, at the head of 150
knights, and 500 foot, set forward to surprise, as he hoped, the Saracens,
returning in careless confidence with their booty. But Chatillon had taught the
lesson of distrust, and i-ideed Afdal or his Lieutenants appear to have heard
of the Grand-Master’s disclaimer of the Earl’s arrangement, inasmuch as they
had pro\ided against its violation. The Templar and his ,>&rty, as they
had proposed, attacked the booty-laden Saracens on their homeward way, who,
as surprised, retreated before them. But they thus drew the pursuers into an
ambuscade prepared for them, where they were so completely cut to pieces that
only Belfort
himself and three knights, saved by the extraordinary fleetness of their
horses, survived.
The next
calamity w as far more serious in character and disastrous n result. Saladin
had advanced, ravaging the country, as far as Tiberias; whence the Saracen
garrison had been dismissed, upon the reconciliation which the above-mentioned
mission, when Afdal’s singular incursion was over, had happily effected between
the Earl and the King. To this city, the capital of the Countess of Tripoli’s
domains, the Sultan laid siege, and Guy led as much of the army which he was
assembling for the defence of the kingdom, as was then ready, reinforced by a
band of crusaders under the Marquess of Montferrat, to its relief. He encamped
for the night about a day’s inarch from Tiberias, and a Council ol War M as
held to discuss the operations of the morrow. The circumstances were so far
changed, that the town, insufficiently garrisoned, had surrendered, and the
Countess with her four sons, the offspring of a first marriage, hud taken
refuge in the castle, which resolutely held out. Earl Raymond strongly
dissuaded any further advance, on account of the great deficiency of water in
the intervening district, and, to the heavy-armed Frank cavalry, the extreme
difficulty of the road, mountainous, precipitous, and abounding in defiles and
gorges, amidst which the light Saracen and Turkirsh cavalry would, as in the
Second Crusade, destroy the exhausted Christians without coming within reach of
their weapons. lie urged that, under the circumstances, whichever, of Guy or
Saladin, were the assailant, must needs be defeated; wherefore it was desirable
to remain where they w ere, abundantly supplied with water and forage, and so
invite the attack; whilst their mere proximity would prevent the enemy’s
attempting to storm the castle of Tiberias; which, should it be compelled to
capituiate, would be easily recovered when the main force of the enemy should
be gone, and the prisoners, his wife and her children included, yet more easily
ransomed. This opinion was violently opposed, but gained weighi from its
evident disinterestedness, and finally prevailed, Orders were issued
accordingly, and the Council broke up. But in the nijjht, the Grand-Master of
the Templars, either
burning to
revenge his late defeat, or merely wishing to thwart the man he hated, returned
singly to the charge, and persuaded Guy, always too amenable to persuasion,
that the Earl, in the rankling of old enmity, envying him the glory of a
victory over Saladin, had misled him ; and further, that should the castle of
Tiberias fall whilst he looked idly on, he would be for ever dishonoured. He
triumphed; (U7) and at dawn the army marched in search of the enemy,
Raymond leading the van, because upon his own territories.
The Earl’s
predictions were fully and speedily verified. About half way, the Christians,
worn out with many hours of severe toil amidst the delaying difficulties above
mentioned, in the heat of July in Syria, and faint from burning thirst,
encountered the Moslem army, that, upon their light, active horses, had performed
their part of the distance too quickly and too easily for such sufferings. The
Sultan did not attack Guy, but he prevented his advance, otherwise than by
fighting his way through the hostile ranks, to which the Syro-Franks were at
the moment unequal. The King therefore encamped for the night in a locality
where water was unattainable.
In the
morning of the 5th of July, Guy offered battle ; but Saladin, aware that every
additional hour of heat and thirst must yet more disable the Christians, fell
back before him, drawing him onward and harassing his march. At length the
Christians reached the hill of Hittin, whence they beheld beyond the enemy, the
fair lake for whose waters they were languishing; and Saladin increased their
sufferings, by setting the bushes and dry grass to windward of them on fire.
Here, before a blow had been struck, a division of infantry unable to endure
this additional evil, unable it should seem, from fatigue and exhaustion, to
use their arms in combat or their legs in flight, tluiig their weapons away and
surrendered at discretion.
The Templars
and Hospitalers fought gallantly, as usual, whenever opportunity offered,
daring this disastrous advance. But their horses were jaded, even their own
powers were beginning to fail: and they appear to have been in a manner
surrounded, at some distance from the rest of the troops, when Saladin. judged
it time to press upon
the main body
of the Christians. Guy, now driven to extremity, ordered the van to charge,
and the Ear] of Tripoli galloped forward at its head. The hostile ranks opened
before him; his enemies say by preconcert, but it is more likely from Saladin’s
foreseeing the result of such a measure. This result was, that the Earl passed
right through the Moslem host, which, elos ;:g beh'nu him, cut him off from the
Christian army, unless by as boldly and hazardously charging back again. To
such self-sacrificing, patriotic heroism, Raymond did not, apparently, feel any
impulse. He did not assail the enemy in the rear, or make any effort to rejoin
his comrades; but, as though he had done all that was incumbent upon him, fled
precipitately, with his whole division, and was not pursued.
His desertion
and seeming treachery("8) appear to have paralysed the King,
the bravest leaders, and the whole army. Resistance was presently at an end;
Guy, and all who were not cut down upon the field, wTere made prisoners,
and the True Cross—which the Patriarch had not, as was his duty, brought in
person, but sent by two bishops, to exalt the courage of the troops—was lost.
Whether it formed part of Saladin’s booty, or, as some old writers say, was
buried for security, and the spot forgotten, is another moot question, but lost
it was.^1") i’his fatal defeat is called by Christian writers
the battle of Tiberias; by Moslem, the battle of Ilittin.
Saladin’s
treatment of the captives .s characteristic. He received the leaders in his
tent with chivalrous courtesy, Prince Renaud alone excepted, upon whom he
frowned most ominously. Observing Guy to look faint and overpowered, he ordered
him a cup of cool sherbet. The King drank and handed the cup to his favourite
Renaud; when Saladin hurriedly called to the interpreter: “ Say to the King,
Thou givest it, not I—for by Arab law the life of a prisoner, who had received
meat or dunk from his captor’s hand, was sacred; and he had swrorn
to take ChutiLon’s. But, in Saladin’s eyes, a conversion to Islam outweighed
even the obligation of keeping an oath, and he offered his destined victim his
life, if he would adopt the Moslem faith. In those days real piety wa» not
incompatible, in seems, v* ith profligacy and the mean
ness of
intrigue; hence, as Prince Renaud was a brave man,
“ nothing in his life
Became him
like the leaving it.”
He refused to
apostatise, and was taken out of the tent; at the entrance of which, Saladin,
in fulfilment of his oath, with his own sabre, either struck off his head, or
at least dealt him the first blow, as the signal for putting him to death. Upon
returning i ito the tent the Sultan found his prisoners in some dismay, which
he relieved by explaining the oath he had sworn in regard to Chatillon. They
were then led away and kept in honourable captivity. From this courteous
treatment the Knights of the two Orders were however excepted. To them the same
choice as to Chatillon was offered, and it hardly need be added, they all chose
martyrdom: which Molsem devotees were permitted, as a religious act, to bestow
upon them with their own hands. Yet all cannot have been slaughtered, since the
Grand-Master of the Templars, as will be seen, survived to recover his liberty,
either by ransom, or with the King. Contemporary chroniclers relate that
laymen, ambitious of sharing this glorious fate, falsely declared themselves
Templars and Hospitalers; and also, that for three nights, lights as from
Heaven, shone over the unburied martyrs.C180) The Grand-Master of
St. John of Jerusalem had been carried wounded from the field by some of his
knights, and died free.
This defeat
was decisive, and Palestine rapidly overrun. The castle of Tiberias
surrendered, when Saladin dismissed the Countess of Tripoli and her family with
a safe conduct to join her Lord, who had taken refuge at Tyre. This was
probably esteemed proof of the Earl’s previous understanding with the
conqueror; and Raymond’s death, which soon afterwards occurred, was, by his
contemporaries, decidedly ascribed to remorse for his treacherous desertion of
countrymen and co-religionists. He left no children, and was succeeded by his
cou-dn Bohernund, a son of the Prince of Antioch, and one of the"
companions of hi* flight from the fatal field of ilittin. A strangely anomalous
succession, for, although Bohemund and Raymond were cousins, it was through
their descent from Melisenda’s two
sinters ; and
the Normans of Antioch, therefore, who were not of the blood of the Toulousan
Earls of Tripoli, could have no shadow of right to inherit their country,
Saladin’s
conquest was at once all but complete. Forty towns are said to have opened
their gates as soon as summoned, and were well treated: whilst the inhabitants
of those taken after resistance •nere massacred. Tyre, into which the Prince of
Sidon—who was stopped on his way to join the army with his vassals by the
tidings of ts destruction—had thrown himself, made a show of resistance ; and
Saladin, who would not just then spare time to besiege it, turned away, took
possession of Sidon and Berytus as he marched southward, and in August laid
siege to Ascalon, which, by its situation, was to him more important. This
strong city defended itself well; and Saladin, impatient of delay, sent for
Guy, to whom he offered his liberty, as the price of Ascalon. Guy desired a
conference with the commanders, when he forbade them to surrender for his sake,
if they could hold out long enough to allow a chance of relief from Europe; but
if they judged this hopeless, he bade them capitulate whilst they could make
their own terms. Ascalon capitulated according ;, ; the conditions being, the
release of the King, of the Grand-Master of the Templars, and of twelve or
fifteen other persons to be named by the King; for such of the inhabitants as
chose to remove, time to sell their property; for such as chose to remain,
security of life, limb, and purse. But the liberation of the captives was
postponed till March 1188; Saladin fearing, it is supposed, that the presence
of Guy and the Grand-Master in Jerusalem, might thwart his desire of obtaining
the Holy City without damaging it by a siege.
The
fulfilment of this hope was now the Sultan’s chief concern. From his camp
before Ascalon he had sent most liberal offers to Jerusalem, in case the Holy
City would agree to surrender, if not relieved from Europe by Whitsuntide,
1188;—the Moslem wouldhardlyso designate the time; but the old Chroniclers
unhesitatingly put their •own words and thoughts into the mouths of those to
whom they were most alien. The citizens proudly rejected the proposal,
announcing their resolution to defend the Holy
City to the
last drop of their blood. When this bold answer was returned, Jerusalem
contained only two knights. Soon afterwards, Balian of Ibelin, who had purchased
his release by the surrender of his castle of Ibelin and an oath never more to
bear arms against the Moslem, came thither, by Saladin’s permission, to fetch
away his wife, the Queen-dowager Maria, and their family. He Mas instantly
seized by the citizens to conduct their defence, and the Patriarch gave him a
dispensation from his oath. He despatched messengers to the Sultan to explain
the coercion under which he was about to break his plighted word; and Saladin,
generously admitting the excuse, caused the Queen-dowager and her children to
be safely escorted, as he desired, to Tripoli.
Balian
knighted the sons of the principal citizens, and in high spirits all prepared
for their defence. This warlike temper lasted even after Saladin had, upon the
20th of September, encamped before the walls; for he respected a city, almost
as sacred in Moslem as in Christian eyes, and still endeavoured to obtain possession
by negotiation. His efforts to avert violence and bloodshed from Jerusalem,
whilst securing it to himself, and the heroic determination of the citizens,
continued through a week; at the end of which the Sultan, his offers being
still perseveringly rejected, began hostile operations. A very short trial of
the evils of a siege—it has been said, a single day—sufficed to damp, even to
extinguish the heroism of the tyro garrison ; and Balian was now compelled to
visit Saladin’s camp in order to obtain a capitulation. The only real
difficulty that appears to have delayed the negotiation, related to the rate at
which men, women, and children might, respectively, be ransomed. This, after
much discussion, being finally settled at 10 gold bezaunts for each man, 5 for
each woman, and 1 for each child, the keys of Jerusalem were, upon the 2d of
October, 1187, delivered to Saladin.
The affluent
speedily ransomed themselves, and the Patriarch then called upon them to assist
in rescuing the destitute from slavery. They did so, but scantily; and
Jerusalem being crowded with indigent peasants who had flocked thither for
protection, these contributions, and
those of the
Hospitalers, said to have been munificent, proved wofully inadequate. He next
called upon the Templars to dedicate to this purpose the remainder of Henry II
of England’s fine for the death of Thomas a Becket, which, allotted by the Pope
to the defence of the Holy Land, had been placed in their custody, and in great
part expended upon the equipment of the army, defeated at Tiberias. All was
insufficient; and tens of thousands still groaned over their impending slavery,
when Malek el Adel begged a thousand of his brother, received the gift, and
instantly enfranchised his lot of slaves. His example was followed by a few
Emirs. Then Saladin made the Patriarch and Balian a present of 700 a-piece;
and, saying he must emulate the generosity of all around him, ordered that
through one specified gate, for one whole day, all persons who had not the
amount of their ransom upon them, should pass gratuitously. Eleven, if not
fifteen thousand still remained, and for these Saladin refused every petition;
they were all, without exception, sold into slavery.
But. for the
wives and children of those who had lost life or liberty at Hittin, he
expressed much commiseration, made handsome presents to the widows and orphans,
and restored many surviving husbands and fathers to their families. He had an
interview with Sibylla, who appears to have been present during the previous
negotiation, siege, and capitulation, but no more to have interfered with
anything, than might a Georgian slave. He was very gracious to her, and allowed
her to visit, or to joifc, Guy in his captivity.
So strict was
Saladin’s discipline, that during the whole transduction not a complaint of
violence or ill usage was heard. Upon taking possession, he sent to Damascus
for several camel-loads of rose-water, wherewith to purify the churches, prior
to their re-eonvei’sion into mosques; and a pulpit, carved by Noureddin’s own
hands, he placed in the celebrated Mosque of Omar, when re-consecrated to
Islam.
SllEDERIC
I.
Third
Crusade—Movements in Europe—Frederic's preparations in Germany—In the Countries
to he traversed—State of the Eastern Empire—Saladin’spreparations—The Emperor's
march—Difficulties in the Eastern Empire—Frederic's progress—His success—His
death. [1387—1190.
It
has been seen that however remiss in their own preparations against the
impending danger the Syro-Franks had been, they had not neglected the easier
resource of seeking aid from Europe. They had so applied as far back as the
pontificate of Alexander III, and obtained his promise to endeavour, with a
view to the organization of a grand Crusade, to reconcile Henry II of England
and Philip II of France (surnamed Augustus, because born in August), who had
then just succeeded to his father, Lewis VII. Alexander had accordingly
addressed letters to the different sovereigns of Europe, earnestly exhorting
them to postpone all conflicting interests to the great cause of Christendom:
but he had effected nothing towards this end. When the danger became more
urgent, the Patriarch and the Archbishop of Tyre had revisited Europe upon the
same errand. Their representation wrung from the Kings of France and England
promises to undertake" a crusade, as soon as the affairs of their realms
and some settlement of their own dissentions should make it feasible. Contented
with these assurances,andwithhavinginduced divers knights and nobles to make
crusading pilgrimages, Heraclius returned to Jerusalem, the Archbishop
remaining behind, to urge forward more potent succours. But, ever since the
death of Ilenry the Younger, the two Kings of France and England had been
trying to overreach each other about
his widow’s
portion, le Vexin, and the anxious prelate’s eloquence was of no avad.
The tidings
of the utterly destructive battle of Tiberias, followed by those of its yet
more grievous, inevitable conse ■ quence, that the birth-place of
Christianity, the scene of the Passion of the Redeemer of mankind, was again in
paynirn hands, gave weight to his words. This calamity fell, like a
thunderbolt, upon Western Europe, rekindling extinct enthusiasm, and striking
down one of the heads of Christendom. Urban III is believed to have actually
died of grief and mortification, that his pont.ficate should be branded with
such misfortune, such dishonour. Feelings envenomed, perhaps, by the consciousness
that he himself, when his every thought should have been devoted to the preservation
of the Holy Land, had instead been excommunicating a Christian sovereign; and,
in order to hurl this spiritual thunderbolt, occupied in contriving his own
escape from Verona, where the act was prohibited, to Ferrara, where he could
anathematize at his pleasure. Urban expired the 17th of November, 1187. His
successor, Gregory VIII, though he did but pass over the stage, dying after a
pontificate of two months, addressed exhortations to all the Princes of Europe
(o join in a crusade; and Clement III, who was elected upon his decease,
laboured assiduously to reconcile enemies, and compromise disputes; thus to
remove all impediments to the hallowed enterprise, whilst he promised every
description of spiritual immunity and temporal protection to crusaders. Wives,
brides, mothers, stimulated their respective husbands, lovers, and sons, to set
forth for the Holy Land; only regretting that their sex precluded them from
sharing in such pious toils and dangers,—and in many cases it was not suffered
to do so. Templars and Hospitalers, who were enjoying a k id of furlough upon
the European domains of their Orders, flew to their proper post in Palestine.
The sovereigns of France and England, at the voice of the Archbishop of Tyre,
apparently forgot their selfish quarrels, and in January, 1188, met under the
frontier elm, beneath whose shade the Kings of France and the Dukes of Normandy
habitually treated: and there making peace, received
the Cross
from the universally revered Syro-Frank prelate. The Earl of Flanders followed
their example, as did many of the nobles present. The heir-apparent of England,
the lion-hearted Richard, had preceded them in assuming the symbol of a Holy
War. The West seemed again about to hurl itself upon the East.
But the word
peace had not made all smooth between France and England; Richard was entangled
in feuds of his ovi n as well as in his father’s quarrels; and much remained
to be arranged ere any of the European monarchs could move. Italy took the
lead, and William II of Sicily was the first in the field. Suspending, in what
was felt to be the cause of Christendom, not only Sicilian resentment for the
spoliation and dishonour of his great-grandmother, but his endeavours to profit
by the disorders weakening the Eastern Empire since Manuel’s death, he equipped
and despatched a fleet to the assistance of the seaport towns of Palestine.
Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, did the same, impelled as much by the importance of
the Syro-Frank states to their commerce, as by religious feelings. These first
succours were not very considerable, but the circumstances under which they
arrived rendered them invaluable. Of this in due time; our present business
being with Europe; of which some parts were unavailable to the common cause.
Spain, Portugal, and Scandinavia, occupied, as usual, with internal wars, had
no leisure to concern themselves with the fate of the kingdom of Jerusalem.
The
Potentate, upon whom all eyes were bent, was the Emperor; and he needed not the
eloquence of the Archbishop of Tyre to excite his sympathy. All recollection
of dissatisfaction with the Syro-Franks faded before the idea of the cradle of
his Faith in the hands of misbelievers. He thought but of this desecration;
and, at the Easter Diet of 1188, convened to meet at Mainz, laying the condition
of the Holy Land before the assembled Estates of the Empire, he announced the
professed intentions of the Kings of France and England, and put the question:
“Whether he and they should not also march to the defence of Palestine?” An
unanimous assent answered him. Again he asked : “Did the condition of the
Empire allow of his immediately heading ii Crusade, or must the
recovery of
the Holy Places be deferred to a later, more convenient period?” The zeal of
the Princes was fervid, and they exclaimed, that the enterprise must not be
delayed one unnecessary moment, The Emperor received the Cross from the hands
of Cardinal Albano and the Bishop of Wurzburg; his second son, Frederic Duke of
Swabia, did the same, and was followed by the Dukes of Bohemia —the royal title
seems not to have been as yet necessarily hereditary—of Ivleran and of Styria,
the Landgrave of Thuringia, the Archbishop of Treves, the Margrave of Baden—a
branch of the Z'iringen family, that had transferred the title of Margrave
from the old margraviate of Verona, to the internal Swabian province of
Baden—with many bishops, earls, and lesser nobles, all, as nearly as might be,
simultaneously pledging themselves to redeem the birthplace of Christianity
from desecration.
But the
Emperor hadjio more intention than the Kings, of proceeding rashly; nor would
he leave his dominions exposed to any disorders or dangers, such as might embarrass
his youthful substitute and vicegerent, if in his power it were to avert them.
lie devoted the remainder of the year 1188 to his preparations. He opened
various negotiations with the Kings of France and England touching the conduct
of the Crusade; with the monarchs whose dominions were to be traversed, as
Hungary, Servia, the Greek Empire, and even the Seljuk empire of Iconium,
touching the condiuons of a. free passage; and, whilst these arrangements wTere
in progress, he turned his thoughts to the measures best adapted to secure the
tranquillity of Germany.
To this end,
he again made a sweeping destruction of the strongholds of robber-knights; of
whom two or more, with their far >ilies, now occasionally occupied one advantageously
situated castle.(121) He adjusted, by influence or by force,
important feuds, as between the Earls of Hainault and Namur, between the Earl
of Gueldres and his old antagonist the Bishop of Utrecht, together with others
between parties of less consequence, but still sufficient to enkhidle civil war
in the absence of the controlling power. One domestic feud—that between the
Margrave of Misnia and his eldest son, caused by an attempt on the part of the
father to supersede bis eldest ii favour of his second
son—he could
in nowise appease. This quarrel, however, as purely domestic, not being likely
to spread beyond the margraviate, he held the less material. Further to guard
his son’s administration against the troubles always, the anarchy often,
engendered by private feuds, the Emperor, in a Diet held at Nuremberg in
November, procured the enactment of the most stringent laws against any armed
assertion of individual rights, or revenge of individual wrongs during the
Crusade:—a potent corroboration of, as well as a corollary from, those equally
stringent, by which the Pope had prohibited war among Christians for the next seven
years ! But it was from two princes dissatisfied, though not then insurgent,
whose power defied, as their arrogance disdained, legal restraint, that
Frederic chiefly apprehended disturbance to his son’s vicegerency. These were
the Archbishop of Cologne and the Duke of Brunswick. With the first of these he
hoped easily to effect a reconciliation, since a Churchman could not decently
proclaim himself the enemy of a Crusader, even setting aside the certainty that
by so doing he would incur papal censure. The prelate facilitated matters by
throwing the whole blame of the plunder of the Augsburg merchants upon the
citizens of Cologne, who were therefore condemned to pay a fine and demolish
part of their walls. But, as the reconciliation with the Archbishop, and, on
the citizens’ part, the expression of obedience, were his chief objects, they
were presently allowed to restore their fortifications, and all was well in
that quarter; Archbishop Philip, professing himself the faithfully devoted
vassal of the Emperor, ready and eager in every way to assist the young King.
Ilenry the
Lion, reduced as he was, was still formidable, and, as an enemy, dangerous. He
had now, since his return from exile, resided three years in Germany as Duke of
Brunswick; apparently inactive, but believed to be ambitious as ever, and
suspected of secretly fomenting misunderstandings, calculated to embroil the
Emperor with the Pope and the King of Denmark; whilst pretty well known rather
to seek than avoid dissentions with the prince he could not but hate, the new
Duke of Saxony. Frederic felt that he dared not trust his angry kinsman in Digitized
by Microsoft®
Germany
during his own absence; and resolved to obtain, if possible, his companionship
to Palestine, where his leomne and even his vulpine qualities would be
invaluable. He, therefore, with the full concurrence of the Diet, made the
following proposals to IIenry.(122) He in the tirst place invited
him to share in the Crusade, entirely at the imperial expense; and to receive,
at their return, remuneration for his assistance, in fiefs.(l23) In
case he should reject this invitation, two alternatives were submitted to his
choice; the one, to relieve the fears he inspired, by rendering himself less
formidable; viz., by resigning some portion of his restored possessions; the
other, to pledge himself to avoid the Empire, vtith his sons, for the space of
three years,—the computed duration, either of the Emperor’s absence, or of the
young King’s inexperience. The haughty, though sunken, Lion, did not chuse to
join the Crusade in a subordinate capacity; further to reduce his already so
greatly reduced dominions was out of the question; and therefore—knowing
himsell iinable to cope with the Emperor and Empire united—he took the prescribed
oath.
The
misunderstandings with Denmark, to which allusion has been made, require a
word or two: as they must assuredly have produced a war, had not Frederic’s
thoughts been devoted to the recovery of the Iloly Sepulchre, in preference to
every other object, except the security of hi’* son. Canute YI had
pertinaciously evaded, if he had not positively refused, to do homage. He
had—whilst the Emperor was last n Italy, engrossed with his son’s
marriage—intrigued amongst, and attacked, the Slavonians subject to the Empire;
he had attacked Bogislaf of Pomerania, 'n retaliation of his before-mentioned
attempts upon Ei gen, and made him vassal to the Prince of Riigen, who was
himself the vassal of Denmark. He had taken advantage of a civil war between
the brother Princes of the Obodrites, to overthrow both; and to divide their
dominions between his own vassals, Jaromir of Riigen and Bogislaf of Pomerania;
and he thereupon assumed the title of King of the Danes and Slavonians. In
addition to these offences, he shocked contemporary feelings, and awoke
mistrust of ulterior designs, by Digitized by Microsoft®
refusing to
join in the Crusade. That Frederic, through zeal for the recovery of Jerusalem,
forbore to recover provinces thus stolen or rent from his empire, was surely
the strongest proof of sincere devotion—according to the devotion of the age
—that man could give. It was a sacrifice of all the passions, all the
sentiments of his soul. But he felt, that any delay of the Crusade would be the
final abandonment of the Holy Places to the Moslem, and postponed the
chastisement of the refractory vassal, and the enforcement of his own rights,
till his return from Palestine. For the moment, he merely demanded the
remainder of the portion of his son’s betrothed Danish bride, and, upon
Canute’s refusing it, sent her home unwedded. His nephew, Lewis Landgrave of
Thuringia, less warrant- ably, sent home the Danish King’s mother, whom, as
Waldemar’s widow, he had married. All further discussion of political
questions, and even of these irritating measures of retaliation, was deferred
until the completion of the Crusade should again permit Christians to turn
their arms against each other.
The Emperor,
having, with extraordinary energy, thus, as far as might be, regulated the chaos
of his times and country, deemed his work at home done, and was nearly ready to
set forward, when an appeal for armed intervention was made to him by a
Russian potentate. Wladimir, Prince of Halitsch, one of the chief
principalities of southern Russia, having been dethroned by his subjects for
tyranny, had fled to Hungary; where Bela III— Geysa’s second son, who had just
then succeeded to his elder brother Stephen—received him kindly, promising to
conquer Halitsch for him. Conquer Halitsch he did; but, in lieu of restoring it
to the expelled Prince, established hi* own second son, Andreas, there,
throwing Wladimir and his family into prison. Thence Wladimir effected his
escape, and, early in 1189, presented himself, as a despoiled and suppliant
Prince, before the Emperor. The Halitsch rebellion, however provoked, and
Bela’s treachery, were alike distasteful to Frederic; who having, moreover, conceived
a high opinion of the Grand-Prince Wsewolod III, Wladimir’s maternal uncle,
would willingly have served his nephew. Nevertheless, he would neither
interrupt his
hallowed
enterprise nor embarrass it by a dispute with Bela, whose dominions he had to
cross. Thus circumstanced, he merely gave the fugitive a letter of recom*
mendation to Kasimir of Poland, an able prince, who, as supreme Duke, was
endeavouring to improve the legislation of his country. And he judged that he
hud thus efficiently assisted Wladimir, since Kasimir, even if he dared slight
the recommendation of his absent liege Lord, must needs grudge the King of
Hungary possession of llalitsch.
It had been
arranged that this most numerous Crusade should, for convenience, begin by
dividing its forces; that the different bodies should not, as upon the last
occasions, tread in each other’s steps, but, as the first had done, take
different routes to their common goal. 1 he French and English were to reach
the Holy Land by sea, the Germans, as locally nearest, to follow the accustomed
land road. The Emperor had, as has been seen, long -since taken all preliminary
measures for preventing obstructions to his progress by this route, and
consequent delay. From the King of Hungary, to whom he had sent the Archbishop
of Maiii!! to negotiate his passage, and from the Princes of Servia, who were
now hardly nominal subjects of Constantinople, he had received assurances that
the roads should be freely open to his troops, and the markets upon his line of
march well supplied with the produce of the country, at prices prefixed.
The
Embassador, despatched to Constantinople, found the Eastern Empire in a
condition very different, from that 1 u which Frederic had last seen it.
Andronicus had not long felt himself securely fixed in his position as Regent
when he chose—whether his Antioohtean wife were living or dead is not mentioned—to
marry the French Princess Agnes, a daughter of Lewis VII, who had been sent to
Constantinople as the bride of the juvenile Emperor, Alexius II; and he
proposed to his Imperial ward an illegitimate daughter of his own, as the
substitute for the Princess. Alexius refused to make the exchange, and did not
long survive the refusal. Andronicus now usurped the throne, and led a life of
licentious revelry with his new wife, the young Empress, and his Queen-dowager
paramour, Theodora, whose love appears to have been Digitized by Microsoft®
proof against
his infidelity to herself and his crimes. It is said, that when once Emperor,
Andronicus would fain have been a good ruler. It is difficult to give such a
man credit even for the wish; but, if he did entertain it, he found—as have
less profligate usurpers—the mistrust inherent in usurpation an insuperable
obstacle to the fulfilment, and became a sanguinary tyrant. Amongst other
causeless atrocities, he massacred all the Franks resident at Constantinople,
and made no exertions to protect his own people from reprisals; when William II
sent a fleet under his Grand-Admiral, Margaritone, and his illegitimate
cousin, Tancred Conte di Lecce, to revenge such of the victims as had been
Sicilians or Apulians, visiting the monarch’s crime—as such can alone be, for
the most part, visited—upon his unoffending subjects. (m) Bulgaria,
Moldavia, Wallachia, Servia, boldly proclaimed their independence : and
Andronicus could reduce none of them to obedience. Even at Constantinople his
satellites could not always murder those who fell under his suspicion : one
designated victim managing to avoid and revenge the fate designed him. This w
as Isaac Angelus, he w ho had led Andronicus, at his earnest prayer, by a chain
to Manuel’s feet. He escaped from his intended assassins into a church, excited
a rebellion, dethroned Andronicus, put him to death whilst attempting to fly to
Russia, and usurped the throne in his turn. It was with Isaac that Frederic had
to treat, and he promised everything that could be desired; but the
Constantinopolitan court was then sunk to nearly its lowest depth of weakness
and degradation. Isaac was at the same time negotiating with Saladin : in
return for w hose promise to make over to the Patriarch of Constantinople all
the Latin churches in Syria, lie permitted the Mohammedans, for the first time,
to build a mosque in Constantinople :—a permission in itself sufficient, during
the reign of ignorant fanaticism, to fill western Europe with distrust—and he
is believed to have justified the apprehensions awakened by promising as much
as possible to delay the Crusaders.
With the
Sultan of Iconium, Frederic had previously had intercourse of a somewhat
peculiar character. The Seljuk monarch had asked a daughter of the Emperor’s in
marriage, and
the Christian father agreed to give her, provided the Moslem suitor first
received baptism. To this no objection appears to have been made by the Sultan,
and, if the matrimonial treaty failed, it was only by the death of the bride
prior to its conclusion. From his intended, and he might hope, half-converted,
son-in-law, Frederic received assurances of a free passage, w ith abundant
supplies, and also of the, Sultan’s gratification in the prospect of making his
acquaintance.
To Saladin
likewise Frederic had sent an embassy; but this one bore a regular declaration
of war, unless the Sultan of Egypt made satisfaction for the invasion of
Palestine and the consequent slaughter of Christians,besides restoring the True
Cross and all conquests from the Syro- Franks. Saladin of course rejected such
terms ; pointing out to the embassador that in Asia the Turks were far more
numerous than the Franks, and not like them severed by long tracts of sea and
land from their resources. Nevertheless, to spare bloodshed, he offered, upon
the surrender of Antioch, Tripoli and Tyre, not onlj to restore the True
Cross, protect all existing Christian churches and cloisters, release his
Christian prisoners, and pledge himself to respect the places still held by
the Syro- Franks; but likewise to ensure constant safe access of pilgrims to
the Holy Sepulchre, where a certain number of priests should be permitted to
officiate. (125) These offers were, equally of course, rejected.
Saladin had
not expected that they would be accepted. Hence his treaty with Isaac Angelus;
and hence he now opened negotiations with the Seljuks of Ieonium, whose
jealousy of his own power he well knew, and in anticipation of an European
Crusade, felt to be fraught with danger.
In the
beginning of May, 1189, the main body of German crusaders met the Emperor at
Ratisbon. Frederic was now sixty-eight years of age, grey haired, and benignant
as venerable in aspect; whilst his sunburnt, ruddy cheek and upright carriage
showed he had as yet lost little of manhood’s vigour. His appearance tilled the
crusaders with reverential confidence in his energy and experience, whic h
all ins measures confirmed. To guard against
the useless,
and worse, the noxious crowd of followers who loved to append themselves to a
crusade, the Emperor had ordered that no person of bad character, none who did
not understand the use of arms, and none who had not wherewithal to defray his
expenses for two years, should be permitted to join his ranks. The Pope feared
such precautions, judicious as he allowed them to be, might too much restrict
the numbers enrolled for the deliverance of Jerusalem, and took measures for
the prevention of the apprehended evil. To this end, he required a general
contribution of ten per cent, upon their property, from all those who staid at
home, without exemption for noble or ecclesiastic—a tax known as Saladin’s
tithe—and he sanctioned, it is said, for the first time the sale of
indulgences; thus to provide a fund for equipping and supplying the wants of
indigent, but otherwise unexceptionable crusaders. The Pope’s object was, in
Germany at least, fully attained : for, at llatisbon, besides 20,000 mounted
and well appointed knights, appeared citizens, ecclesiastics, free peasants,
villeins, in short equestrians and pedestrians of all descriptions, in
countless throngs, of course to be winnowed according to the prohibitory
edicts. Nor were these all, for many individuals, of the knights the larger
portion, delayed joining till the latest moment, and many chose to take
separate roads. Of these last, a large body of Netherlanders and Rhine-landers
(Cologne alone despatched 1300) went by sea; and, putting into the Tagus for
refreshment, were induced there to remain, performing their crusade in Europe.
Some bands attempted to pass through Italy, and embark for a southern port; but
these, at the desire of Frederic, wrho liked not such stragglers,
were turned back by William II from his frontiers.
From
Ratisbon the Emperor and his army, part by land, and part by water, descended
the Danube to Vienna, where they where joined by the laggards. Here again he
puritied his army, dismissing from oOO to 1500—as differently estimated by
different writers—camp followers, Including thieves and courtesans. He
published a code of discipline to be strictly observed: and he renewed his
interdict against taking hawks or hounds upon the pious expedition, which was
not to be made a party of > Digitized
by Microsoft®
pleasure.
From Vienna, the march fairly began. The Emperor, bidding, as he hoped, a
temporary milieu to the Duke of Austria, who proposed shortly to rejoin him in
Palestine,—going thither by sea—embarked upon the Danube, along the banks of
which the troops marched.
At a small
town upon the river a tumult arose, in consequence of the municipal
authorities demanding the customary tolls, which the Crusaders, deeming
themselves exempt in virtue of the sacred character of their expedition—pilgrims
were usually thus exempt—refused to pay. During the riot, the town was,
purposely or casually, burnt. The Emperor, as a preventive of such disorders
for the future, sharpened his code of military discipline, republished it, and
required from every Crusader an oath to obey its laws. And :>o strict was he
in informing the obedience he required, that he soon afterwards executed two
Alsatian noblemen for transgressing these crusade- laws.
At Gran, the
Emperor was met by the King and Queen of Hungary, who entertained him with
hunting parties and banquets, whilst bis troops were tediously crossing the
Drave in ferry boats. The alliance, was strengthened by the betrothal of the
Duke of Swabia, now freed from his Danish ties, to a daughter of Bela’s. It is
said that Bela’s Queen, the French Princess Marguerite, requested Frederic to
solicit of her consort the release of his younger brother, Geysa; who—preferred
to him by the Hungarians because educated amongst themselves, wh'lst Bela, as a
hostage, had grown to manhood at Constantinople—had t~:ed to wrest
the crown from him, and since lain fifteen years :n prison. The
Emperor did solicit his release, which Bela not only granted, but gave Geysa
the command of the very respectable body of Hungarians who heie joined the
army. (1!S) Upon leaving, the Danube to join his troops beyond the
Drave, Frederic presented the vessels that had brought him down the former
river to his courteous host. At the passage of the Drave, the crusading army
was counted, and found to amount to jO/JOO knights and 100,000 of inferior
station.
This mighty
host now marched in four divisions, under separate commanders. The
first—consisting of Bohe-
mians and
Hungarians —was led by their own respective Princes; the second, by the Duke of
Swabia; the third, by three Bishops; and the fourth, by the Emperor in person.
Upon leaving Hungary the Crusaders were harassed by the active hostility of the
population. This Frederic endeavoured to check by reprisals; but, aware of the
impotence of the Constantinopolitan Court in any degree to control these
remote, half-barbarous, and more than half-independent provinces, he ascribed
the annoyance solely to the temper of the people. He was speedily undeceived.
At Nizza, Kalopeter and Asan, two powerful brother-chieftains, descended from
old Bulgarian Kings, who were then intent upon re-establishing a kingdom of
Bulgaria, exempt from Greek authority, the Grand-Shupan or Prince of Servia,
and a lesser Prince of Rascia, waited upon the Imperial Crusader. They all
assured him that the hostility he had encountered was the result of especial
mandates from Constantinople, some of the Servian chieftains still professing
allegiance to Isaac. The Grand-Shupan and the Bulgarians, on the contrary,
vehemently professed friendship to the Crusaders, and strove to prove it by
personally superintending a gratuitous supply of provisions, and proffering
their services in various ways. The Grand-Shupan even proposed to hold his
lands in vassalage of the Western Emperor, if Frederic would undertake his
protection against the perfidious Byzantines. The Emperor courteously thanked
them for their actual and for their proffered services, gravely replying to the
last offer, that, inasmuch as he was in arms to recover from Paynim profanation
the scene of the Redemption of mankind, not to wage war upon Christian
sovereigns, however faulty, it was impossible for him to comply with their
wishes. But suspicion of Greek faith was now aw’akened in his mind, and he
despatched a new mission, consisting of the Earls of Nassau and Dietz, and his
Chamberlain Markwald von Anweiler, to Constantinople, t< ascertain what the
designs of that Court really were.
Isaac
received tha Envoys with cordiality, professing the utmost good will; but,
despite his professions, the further the Crusaders advanced into provinces really
sub-
VOL.
II. 1]
jcct to the
Greek Empire, the scarcer became provisions in their camp, the worse they found
the roads—purposely, as was self evident, destroyed—the more obstructed the
mountain passes. Still Frederic professed reliance on the word of a Christian
Emperor; still treated all as popular passion, which lie still tried to check
by reprisals; whilst he to the full as severely punished any Crusader who,
impelled by hunger or revenge, plundered or maltreated the peasantry) thus
provoking them to murder stragglers. The Bishop of Wurzburg often, by his
desire, preached against robbery. At length Duke Frederic stormed an
obstructed pass, now openly defended by Constantinopolitan troops, and was
repaid by possession of abundantly supplied magazines. A result so confirming
every suspicion, that the Court now dropped the mask. The diplomatist Crusaders
were imprisoned; the Greek Envoy n the crusading camp loudly complained of the
outrages, and the violations of the existing treaty, committed by the Cru-
siders; of Frederic’s negotiations with the insurgent chieftains, and
designing, as Isaac, he said, knew from the Kings of France and England, to
place the Duke of Swabja upon the throne of the East-Roman Empire. The Emperor
Isaac, he added, the treaty being thus broken, would not now grant the
Crusaders a free passage, unless they gave hostages, the Duke of Swabia being
one, not only for their peaceable demeanour, but also for the fulfilment of
the promise he required, to cede half their conquests from the Saracens to
hi.n, and do him homage for the remainder. Frederic laughed at the complaints,
taxed the Greeks with their convention with Saladin, and in his turn demanded
the release of his Envoys, and the execution of the existing treaty. To the
demand of homage he observed: “I am the Emperor Isaac’s equal, Roman Emperor
and Augustus like him; ay, and with more right to the title, for the metropolis
of the world is mine; I reign over Romans, he over Roumeliotes only.” And,
pending these discussions, he continued to advancc.
The Court of
Constantinople, hesitating betwixt arrogance and conscious weakness, took half
measures; insulted and harassed the army, repeating the demand of hostages and
homage, but made no efficient military move.
Towards the
end of October, however, Isaac became seriously frightened ; then, by way of
discrediting the report of his alliance with Saladin, so repugnant to the Crusaders,
he released the German Envoys, and sent them, honourably escorted, back to the
Emperor. They were received by the crusading nobles with such brandishing of
spears, clashing of arms, and jousting evolutions, that their Greek escort was
terrified at the seemingly imminent onslaught; until the Duke of Swabia
explained to them that these warlike demonstrations were merely German forms of
welcome. The bulk of the humbler Crusaders greeted them differently, with hymns
and psalms of exultation; and the Emperor with the ejaculation : “1 thank God
! For these my sons were dead and are alive again, were lost and are found!”
Still
Frederic advanced, his son defeating all attempted resistance, taking every
town that tried to close its gates against him, and generally finding therein
booty so abundant, as to delight his troops, and cause the transmission of the
most cheering reports to Germany. Still Isaac hesitated betwixt nominal
friendship and open hostility ; whilst his subjects, agreeably surprised by the
crusading monarch’s impartial justice and protection of the unoffending, daily
became more reconciled to their passing visitors. 1 he Western Emperor took up
his winter quarters bet» een Philippopolis and Adrianople, to await the spring
for crossing over to Asia.
Here Frederic
received letters from Queen Sibylla, giving him notice that Isaac, agreeably to
his treaty with Saladin, had planned the destruction of the crusading army, by
poisoning the wine and flour supplied to them, and the wells in the vicinity of
all the expected encampments. Here too he received Envoys, sent by Kilidje
Arslan, Sultan of Iconium, with renewed assurances of friendship and
admonitions to beware of the covert enmity of the Constantinopolitan Court.
Together with these warnings of Greek treachery, he received, from the
Bulgarian Prince Kalopeter, the offer of an auxiliary arny of 41,000 Kumans —a
Tartar tribe ready, it should seem, to furnish both sides with mercenaries,
being constantly named as part of the Byzantine army (!?)—if he would dethrone
Isaac and Digitized by Microsoft ®
assume the
crown of the Eastern Empire. This offer he declined as before, and upon the
same grounds as before, to wit, that he was pledged to fight the enemies of
Christianity, not to chastise a Christian monarch, whatever his offences.
Sibylla’s communication was heeded, and gave rise to some measures of
precaution, whilst still the strictest discipline was maintained. The. system
of passive resistance and active annoyance still conti-raed to counteract his
endeavours, and Duke Frederic still overran the country, taking towns far and
near. In one of these he found some confirmation of the Queen of Jerusalem’s
intelligence; the inhabitants naming places to him where the wells were
poisoned, and others where poisoned wine was deposited.
At length, in
the month of February, 1190, it seems to have occurred to Isaac that the
shortest way of relieving himself from all fear of the Crusaders’ designs upon
Constantinople, was to transport them into Asia, and leave them and the Turks
to slaughter each other. Thus happily enlightened, he concluded a new treaty
with Frederic Bar- barossa, to which 500 of the principal personages of Constantinople
swore upon the high altar in the Church of St. Sophia. By it, Isaac bound
himself to forgive all damage done, to provide for the markets being well
supplied, and. to furnish vessels at Gallipoli for conveyii.g the Crusaders
across the Hellespont. Presents were then exchanged, and compensation was made
to the German Envoys for their imprisonment. Isaac gave hostages for the
fulfilment of the conditions nowT agreed upon ; and, it is saiil,
betrothed his daughter Irene to Frederic’s youngest son Philip.(12H)
By the end of
March, 11<J0, all was ready for the passage, which began upon Good Friday,
and occupied six days ;(129) upon this occasion the army was again
counted, and the numbers arc variously reported at from 82,000 to 300,000. The
previous computation, as well as the subsequent narrative, indicate the first
number, though certainly very much too low, to be the least erroneous of the
two. The Emperor was the last to cross, that he might assure himself no
stragglers remained behind; and, upon landing, he dismissed all his Greek
hostages except five, detained probably to ensure supplies and guides. He now
altered the
organization
of the army, making two bodies only; gave the leading of the foremost to his
son, who, however young, was by this time deemed a tried warrior, placed the
baggage—transferred on account of the mountainous ways from carts to beasts of
burthen—between the two divisions, and commanded the second in person.
Notwithstanding the professions of the Greek Emperor and the detention of five
Greek hostages, bands of Greek robbers harassed the army in Asia as their
fellows had in Europe; the markets were most inadequately supplied; and still,
therefore, the famishing pilgrims would plunder, would cut the green corn for
their horses; and thus, as before, they provoked the enmity of the peasantry.
Amidst these annoyances, the army made its way, and upon the 21st of April
reached Philadelphia, in Lydia; where, being about to quit the territories of
the Eastern Empire, the last five hostages, with an honesty to which the Greeks
had no claim, were dismissed.
At
Laodicea, the dominions of the Sultan of Iconium were entered: and so kindly
were the Crusaders there received, so amply were they supplied with
provisions, though the country through which they passed was sterile, that
perfect confidence in the friendship of Kilidje Arslan was felt. All
difficulties were believed to be over. But suddenly all was changed at
Iconium, and soon was that change perceptible in the crusading camp. Kilidje
Arslan hated Saladin as the destroyer of many Seljuk princes of his race, and
appears therefore to have meant fairly by the Crusaders, whom he considered as
allies against the object of his dread and detestation. (13°) But
Saladin, somewhat alarmed, as before intimated, at the gathering tempest, sent
an embassy to Iconium. For this delicate mission he made choice of the Cadi
Bohaeddiu., who, originally employed by Noureddin to find him allies against
his dreaded Sultan- Viz;er, had since entering Sal ad in's service become his
most trusted diplomatist and friend; and who, outlying him, became his
biographer. The instructions given him were simply to secure co-operati >n
there, at any cost. The result of Bohaeddin’s negotiation was the change above
mentioned Kilidje Arslan, after he had despatched his envoys to Frederic, was
deposed aud confined by his son ‘ Digitized
by Microsoft
Kotbeddiu
Malek Shah. From him the old Sultan, however, effected his cscape, and sought
protection from another son, Raikhosru, who readily promised it. And so far he
kept his promise, that he expelled Malek Shah, and nominally reinstalled his
father; hut he retained all power in his own hand, and, like his brother, ’Has
devoted to the Mussulman hero, Saladin
How early
these changes of ruler and of policy were made known to the Envoys accompanying
the Emperor, does not appear; but soon the friendliness and the supplies vanished,
whilst the line of march was harassed by Turcoman robbers, more numerous and
more daring than their Greek predecessors. Ere long a whole army of light
cavalry, for ever attacking, never awaiting the retaliatory attack, cut the
Crusaders off from the towns where provisions were stored, as from all wells
and springs. They suffered severely from hunger and thirst, from incessant
skirmishing, from more serious assaults whenever opportunity favoured, and
from fatigue; the alarm being so repeatedly sounded by day and by night, thut
for six weeks no man durst lay aside his armour for an hour. Complaints to the
Seljuk Envoys were answered by assurances of their Sultan’s friendship, and of
his inability to control the wild Turcoman tribes ha'inting his dominions;
marauders, by chastising whom, the Emperor would render bun a great service.
Frederic was fain to believe them. Amidst these severe trials he maintained the
same strict discipline that commanded the admiration of his enemies, and is,
together with the generally patient fortitude of the whole army, highly
eulogized by Bohaeddin in his reports to Saladin. At length, however, the
sufferings became, in the opinion of many, too much for human powers of
endurance; numbers deserted to the Turks and apostatized. When a
horror-stricken informant reported this disgrace to the Emperor, he calmly
observed: “How could we hope to prosper with such comrades? The loss of those
Godless men is the purification of the host.”
The Seljuk
Envoys now proposed to the Emperor to let them seek an interview'with the
Turcoman leaders, that- they might endeavour, by threats of the Sultan’s resentment,
to avert further attacks; and they desired to be Digitized by Microsoft®
accompanied
by a German knight, as a witness of their zeal. The offer was eagerly accepted,
but neither knight nor envoys returned. The latter sent word they were
prisoners, and asked for their baggage; w’ith which request Frederic, still
desirous to believe them, or rather their Sultan, honest, complied. But the
illusion shortly vanished. After a few more days of ever increasing skirmish
and privation, the facts of the dethronement of Kilidje Arslan and the actual
subserviency of the new Seljuk ruler to Saladin, were frightened out of a
Turcoman prisoner, whom the Emperor compelled to guide the army over the
mountains by a road different from that previously designed; thus avoiding a
defile where their destruction was prepared.
But if they
thus escaped a snare, they did not long elude their enemies; the fighting was
incessant; but whatever the sufferings of the Crusaders, their blood was not
shed with impunity; every Turk or Turcoman who came within reach of their
weapons paid with his life for his rashness, and still they struggled forward.
Upon the 15th of May, as they prosecuted their weary march, they caught sight
of the whole army of Iconium, drawn up, conjointly w ith the Turcoman hordes,
in order of battle. Their united numbers were computed at 300,000 men; and for
a moment the Crusaders stood aghast. But the Bishop of Wurzburg piously
exhorted his brethren to place their trust in God, and rest content w’ith the
crown of martyrdom if disappointed in their earthly hopes. The Emperor reminded
them that in courage lay the only chance of safety, since flight must be
certain death. And the army, shaking off its alarm, raised the German war song,
“ after the Swabian fashion,” says Wilken. All then quietly encamped for the
night. At daybreak the bishops said mass, and, as wTas customary
before a pitched battle, the sacrament was administered to the troops. The army
was then arrayed for action.
At the Seljuk
head-quarters, meanwhile, opinions were divided. Malek Shah, who is said to
have had the command, as if he and Kaikhosru had acted collusively towards
their father, was bent upon overwhelming the Christiana with his numbers, and
thus at once annihilating them. Digitized by Microsoft®
One of the
leaders, producing a Turk’s arm, cut off through its stout armour by the single
stroke of a Crusader’s sword, advised to shun close conflict with men of such
bodily powers, and wear them out by continuing the course hitherto so
successful, The Prince was obstinate, a pitched battle was fought; 10,000
Turks and Turcomans remained upon the field, and the routed host fled to
Iconium.
Cut victory
brought not relief to the Crusaders. They were still nearly without food or
water, and their guides betrayed them into districts yet more destitute of
both. The army was well nigh n despair, ■when a messenger from the new
Sultan appeared, offering the Emperor a free passage and provisions at the
price of a gold piece for every Crusader. The Imperial veteran, amidst his
difficulties and dangers and in old age, answered the Seijuk plenipotentiary
much as in the pride of power and vigour of manhood he had answered the
representative of Rome. He said : “It is not the custom of German Emperors or
of chivalrous Crusaders to open their road with gold. With the sword, under the
protection of our Lord Jesus Christ, will we break cur way.”
The Seijuk,
ere riding off with this answer, angrily announced the hour of the morning at
which the destruction cf the whole Christian army would teach the Emperor to
repent his unseasonable boast. The Crusaders sinking with inanition, gasping
with thirst, lamented their monarch’s inflexibility; but he calmlv announced:
“Tomorrow night we shall encamp in the Sultan’s garden, where plenty awaits us
” The confident words were solace; but yet greater solace was found in the
report of an Armenian deserter from the Turkish camp, that in even' encounter a
troop of knights clad in white and mounting white steeds wrought the most
slaughter amongst the Turks. Now as there was no such troop in the army, it was
clear to the Crusaders that these white warriors must be Saints, headed by St.
George. With such supernatural auxiliaries they felt that a doubt of success
would be sacrilege.
At dawn the
enemy was seen in threatening array; but he only threatened; it rested with the
Crusaders to attack.
They did so,
and gradually forcing a passage through the formidable hostile array, they
actually did, before evening, reach and encamp in the gardens of the Sultan’s
palace. Here, as the Emperor had announced, they found provisions and water ;
and here the Sultan made overtures for negotiation. Frederic, before he would
listen to anything, demanded the release of the knight whom the Seljuk Envoys
had betrayed into captivity; and he was brought to him. But still an immense
army pressed closer and closer upon the Crusaders from without, whilst a
numerous garrison manned the walls of Iconium. Frederic became apprehensive
that the negotiations were a lure, designed to throw him off his guard, thus
exposing his camp to a surprise. To counteract this scheme, he again divided
the army, in which only about a thousand still possessed chargers and full
equipment, into two bodies; with the one he confronted the external Turcomans,
whilst he commissioned his son, and Florence Earl of Holland, to lead the other
to the assault of the town. The sick and wounded, with the baggage, were
stationed for protection betwixt the two.
The Turcoman
host attacked the Emperor so fiercely that even he began to falter, and was
heard to wish he and his troops had reached Antioch. The Crusaders gave way,
recoiling from the storm of darts that met them. Then was Barbarossa himself
again. Shouting, “ Christ conquers! Christ reigns ! We left home to win Heaven
with our blood, and now is the time to shed it! ” he made his horse caracole,
and galloped upon the foe. All the knights followed. Again, as usual, neither
Turk nor Turcoman could stand the charge; they broke and fled. Almost at the
same instant the Christian banner was seen waving over the walls of Iconium.
Duke Frederic had, like his father, been repulsed. His troops also had recoiled
from the “ iron sleet of arrowy shower ” greeting them from the walls. In
despair, he flung himself amidst the fugitives, crying, “ Forward ! Forward !
Death is behind us!” Hardly could he rally them, but rally them he did, and led
them back to renew the assault. One party now scaled the walls, whilst another
simultaneously burst open a gate. The Turks fled before them. The Sultan and
the
sen, his
master, sought safety in an adjacent castle, and Iconium was the Crusaders’.
The town was sacked, the booty immense, including the whole sum paid by Saladin
for the betrayal of the Franks ; but, sad to say, bigotry painted mercy as
impious, and the triumph was stained with the massacre of the unresisting,
women and children included: not in vengeance for past sufferings and the
treachery that had caused them, but because it was deemed unknightly as
unchristian to spare God’s enemies for the sake of ransom.
Abundance now
reigned in the Christian camp; the knights whose horses had died of want or
been killed for food, were remounted from the stables of Icoriuin, and the
spirits of the Crusaders revived. Kilidje Arslan, who seems, upon these
disasters, to have regained his authority, now from his asylum sued for peace,
representing that he, an old man, had been physically coerced by the young, who
were themselves morally coerced by fear of Saladin. Frederic replied that,
inasmuch as clemency became an Emperor, if hostages were given to insure his
unmolested passage through the remainder of the territories of Icoi'ium, with a
sufficient supply of provisions, he would grant him peace. The Sultan complied
with the demand; peace was made, and for some days the Crusaders recruited
their exhausted vigour in Iconium and its well- watered district.
When they
resumed their march they still suffered some annoyance from wandering hordes ci
Turcomans; the roads were, mountainous and difficult as ever, the night- halts
occasionally disturbed by storms and even slight shocks of earthquakes. But the
Seljuks were faithful, provisions abundant, and the inconveniences
comparatively trifling. At length the Cross once more greeted the r eyes in
lieu of the Crescent They had reached a Christian state, the Lesser Armenia,
which, upon Manuel’s death, had renounced all subjection to Constantinople.
Prince Leo, who had just succeeded to his brother Unpin, endeavoured,
indeed—although the maintenance of the Syro-Frank states against Turks or
Saracens was the true policy of Armenia—to prevent the Emperor from traversing
his dominions ; but, falling in the attempt, sought to
expedite his
transit. To this end, he caused the wants of the army to be abundantly
supplied, and even engaged to join in the enterprise. The Crusaders now thought
their difficulties really over.
So high had
Frederic’s reputation risen viith friend and foe by his conduct of this
Crusade, that Saladin appears to have gradually conceived apprehensions more
and more serious. He now despatched Envoys to the camp of the Crusaders,
bearing messages of a tenor totally different from his answer to the Emperor’s
first communication. By these he offered to submit to the judgment of the
Emperor himself and of the sovereigns of Europe the legitimacy of his right to
the conquests he had made from the Syro-Franks. But him, to whose honour and
power this extraordinary compliment was especially offered, the Envoys found
not to receive it: already was the exulting joy of the triumphant Crusaders
turned into despair
Upon the 10th
of June the army broke up from Seleucia to cross the Kalykadnus, Duke Frederic,
as usual, leading the van. The single bridge was narrow; all kinds of
difficulties, impediments, and accidents obstructed the passage of the troops,
and yet more of the baggage. The consequent disaster is told in two different
ways. The Emperor, according to one account, impatient to reach and communicate
with his son, resolved to ford or swim the river. In vain he was implored not
to trust the unknown stream ; Frederic Barbarossa had never known fear, and
forced his horse into the water. Whether the current overpowered the animal,
whether— which seems the most likely—it stumbled upon the rough bottom and
fell, or v>hether the partial immersion in the deep stream with" a
sudden chill paralysed the aged frame of the heroic monarch, in the passage, in
sight of the whole army, the half-worshipped, Imperial Crusader, perished.
This is the
form of the accident, as gathered and adopted hv the Italian Giannone and the
German Raumer, from some of the old chroniclers.(I31) The other
account is given by the majority both of those Latin chroniclers and of
Oriental writers. They assert that he bathed to refresh himself whilst
necessarily detained during the
passage of
the troops, was seized with a fit from the coldness of the water, and,
according to some, was drowned, according to others, was taken out alive, and
sun ived some hours, or even days. Wilken and Funk (,32) adopt this
statement; the latter ascribing Frederic’s death to apoplexy, without any
peculiar coldness of the water; and both, upon the authority of an anonymous
contemporary, who certainly writes as if he had been an eyewitness, account
for the delay in extricating him by an eddy overpowering the first swimmer v,
ho got hold of him The first of these narratives seems preferable, partly because,
as Vinisauf observes, more consonant with the Emperor’s character and position
than the indulgence of a wish for the refreshment of a bath ; but chiefly as
the best explanation of a whole army’s inability to extricate thei- idolized
leader from the water 111 time to save his life. This, the weight of his
armour, supposing his horse to have fallen with him about the middle of the
river, renders conceivable, especially if he was crossing unattended. But that
a man undressed for a bath, and near the bank, as the bather must be if a fit
were caused by the S'ldden chill of the water, should not have been
instantaneously rescued by thousands of spectators, all bold warriors, feeling
their lives bound up in his, seems absolutely impossible.
And bound up
in his they did indeed feel their lives, and surpassing all power of
description was the despair caused by his sudden, irreparable loss. Ilis son
Frederic, who upon the long and difficult march had shown dauntless valour and
much military talent, was, it is true, at once acknowledged as commander in his
father’s stead, and all swore to obey him. Nor did the Duke of Swabia betray
any insufficiency for the arduous office assigned him. I Je entered upon t with
the p.ctivity, energy, a ,d resolution that had hitherto distinguished him. By
his firmness he compelled Leo to observe the treaty, from which, upon the
dreaded warrior’s death, he attempted to draw back. But lie was less successful
with those who had sworn to obey him, than with allies or enemies. lie was not
the sovereign to whom the great vassals owed allegiance, he, though
theirEmperor’s son.was but their equal; neitherwas
the gallant
youth the renowned imperial veteran, selected as the leader of the Crusade. He
found it impossible to maintain the discipline of the army. In these fertile
regions the Crusaders plundered, rioted in every excess, as compensation due
for their recent privations; so that more died of repletion and consequent
disease, than had perished by the sword or by the many sufferings of their
pilgrimage. Many, as though the loss of their leader dissolved all vows and
duties, dispersed in various directions, selling their arms to provide for
their support, and endeavouring to return home, these by sea, those by land. Of
such as persevered in their crusading purpose, many chose at once to lighten
its toils and evade the obedience which in a
• r
moment of
strong feeling they had sworn to the Duke of Swabia, by embai'king at the nearest
seaport, for any part of the Syrian coast still in the hands of the Christians.
Of the immense host led by Frederic Barbarossa from the banks of the Danube,
only a fraction, variously estimated at from 1000 to 8000 men followed his son
to Antioch, whither his revered corse was conveyed. But these few would,
probably, be in every respect its choicest spirits. Upon the 19th of June this
little band reached Antioch, where the Duke of Swabia interred his father’s
remains before the altar dedicated to St. Peter, in the Cathedral.
The deceased
Crusader’s contemporaries of all countries extol his high qualifications. (133)
But there is, perhaps, a still stronger testimony to his* real greatness, than
the eulogies of Chroniclers of rival nations, and even than the despair of the
Crusaders at his loss. It is the confident belief in the prolonged existence
of Frederic Barbarossa in the interior of a certain mountain in Germany, where
his beard has grown round and round the stone- table at which he sits, and
whence, upon some great emergency, he is expected to issue, again to wield the
sceptre and the sword, so long cherished by the German peasantry, and hardly
yet in these days ol enlightenment and revolution renounced.
CHAPTER I.
KINGDOM OP
JERUSALEM.
SIBYLLA
AND GUY GUY.
Continuation
of the Third Crusade—.Preparations of Kings of France and England—State of
Sicily—Transactions there— State of Palestine—hefence of Tyre—Siege of
Acre—Death, of Sibylla—Contest for the Crown—Origin of the Teutonic Knights. [ 1189—1191.
The Crusade, of which the Emperor Frederic
Barbarossa was the chosen leader, had, after his death, so little connexion—save
in its somewhat remote consequences—with the Holy Roman Empire, that it will be
most conven’ent to dispose of this portion of the affairs of the Syro-Franks,
if a little prematurely, before entering upon the reign of Henry VI. Thus, the
preparations of the Kings of France and England are the first points to be
considered.
Such was the
unreasonable procrastination of these preparations, owing to both monarchs
turning their arms, despite Papal prohibitions and their own oaths, against
•each other, that one of them, Henry II, did not live to perform his vow. He
was, however, the least to blame for the delay ; the first transgressor being
Philip Augustus, in prosecution of his almost uninterrupted endeavours to
•wrest from the English crown some of its French possessions. Raymond ( omte
de St. Gilles, as a male collateral, had contended with the lineal female heir,
Queen Elinor, Duchess of Aquitaine, for the county of Toulouse. The
King of
France, almost as a matter of course, pronounced in his favour, and he was
invested with the county. Henry and Elinor had, it should seem, submitted to
the award: but, when Richard, already invested with hki mother’s duchy, was
eagerly making ready for the Crusade, Earl Raymond, who had done homage and
sworn fealty to him as his mesne Lord, chose to allege that the young Duke was
about to revive and inforce his mother’s claim to the county, and took the
opportunity of a revolt in Guienne, to attack him. Philip adopted Raymond’s
quarrel, Henry naturally supported his son; and it is said that these really
perjured Crusaders thought to obviate the charge of violating their oath, to
maintain peace amongst themselves until their hallowed enterprise should be
achieved, by laying aside, whilst engaged in this war, the Crosses they had
assumed when they took that oath. But its details, complicated by the artifices
of Philip, and the mutual jealousies, political and domestic, which he
sedulously enkindled and fomented in the English royal family, together with
the contradictory statements of French and English princes, of French and
English chroniclers have no other relevancy to the subject of the present narrative,
than as they delayed the operations of these divisions of Crusaders, who were
to have moved simultaneously with the Emperor. Suffice it to remind the reader
that in this same year, 1189, Henry II died, it was believed, of the shock of
finding the name of his favourite son John—in the list given him of the rebels
to be included in the amnesty ; and that Richard, struck thereupon with
remorse for his own unfilial conduct, was no sooner crowned than, postponing
all other cares, he diligently prepared for the Crusade.
Richard’s
zeal exciting Philip’s, Easter week, of 1190, was fixed for Lhe time of their
departure; and upon the last day of 1189, the two monarchs met at the bridge of
St. Remy, near Nor.aincourt, to make their final arrangements. They there took
measures for the maintenance of internal peace in France and England, analogous
to Frederic’s in Germany; and not only bound themselves and their respective
vicegerents by treaty, to respect each other’s rights during the Crusade, and
reciprocally afford
assistance in
any emergency, but pledged themselves so deeply to each other for the
expedition, that, should either die in Palestine, the survivor was, for the
accomplishment of their common object, to iuherit the army and treasure he
there left. They likewise published, as Frederic had done, codes of discipline
to be observed, in their several armies.
Each of the
former Crusades had begun by a massacre of Jews; and, as if Fale grudged
mankind the credit of such progress in civilization as abstinence from wanton
bloodshed wou'd indicate, the third was not to escape the same stain. The stain
was, however, less black; the butchery of the defenceless victims of prejudice
being, at least in England, unpremeditated. At the festivities attendant upon Richard’s
coronation, some Jews indiscreetly intruding, in defiance of an explicit order
for their exclusion, into the palace, the attendants, exasperated at what they
deemed unwarrantable insolence, violently ejected them. Any appearance of
scuffle or affray would naturally produce a tumult amongst the excited London
populace, crowding around the palace, to witness as far as possible the
celebration of the rite; and those, who were in debt to the Jews, were prompt,
as usual, to catch at any opportunity of freeing themselves from troublesome
creditors. Thus, dishonest insolvency stimulating bigotry, this casual ejection
of half a dozen impertinently 'ntrusive Israelites became the signal for
horrible slaughter; which, beginning in London, notwithstanding the active
exertions of Government, spread over the whole kingdom. At York, five hundred
of the persecuted race sought; shelter in a castle, where they defended
themselves till their provisions were exhausted. They then proposed to
capitulate, and were offered life as the pricc of apostasy. Many wavered ; but
Josius or Jocenus, a learned Rabbi, the wealthiest amongst them, indignantly
said: “ Are we to quest ion God, why dost thou so or so ? We are freely to
sacrifice our lives when he requires them ; not to live apostates upon the alms
of his and our enemies.” He then, with Lis own hand, slew I.is wife, his t »vo
children, and set fire to the castle; which done, he stabbed himself. The
majority followed his example, and the few who accepted the offered terms
gained little by
their
cowardice. They were treacherously murdered as they came forth. Richard very
severely punished the ringleaders in these atrocities, some being even burnt
to death- But what more strongly marks progress in opinion is, that the King,
upon hearing that one of the survivors, the well-known, wealthy Benedict of
York, had received baptism, sent for him; inquired whether he were really a
convert, or had dissembled to save his life; and, when Benedict confessed the
dissimulation, permitted him to resume the profession of the religion in which
he believed. The words, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury sanctioned the
royal permission, are more mediasval and less Christian: “If he will not be a
Christian, e’en let him be the Devil’s liegeman.”(134)
The example
of crime was more infectious than the dread of punishment was preventive. A
similar massacre of Jewish creditors by debtors, wTho called and
really believed themselves Christians, followed in France; but not a similar
punishment. Germany had not, upon this occasion, been so polluted.
These
sanguinary incidents had not interrupted the pre-
{mrations of
the two Kings, which nevertheless advanced ess rapidly than had been expected.
It was late in June ere Richard joined Philip at Yezelai, whence they proceeded
together to Lyons. But the numbers thus congregated being found inconvenient,
alike to move, to lodge, and to feed, the monarchs separated. Philip marched to
Genoa, where he embarked for Messina, the appointed rendezvous for the French
and English armaments. Richard descended the Rhone, and proceeded to
Marseilles, the port at which, when he landed in France, he had directed his
English fleet to meet him. But the rapidity of his movements had outstripped
calculation; his ships had not arrived when he reached Marseilles, and,
impatient of delay, he hired the vessels he found in that port to convey
himself and as many as could be therein accomo- datcd, to Sicily, leaving the
bulk of his army to await its pre-arranged means of transport. Richard’s
impetuous temper soon became equally impatient of the monotony of a sea voyage.
He incessantly landed, to ride 011 hired
horses, with
or without attendants, from point to point of the coast, in a reckless,
knight-errant style, but too indicative of the self-willed character, more
chivalrous than regal, which afterwards, involving him in enmities, exposed him
to calumny and imprisonment. But, ere narrating the incidents that marked the
sojourn of the royal Crusaders at Messina, it will be proper to state w hat was
then the condition of the kingdom of Sicily.
Richard’s
brother-in-law, William II, with whom all their arrangements had been made, was
no more. In November, 1189, at the early age of thirty-five, he expired; but
not with him expired the cabals and intrigues that had distracted his whole
reign. The English Archbishop of Palermo—who had effected the recognition of
Constance as presumptive heiress, and her marriage with the King of the
Romans—immediately claiming the crown in her name and her husband’s, despatched
messengers to Germany with intelligence of the event, and an urgent summons to
come and take possession. Bur the affairs of the Empire then inevitably
detaining Henry in Germany, he contented himself for the moment with sending his
Chancellor Diether, and the Archbishop of Mainz, to assist the Sicilian prelate
in maintaining his and his wife’s right, and further to report upon the state
of her heritage. Had Constance herself accompanied them, she would probably not
have been the less welcome for presenting herself alone to her vassals and
subjects, and much bloodshed might have been avoided. That she did not, can
only be explained by the young king’s jealous temper, that feared if his
consort assumed her hereditary crown alone, she might establish her authority
independently of his control. But, whatever the cause, Constance did not .n
person assert her right ,: and the Archbishop of Palermo’s chief rival, the
Protonotario Mat.teo, who, if he had been once defeated had by no means abandoned
the game, found the circumstances of the moment propitious to his purpose of
barring her accession. She and her husband were absent; their German
emissaries—apparently confining their investigations and endeavours very much
to Apulia, whilst Sicily was the focus of intrigue—sent favourable accounts
that lulled
Henry into security. Broils, in fact a civil war, that was always threatening,
broke out during the virtual interregnum.
A large
portion of the Sicilian population still consisted of Saracens: of whom those
inhabiting the mountainous districts acknowledged no authority but that of
their own Chiefs ; and the loyalty of Moslem Chiefs to any Christian king was
so doubtful, that scarcely could they be properly deemed subjects or vassals.
On the other hand, those who had settled in towns were, like their brethren in
Spain, far advanced beyond their Christian fellow-countrymen in civilization,
in knowledge, and in all mechanical arts. Hence the favour they enjoyed at
Court, the high offices they held in the Government, which excited the envy and
the anger of all who thought themselves supplanted by misbelievers. The
suspension of all control by royal authority, upon William’s death, through the
absence of his heirs, was to the mortified Christians an opportunity for
revenge too auspicious to be missed. The Christian townsmen attacked and
worsted their Mohammedan neighbours, who, too few in number to defend
themselves, fled to their fierce co-religionists in the mountains; and the
mountaineers, proud of their own independence, rose in arms to protect and
avenge their compatriot fellow-wor- shippers, the citizens. This civil war,
combined w ith the absence of the sovereign, appeared, in like manner, to the
higher nobility—who under the two Williams had broken the iron yoke imposed
upon them by the two Rogers—a favourable moment for substituting an
aristocratic republic for the monarchy. With such views they of course delayed
and hesitated to acknowledge Constance and Henry; and, in this complicated
confusion, Matteo, in his turn, perceived an opportunity of seating a king,
who should be his creature, upon the throne, in lieu of those whom he had made
his enemies.
For this
king, he made choice of an illegitimate scion of the royal race, whose name has
already been mentioned, and whose pretensions must here be explained. Prince
Roger, the gallant and generous eldest son of King Roger, having been sent,
according to the custom of the times, for chivalrous education, to the castle
of a nobleman, the Digitized by Microsoft®
Conte di
Lecce, hail fallen in love with the daughter of bis host. The lady requited h's
passion, and two sons, Tancred and William, were the fruit of this attachment.
The Prince then solicited his father’s consent to his marriage with the mother
of his children ; by ’which subsequent nuptials, according to the canon law, as
well as the law of Sicily, the illegitimately born offspring would have been rendered
legitimate. Whether the King did, 01* did not give that consent was a question
warmly disputed by the respective partisans of Constance and of Tancred; though
apparently little material, no one alleging that the marriage took place; and
it must lie observed, that no claim had been advanced in his behalf, in
opposition to either of the Williams, his uncle and cousin, who, if he was
legitimate, were usurpers. What is certain is, that Prince Roger, worn out, it
is averred, by licentious excesses, died of a decline, unmarried; and that,
upon his death, the King accused the Conte di Leccc of having sought to entrap
the Crown-Prince into an unequal marriage. The Conte fled with his family, and
took refuge in Greece, leaving behind him his two llegitimate grandchildren,
who were kept by their royal grandfather n a sort of honourable captivity at
Palermo. The youngest died; Tancred recovered his liberty in Bonello’s first
insurrection, and was -mplicated in all the following plots and conspiracies.
When the King gained the ascendency, he fled to Athens; where he resided for
some time with his mother, and was • ne of those whom Queen Margaret, as
Regent, amnestied; which, had she feared him as a possible rn al to her son, he
would hardly have been. By his personal beauty, address, courage, liberality,
and musical talents, it may be presumed, rather than by his reported
proficiency in astronomy and mathematics, Tancred became a popular as well as a
court favourite. Will.arn II employed him in dive:s high offices, gave him his
maternal grandfather’s county of Lecce, and, it has been seen, in 1185,
associated him with his Grand-Admiral Margaritone, in the command of an expedition
against the Eastern Empire.
This was the
person, whom Matteo selected for the antagonist of Henry and Constance, and
whom he proposed to the Barons assembled at Palermo as their King. The Digitized
by Microsoft®
arguments
that he addressed to them against the lawful heiress, wife to the King of the
Romans, are so precisely identical with those which have been used for the last
few years against Austrian domination in Lombardy, that their universal
currency makes it quite supererogatory to trouble the reader viith their
repetition or enumeration. His other arguments are more worthy of notice.
Tancred's own oath of prospective allegiance to Constance, taken at William IPs
command, he endeavoured to neutralize by alleging that, in a King, it was more
sinful to keep than to break an oath sworn contrary to the interest of his
country. He urged, that the son ought not to suffer, because his father died
before he had done justice to the mother, and thus concluded : “ Even were his
hereditary right insufficient, have not we the same elective rights that our
ancestors exercised, when they placed his ancestors on the throne? And were
all these deep-seated reasons unavailing, is not this argument conclusive,—that
rebellion is raging in the land, and we need a present King
As a
political intriguer the Archbishop was no match for the Protonotario, who
appears to have long preconcerted this move with Tancred. The Barons, who
perhaps hoped to extort greater privileges from an usurper than from the
rightful heir, were won, and a deputation waited upon the Conte di Lecce with
an offer of the crown. He affected to hesitate, and urged his scruples on
account of his oath of allegiance to his aunt Constance. But Clement III, then
already the occupant of St. Peter’s chair, naturally dreaded the annexation of
Southern Italy and Sicily to the dominions of the Swabian Emperors, and a papal
dispensation from the obligations of that oath was ready to relieve his
conscience. Tancred thereupon accepted the birthright of the aunt, to whom his
allegiance wTas solemnly sworn. In January, 1190, he was crowned at
Palermo, and received investiture of the kingdom from the papal sanctioner of
perjury and usurpation, as Lord Paramount. He immediately repaid, and
stimulated, iYlatteo’s exertions with the post of Grand-Chancellor.
Tancred was
now King; but not even his suzerain’s protection could seat him securely upon a
contested Digitized by Microsoft®
throne. In
Apulia, Henry’s deputies were asserting the rights of the lawful and recognised
heir. In Sicily, the Saracens were in arms against Christian sovereignty; the
Archbishop of Palermo, and all the partisans of Constance, wereavowedly
dissatisfied; so were the proud nobles who
hud hoped to be the rulers of a republic ; and yet others, who thought
that, if the lineal heir were to be set aside, they, as legitimate Norman nobles,
had better claims to the vacant throne than a base-born Hauteville. The last
two classes of malcontents, speedily discovering their own objects to be
unattainable, coalesced with the Archbishop, as head of the legitimatist party;
and conjointly they despatched a deputation to Germany, to urge Henry to lose
no more time in recovering his wife’s heritage fiom the usurper. There, for the
moment, the matter rested.
Although this
change in the condition of Sicily could not be matter of indifference to the royal
Crusaders, they persevered in their purpose of there assembling their forces,
thence to proceed together to the Holy Land. Richard’s voyage having been
delayed, partly by his indulgence of the whims before mentioned, partly by his
reluctance so far to precede his fleet as should cause him to appear at the
rendezvous shorn of his might—was that his real motive for the censured
indulgence?—Philip reached Messina first. Richard, upon his arrival, found that
the French King had not only taken up his quarters in the town, but had so
taken them as to leave no fitting accommodation for his brother
monarch;—whether actuated by sheer selfishness, or in assumption of superiority
as suzerain, may be questionable. Possibly Richard’s consciousness of superior
power prevented his feeling any suspicion of such an assumption; certainly he,
betrayed nothing like captiousness upon the occasion, but, good-humouredly
giving way, encamped with the troops accompanying him outside the walls.
Two reasons
might tend to reconcile the lion-hearted King to this position. The one, that
ha found the large pon ion of his army, which his fleet had brought prior to
his arrival, and which had lodged itself in Messina, involved in quarrels with
the citizens, whom—as mongrels between Greeks and Saracens, nick-named
Griffons—they
despised,
whilst they delighted in provoking their Oriental jealousy of their women.
Blood had already been shed in these idle quarrels. The other reason was, that
Richard, from information received during his voyage, landed highly
dissatisfied with the new King of Sicily. Tancred had not only hitherto
withheld from Queen Joanna, Richard’s sister, the dower assured to her by her
marriage contract, and the several articles of great value, assigned by
Sicilian law to royal widows—conduct to which he was impelled by want of money
to maintain his usurped throne —but, fearing the Queen-dowager’s influence in
favour of Constance, he had actually placed her in confinement. Indignantly,
the King of England demanded justice for his sister and the fulfilment of the
treaty concluded, preliminarily to her marriage, between her father and her
husband. Tancred, who in prevision of Richard’s anger had sedulously courted
the King of France, resisted the demand ; asserting that he had already
satisfied the lawful claims of the Queen-dowager with a large sum of money. He
how?ever released her from captivity, when she hastened to seek her
brother’s protection.
Pending this
dispute, the ill-will between the Messinese and the English increased from day
to day ; and the ground being thus prepared, the violence of a market-woman produced
a formidable outbreak. An English archer having, probably for the boyish
pleasure of irritating her, offered an offensively low price for her wares, she
screamed murder! Her countrymen flew to take her part, the English Crusaders
to take their comrade’s; and presently the whole of both city and camp were in
commotion. Richard was obliged to interpose in person ; and though he could
collect but twenty men to support his interposition,(135) the broil
ended in the capture and plunder of Messina by the English.
Philip's
jealousy of his royal vassal having, apparently^ been excited or revived by the
superior magnificence that Richard had displayed, since his landing in Sicily,
now revealed itself; inducing him, whilst he forbore actively to interfere,
very decidedly to favour the Messinese throughout the affray. Upon their
complete discomfiture, he, nevertheless, demanded half the booty made in the
city—the agreement
touching booty made from the misbelievers in the Holy Land,—and that his
banner should float upon the walls beside the English.(13b) A breach
seemed inevitable. But the wrathful Richard suffered himself to be persuaded by
his barons to yield upon the latter pretension, and the rapacious Philip found
it necessary to abandon the former. When this dispute was settled, Philip
interposed as a mediator between the Kings of England and Sicily; and his
efforts were greatly assisted by a hostile demonstration of Richard’s, in
consequence of an attempt on Tancred’s part to starve him i:ito terms. In the
end, Tancred paid Joanna 40,000 ounces of gold in full compensation of her
claims, and Richard promised the hand of his nephew and presumptive heir, Prince
Arthur, to a daughter of Tancred’s, whom he, on his part, promised to dower as
beseemed a royal bride.
These various
dissensions and hostilities had detained the royal Crusaders, till the season
was too far advanced to allow of thei1 safely prosecuting the
scarcely begun voyage; and it bceame necessary to winter in Sicily. During the
delay, new differences arose betwixt them. Philip learned that Richard, either
in utter disregard of his long-standing contract to the French Princess Alice,
or in confirmation of all the scandalous reports respecting her and his father,
Ilenry II, had engaged himself to Berengar-a of Navarre, with whom, having seen
her whilst resident a Aquitaine, he had fallen in love. He learned further,
that the Queen-dowager of England was even then bringing the Spanish bride to
her son; and, resenting the indignity thus put upon his sister, he sent a
haughty message to Richard, by which he required him instantly to wed Princess
Alice by proxy, and get ready to set sail for the Hoi}7 Land in
March. What answer Richard returned to the first part of this message is not
recorded; and indeed it is difficult to conceive what excuse he could make to
the slighted lady’s brother,—the true one, to wit, his conviction that she had
been his father’s paramour, being of all others the most offensive. To the
second, he replied that his ships needed repairs, that he was budding battering
engines—the Sicilian Arabs probably excelled, like their Spanish brethren, as
engineers—and that he
could not be
ready before summer. Philip commanded him, as a vassal, to obey his Liege Lord,
upon which condition he would pardon his desertion of Princess Alice. Richard
haughtily denied that any such obedience was due;(137) Philip called
upon all Richard’s French vassals to leave their mesne Lord and follow him, as
Lord Paramount, and Richard denounced the forfeiture of their fiefs as the
penalty of compliance with the French King’s demands. From this day, whatever
the subsequent semblance, the reality of friendship, if it ever had existed
betwixt the rival monarchs, disappeared. Nevertheless, the Earl of Flanders
succeeded in negotiating a convention, by which Richard was released from his
engagement to Alice, upon paying 10,000 marks to her brother, and pledging
himself, should he have two sons, to sever his French dominions from the crown
of England. Princess Alice afterwards married a French nobleman, the Comte de
Ponthieu.
After this
nominal reconciliation, the two Kings associated and sported together; and a
singular scene occurred at a tilting match with mere sticks, illustrative of
the Lion-heart’s temper and character. In Philip’s train was a knight, named
Guillaume des Barres, who, in the last French war, had justly incurred
Richard’s displeasure. Having been made prisoner in a skirmish preceding a
pitched battle, upon plighting his word not to attempt escape (rescue or no
rescue), he was, according to chivalrous custom, left free; but during the
engagement broke his parole, seized a page’s horse, and fled. Des Barres,
notwithstanding this dishonourable act, was admitted to joust with the Kings
and their nobles; he was a man of extraordinary corporeal powers, and, in this
tilting, Richard found it not only impossible to unhorse the false knight, but
so difficult to keep his own saddle against him, that, becoming excited even to
exasperation, he suddenly exclaimed : “ Away with thee ! And beware I never see
thee again. For between me and thee, and all thine, is henceforward eternal
enmity!” In vain Philip and the noble Crusaders of both armies strove to
appease the mortified tilter; yet before either party quitted Sicily he had
frankly pardoned his powerful antagonist.
voi..
ii, 12
During the
winter, petty causes of irritation were for ever occurring between the crusading
monarchs, which the manoeuvres of Tancred (who might fairly think the disunion
of his two potent guests essential to his own safety) so aggravated, that a
complete breach seemed inevitable. '■ he mistrustful Sicilian invited
Richard, whom lie now courted in preference to the French Kiri;, to his palace
at Catania; and there, amidst the festivities with which he strove to win his
favour, informed him that a design of seizing Sicily for himself was imputed
to him by Philip, even showing in proof of bis words, a letter to this effect,
which the Duke of Burgundy, he said, had brought him from the King of France.
Philip, when taxed with, denied the calumny, declaring the letter to be a
forgery of Richard’s. A defence so extraordinary as to give 'lancred’s accusation
a tinge of verisimilitude ; since it is impossible to divine how any object of
the King of England could be promoted by such a forgery, although some of the
King of Sicily’s might. Again the Earl of Flanders, interposing, effected a
reconciliation, and Richard freely lent his acknowledged suzerain ships, to
transport himself and .us troops to Palestine.
In these
English vessels Philip, towards the end of March, sailed for the Holy Land.
Queen Elinor, who, in consideration, partly of the dignity of her future
daughter- in law, and partly of the feelings of the rejected bride’s brother,
had hitherto remained quietly at Naples, with Berengaria, now, upon his
departure, took her over to Sicily. But the moment was inappropriate; Lent was
not over, and marriage, ii has been seen, could not then be solemnized without
a breach of the reverence due to the season of mortification. The Queen-mothcr,
therefore, when, after passing twelve days with her children, she embarked for
England, committed to her daughter Joanna the care of the affianced Princess.
Richard now made ready for his voyage, and his preparations were more consonant
with its sacred character and with that of the season than might have been
anticipated from his disposition. He made confession of his sins, and, in
penance for them, permitted Ins bishops to “scourge th’ offending Adam out
of him.”(138)
That done he embarked. but either from
_
o i ■ Digitized by Microsoft® -
respect to
decorum, the marriage not having yet taken place, or that he might be more free
for any warlike adventure that should chance to offer, he did not perform the
voyage in the company of his bride, who, with the Queen-dow- ager of Sicily,
sailed in a separate vessel. But, ere landing any of the Crusaders in
Palestine, it will be proper to see what had there ensued since the fall of the
Holy City; in what state they were to find the kingdom they had armed to
defend, or rather to recover.
When Saladin
was fully established in possession of Jerusalem, he proceeded, in November,
1187, to besiege Tyre. The Prince of Sidon had left it for Tripoli; and the
Governor, although the inhabitants were bent upon defending themselves, judging
resistance to be hopeless, refused to make their condition worse by so vain an
attempt. He therefore offered to treat, and Saladin sent him two standards to
hoist in sign of submission. This, however, he won Id not risk the fierce anger
of the Tyrians by doing, until the Sultan’s army should actually be before the
city. It appeared, and the day of surrender was fixed; when an arrival from
Europe changed, or for many years postponed, the fate of Tyre.
The new comer
was Marquess Conrad of Montferrat, the captor of the warlike Archbishop of
Mainz. He had left Italy with his father at the head of a small band of armed
pilgrims, but had quitted him by the way. The old Marquess, hurrying forward to
the fulfilment of his vow, had arrived with his crusaders in time to
participate in the disastrous defeat of Tiberias. His son had directed his
course to Constantinople, there—the previous marriage that had obliged him to
cede the Emperor Manuel’s daughter to his younger brother Rinieri, being
probably dissolved by death—to celebrate his wedding with the Emperor Isaac’s
sister, Theodora, to whom he was already contracted. He found a rebel general,
named Alexius Braneas, encamped at the city gate, and the indolent voluptuary
Isaac, upon the point of yielding to him. Marquess Conrad, known as a biave
soldier, breathed new tile into all. He made the Emperor pawn his jewels for
money with which he hired Turks and Sarsceus as auxiliaries, and he induced the
Franks in the
CU kiy linivi
UOt-i I
city to arm.
When the Greeks saw efficient troops under, efficient leaders, they too joined
the ranks of the loyalists, and an imperial army was assembled. Isaac
stimulated and assisted by Conrad, led forth the army, thus formed, gave
battle, and defeated Brancas, whom Conrad slew with his own hand. The dead
rebel's head was cut off, and it is said that Isaac—cowards and voluptuaries
are generally cruel—after it had been played with as a ball at a banquet, sent
the sanguinary trophy to the imprisoned widow of the slain. Conrad was
immediately created Cassar, and Isaac would fain have detained him to exercise
supreme authority at Constantinople. But he was disgusted with either the
Constantinopolitans, or his imperial brother-in- law, or his new wife—inflamed
with honest crusading zeal, it is difficult, from his subsequent conduct to
believe him— and made his escape, by smuggling himself on board a ship at the
moment of her sailing. In this ship he reached Tyre, as before said, the very
day prior to that appointed for hoisting the Moslem flag.
Conrad
arrived full of exultation at his recent deliverance of the Eastern Empire,
and recoiled indignantly from the impending surrender. The martial citizens
inquired whether he would undertake the command and defence of the city; and
upon his confident “Yes,” joyfully proclaimed him Prince of Tyre, by what
right— Tyre being part of the kingdom of Jerusalem—is not so apparent.
Diligently the new Prince prepared for a regular and obstinate defence; and
when summoned by Saladin to execute the convention, answered that he had made
none. The Sultan thought at once to vanquish him by sending for the old
Marquess, one of his Iiitti.i prisoners, to the camp, and threateni.ig to put
him to death if his son did not at once surrender. But Conrad coolly replied to
the message that not for any individuals sake would he surrender a single stone
of the. walls he had pledged himself to defend; and that, e.t his father’s age,
■with only a few years of infirmity to expect, the crown of martyrdom
would be the first of blessings. And as if to demonstrate the truth of this
asserted opinion, he would not even direct his engineers to avoid hitting the
places where his father should be exposed Saladin was however
'
r -irfcjftf ’ r I *
too generous
to execute his threat, and the old Marquess of Montferrat lived to be one of
the fellow-prisoners released with Guy. Conrad conducted the defence of Tyre
with equal skill and courage; by stratagem he destroyed the Egyptian fleet
blockading the port, and before the end of January 1188, Saladin, impatient
seemingly of tedious operations, raised the siege.
This check
scarcely interrupted his career of conquest. During the whole of this year, and
the first half of 1189, he continued to overrun and subdue the previously unoccupied,
rather than unconquered, provinces. He then turned his arms northward against
the principality of Antioch, where Bohemund appears not to have made even an
attempt at defence; but upon Saladin’s advance, to have immediately agreed, if
not relieved by foreign succours within seven months, to surrender both his
own dominions and Tripoli, so recently bequeathed to his second son. He was
spared part of the shame he had incurred,as well as all the loss consequent
upon his dastardly conduct, by the timely arrival of the Sicilian fleet;—the
first division of the third Crusade, it will be remembered, that was ready to
act. It was commanded by the Grand- Admiral Margaritone, and upon reaching the
Syrian coast narrowly escaped capture at Acre, where the Saracens kept the
Christian standard displayed, in order to insnare European vessels. This
Margaritone, when upon the point of entering the harbour, fortunately
discovered, lie then steered northward, visiting Tyre, where his aid was no
longer needed; but the position of Tripoli and Antioch, being there made known
to him, he hastened to the r relief. Thus were all these important places
preserved for the present to Christendom.
In the midst
of Saladin5 s rap:’d conquests, occurs one of the very few
dishonourable actions imputed, even by his enemies, to this admired prince, and
that one for which it is ditficult to imagine any motive sufficiently strong to
be really a temptation, whilst it is little consonant with subsequent history.
The accusation is this (‘39) Instead of releasing Guy and the twelve
companions of his choice, in March, 1188, the price at which he purchased the
surrender of Ascalon, he not only detained them in captivity till May,
but 'when,
upon the earnest remonstrances of Sibylla, •who seems to have merely visited
Guy, he then set them free, he compelled them further to purchase the liberty
already paid for; Guy,by abdicating the crown, and all the thirteen, by
swearing a solemn oath never again to bear arms against the Mohammedans.
Assuredly, Saladin’n appreciation of Guy must have been very different from
that of the King of Jerusalem’s enemies, if he could think it worth while to
violata a solemn engagement, merely to avoid encountering him at the head of
the Syro-Frauks Be this as it may, Guy, it is added, was no sooner at liberty
than he and his companions obtained dispensations from their unjustly extorted
oaths; he resumed the government, as they did their arms. Nor does '.t appear
either that, in Guy’s subsequent contest for the crown, this abdication was
ever brought forward as an argument against him, or that Saladin ever
reproached him or those released with him, with having broken their oaths. Some
old authors name the GrandMaster of the Templars as one of the twelve, but it
was actually impossible that he should take such an oath in direct
contradiction of his Templar’s oath, and the more general opinion is that the
Order, either before or after Guy's release, ransomed h-m by the surrender of
one of its castles.
The first
fruit of Guy’s release must have taught Saladi.i to regret having so long
detained him; being a schism in the small remainder of the kingdom. With
Sibylla hs immediately repaired to Tyre, as the strongest and most important
place remaining to them; but Conrad, proclaiming himself independent Prince of
Tyre, refused them the admittance they demanded, as sovereigns, of their
vassal. The Pisans, who were legally masters of a part of the city, and whose
fleet occupied the harbour, in vain urged the right of the King and Ciueen to
the recognition and admittance they claimed; Conrad called, and called
successfully, upon the Tyrians to join his own few followers in' opposing them,
should they attempt to force an entrance. Many fugitives from the fatal field
of Hittin, and fro.n divers of the lost towns, had already- gathered around the
royal standard ; but Guy was toe prudent to superadd a civi1 war to
his struggle for existence against a conqueror. He withdrew from hefore
Tyre; visited
Antioch and Tripoli, and spent the year in endeavours to secure vassals and
allies, and to raise troops in order to resume hostilities. In the early part
of 1189, he is allowed by Arab historians to have defeated a body of the
Sultan’s troops,(14°) and towards the end of August, 1189, he
attempted to carry Acre by surprise. For a moment he seemed not unlikely to
succeed; but an idle rumour of Saladin’s approach in great force interrupted
the assault, and when it was renewed the opportunity had fled. Upon his repulse
he began a siege in form.
This was an
operation so much beyond his means, his whole army consisting of 700 knights
and barely 9-000 foot,(ul) that Guy was much dissuaded from
undertaking it and blamed for his pertinacity. Experience had, perhaps, cured
him of his too great pliability, and the measure, if somewhat bold, proved in
the end judicious. It at once stopped the conquest of the kingdom, anxiety for
the preservation of a sea-port town, esteemed then as now, the key of Syria,
concentrating Saladin’s attention upon its defence,(U2) whilst Guy’s
camp formed a nucleus, around which gathered all remaining warlike Syro-Franks,
and, as they arrived, the small bands of Crusaders that preceded the royal
armaments.
Acre is
situate at the extremity of a projection of land that forms the north-western
point commanding the mouth of the bay; the wall is washed by the sea on the
western, and by the waters of the bay upon the southern side. The shore of the
bay is a fertile plain of no great extent, girdled by the Phoenician and
Galilean hills, with Mount Carmel as their southern termination. But the
streams that give this plain its fertility render it unhealthy after heavy
rains, when they overflow, and convert it into a morass.
Guy had not
numbers to shut in Acre upon its two land sides, but he pitched his camp before
it to the east. Saladin, the report of his vicinity having only been premature,
presently appeared with his army. He entered the town, made all requeue
arrangements for its defence, established a system of signals to enable the
Commandant of the garrison to receive his instructions, so as to facilitate his
acting in concert with him; and then encamped upon one of the nearest hills3
to watch Guy’s movements.
Bands of
Ciusaders now began to arrive; first Danes, then Frieslanders, despatched by
King Henry to meet, as he hoped, his father in Palestine; then, with the same
hope, came the Landgrave of Thuringia, who rendered Guy a double service.
Making Tyre first, he urged Conrad, his kinsman by their mothers, to assist
iri the siege of Acre as a Crusader, and prevailed upon him to open a
negotiation with Guy as to terms. Conrad required as the price of his aid, not
only the ndependence of Tyre, but the promise that Sidon and Berytus should,
when reconquered, be added to it. Prince Reginald of Sidon had forfeited all
claim to them, by asking and receiving from Saladin lands in Damascus as
compensation for the principality he renounced when submitting to him ; and so
urgent was the need of Conrad’s help, that the King and Queen acceded to these
demands. The Prince of Tyre, in return, undertook to supply provisions for the
whole besieging army, which he joined at the head of 1000 horse and 20,000
foot;—surely these numbers must have included both the survivors of his
father’s Montferrat band, and the Landgrave’s Thuringiaus. He took post with
the Hospitalers on the northern side of Acre, which was thus completely shut in
by land.
The siege was
long and peculiar, the besiegers being themselves in a manner besieged by
Saladin’s far larger host- From its great prolongation huts were gradually
substituted for tents in Guy’s camp; and from the condition of the kingdom
non-combatant Christians repaired to it, as to the capital. Queen Sibylla, with
her four daughters by Guy, was domiciliated in this temporary \\ oooen town,
where huts of shopkeepers alternated with those of soldiers. For one while the
frequent, often objectless, fighting, was intermingled with a strange sort of
social intercourse between enemies, who, despite their reciprocal intolerance,
had learned to respect each other. Upon one of the latter occasions, i( seems
to hav e struck the warriors as desirable that the children should share the
toils, dangers, and glories of the adults, and thus be early trained to what
appeared likely to form the business of their lives; and it was arranged that
two Christian boys should encounter two Mohammedans of their age. Chil-
dren abounded
in the camp as in the city, so that no difficulty in providing the juvenile
champions delayed this strange combat. The four boys fought; the young Moslems
took one of the Christians prisoner; the victory was pronounced theirs, and the
captive was ransomed, as had been predetermined, for two gold pieces. A
curious, as illustrative, specimen of the feelings of the age.
In October, a
more serious battle was fought, in which the excellence of Saladin’s previous
arrangements, and the rashness of the Grand-Master of the Temple, gave the
Saracens the advantage. At the head of his Templars, without waiting for the
junction of other troops, he attacked, defeated, and incautiously pursued the
enemies in front of him. Whilst Saladin was making prodigious exertions to
prevent the infection of flight in his own ranks, and to profit by the gap thus
left in those of the Christians, the garrison sallying, as they had beforehand
been commanded, attacked the camp, for the guard of which, Guy’s brother,
Geoffrey de Lusignan, had only a small corps. The absence of the Templars was
now painfully felt; and the confusion created by a report of the danger of the
camp—full it will be recollected of wives and children,—being increased by the
indiscretion of some Germans, who, in their eagerness to recover a runaway
horse, broke their array, Saladin gained the victory. During the engagement,
Guy rescued Conrad from the enemy’s hands, into which the Grand-Master of the
Templars fell; though whether dead or alive is uncertain. If the latter, he was
either slain by Saladin’s orders or died of his wounds. The Saracens are
reported by their own writers to ha\e been much amazed, upon stripping the
dead, to find three women in knight’s armour; and unable to conceive female
purity, save in seclusion, at once set down these devout amazons as courtesans.
The victory
was barren; each army resuming the position previously occupied, and the
garrison of Acre being driven back into the town by the return of the
Christians to defend their camp. An Egyptian fleet soon afterwards appeared oif
the mouth of the bay, which had been hitherto blockaded by the Sicilian and
Italian squadrons. Not indeed completely; since Saracen barks, by displaying
the
12 §
Cross aloft,
and swine upon their decks, had managed frequently to pass, with the fleets,
for Christian vessels, and so slipping through, to enter the port; which,
defended by strong towers, was still in the possession of the town. The Egyptian
fleet now attacked those of the Crusaders, defeated, and chased them from their
station. The sailors taken in the captured ships were forthwith hung upon, or
externally from, the walls of Acre.
During the
winter, Guy continued the siege, as did Sa- ladin his watch upon the besiegers.
The latter, however, removed his camp to a somewhat greater distance; and,
judging active operations over for the next few months, permitted a large part
of his army to return home for the unpropitious season. Guy similarly indulged
those who had homes to retire to; and amongst others Conrad withdrew with his
troops to Tyre. Occasional aftrays diversified the winter ; but the principal
occupations of the Syro- Franks and the Crusaders were fortifying their camps
and constructing battering engines; that of the Sultan’s troops, watching them;
and the chief casualties that occurred, proceeded from disease.
With the
return of spring, reinforcements poured in upon Saladin from all parts of his
widely-spreading dominions- New bands of Crusaders joined Guy, and Conrad
brought a fleet, with which he attacked, defeated, and drove away, in its
turn, the Egyptian fleet. The cruelties practised upon the Christi?n sailors
were nov/ more than retaliated; and that mainly by the female camp followers,
to whose vindictive fury the Egyptian prisoners were abandoned. From this time
forward any intermingling of courtesy or sociability with hostilities was
superseded—at least amongst all but the highest classes— by virulent enmity.
Still, the inferiority
in point of numbers of the Christiana to the army watching thtir every move,
prevented any serious attack upon the town, and induced a prohibition an the
part of the King and of the crusading leaders— the Landgrave of Thuringia and
the Comte d’Avesnes, who alternately held the command of the Europeans— to
fight, or even quit the intrenched camp, without orders. This the inferior
Crusaders considered as sheer
cowardice;
they had come to fight, and fight they would. Their pertinacious disobedience
in breaking out for desultory skirmishes, without knights for officers, cost
thousands of lives ; and, w ith the burning of the military engines by either
naphtha or Greek fire, thrown upon them from the walls, were the only incidents
that diversified the spring months, passed in anxious expectation of the
Emperor Frederic, but cheered by intelligence of his capture of Iconium.
In the course
of the summer of 1190, bodies of Crusaders arrived; one from England, under
Baldwin, Archbishop of of Canterbury, and Halph Glanville, ex-Grand Justiciary,
with an auxiliary troop from Scotland, others from France, under the Comte de
Champagne, and from Germany, under the Duke of Austria. But, to countervail the
satisfaction of such reinforcements, came the crushing tidings of
1
-», O _ o
the Emperor’s
death, and the consequent dispersion of the greater part of his army. Grievous
indeed to Guy was the loss of the veteran Imperial Crusader, upon whom and Iris
host he had so confidently relied, whose authority would have been undisputed,
and whose arrival he was daily anticipating. Deeply did the calamity depress
the spirits of the Germans already present, especially of the Landgrave who was
even then in ill health; and thus perhaps enabled the Comte de Champagne, notwithstanding
the superior rank of the Duke of Austria, to accomplish his object; to wit,
monopolizing the command of the Europeans, upon the double plea of the numbers
of French Crusaders in camp, and his own near relationship to both the expected
kings;—his mother, being half-sister to both, as daughter of Leu is VII, by
Elinor of Aquitaine. The mortification of being thus completely set aside,
added to grief, personal and national, for the loss of his imperial uncle,
increased the illness of the Landgrave ; and, <n testimony of the high
esteem in which he was held by foe as by friend, Saladin sent to offer him the
services of his own physician. The offer was civilly declined; whereupon for
medical aid the Sultan substituted a present of delicacies, suited to the
appetite of an invalid, with a leopard trained to hunting, for his pastime:—n
piece of courtesy that is said to have excited great jealousy Digitized by
Microsoft®
amongst the
French Crusaders. Ill, sad, and irritated, the Landgrave, abandoning the Holy
Land, embarked for Europe; but landed in Cyprus for rest or refreshment; and
there, in October, he died.
Guy conceived
that the Duke of Swabia, with his 5000 men, the poor residue of the mighty
host,—plenty at Antioch having again been abused, with the same noxious
consequences as before—would be of most use to the common cause, by attacking
the Mohammedans in that more northern region, and thus making a diversion in
favour of the besiegers of Acre. But, if the King’s strategy were good, his
policy in the choice of a negotiator was not. He requested the Prince of
Tyre,—whom he perhaps thought his rescue of him had made his friend,—as the
Duke’s kinsman, to visit, and concert with him such a plan of operations.
Conrad readily undertook the mission ; but if the accusation already w hispered
against him, of taking bribes from Saladin, were false, and improbable :t then
assuredly wTas, he bore little good will to the sovereign from whom
he had wrested so considerable a por'ion of his dominions as the principality
of Tyre, and studied his own interest in preference to the recovery of the
kingdom. Thi« 'nterest he thought would be promoted by the presence of his
imperial relation, a3 his supporter, in the camp; and accordingly, having
gained Duke Frederic’s esteem and friendship, upon the 8th of October he again
appeared before Acre, accompanied by him and his German Crusaders. But, however
judicious the baffled plan might have been, the presence of the Duke of Swabia
mi the camp was not without advantages. The command of the Germans and Italians
w as immediately transferred to the son of their deceased Emperor; and, though
he claimed no authority over the French, his superior rank and high reputation
gave him great influence over the Earl of Champagne; whilst, having 110
possible object save that for which the Crusade was organized, his authority
was a check upon all selrish views —even upon Conrad’s.
The
dissentions in the camp increased nevertheless, and appear, more even than
Saladin’s army, to have impeded active measures against the town. The remainder
of the
autumn was
wasted in exploits of individual gallantry and irregular desultory fighting.
Amongst the former, the assault of one of the castles commanding the mouth of
the port may deserve mention. The Pisans, in whose squadron were some ships
furnished with towers for attacking high walls, undertook the attempt upon this
castle, in which the Duke of Austria joined them. He led the storming party,
and led it so vigorously that, although severely wounded, he was on the summit
of either the Pisan tower or the attacked castle, when the Greek fire was
skilfully directed against the vessel bearing the former. It caught ship and
tower, burned fiercely, and every hope of carrying the castle vanished. Leopold
saw no chance for life but by leaping from his lofty position into the sea,
and swimming to another bark. He did so, it is said,(U3) covered
with blood, his white sword-belt alone excepted: and, in memory of the feat,
henceforward bore, as his coat of arms, a red shield obliquely traversed by a
silver beam, or in field gules a fess argent.
As an
instance of the desultory fighting may be mentioned, that a party of
Crusaders, going forth without orders or leaders, surprised the quarters of
Malek-el-Adel at meal time, putting him and his whole division to flight. But,
instead of prosecuting their victory, they fell to plundering the tents, and
eating and drinking what they found there, and wrere surprised in
their turn by Saladin. He forbade giving quarter, and they would have been
entirely cut to pieces, had not an English priest prevailed upon the Princes to
lead out the army for their protection; when, as usual, the Saracens could not
stand the charge of the European chivalry.
The horror of
the Mohammedans at finding women in male attire amongst the slain has been
mentioned. Such female warriors were numerous; and many, doubtless, were of the
class of Archbishop Christian’s brigade of amazons. But many w ere wives and
daughters of spotless reputation, who had made the pilgrimage in the company of
their natural protectors, and, in the fervour of crusading zeal, fought by
their side. Of one of these it is recorded, that, being mortally wounded by ail
arrow from the wall, whilst diligently labouring with those employed to fill
the Digitized oy Microsoft®
ditch of Acre
(a measure indispensable to the advance of the moveable towers within reach of
the walls), she on- treated her husband to leave her corpse in the ditch, that,
even after death, she might contribute to the success of the siege. Respecting
another woman in the camp an anecdote is related, exhibiting Saladin in the
truly chivalrous character that has made him a favourite hero of romance. A
female Crusader one day rushed amidst the Saracen host, and flung herself at
the Sultan’s feet, exclaiming that her child had been stolen by liiij people,
that she had heard he was merciful, and came to implore hii:i to have pity upon
a bereaved mother. He ordered the stolen child to be sought, purchased it of
the captor, and restored it to the mother, whilst he wept in sympathy with her
delirious joy. And this same man could order the massacre of prisoners who
refused to apostatize ! Could there be a stronger proof, that it really was
then esteemed a religious duty to kill God’s enemies,—holding as such all who
worshipped God in a different form from the slayer?
Amidst
such desultory warfare, autumn produced the marsh fever, already mentioned as
habitual in the plain of Acre; and the disease swept away, in add.;ion to thousands
of ordinary crusaders, personages whose deaths complicated the existing
dissetitiojis. These were Queen Sibylla and her children. Conrad at once
accused Guy of poisoning them; without however adducing, either mv ground of
suspicion, or any conceivable motive for the perpetration of a crime as
suicidal as it would have been revolting, a crime destructive of all the hopes
and views of the accused. More rationally, he argued that Guy, having been King
only as husband of the Queen, could, after her death, have no pretension to the
crown, which devolved to ihe next heir; and this heir, Sibylla having left no
child, was her half-sister Isabel. Guy and his partisans, on the other hand,
alleged that, having once been crowned, he could never more be deprived of the
rights and the dignity that ceremony had given him (U3*) But let not
Conrad be supposed to have had any intention of playing' the gratuitous
champion of legitimacy. Far from propos ing to dethrone Guy in order to seat
Isabel’s husband, Humphrey Dig iti zed by Micro soft © ■
de Thoron, in
his place, he appears to have for some time projected supplanting the latter in
that capacity, and theij advancing her claim, as Amalric’s only legitimate
child, against Sibylla, whose death merely facilitated the scheme. Over the
giddy and, judging from her conduct, heartless Princess he had acquired
unbounded influence, and now easily induced her to sue for a divorce, upon the
plea that her nonage at the period of her nuptials precluded a valid consent on
her part. A tribunal was found to pronounce the divorce, with the sanction, it
is said, of the Patriarch, who, as has been seen, was not very scrupulous in
such matters, but who certainly took no active part in this transaction. The
sentence obtained, it wras a Crusader, the Bishop of Beauvais, who
married Conrad, the husband of a living Greek Princess, (144) to
Isabel, the wife of a living Syro-Frank husband, whom she had acknowledged as
such for years. The Archbishop of Canterbury, a person of more importance
amongst the Crusaders, excommunicated all parties for such profanation of a
sacrament.
Conrad and
Isabel now assumed the titles of King and Queen of Jerusalem; Guy retained his
of King; and of the Syro-Franks and the Crusaders, half adhered to the one, half
to the other, of these contending candidates for the fragment of a kingdom. And
where the right really lay, save with Isabel, it were hard to decide ; Guy
could have none, as a childless widower; Conrad none, not being the Queen’s
lawful husband. The pretensions of her real husband, Humphrey de Thoron, no one
thought of; and ere long lie, for a good round sum, sold his consent
to the divorce. But his consent could only avail against his own right to
redress, not to dissolve a sacrament.
It should
seem, however, that Guy had far the largest half of both subjects and army; for
so indignant was Conrad at the preference given to him, that he withdrew with
Isabel to Tyre; and, if he did not absolutely break his engagement as to
feeding the besiegers, he confined his supplies to that portion of the camp
which was occupied by his own partisans, and even their necessities he became
very remiss in supplying. Nor was this sin of
omission all
the army had to complain of relative to tin?
important
matter, since he i.s accused of having defamed at Tyre divers vessels freighted
with corn for the market before Acre.
In
consequence of these measures of Conrad’s, aided by the usual impediments to
winter navigation, especially during the infancy of the science, scarcity soon
prevailed in the camp, It lasted from the end of November till February,
becoming from day to day more terrible. The bakers’ shops, or huts, were scenes
of ever-rccurring ■ conflict, the purchasers actually fighting for the bread;
whilst, upon the plea that these bakers were seeking to derive exorbitant
profits from the general distress, even noble knights joined in plundering
them. Valuable chargers were slaughtered for food; every Lind of weed or
animal, even the most disgusting reptiles, were devoured. And so recklessly
did whoever obtained anything eatable satisfy his ravenous appetite, that one
very unexpected result of the famine was, at its close, the imposing of almost
general penances for noii-observance of Chureh fasts. Extremity of hunger
seduced many Crusaders bito apostacv. For bread, they offered their services to
Saladin, who was constantly well supplied from the country in h's rear, and
from Egypt by sea ; a road to him, master of almost all the seaports of Palestine,
ever open. He equipped vessels for these renegades, and, as pirates, they
inflicted heavy losses upon their former friends, helping the famine ; but the
Sultan is averred, honourably, if inconsistently, to have refused his
covenanted share of the booty when offered him. The sufferings of the besiegers
were still on the increase, when, upon the 2d of February, 1191, a ship loaded
with grain entered the bay, and the measure of corn, which the preceding day
could hardly be procured for one hundred gold pieces, was offered for four.
The famine
had, as usual, been accompanied by a fearful Increase of the epidemic, which
often carried off as many as a hundred victims in a day. Amongst these W7ere
knights, prelates, earls, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Patriarch of
Jerusalem, and superior to all these in importance, the Duke of Swabia, who
died the 20th of January, 14-9 U But his brief sojourn in the camp before Digitized
by Microsoft®
Acre, besides
being marked by several gallant feats of arms, left one, if not imperishable,
yet durable monument; viz., a new Order of Knights—the third Order already
mentioned. (U5)
The masters
of the Lubeck and Bremen vessels, that had brought the Earl of Holstein and his
crusaders to the camp before Acre, being touched with the seemingly neglected
and helpless condition of the indigent sick and wounded there, made a tent with
their spare sails, as a hospital for such as needed the accommodation. Duke
Frederic upon his arrival, charmed with this act of Christian charity,
afforded the sea-faring good Samaritans all the assistance in his power; in
consequence of which they, at their departure, made over their hospital tent to
his chaplains and chamberlains, and the little establishment was immediately
enlarged. To the tent was now added a hut, with an adjoining wooden chapel, for
the spiritual wants of the patients. Amongst those, who proffered their services
as nurses in this hospital, were several members of a charitable institution at
Jerusalem, that had perished when the Holy City was lost. This was a German
hospital, founded by a married couple of German pilgrims, whose names history
has unkindly neglected to preserve. They thought that the Knights Hospitalers,
being mostly French and English, with a few Italians, devoted their cares too
exclusively to compatriot sufferers. Hence they built at Jerusalem a hospital
for German pilgrims solely, endowed it amply, dedicated it to the Virgin, and
placed it under the jurisdiction of the Grand-Master of St. John. Duke Frederic
was as much delighted with the account given him of this German hospital of St.
Mary, as he had been wilh the active charity of the Bremen and Lubeck sailors,
and conceived the idea of blending the two into a German institution of Knights
Hospitalers, who, under the rather long-winded name of the Order of the German
House of our Lady at Jerusalem, might emulate the Knights of St. John of
Jerusalem. The idea look; German knights offered themselves for the twofold
duties of champions and nurses of pilgrims, from amongst whom Heinrich von
Walpot was selected as Grand-Master. Frederic, besides liberally supplying the
present tvants of the new Order*
endowed it
with Miihlhausen ,‘n his own duchy, secured for it the patronage of his brother
Henry VI, and obtained from Celrstin III—who had now succeeded to Clement III,
in St. Peter’s Chair—the Papal sanction indispensable to its recognised
existence. To this pontiff, the constitution of the new Order, in which those
of the Templars and Hospitalers were "virtually blended, was submitted and
by him highly approved. This Order adopted, as its distinctive garb, a white
cloak with a black cross, and, overlooking if not discarding the
before-mentioned verbose title, its members are designated indifferently the
Marians, or the Teutonic Knights. The historians of the Order Fay the Marians
early acquired their reputation ;(146) and German writers ascribe
the absence of all mention of them in the chronicles of Richard Coeur de Lion’s
Cmsade, to their resentment of his treatment of the Duke of Austria (147)
(of which hereafter) and consequent resolution not to serve under the English
monarch. That a degree of German nationality existed in the Middle Ages, very
different from the narrow patriotism now severing Brandenburg, for instance,
from Austria, there is no doubt. But without having recourse to it rela- ‘lVely
to an offence relegated by many writers, and by probability, to the latter end
of Bichard’s Crusade, this silence is abundantly explained by the infancy of
the- Order at that time. French, English, and Syro-Frank chroniclers might well
confuse 'he few Marians with the Hospitalers, their prototype: and in fact the
expression of “ early acquired their reputation” refers to the following
century, when their fourth, really great, Grand-Master, Hermann von Salza,
completed the institution of the Teutonic Knights, and, as will be seen, led
them to fame. This monument of Frederic of Swabia’s piety and charity subsisted
till involved in the sweeping destruction of continental institutions wrought
by the French revolution, and the Emperor Napoleon I.
There is a
report, too unlikely to be believed, but which should be mentioned, and which,
in date, must precede the arrival of the crusading Kings. It is, that, at one
period of the siege, Acre, being distressed, offered to cop - tulote, upon
condition of the garrison and inhabitants Digitized by Microsoft 0
being
permitted to depart unmolested with their moveable property; that Guy was eager
to recover so important a place so easily; but that the Crusaders, who wanted
to have the sacking of the wealthy town, and Conrad, bribed by Saladin,
prevented the granting of these terms. When Conrad’s intriguing negotiations
with Saladin began, is not certain; but even were they already a-foot, and were
the tale otherwise credible, it would not be necessary to accuse the Prince of
Tyre of the meanness of taking bribes to betray the Christian cause, since
enmity to Guy would have been motive strong enough to induce him to oppose
whatever was beneficial to the rival King. But that Acre, under the Sultan’s
very eye, should dream of capitulating until compelled by irresistible
necessity, is utterly unimaginable.
GUY ISABEL AND CONRAD ISABEL AND HENRY.
Conclusion
of Third Crusade—Arrival of Philip Augustus— Rickard’s Capture of
Cyprus—Arrival in Palestine—Capture of Acre—Departure of Philip
Augustus—Richard's Campaigns—Murder of Conrad—Isabel's third Marriage—Rescue
of Joppa—Treaty with Saladin. [1191 —
1192.
The siege of Acre proceeded, but the want of a Com-
mander-in- Chief was deeply felt, none of the crusading princes combining the
requisite qualifications for that office, military experience and reputation,
with high station; whilst Guy, since Sibylla’s death and the contention for the
royal authority, scarcely retained a shadow of power. Impatiently was the
arrival of the Kings of France and England expected. The 13th of April, 1191,
brought the first named monarch; but the very small accession of numerical
strength that came with him (six ships contained his whole army) cruelly
disappointed the hopes that had been entertained. Philip Augustus at once
involved himself in the feuds dividing and embroiling both camp and kingdom,
by adopting the cause of his relation, Conrad of Mortferrat, who hurried from
Tyre to the camp, in order to secure his support.
Richard’s
voyage had been variously delayed; first by a storm, that dispersed the English
fleet, next by the consequent necessity of re-collecting the scattered
vessels. Whilst, for this purpose, successfully visiting Crete and Rhodes, he
learned that some of his ships, amongst others that which bore the keeper of
his signet, had been wrecked off the coast of Cyprus and plundered by the
Cypriots; who, murdering many, had made prisoners of more, of the sailors and
crusaders, as, exhausted and defenceless, they Digitized by Microsoft ® •
reached the
shore. He learned further, that vessels of his, having put into the Cypriot
harbour of Limasol for shelter, the passengers had been invited to land, and similarly
made prisoners.
Cyprus was
then governed by a prince named Isaac, a descendant by females of the Comneni,
who, by means of forged documents, had possessed himself of the sovereign
authority there, whilst Andronicus was seizing the throne at Constantinople. He
entitled himself Emperor of Cyprus, proved a worse tyrant than even the
Constan- tinopolitan usurper, and was yet more detested by his subjects than by
the Syro-Franks, to whom he was as troublesome a neighbour as a nest of pirates
could have been ; intercepting, plundering and imprisoning crusaders and
pilgrims wTho ventured within his reach.(U8) The ill-
usage of Richard’s Crusaders was not the crime of popular lawlessness, but
inflicted by his positive command.
The
Lion-heart was not the man to overlook such conduct ; he steered directly for
Limasol, where he found the bark to which he had intrusted his sister and his
bride, lying off the mouth of the harbour. He hastened on board, and learned
from their lips the subsequent transactions there. The bold Crusaders 'uho had
been entrapped had broken prison, had, with two or three weapons, which they
had managed to secrete when captured, defeated the multitude of their guards,
achieved their liberty, and rejoined their ship. Isaac had thereupon disavowed
the unsuccessful outrage, and endeavoured, by the most courteous messages to
lure the two princesses on shore. They, fearing to trust themselves in his
power, had declined his invitations: whereupon, in his exasperation at being
thus foiled, he had ordered the captives taken from the wrecks to be executed.
The perpetration of this fresh atrocity had been prevented by the tumultuary
opposition of the people, and the Cypriot Emperor had now equipped four
galleys to seize the ship containing the Queen and Princess.
The King of
England immediately sent to demand from the Emperor of Cyprus the restitution
of the arms and other property taken from the English Crusaders. An answer of
supercilious defiance was returned: and Richard.
with a
moderation wholly unexpected, sent two more demands for redress, when his
messengers were not even suffered to land; and now he gave his anger the reins.
Manning his boats, he in them attacked the large armed vessels guarding the
entrance of the inner harbour ; and the crews, instead of attempting
resistance, threw themselves into the sea to escape from the Lion-heart and
his Englishmen. The assailants landed; and the troops, headed by' Isaac, fled
with equal headlong precipitation. His horses being yet afloat, the King could
not pursue them; but he occupied Limasol, and established his sister and his
bride in the palace of him, whose prisoners they had so nearly been. The next
day, his horses were brought on shore, and he proceeded to seek, engage, and
defeat' the Cypriot army, that Isaac had now assembled in numbers far superior
to his small band. Isaac took refuge in Nicosia, and, leaving him blockaded
there, Richard returned, laden with booty and prisoners, to Limasol.
During these
operations, more and more of the English fleet had gradually made the harbour,
where the King was by this time known to have landed, and he was joined by more
of his troops. At Limasol, he was likewise visited by Guy ; wTho,
seeing his rival’s interest adopted by the King of France, felt himself lost
unless he could secure the favour of the King of England. The Lasignans, as
before said, appear to have been distantly related to the Queen-mother Elinor,
whose vassals they were; and Richard, frankly forgiving the rebellious acts
that had forced both brothers, Guy and Geoffrey, to make pilgrimages to the
Holy Land, at once recognised as King of Jerusalem, him, as whose ally in that
character he had left Europe, even as though the death of the Queen made no
change in his position. Guy had brought with him his brother Geoffrey, the
Grand-Master of the Hospital, the Princes of Antioch and Tripoli, a son of the
Prince of Armenia, Isabel’s repudiated husband, and some other Palestine
magnates. In their presence, Richard, Lent being now' over, solemnized his
marriage with Borengaria; and his guests accompanied him in the short campaign,
that ensued in Cyp.-us. Isaac, terrified at Richard’s Digitized by Microsoft
®
power, first
sued for peace, and through the mediation of the Grand-Master obtained it;
then, in a fit of offended arrogance, broke it; whereupon he was again
attacked, completely vanquished, and made prisoner. The Cypriots now gladly
hastened to tender their homage and allegiance to Richard, who took possession
of the island as his conquest: which the Greek historian Nicetas, as well as
Frank chroniclers, holds to have been the happiest possible event for
Palestine. In fact, during the remainder of the Crusade, the army was fed from
that island. Richard now appointed an Anglo-Norman Governor of Cyprus, with
whom he left sufficient garrison, sent Isaac, in the custody of one of his
Chamberlains, to Tripoli in Syria,(us) placed his only child, a
daughter, amongst Berengaria’s ladies, partly for education, partly as a
captive, and set sail for Acre. Again Berengaria and Joanna performed the
voyage in a separate vessel; the object clearly being, that Richard might be
free to seize any opportunity of fighting that should offer.
The English
fleet, consisting of twenty-five sail, first made Tyre; where, in accordance
with Conrad’s prospective orders, upon the futile plea that Richard designed to
take Tyre, as he had taken Cyprus, he was refused admittance ; he therefore
uninterruptedly prosecuted his voyage to Acre. By the way he fell in with a prodigiously
large Saracen ship, under French colours, detected the fraud, and attacked her.
She was defended w7ith admirable courage; and the Greek fire
terrified the English sailors, who had never before seen it; but Richard’s
firmness prevailed. Her captain, when he despaired of saving, strove to sink
her. In vain ! She was taken, and proved to be bound for Acre, laden with
provisions, arms, the ingredients of which the Greek fire was compounded, and
some barrels filled with the most venomous snakes, destined to be flung into
the besiegers’ camp.(150) The capture of this ship was accepted by
both parties a3 an omen; depressing the garrison of Acre, and even Saladin, as
much as it delighted the besiegers.
Upon the 8th
of June, Richard landed, and found the siege still languishing, notwithstanding
Philip’s arrival. The filling of the ditch was still in progress; and the chief
Digitized by Micrc -oi
occupat ion
of the French King, who averred that not to rob Richard, of this share of the
glory of taking Acre, he had waited for him, had hitherto been putting the
machines constructed in Sicily in order, anil erecting for himself a stone
mansion, proof against the weapons of the age. This house was situated opposite
to the Acre castle named la Maudite, and was in its turn called Malvoiun.
From
the hour of Richard’s landing, dissentions arose between the royal Crusaders :
and so contradictory are the accounts given by French and English historians,
that the only chance of eliciting the truth, lies in comparing the several
statements with the respective characters of the supposed actors; and even so,
and at this distance of time, it may not be easy to avoid a tinge of
partiality. Richard was the very impersonation of the feudal chivalry of his
day, as Frederic Barbarossa of that of some half century earlier; and in
judging of his probable conduct it must ever be borne in mind that the
unbounded admiration which his excellence in all knightly exercises, and his
protieieney in the gai saber commanded, would naturally render hnn self willed,
and likely in every way, except by artifice, or by declining an opportunity of
doing battle, to offend a rival. Philip, on the other hand, was more admired as
a politic and successful monarch, than as a knight; and in those days, as long
after them, almost to our own times, craft was deemc-d an essential element of
policy. That it was so esteemed by Philip, one instance will sufficiently
prove; which, as he did but appear in Palestine to vanish again, must be taken
from Lis acts in France. A Brabanyon corps—the employment of such mercenaries
became daily more general—having mutinied for their pay, which was greatly in
arrear, he appointed them to meet him at Bourges, where he would satisfy their
demands. Bourges was then occupied by French troops in numbers infinitely
superi >r to the Brabangons; and there these French troops, as Philip had
pre arranged, fell by surprise upon his unprepared creditors, disarmed them,
and robbing them even of their horses, drove them penniless, helpless, nearly
naked, out of the town.(151.) And this politic monarch, naturally
jealous of a vassal more powerful than Digitized by Microsoft® ,
his suzerain,
felt himself eclipsed as well by that vassal’s brilliant and impetuous valour,(1M)
as by his wealth. Philip had offered three gold pieces to every poor knight who
would engage in his service. Crusaders who had dissipated their own resources
caught at such offers— Richard gave four, and Philip was deserted for him who
paid better. Richard, however, generally rejected those whom he knew to have
previously accepted the French King’s offers, or to be in treaty yi ith him. For his nephew, Henry of
Champagne, he made an exception. This Earl, finding his means exhausted, had
applied for assistance to his uncle Philip, who offered him a loan upon
mortgage of Champagne. The nephew said, “ 1 have done my duty in applying first
to my liege Lord;” and had recourse to his English uncle, who supplied him
freely with what he wanted.^153)
Immediately
upon his rival’s landing, the French King produced his engines, announced his
purpose of battering the walls preparatory to storming the town, and summoned
the English King to co-operate in both measures. Richard returned for answer,
that the ships freighted with his battering train were not yet arrived, and
that he, individually, disabled by the still prevailing epidemic—of which the
Earl of Flanders had just died—could not then rise from his bed. Philip made
the attack without him, and was repulsed, with loss of many lives and of much
machinery, destroyed by the Greek fire. This is the English account; the French
version is, that Richard, then in good health, his illness beginning
subsequently, promised all co-operation and failed; thus, either of malice
prepense, or capriciously, causing Philip’s discomfiture.
This
disaster, however caused, superadded to previous qnarrels, gave birth to ill
blood and recriminations that embittered the dissensions, respecting points
really in dispute betwixt the Kings. These were two; namely, the conflicting
claims of Guy and Conrad to the kingdom of Jerusalem; and the pretensions
advanced by Philip to half the island of Cyprus,—as previously in Sicily to
half Medina- in virtue of the convention by which all crusading acquisitions
—looking probably beyond the recovery of Palestine to conquests from
Mohammedans—were to ba VOL. II. JS
shared
equally. Both these disputes necessarily embarrassed the conduct of the war
The first deprived the besiegers of the assistance of Conrad, who, challenged
by Geoffrey de Lusignan to tent his pretensions by a judicial combat, had
refused, and again retired to Tyre. The second, exacerbating the rivalry of the
crusading monarehs, was still more inconvenient. To Philip’s demand, Richard
replied that Cyprus was no crusading acquisition, but an accidental conquest,
made in pmiishing an abominable outrage offered to his own family and vassals;
nevertheless, if Philip would give him half his recent acquisitions, pecuniary
in Syria, and landed in Europe—upon the death of the Earl of Flanders, Philip,
as suzerain, had seized his money, and claimed many of his Flemish fiefs as
lapsed to the crown—half of Cyprus was much at his service. Neither King was
disposed to accept a compromise, and no means of conciliation could be devised.
But if the
ill-will existing between the royal Crusaders prevented positn e co-operation,
it likewise produced an emulation in some measure compensating that evil.
Philip built new engines, and repeated his unsuccessful assaults. Richard’s batter’ng
train, as soon as landed, was brought into action; and he, whilst still unable
to stand, was carried to the scene of danger, and there laid upon cushions,
that his presence might animate, whilst his judgment directed the exertions of
his troops. And even in this debilitated condition, he added to the general’s
part, the soldier’s, so much more congenial to his temperament. From his
cushions, he, with his crossbow, mortally wounded two Saracens upon the walls,
one of whom was pranking in the armour of a French Knight, slain in one of
Philip’s unsuccessful attacks; the other deliberately defiling a crucifix.
Richard’s machines are said to have been more ingeniously contrived than
Philip’s, and securely protected against the destructive Greek fire; but his
assaults were equally unsuccessful. During the earlier part of this time, his
impatience of the inactivity, unavoidably caused by disease, was relieved by an
interchange of messages and courtesies with Saladin; who, hearing of his illi
ess, as in the case of the Landgrave, sent presents of fruits and delicacies
adapted to his con- Digitlzed by Microsoft®
dition.
Richard, charmed with so chivalrous an enemy, made overtures for an interview,
which the more cautious Sultan declined whilst they were at war.
Richard
gradually recovered; and now the siege, after lingering on for two years,
assumed a character of vigorous activity, that by the 4th of July, drove
Karakush, the Commandant of Acre, to propose a capitulation. The proposal was
entertained ; but he demanded terms to which neither Richard nor Philip would
listen. Various stipulations for the surrender of Acre were then, on either
side, suggested and rejected. Amongst others, Saladin is averred to have
offered the restitution of the whole of Palestine, except a few southern
fortresses, indispensable to the safe communication between Cairo and Damascus,
if the two Kings would aid him with their whole force to subdue Kotbeddin, a
still refractory nephew of Noureddin’s, reigning beyond the Euphrates. This
mode of attaining the object for which they were in arms, was probably deemed
inconsistent with their crusading vowT and character; since the
offer, if really made—a startling one from so zealous a Mussulman—was not
closed with. The negotiations went on, and so did the assaults ; the last being
led by the Earl of Leicester and the Bishop of Salisbury on the 11th. Though
repulsed, it apparently determined Karakush to surrender upon whatever terms he
could obtain.
The next day,
July 12th, he therefore agreed, upon condition of the lives of the garrison and
of the inhabitants being spared, to deliver up the city, with all its arms,
wealth, and provisions, and also the ships in port; to pay a sum of 200,000
bezaunts as ransom for their lives ; and to procure the restitution of the True
Cross, together with the release of a certain number of prisoners—‘it should
seem of 250 knights, and 2,500 common men; but authorities differ both as to
the numbers, and as to the precise.time within which all this was to be
performed. The Emirs and part of the garrison were to remain, as hostages for
the fulfilment of these stipulations, in the hands of the two Kings, and at
their mercy, should the Sultan reject the terms of the capitulation. This provision
appears very -strange, when it is recollectcd that the Dfgitizeaby
Microsoft®
Sultan was
close at hand, and of course still in communication with Acre by signal,—his
own proposal might not particularly refer to Acre—and suspicion that he did not
chuse to be consulted upon the matter, involuntarily intrudes itself. For we
are told that after the capitulation had been not only concluded but executed,
as far as was in the power of Karakush, the indignant Saladin was disposed to
reject the terms, had net his MoHahs so earnestly represented the danger to
which he would thus expose all Moslem prisoners of the Christians, as to
prevent his actually so doing. But that he never ratified the capitulation
seems equally certain, and whether he in any way, ever formally assented to, or
recognised t, is still a question. The whole transaction is indeed involved in
considerable obscurity. Ccnrad, who, at the request of the French monarch, had
returned to the camp and negotiated the arrangement, being accused of having
bargained with either Karakush or Saladin himself for a pecuniary remuneration
of his pains ; whilst it is self-evident that, had he been bribed, he would not
have extorted concessions which the briber, if the Commandant, doubted his
master’s sanctioning, if the Sultan, could hardly be induced even tacitly to
admit.
The two
Kings, as though Acre were one of their conquests to be shared, not a city of
the King of Jerusalem’s recovered for him, entered the town with their own
troops, excluding all others, hoisted their own flags, divided the booty
between themselves, and occupied, Philip, the Preceptory of the Templars,
Richard, the Castle. They justified such autocratical proceedings by the
uncertainty as to who really was the King of Jerusalem, which must be ascertained
ere Acre could be given up to him. The Duke of Austria was, like all other
vassal princes, of course excluded from any partnership with the monarchs; and
it is exceedingly doubtful, whether he advanced any pretension to share with
them, or to place his banner beside theirs. If he did, there can be no doubt
that Philip, as well as Richard, would contemptuously reject it, though the
former, it may be presumed, would manage to throw the active and offensive part
of the rejection upon the
latter. Yet
do Oerinar historians, even of the present
day,
forgetting that the vassal Duke of Austria of the twelfth century held a very
different station from the Dukes of Austria, hereditary German Emperors, of
later times, and taking no notice of the French King, state the Duke’s
exclusion as an assumption of superiority, so unwarranted as to justify the
hatred borne by Leopold the Virtuous to Richard Coeur de Lion; (154)
who, they assert, ordered the Austrian flag to be dragged in the mire, in spiteful
jealousy of Leopold, as a rival in “ deeds of derring do.” The question of the
cause of Leopold’s hatred, for which divers are assigned, will be more properly
discussed, when the others; as suggested, occur.
At Acre both
Kings were occupied during the remainder of July in negotiating with the
Saracens, in settling conflicting claims to property, of Christians—fugitives,
or expelled whilst the city had been under Moslem rule—now returning ; and in
investigating and pronouncing between the more important conflicting claims of
the rival pretenders to the kingdom.
Judges were
appointed to examine the first class of uncertain pretensions, and restore all
property to which a right could be clearly established; when the potent Venetians
found no difficulty in recovering their portion of Acre. With respect to the
kingdom, the claim of Guy, supported by the Hospitalers, Venetians, and Pisans,
and that of Conrad maintained by the Templars, had been previously referred to
the two Kings and their Baronage, and the decision by them postponed until Acre
should be taken. This decision, to which both rivals were pledged to submit,
was now pronounced. It ordained that Guy should be King for his life, Isabel,
with Conrad, or their children, succeeding at his death, and that during his
life the revenue derived from crown domains, royalties, &c., should be
equally divided between them; Conrad meanwhile holding Tyre, Sidon, and
Berytus, as an hereditary, vassal principality. To Geoffrey de Lusignan were
similarly assigned the counties of Joppa and Ascalon, of which he was to
receive investiture, as was Conrad of hit principality, in guerdon of their
valour and their services, both doing homage to Guy. With the exception of
Tyre, neither arrant could be verv beneficial to the grantee, until
the
territories granted should be recovered from Saladin, in whose possession they
then were. Upon the 27th of July, both Guy and Conrad bound themselves by oath
in the prescribed form, to observe theae terms. Saladin is reported to have,
during these transactions, renewed hit offer of restoring Palestine, in
consideration, of effective aid against Kotbeddin; and Kotbeddin, on his part,
to have offered to turn Christian, with all his subjects, as the price of an
alliance offensive anddefensive agr.inst Saladin. Neither offer was positively
accepted or rejected, and the negotiations lingered. Nor were the clashing
proposals the only matters that diversified the royal deliberations.
A week before
the sentence was pronounced, the Duke of Burgundy, the Bishop of Beauvais, and
two French Earls waited upon the King of England on the part of the King of
France. They appeared from excessive agitation unable to speak, and Richard
noticing their distress, thus addressed them : “ I know your errand. The King
your master intends to go home, and you come to ask my opinion on the subject.”
The envoys replied: “ Gracious Lord, you know all. We do indeed coine to inform
you of this resolution, and to ask your opinion thereon. Our Liege Lord the King
of France is persuaded that he cannot longer remain here without peril to his
life.” Richard rejoined: “ Doubtless to quit the Iloly Land without fulfilling
his vow, must brand King Philip himself and his kingdom with shame
ineffaceable; but if he believes that a sojourn here would be his death, I
shall not oppose his departure. Let him do what he and his people think fit.”
French
writers generally ascr le this abiupt deterioration of Philip’s to a dreadful
illness, caused, as he supposed, by poison administeied at Richard’s
instigation, and to mistrust of Richard’s good faith, awakened by his intercourse
with Saladin. Generally, but not without exceptions; Bernardus Thesaurarius,
believed to have been a Frenchman, and evidently a Fren-ch partisan, admitting
impatience to seize Flemish fiefs as one strong motive; and amongst moderns,
Michaud, allowing that he affected fears which he did not feel. English writers
impute it partly
to jealousy
of Richard’s superior celcbritv, and consequent.
greater
weight with both Christians and Mohammedans ; but more to impatience to seize
upon Flanders, and to try whether, in Richard’s absence, he could not, by
disregarding their reciprocal oaths of forbearance, and the especial
protection and guarantee assured by the Church, to the property, real and
personal, of all Crusaders, possess himself of some of the English King’s
French dominions. Richard himself suspected the influenceof the last suggested
motive; for he required and obtained from Philip, a renewed oath to respect
both his possessions, and those of every Crusader, during not only the absence
of their respective sovereigns, but also for forty days after the return of
such sovereigns. He then, in proof of reconciliation and amity, complied with
the French King’s request for the loan of two ships to take him home. Two
sufficed, a body of French Crusaders, amounting to 500 knights and 1000 foot,
remaining in Palestine under the command of the Duke of Burgundy. With the
Duke, Philip left such of the Acre prisoners as fell to his share, assigning
his half of the Acre ransom, for which they were hostages, as the fund out of
which was to be defrayed the expense of the troops remaining in Palestine; and
who were even then in so destitute a condition, that the Duke of Burgundy was
almost immediately obliged to request the loan of 10,000 marks from Richard for
the-r support. It was as immediately advanced him.
Upon the 30th
of July, the King of France, after a stay of between three and four months,
embarked for Europe. He first visited Tyre; whither Conrad accompanied him,
and where he seems to have deposited, as a check probably upon the Duke of
Burgundy, part if not all of his Moslem prisoners; and proceeded on his
voyage, lie landed at Otranto, in continental Sicily, and repaired to Rome.
There he so satisfied Celestin III of the validity of liis reasons for
returning after this very imperfect performance of his vow, that he obtained a
release from his obligations as a Crusader, and palm branches for himself and
suite, as if those obligations had been fully discharged. But the dispensation
from his oath to respect Richard’s dominions during the Crusade, which the
general opinion of even German writers, hos
tilely
disposed to Richard,(15S) charges him with soliciting, on the plea
that his sister was r.ot yet sent home, the Pope positively refused him. From
Rome, Philip traversed Italy and Savoy to France, with a safe conduct from
Henry VI.
We now comc
to one of those transactions which it is difficult to reconcile to modern
notions of the chivalrous character; and yet more difficult to palliate to
modern feelings, by recollecting that such were not the feelings of the 12th
century. When the time prefixed for the full execution of the terms of
capitulation granted to Acre arrived, Saladin had only part of the
ranscin-money, with part of the Christian prisoners, and those of the lowest
grade, ready for delivery. Whether the True Cross was or was not forthcoming,
is another of the points upon which historians, modern as well as old,
disagree. It seems pretty certain that Saladin neither declared that he hail
not the Cross to restore, as those writers who huld that it was buried at
Hittin, and so lost, assert; (136) nor refused to sanction, by restoring
it, what he deemed idolatry, as has been alleged by others; actually destroying
it to prevent, the possibility of such an offence. Saladin’s views upon the
subject could not be known to the Crusaders or their Chroniclers, and the Relic
being of no value in Moslem eyes, information could hardly be hoped from
Oriental historians ; nevertheless the subject is mentioned by two. Bohaeddin
states both that the True Cross was found at Hittin, and that Saladin had it-
ready for delivery. He even says that the Sultan caused it tc be shewn to two
English negotiators, whose adoration of it amazed the Mohammedans.^5’')
And this biographer of his friend is surely the best authority as to Saladin’s
acts. When the negotiation so disastrously broke off upon the question of
prisoners, the True Cross would of course be withheld, and in the end,
probably, lost.^i58) According to Vinisauf, it was exhibited to some
of the Crusaders, who visited Jerusalem as pilgrims, when the Crusade had ended
in a truce ; though ha himself was not one of the fortunate party; but there
could be nc difficulty in finding a Cross to satisfy the pilgrims of those
days.
To return
from a subject upon which nothing certain is or can be known, to the painful
negotiation, followed by a
more painful
catastrophe. Saladin required an extension of the time fixed for the delivery
of the prisoners and the payment of the money. This Richard once or twice
granted, and seems to have been willing again to concede, receiving the part then
ready as an instalment; but he insisted upon keeping all his hostages—a few w
ho had escaped excepted —until the terms of the capitulation should be
completely executed. Saladin, on the other hand, required the release of all
the hostages, or at least of a large majority of them, to be selected by
himself, before he would part with the Cross, one prisoner, or one gold piece;
whilst Conrad, expecting to obtain a heavy ransom for the hostages Philip had
left with him, and perhaps mistrustful of Saladin’s intending to fulfil his
officer’s engagements, refused to part with those in his hands, even for
exchange, according to the treaty he himself had negotiated. Some bargaining
and haggling went on through agents; some personal interviews for discussion
were arranged; but at these neither the Sultan nor any person in his name
appeared. For the first fault in this deplorable business, Saladin— whom even
Moslem historians have suspected of seeking to evade conditions which he
disapproved(160)—is therefore clearly responsible; for the horrible
consequences of that fault, Richard and the whole Crusading Council, but yet
more the unchristian opinions of the age influencing them. Richard, and the
Council of leaders of the different nations, now sent Saladin word that they
would give him ten days more to redeem his officer’s plighted word; but if then
the terms of the capitulation were still unfulfilled, the hostages must be put
to death. To this message, Saladin replied, that if the hostages were touched
he would dreadfully retaliate.(16°) When the last period fixed for
the execution of the terms of capitulation expired, wdthout a step on Saladin’s
part that way tending, Richard brought his hostages, to the number, variously
seated, of from 1750 to 8000, but, according to the most authentic accounts, of
2500, or 2700, into the vicinity of the Sultan’s camp, and again demanded the
fulfilment of the engagements entered into. Again he received no satisfaction;
whereupon Richard, who rarely ii ever punished treason against himself with
death, merely, like Frederic Barbarossa, destroying towns
and
castles—Richard ordered these defenceless hostages to he put to the sword.(m)
Some writers
have averred, that the Duke of Burgundy wrung from the Prince of Tyre some
portion of the French share of hostages, others that he gave or sold to the
King prisoners of his own, to swell the amount, and that these were
simultaneously sacrificed within Acre. But the more general opinion is that
only those belonging to Richard perished; and the rumour s chiefly noticeable
as it demonstrates the tone of mediaeval feeling upon the subject. Hardly any
one dreamt of imputing the deed to cruelty or unbridled passion. Of
contemporary Christian writers, the Bisliop of Creinona stands almost alone in
censuring this fearful carnage; (l(i2) the rest of Europe admired
the disinterested piety that sacrificed the immense ransom the prisoners might
have paid, and blamed the mercenary temper of Philip or C'or.rad, who, for
thirst of lucre kept their prisoners back. And Richard himself in a letter to
the Abbot of Clairvaux, narrating the. transaction, says, “ Sicut decuit 2500
fecimus expirare.”(ies) Moslem writers, indeed,—to whom the
immolation of the Templars and Hospitalers seemed not merely unobjectionable,
but a praiseworthy deed, inspired by devotion—speak of this, its exaggerated
counterpart, with due horror ;(161) ascribing it partly to
revenge for the great loss on the Christian side during the siege—the deaths
have been estimated at 120,000 —and partly to ^ politic fear of leaving so
mf.ny prisoners at Acre wrhen the army should remove.
With respect
to Saladin's conduct throughout the transaction, one report ia, that,
exasperated at Richard’s insisting upon the complete fulfilment of the
conditions, he had slain many, if not all the Christian prisoners brought prior
to the slaughter of the hostages for exchange; and this is supposed to be
implied by Boiiaeddin’s remark that “ Richard perhaps used the right of
retaliation.” But the expression might refer to the slaughter of the Templars
and Hospitalers. That the Sultan was deeply grieved, was uncontrollably
exasperated by the massacre of the hostages, all True Believers and his own
subjects, there is no doubt; nor would his exasperation be softened by the
consciousness that he was himself the cause, by his non-execution of his
own officer’s
capitulation. As little doubt is there, that in the first burst of his wrath he
forbade the giving quarter to Christians for the future, and ordered those
Christians, who were hoping for liberty, to be put to death.(l65)
Many suffered in consequence of this mandate, ere he had time to cool. Then,
repenting of these reprisals, he stopped the butchery, and sent the survivors
to Damascus, to be there kept in slavery, till ransomed or advantageously exchanged.
Richard now
planned his future operations ; and, clearly perceiving that the recovery of
the sea-coast must be the first step towards the re-establishment of the
Kingdom, decided upon beginning with the siege of Ascalon. This design was
announced—together with the day appointed for the army assembling, equipped for
service. 13ut, amidst the orgies of Acre, the bulk of the Crusaders had
forgotten their vow. Only his oun vassals, and the two Orders, answered to his
call; even his offers of high pay could but partially counterbalance present
pleasures; and, again and again, was the acknowledged Chief of the Crusade obliged
to have the lingerers forcibly driven out of the town. At length, upon the 21st
of August, he was able to set forward.
Upon this
occasion, as well in the preliminary arrangements, as in the whole conduct of
his projected operation, the Lion-heart displayed all the generalship which
modern Germans deny him; it was indeed the generalship of the age, but the best
of the age. He cleared his army of female camp-followers, with the exception of
a very few to serve as washerwomen. He marched in regular divisions; the first,
w liich he himself commanded, consisted of the English, the Normans, and his
other French vassals, in whose centre was stationed his banner, in Carroccio
style. A. second division seems to have comprised the Germans and Italians,
with the Syro-Franks, and the men of Poitou separated from the rest of
Richard’s vassals, probably that the King of Jerusalem, as a Lusignan, their
countryman, might lead them. The Duke of .’.urgundy, with the French and
Flemings, formed the third division ; whilst the Templars and Hospitalers
protected the front and the rear alternately. The Earl of Champagne, with the
light troops, was on the Digitized by MicrbsoftO
left of the
whole line, near the hills. The route lay along the sea coast, to ensure the
supply of provisions from the English fleet; and accordingly the troops never
experienced any want, unless storms drove off the ships. Every night when the
camp was pitched, the hour of rest was announced by the cry of “ Help ! Help!
Holy Sepulchre!” (166) ■.vhich a Herald thrice repeated, and the whole
army re-echoed in chorus.
Saladin,
considerably to the left of the Earl, kept the Christian army in sight,
marching among or along the side of the hills, out of reach of the dreaded
charge of their heavily armed cavalry, whilst, with his clouds of light horse,
he incessantly harassed them ; skirmishing, cutting off stragglers and baggage,
and watching his opportunity for more serious attacks, llichard, his object
being to reach Ascalon in unbroken force, controlled his natural eagerness for
action, and carefully avoided an engagement; for which, as much as for his
knight-errant-like love of adventure, he has been censured by his modern
French and German detractors, who impute his forbearance to indifference with
regard to the success or failure of the Crusade,
Saladin’s
incessant harassings afforded Richard some compensation for his self-denial.
Though the brunt of the battle generally fell upon the tw o Orders, wherever a
lilow was struck, there the Lion-heart was found, often by his individual
prowess deciding the fate of the day. And so gallantly did des Barres, who would
not return home with Philip, support him in these encounters— especially once,
when the French division seemed irretrievably lost, till rescued by the King
and his former antagonist, and cnce, w hen Richard himself was alone in the
midst of the enemy—that he actually gained his especial favour. 1 he most
serious of these encounters took place at Arsuf, on the 7th of September, when
the impatience of the Hospitalers baffled Richard’s efforts either to avoid an
action, or to delay it until the whole of Saladin’s force should be so fully
brought out against them, as to prevent their disappointing, as usual, by
their light activity, the Crusaders’ charge. In this battle, in which Jacques
d’Avesnes fell overpowered by numbers, and the Duke of Burgundy owed .his
escape from a similar fate solely to
Richard’s own
arm, even the detractors of the chivalrous King allow that to his personal
exploits was the victory, gained by 100,000 Christians over SOO,000
Mohammedans, mainly due.
This defeat
appears to have finally convinced Saladin that his troops were no more able to
cope with the Crusaders in the field, than to defend fortresses against them;
the latter being moreover a duty to which the fate of the Acre garrison had
rendered his Emirs and warriors, even his Mamelukes, averse. He resolved,
therefore, to guard against the evils that must ensue from Richard’s making a
stronghold of Ascalon, by sacrificing the place he so highly valued; and, with
expressions of deep regret, he ordered it to be not only dismantled but
destroyed. This was done, whilst the Christian army halted amidst the ruins of
Joppa for rest and refreshment upon so arduous a march. The object of the
movement was now annihilated, and a new plan of campaign had therefore to be
formed ; when Richard, apparently in concurrence with all entitled to be
consulted, resolved that Ascalon, become insignificant, must be neglected, but
Joppa restored and fortified, as a support both to their own operations and to
those of all future Crusaders: and when this was accomplished the army should
advance upon Jerusalem.
But repairing
fortresses, for the defence of the not yet recovered Holy Land, was a very dull
mode of discharging the crusading vow; and such numbers, disliking the task,
returned to their Acre revels, that Richard was obliged first to send Guy, and
then to go himself to drive them back to the camp. Disgusted with their levity
and insubordination, and under some apprehension from the intrigues of his
brother John, and of his suzerain Philip, the English King now grew impatient
to return home, and opened negotiations with the Sultan for a long truce, based
upon some division of Palestine between Moslem and Christian, Saladin and Guy,
But both parties insisting upon the possession of Jerusalem, the negotiation,
by which Saladin only sought to gain time for strengthening the fortification
of the Holy City, receiving reinforcements, and completing the demolitions he
judged necessary, made little progress. That little bccame less, when Conrad Digitized
by Microsoft®
offered the
Sultan his alliance against the Crusaders, provided Tyre, Sidon, and Berytus
were assured to him.
Meanwhile,
the restoration cf Joppa being nearly complete, Richard determined to begin
his movement upon Jerusalem. This was a measure to the taste of the Crusaders,
and again they thronged to his standard. But, in order to maintain possession
of the Holy City when recovered, it was indispensable to be master of its line
of communication \iith the sea; and to this end Richard halted upon the road to
repair two important fortresses, which the Sultan, conformably to his new
scheme of defence, had razed. In consequence of this delay he was surprised by
the winter; and, quartering his army as he best could in the position he had
gained, he suspended his operations. The King relieved the dulness of this
period of inaction by excursions of knight-errantry, or the chase, often idly
exposing his person to danger. Upon one such occasion he escaped capture by a
numerous troop of Saracens, only through the self-devotion of Guillaume des
Preaux or des Pratelles—which is the name seems doubtful—who announcing himself
as the King, gave his Liege Lord time to fly. The loyal pseudoKing was
ransomed, and the army extorted from the true King a promise not again to incur
such risks.
During all
this time the negotiation was proceeding; and it was now that Richard, in his
impatience to get the
affairs of
the IIolv Land settled, and thus recover
. «/ ?
liberty to
attend to his own, devised the strange compromise, if indeed it were not, as
has been supposed, a mere jest, of giving his sister, the widowed Queen of
Sicily, to Saladin’s brother, Malek el Adel, in marriage; and then, the claims
of Guy and of Isabel to the portion of Palestine in Saladin’s possession alike
set aside, mt,king the newly united Moslem and Christian couple jointly King
and Queen of Jerusalem. The scheme, if seriously projected, was foiled by
Joanna’s positive refusal to wed a Mohammedan.
In January
the weather improved and again the army was in motion. But, by the time it had
reached Baitnubah or Bethanopolis, about a day’s march distant from their goal,
Richard had listened to the expostulatory reprrsen-
tations of
the two Grand-Masters, and of the Palestine nobles, as to the utter impossibility
of taking a city of which the defences, ever since it was menaced with a siege,
had been diligently repaired and improved, in the very face of Saladin’s army.
Representations, enhanced by those of the unprejudiced Pisans, upon the further
impossibility of keeping it if taken, unless more of the coast, and of the
intervening district were in the hands of the Syro-Franks. He felt the weight
of all these objections; and, reluctantly curbing his eagerness to be hailed as
the second liberator of the Holy City, he resolved first to restore Ascalon, as
he had restored Joppa.
The rage of
the great body of the Crusaders at what they termed the abandonment of the sole
object of the Crusade^167) and their disgust at being again
required to assist in the dull work of repairing the fortified towns, indispensable
to the very possibility of a Christian kingdom of Jerusalem's existence, were
actually boundless. The Duke of Burgundy now applied to Richard for a second
loan ; the first was still owing, and the bulk of the Crusaders had for some
time subsisted chiefly upon English gold. The King declared himself unable to
afford him further aid; whereupon the Duke announced his intention of no longer
submitting to the arbitrary and absurd caprices of the English monarch, but
returning, with all French Crusaders to France, at Easter. lie at once quitted
Ascalon ; withdrawing to Tyre, whither he summoned, it is averred at its
Prince’s instigation, those French Crusaders who had remained in the camp, to
follow him. Unwillingly they obeyed.
Nor was the
Duke of Burgundy the only deserter from the Crusade; this being the epoch,
fixed by most writers, for the Duke of Austria’s abandonment of the Holy War.
So fixed, even by some of those who refer the quarrel to the occupation of Acre
; thus making the Duke serve under Richard, and receive pecuniary assistance
from him, subsequent to an affront resented so deeply as to induce breach of
oath, with disregard of Church law and Papal authority. Other writers place the
offence later; some upon the just ended march to or from Baitnubah; when, they
say, a quarrel occurred between
the King’s
servants and the Duke’s, respecting a house that each party had selected for
their master’s nocturnal quarters; ard the latter being rudely ejected, the
King ordered the ducal banner, planted as a sign cf appropriation, to be torn
down and left in the dirt. A more likely storv than the former. The third
account, from accompanying circumstances the most likely of all, makes the
quarrel more personal, and Ascalon its scene. Richard, in his ardour to
despatch all that must be preliminary to the recovery of Jerusalem, endeavoured
to encourage the reluctantly labouring Crusaders by labouring with them in
person, at the restoration of Ascalon, as at Jerusalem Saladin had done, thus
to expedite the completion of its defences. Vinisauf says, that Richard and his
nobles habitually thus assisted in all necessary labours, as in building
military engines, unloading ships that brought materials for their construction,
and the like. But upon this pressing occasion he first required all the
crusading leaders, princes and nobles, to follow his example. Most of those
present at Ascalon readily and zealously complied; but the Duke of Austria,
when invited to take hi* turn, sneeringly replied that his father was neither a
mason nor a carpenter. The King, meeting him, repeated his demand that the Duke
should do what he himself had done; and received a repetition of the
impertinent answer, when Richard’s impetuous temper hurrit-d him into forgetfulness
of his own dignity, yet more than of the Duke’s. He struck the Duke, whether
with hand or foot seems doubtful, and forbade the appearance of the Austrian
colours beside his. Leopold left the camp swearing vengeance.(168)
The first ships thatarrivedfrom Europe in 1192, brought Richard an earnest
summons heme from his vicegerent and Chancellor, the Bishop of Ely, whom Prince
John had driven out of England. The Lion-heart had looked to resuming the
attempt upon Jerusalem when Ascalon should be restored ; but these t'dings,
joined to the desertion of the French and Austrians, changed his plans. He
assembled the Crusadfng leaders and the Falestine magnates, made known to them
the absolute need of his presence at Nhome, and consulted them upon
the arrangements that should precede his departure.
All urged the
sacrificing Guy to Conrad, whose abilities no one questioned, if many did his
honesty ; while those who most distrusted him thought to render him innoxious,
by making it his individual interest to defend the kingdom. Conrad was known
to be, at this very moment, in treaty with Saladin, offering to hold his
principality, considerably enlarged, of him.(169) All the minor
points of their alliance were not yet arranged; but the recall of the French
from Ascalon is supposed to have been the first step towards co-operation
against the Syro-Franks of Jerusalem, and the Crusaders; and even the former
therefore judged it indispensable to bribe him with their crown. The haughty and
self-willed Richard, upon this emergency, mastered his private feelings, and
assented to the elevation of his almost avowed enemy, taking it upon himself to
indemnify his friend. He had previously sold Cyprus, which he found quite as
much a burthen as any acquisition, to the Templars. To them, likewise, the
hatred borne by the Greek natives to a Latin Order had rendered the government
of the island so troublesome, that they were tired of their kingdom. Richard
nowr redeemed it from them, as a compensation to Guy for Palestine.
Guy, having no choice but to submit and accept, was thenceforward King of
Cyprus.
A deputation
of Palestine Barons, and of Crusaders, headed by the Earl of Champagne, now
repaired to Tyre, to announce to Conrad the resolution taken in his favour, as
also Richard’s intention of meeting him at Acre. They and their tidings were
received with great joy, accompanied by expressions of piety, and of a deep
sense of regal responsibility, not very consistent with the new King’s previous
conduct. But still he professed to mistrust Richard—to his Italian temper the
Lion’s w'as incomprehensible—and he refused to. accompany the deputation back
to Acre to meet him, until he should first be crowned. Preparations were made
in all haste for this ceremony, prior to which the government, it would seem,
could hardly be assumed; when, before they were completed, upon the 28th of
April, 1192, two emissaries of the Sheik of the Assassins—who, the better
toexecute thei*
mission had
received baptism, and resided six months at
Tyre as
neophytes—stabbed him as he rode along an open street of Tyre. They were
instantly torn to pieces, boldly avowing the deed as executed by them at their
Sheik’s command.
Three
individuals are accused of this murder : that is to say. of having bribed the
She ik to its commission, for of his being the immediate author there never w
as any question ; and not much that he openly acknowledged and justified it,
upon the ground of Conrad’s having seized a ship belonging to him, and refused
either to restore the property or to release the crew, besides having hanged a
servant of his—it may be presumed lawfully, for murder. The three accused are
Richard, Saladin, and Humphrey de Thorop. With respect to the last it is enough
to point, out the absurdity of supposing that a weak, avaricious man, who had
taken money to concur in his divorce from his Clueen-wife and her kingdom,
could afterwards, merely to revenge himself for their loss, disburse any sum
approaching the price at which the Sheik usually sold his assassins—for a sale,
not a hiring out, it was, as they rarely survived Saladin, again, could have no
motive for such a deed, unless apprehension of the talents of Conrad—w hich all
Moslem writers rate very high—when he should be King of Jerusalem, can be
supposed sufficient. And surely to stain so lofty and generous a character as
Saladin’s with murder, for so paltry a motive, and that through the Sheik,
abhorred by him as a heretic, even more than as a murderer, who had attempted
his own 1 fe, is repugnant to common sense : to say nothing of the little time
remaining for resolve, negotiation, arrangement, and execution, after Saladin
cou! ' be acquainted with the determination taken at Ascalon, (and, till he was
so, why should he wish to kill an able Prince, whose alliance he was actually
purchasing?) whilst the actual assassins appear to have been for some months’
time at Tyre, await- ‘ng a convenient opportunity.(W)
Ii is upon
the English King that French and German vrriters, as champions respectively of
Philip Augustus and the Duke of Austria, try to tix the crime.(m)
Much of what has beeu said in relation to Saladin applies equally here; as, the
want cf an adequate motive—none is assigned
but. dislike
to Conrad, and therefore reluctance to see him King—want of time for such a
negotiation, and repugnance to the character of the accused. It has been
argued that he, who in cold blood could order the massacre of 2jOO prisoners
who were objects of indifference to him, could not hesitate to murder one man,
whom he disliked^172) But this is again judging the twelfth century
by the standard of the nineteenth. Take the sentiments of that age into
consideration, and what analogy is there between the slaughter of two or three
thousand enemies of God, of which he who ordered it could write, “ it was done
as was fitting,” and hiring assassins to murder a personal enemy, a fellow
Christian, a Crusader, the champion of God ? The only thing that really tells
against Richard, is his having produced for his vindication an absurd
supposititious letter from the Old Man of the Mountain, acquitting him, and
taking the deed upon himself. This self-evident forgery—which appears to have
been a clumsy device of Richard’s Chancellor, Longchamps Bishop of Ely,(173)
for making an acknowledgment, matter of notoriety in Syria, known in
Europe—can hardly be thought to counterbalance the weight of improbability in
Richard’s favour.
The only
fruit of Conrad’s marriage with Isabel had not yet seen the light; but the
Palestine Barons felt that a King they must have, and felt the necessity the
more strongly when the French—after requiring Isabel to intrust Tyre to them;
and being by her refused, because forbidden by her murdered Lord to intrust it
to any one but King Richard (presumptive proof surely that Conrad did not
impute his assassination to Richard, and that the murderers had not accused
him)—prepared to seize it by force. Not only would the Barons not await the
birth of the Queen’s first child, in the very first week of her widowhood they
insisted upon her marrying again, and Isabel, who has been represented as
devotedly attached to Conrad,(174) apparently made little objection.
The choice of the Barons fell upon the Earl of Champagne, who, as the nephew of
the Kings of France and of England, they might reasonably hope would be
vigorously supported from Europe. Ilenry, who was upon his way back to Acre
there to meet Richard, Digitized by Microsoft®
made his
acceptance subject to the approbation of that royal uncle who was still
fighting for Palestine. lie, as had been hoped, was much pleased with the
election of his nephew, though he expressed considerable dislike of marriage
with the wife of a living husband. But, finding, probably, that it was an
indispensable condition of the kingship, he consented and hurried forward to
Tyre to be present at its celebration. And now the new King, being the person
who profited by the crime, became a fourth object of suspicion, as the
instigator of Conrad’s murder.
The Duke of
Burgundy and the French Crusaders testified their satisfaction at the
exaltation of their countryman, the nephew’ of their King, by promising to
devote another year to the fulfilment of their vow. Richard, on his part,
transferred all his conquests at once to his nephew; and after a w'hile added a
promise similar to the Duke of Burgundy’s, notwithstanding the urgent need of
his presence at home. During Richard’s sojourn at Acre, upon this occasion, lie
is stated by some writers to have conferred knighthood upon a nephew of
Saladin’s, called a son of Saphadin’s, who visited him purposely to receive it;
but Vinisauf places the incident earlier, upon one of the occasions, when,
during the repairs of the ruined fortresses, the business of the Crusade and of
the kingdom occasionally required Richard’s presence at Acre.
The
restoration of Ascalon being now complete, and the return to Europe postponed,
Richard resumed the projcct of laying siege to J erusalem; for which favouiite
enterprise the Crusaders again thronged to swell his ranks. Again the army set
forward for the Holy City, again reaching Baitnubah ; and there, to await King
Henry, who with his Syro-Franks had not yet joined the Crusaders, again
halted. As usual, Richard, during the delay, relieved his impatience of
inaction with feats of partisan warfare, one of which was the capture near
Hebron, of a large convoy sent from Egypt to Jerusalem, to share in
■which spoils the Crusaders were willing to defer the capture even of
the Holy City. *
The sojourn
at Beitnubah gave occasion to an incident worth mentioning ; ;n
proof that, whatever the degeneracy (if the demoralization resulting from
wealth, pride, and Digitized by Microsoft®
ambition may
be so termed) of the two great Orders, frotn their primitive purity, relaxation
of discipline was not among their faults. During Richard’s absence upon one of
his adventurous excursions, the camp was attacked by the Turks in overwhelming
numbers. Whilst the leaders were arraying their troops as they best could for
defence, a knight of St. John, named Robert de Bruges, burst out from the
ranks, slew the Turkish commander, broke through the hostile force, carried the
news of the surprise to the English King, and returned vrith him to assail the
enemy in the rear. This unexpected charge gave the almost defeated Christians
the victory. But the knight had acted upon his own opinion, neither staying for
the commands of his superior, nor even inquiring his pleasure ; and the
Grand-Master, instead of praising his zeal and judgment, punished his
insubordination by a command to dismount, lead his horse to the stable, and
await the Chapter’s decision upon his conduct. In silence he obeyed; but the
prayers of the King and the Princes obtained his prompt pardon.
Henry arrived
viith his reinforcements; but again the main enterprise was abandoned, and
again, and still, even now, historians differ as to the cause. Some again
impute it to fickleness in Richard ;(175) others to the thwarting of
the Duke of Burgundy, who either himself grudged Richard the glory of
recovering Jerusalem, or had been commissioned by Philip to foil any such
brilliant success of his rival.(176) He had urged the English King
to make the attempt without even waiting to be reinforced by the King of
Jerusalem, in order, as Richard alleged, to involve him in the disgrace of a
failure. Apprehending such a result, Richard refused to lead so rash an
attempt, but offered to join it as a volunteer. Of course none was made. T he
better opinion seems to be, that Richard again listened to representations of
those most interested; i.e., the King of Jerusalem, and the Grand-Master of the
Temple and the Hospital, who opposed the siege of Jerusalem upon two grounds:
the first, that, Saladin having destroyed all the wells in the district, the
besieging army could not, in the-dry season, be supplied with water;
the second,
the old one, that the moment the Holy City was taken, the Crusaders would deem
their work done, and depart; when, unless more of the kingdom were previously
recovered, it must infallibly be again lost. Again Richard yielded, but he
proved the intense mortification with which he renounced, or postponed, the
great object of Hs ambition, by refusing “to look upon the Holy City which he
was unable to rescue from the enemies of Clod,” when informed that it was
visible from a hill not far distant^7").
During this
second halt at Beitnubah, a Syrian Abbot brought the King of England, as he
averred, a piece of the True Cross, which, he asserted, he had himself concealed
after the fatal defeat at. Tiberias, and still kept safe in concealment,
notwithstanding Saladin’s persecutions.^78) The story refutes
itself, but was believed by its hearers.
The army now
retreated; disunion at ts height, and every enterprise proposed by one,
rejected by others. Richard accused the Duke of Burgundy of a treacherous
correspondence with Saladin ; the Duke again withdrew to Tyre, where he soon
afterwards died, according to some accounts, raving mad; which was esteemed by
his contemporaries proof positive of his guilt.
Upon giving
up the immediate recovery of Jerusalem, and finding every other proposed scheme
of action baffled by French opposition, the Lion-heart felt his Crusade
terminated; and, grieved and mortified, he was about to embark for Europe at
Acre, when an opportunity presented itself of at least ending his enterprise
with a brilliant exploit. A messenger brought information to Acre, that Joppa
was besieged by Saladin, was defending itself gallantly, but against h:s
swarms of warriors could not, unaided, hold out many days. Richard instantly
set sail with his French and English vassals to relieve this important
fortress, whilst Henry led a body of Templars, Hospitalers, and Crusaders
thither by land. He was delayed by the necessity of fighting his way through
defiles, which the Sultan’s troops guarded in great strength; as was Richard by
contrary winds and a storm that dispersed his squadrons. When at length, August
1st, with so much of the fleet as had remained together or reassembled,
he came in
sight, of Joppa, the crescent appeared upon the walls ! The conclusion was that
relief came too late, and even Richard hesitated.
And for all
but Richard it would have been too late. The town was already evacuated; the
citadel in process of surrender, when the sight of the Lion’s flag suspended
the operation, and the battle was renewed. The besieged saw that the fleet
paused, thinking all lost, and feared it might retire. A priest thereupon
scrambling down from the battlements, where the waves washed the wall, flung
himself into the sea, swam to the nearest ship, and announced the actual state
of affairs. Richard ordered the vessels as near in shore as they could get,
then leaped in full armour into the sea, and with the w'ater up to his middle,
waded ashore, eagerly followed by knights and archers. First, he made the shore
; and speedily cleared it of the Turks who had hurried dowrn to
prevent their landing. First, whilst all were seeking means of entering the
town or the citadel, to assail the assailants, he found an unfastened postern
into the Templars’ tilt-yard, and rushing through, fell with his wonted
impetuosity upon the victorious Saracens. They hardly awaited his blows, or the
onslaught of his followers. At the very cry of le Roi Richard,(179)
they fled from their all but completed conquest. Town and castle were
recovered; the hostile army had disappeared.
Richard
encamped with his own company before the town to protect it till the walls
should be sufficiently repaired, and to await Henry with the rest of his
vessels and the Palestine army, still impeded by the already mentioned
difficulties; and for the moment, the victor remained unmolested. But Saladin
had only withdrawn, like the tiger, for a better spring; or rather to spring,
as he hoped, upon an easier prey, lie had received information of the King 01
Jerusalem’s movements, and thought to find him entangled in defiles, and so
poor in-numbers as to be indeed easily destroyed. But Richard, who knew his
nephew s position, upon learning Saladin’s altered direction, instantly
despatched the larger portion of the troops he had with him to reinforce
llenry; and the Sultan, learning that he had done so, indulged a hope of the
more important victim.
He turned
back to take advantage of Richard's having thus further weakened himself. In
the night of the 4th of August, a chosen party of light Saracen troops sought
to creep stealthily into the English camp, trusting to surprise the Christians
asleep, and thus carry off Richard himself, ere he had time for resistance ;
whilst the whole Saracen army was rapidly advancing to receive and secure their
prize, if successful; to support the adventurers in case of resistance. Some
accident fortunately delaying the attempt till peep of dawn, a Genoese chanced
to descry the intruders as they were stealing into the camp, and flew to awaken
and warn the King, alarming the sleepers as he ran. All were instantly afoot,
and this scheme was foiled, but before King or Knights could fully arm, Saladin
himself was upon them.
The battle
that ensued is one of the Lion-hearted monarch’s most splendid exploits; even
his detractors confessing that solely through his self-possession, skill, and
valour, did his little band gain the victory over the immense Saracen host. He
arrayed them with great judgment, so as to make the most of their reduced
numbers —estimated at 17 knights and 1000 archers— constructing a sort of
fortress with their shields. And such confidence had he in the steadiness of
his men, and in their confidence in him, that, being informed, in the midst of
the unequal conflict, that a body of the enemy had scaled the walls of Joppa,
he bade the messenger kocp the disaster secret, told his knights he would go
see if all were safe and right in- the town, and galloped off almost alone. In
Joppa, he reanimated garrison and townsmen, cleared the place of the enemy,
made the necessary dispositions for its security, should the attempt be
repeated, and was then rowed to the ships, to summon the crews to the
assistance of their imperilled brethren. With them he hastened back to the
field, where he found his band maintaining their ground within their shield
fort, but sore pressed, and much alarmed at his prolonged absence. With the
reinforcement he brought, the victory was soon decided; and is said to have
cost the life of only one of Richard’s knights^ whilst 700 Turks lay dead upon
the field.
Two little
incidents of this battle are related, which, notwithstanding the length the
narrative of this Crusade has been suffered to reach, must not be omitted.
Saladin, when beginning to apprehend defeat, reproachfully exclaimed : “ Where
are those who were to bring me King Richard a prisoner?” To which one of the
baffled nocturnal adventurers answered: “Lord Sultan, this king is not like
other men : none can stand his blows.” The other anecdote is one of those
touches of human nature, so soothing to the mind oppressed with the record of
crimes and follies. Richard, whose armour is described as stuck over with darts,
“like quills upon the fretful porcupine,” had charged through the whole hostile
army, and, unlike the Earl of Tripoli, at Tiberias, charged back again,
rescuing, upon his return, the dismounted and nearly overpowered Earl of
Leicester and Raoul de Mauleon ; when his own horse, exhausted or wounded,
fell. Malek el Adel, who appears to have been much captivated by Richard during
the intercourse to which their negotiations had given birth, saw the accident,
and immediately sent him a very fine steed. The King w'as about to mount, when
his attendants prevented him, proclaimed their dread of a foe’s gift, and
insisted upon first trying the suspected quadruped, when the spiiited animal
carried off its rider into the midst of the Saracen host. The attendants wrere
exulting in their wise distrust, when horse and rider reappeared, safely
escorted back to the Christian troops, in company with a second, yet finer,
charger.
The unusual
intercourse between the hostile armies, introduced by Richard, had never been
quite broken off, and after this engagement some Moslem Emirs visited the King.
They found him in bed and alarmingly ill, from the intense exertion of the
preceding day; but he received them graciously, highly praised Saladin, and
charged them with this more frank than diplomatic message to him : n
In God’s name lei us make peace ! It is time this war should end, since it can
benefit neither of us. If it leaves my hereditary dominions a prey to civil
discord, what are you the better for that?” The message was duly delivered ;
for the Emirs had long been weary of the war, and Saladin was, for many
reasons, as desirous
VOL.
II. 14
of a
cessation of hostilities, as Richard could be of getting home, to quell his
brother’s revolt, and counteract Philip's nefarious projects.
The
negotiation now, therefore, made more progress; though divers conflicting
interests stiil interposed. If Richard perforce submitted to leave Jerusalem,
for the present at least, in Saladin^s possession, the disposal of Asca- lon
remained a question of seemingly insuperable difficulty, each party dreading it
in the hands of the other. The compromise at length agreed upon was, jointly to
destroy it; as a compensation for which sacrifice the King of Jerusalem'—to
whom the whole sea coast frum Joppa to Tyre, both inclusive, was
assigned—should share with the Sultan in Ramla and Lydda. The safety of
Christian pilgrims, and the regular performance of Christian worship at the
Church of the Iloly Sepulchre, at Bethlehem, and at Nazareth, was provided
for. Saladin thought fit to include the Ismaelites in the treaty, as his allies
; Richard and Henry, the Princes of Antioch and Tripoli, as theirs; the last
having apparently renounced his vassalage w hen bis suzerain became too weak to
enforce it. The truce was for 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, and 3 hours;
(180) and Richard, when, in the presence of Malek el Adel, it had
been duly sworn by his Barons at his bedside, he himself giving his hand upu:.
it, sent Saladin word, that as soon as it expired he should return with another
army, to complete the recover/ of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Saladin’s answer
was, that were it to change hands, it could not be transferred to a worthier
sovereign.
Richard
refused to owe the privilege of offering up his prayers at the Holy Sepulchre
to the favour of a Mussulman ; and did not, therefore, iilce nine tenths of
his army, visit Jerusalem. Of those that did, the Bishop of Salisbury had an
interview' with Saladin, who, being pleased with him, bade him ask a boon. The
prelate asked leave for Roman Catholic priests, in addition to the schismatic
Syrians, to officiate at the hallowed spots to which ilgrims resorted in order
to pay their devotions: and Saladin, admiring his disinterested piety, both assented,
and, Vini- sauf says, shewed him the True Cross. The good
Chronicler
adds that he and his party were not so fortunate as to see and revere it.
Again, the
King of England sent the two Queens, his wife and sister, in a separate vessel,
now giving them the whole fleet for their escort. For his own conveyance, he
borrowed a ship of the Templars, some of whom accompanied him; and it has been
conjectured that, designing to cross Germany, in order to reach his own
dominions earlier than he could in any other way, he further designed —as a
prudential measure for eluding observation—to assume the garb of a Templar
during his journey. Upon the 9th of October, 1192, weeping bitterly over the
necessity of quitting the Holy Land without having recovered the Holy City,
Richard embarked for Europe. This chivalrous Crusade is computed to have cost
500,000 Christian lives;(181) and in it the value of infantry is
said to have been first appreciated, through the excellent service of the
English archers. (182)
HENRY
VI.
German
affairs—Pccice with the Welfs—Sicilian affairs— Tancred’s Usurpation—Henry and
Constance in Apulia— Seizure of Rickard Cmur-d-e-Lion—His captivity—Ransom
—Release—Further Negotiations. [1189—
1194.
Hen by YI, if
infinitely the least amiable men. is by no means the least remarkable monarch,
of the Swabian dynasty. Ilis naturally slender and somewhat delicate frame had,
under the effective regimen of knightly exorcises, the chase, and the like,
been hardened into fair health and strength. His naturally vigorous intellect
had been as carefully cultivated by education ; and the studies, originally
compulsory, he still sedulously pursued when emancipated from the control of
prcceptors; at least such studies as were most adapted to form the monarch, the
warrior, or the statesman. In his youth, he had condescended to trifle with
poetry, the love strains of the troubadours; but, as if to mark the rapid
progress of really modern literature, and of the development of living
languages, Henry wrote, not like his father in the Provenfal, which, as first
really cultivated, had opened the way, but in his German, mother-tongue.(18S)
In early manhood, such juvenile occupations and thoughts were cast aside by
him, as idle; though through life he treated poets and scholars with a respect,
reflecting the more honour upon himself, because not to have been anticipated
from his coldly practical nature. He was a master of the Latin language, as of
the history and laws of the countries over which he was called to reign; and
also of the canon law. He is said to have been eloquent, was quick of comprehension,
a keen observer, and an almost infallible appre-
ciator of the
character and abilities of those who approached him. Succeeding to the throne
at the usually immature age of 23, and married to a woman by nearly ten years
his senior, he was proof against, apparently insensible to, all those refined,
though sensual temptations and pleasures, amidst which princes so circumstanced
are but too apt to waste their energies, forgetitng their most important duties
and interests. Add to these qualities, intense ambition, blunting, deadening
all sympathy and sensibility, and Henry may perhaps be accepted as the very
ideal of an able despot, well-principled, but not scrupulously conscientious.
The blots of his moral character, avarice, which however he knew how to sacrifice
when necessary, and inexorable implacability towards offenders, towards
antagonists, towards all who had ever resisted his will, or in any way incurred
his displeasure were the chief source of his few political blunders.
Frederic,
without resigning any portion of his own sovereign authority, had early
initiated his heir into the cares and the functions of royalty. He often
consulted him, partly as a mode of conveying instruction, and gradually
employed him more and more. After his marriage with Constance, the government
of Italy, it has been seen, was intrusted to him, and he exercised it according
to his harsh temper and arbitrary disposition. lie frightened and offended the
Pope, and caused a Lombard bishop, who denied the Emperor’s right of
investiture, to be scourged. From Lombardy he was recalled to Germany to
receive his father’s last instructions, and take charge of the whole Empire as
his representative.
In Germany,
Henry’s first business was settling the odious family feud in Misnia, which
Frederic had so far allayed, that he had prevailed upon the son to release the
father; but which, upon his departure, as though all controlling authority
were thereby removed, raged fiercely as ever. Again the eldest son seized and
imprisoned his father; and now the exasperated old Margrave, as well as the
triumphant filial rebel, rejected the young King’s proffered mediation. In
conjunction with the Diet, Henry then commissioned the Duke of Bohemia to
reduce the
refractory
Margrave, in expectancy, to order. The Duke overran the margraviate; whereupon
father and son, recovering iheir senses, listened to the King’s remonstrances.
The son released the father, and the father forgave the son
But
Henry’s attention was soon called to troubles more important to both the Empire
and himself. In the autumn of this year, 1189, Henry the Lion, in violation of
his oath, returned to Germany, alleging, in justification of his breach of
faith, that the enjoined ;)eace had not been duly observed towards his
dominions. Even Guelph historians do not specify the aggression of which he had
to complain ; and, judging from his conduct upon Lis arrival, it seems most
likely that he thought, as Frederic had apprehended he would, the opportunity
of recovering some of his forfeited possessions offered by t he absence of the
Emperor and his army:—invaluable, too much so, to be lost for an oath, which he
would fain deem unfairly extorted.
Immediately
upon the landing of the Duke of Brunswick, a second Hartwig, who now occupied
the see of Henry’s old enemy, Hartwig, Archbishop of Bremen, not only declared
in his favour, but gave him back his old booty, Stade, which he had been forced
to restore to the see Ilis son-in-law, the King of Denmark, sent him a body of
troops, and the Earls of Ratzeburg, Schwerin, and Wolpe, oined him. Thus
strengthened, he easily raised the Brunswick vassals, and invaded his
confiscated duchy of Saxony. Hamburg and some smaller towns opened their gates
at his summons; and Holstein discovered such favourable sentiments towards -ts
former suzerain, that Earl Adolf, who governed the county for his absent crusading
father, the Earl of Holstein, retired for security to Lubeck. The old Lion next
proceeded to fulfil a vow more congenial to his temper than the oath he had
sworn to Frederic Bar'oarossa. He besieged Bprdewick. Dreading the wrath the
ir insolence had provoked, its citizens defended it stcutly; but in vain. In
three days the Free Imperial city,—to which dignity the town had risen since it
had ceased to be the Lion’s—was his, and those who had insulted his misfortune
felt his vengeance. The men were mostly butchered, those who escaped the sword,
with
the women and
children, were expelled or enslaved; the church treasures were removed to
Ratzeburg, and the town was given up to pillage. When nothing more could be
found, the houses were set on fire, the walls razed, and the ditch was filled.
The Cathedral alone was spared, and over its door the Duke affixed his shield,
with an inscription purporting that this was the “ trail of the Lion.”(ls3)
His treatment of Bardewick, though an especial revenge for an especial insult,
so terrified the Lubeckers, that they refused to attempt defence. When
summoned, they merely demanded of the Duke an oath to respect the extension of
privileges granted them by the Emperor, and to insure the safe departure of
Earl Adolf, with his relations and property, ere receiving him and his troops
within their walls. The Duke next made himself master of Lauenburg, one of Duke
Bernard’s strongest fortresses.
King Henry,
upon the first tidings of the Duke of Brunswick’s return, had assembled a Diet
at Merseburg. He himself was highly incensed; regarding the Lion’s perjury, as
indicating an expectation of being able to take advantage of a youthful King’s
inexperience, and consequently as a personal insult. The Princes resented the
violation of an oath imposed for the common good, and yet more the contumacious
disregard of their authority, betrayed by this attempt to re-conquer the
territories, of which the sentence of the Diet had lawfully deprived him, from
those princes to whom it had as lawfully assigned them. Again was the Lion laid
under the ban of the Empire, again an Imperial army assembled to put the ban in
execution, and at its head the King of the Romans marched against the rebel
Duke. Hanover was quickly taken, and, in retaliation of the destruction of
Bardewick, burned. Brunswick was besieged, but gallantly defended by another
Henry, one of the Duke’s sons, until winter suspended all military operations,
and, according to the custom of the age, both armies dispersed.
In the course
of the winter, intelligence of the death of William II of Sicily put a stop to
King Henry’s preparations for resuming hostilities against the Duke of Brunswick
in the spring. Although he neither could nor would think of leaving Germany,
until rebellion should there be
suppressed,
his sense of the urgent need of the lawful heirs, early presence in the
Sicilies, determined him to aim at pacifying, rather than subduing the Lion,
thus to effect a reconciliation between hi-n and his neighbours. It would seem
that, had Constance hastened to take possession of her heritage, this might
have been secured without detriment to the affairs of Germany, 01 nterruption
of the King’s previous designs; but the German Henry VI vers too like Henry VII
of England, not to be jealous of his wife’s individual rights and possible
authority. He detained the Queen n Germany until he should himself be at
liberty to accompany her; and contented himself ■with despatching his
Chancellor, Diether, and the Archbishop of Mainz, to claim the crown for
himself and her, ascertain the state of affairs in their new kingdom, and in
ever} way act for them. His two envoys unfortunately quarrelled, and the
Archbishop returned to Germany, leaving the Chancellor to discharge his mission
alone.
The most
indispensable preliminary to Henry’s crossing the Alps being a peace with the
Duke of Brunswick, upon the continuance of whi'jh some reliance could bo felt,
he immediately made overtures to that prince; and whilst both negotiations with
him and warlike preparations, in case of their failure, were in progress, he
addressed himself to conciliating the only other prince of whom he entertained
any apprehensions. This still d-eaded enemy was the unapostolic, and ambitious
as powerful, Archbishop of Cologne. Henry was convinced that the apparent reconciliation
with the Emperor, to which the Papal Legate had almost compelled the prelate,
had been a mere external sacrifice to ecclesiastical decorum; and that nothing
really prevented Philip from confederating with the reb<-’ Lion, but his
possession of a large portion of the ducal fiefs, without restoring which he
could hardly even propose an alliance with the previous owner But King Henry
could bend his implacability when his interest required yielding; he controlled
his own anger, and submitted to extortion with a good grace. He confirmed to
the Archbishop various disputed pretensions to tolls, coinage, &c.;
restored him some mortgaged lands; and at the Whitsuntide Diet of 1190, held at
Nuremberg, treated Digitized by Microsoft®
him with such
tender respect, rejecting every insinuated suspicion, that he seems to have
effectually obliterated all lurking resentment of past quarrels. The Archbishop
promised him his cordial support, in the inforcement of his consort’s right to
the kingdom of Sicily.
The Duke of
Brunswick had looked upon the Archbishop of Cologne as a prospective ally,
whose co-operation might, when wanted, be certainly purchased by the renunciation
of all claim to his Westphalian acquisitions; and the loss of such a possible
future confederate was not the only deterioration his position underwent, in
the spring of 1190. The Holsteiners, repenting of their revolt from their own
mesne Lord, not only deserted the Duke to submit again to their Earl’s son,
but, under his command, gave the Brunswickers battle, and defeated them; whilst
the strong fortress the Duke was besieging, Siegberg, showed no disposition to
surrender. Under these circumstances the old Lion was well pleased to escape
from the ban of the Empire, not only without additional forfeiture, but with
some little gain ; and to be permitted to remain quietly in his dukedom of
Brunswick, giving his eldest son, Lothar, as a hostage for his peaceable
conduct, and sending the second Henry, surnamed, for distinction, the Younger,
to perform, as his substitute, the feudal service due for his fiefs. The other
conditions were, that the walls of Brunswick should in four places be broken
down, and those of Lauenburg destroyed; in which dismantled state the town
appears to have been left to him: whilst, as an Imperial gift, he was suffered
to retain half of Lubeek, the second half reverting to the Earl of Holstein—its
privileges as a Free Imperial City being forfeited, seemingly by its prompt
submission to a rebel.
King Henry,
now deeming himself free, was about to set forward for Italy, when new
hindrances interposed to detain him. First, came tidings of the death of his
cousin, Landgrave Lewis, of Thuringia, in Cyprus. The Landgra\e had died
childless; his brother and heir, Hermann, was still in the crusading army
before Acrej and some active interference on the part of the sovereign was
requisite, to : lsure to the new Landgrave his Jawful heritage.
Henry, although by this time perforce aware
34 §
of Tancred’s
usurpation, showed himself the less inpatient of these delays, as Chancellor
Diether, confining his investigations to the more loyal, continental half of
tlie kingdom, where no pains had been taken to alienate the people from the
rightful heir, sent him very satisfactory, reports. Still he used the utmost
diligence to remove all impediments, and was again prepared to start, when the
yet heavier news of the Emperor’s death, in the very moment of success, again
stopped him. He, the Imperial heir, was indeed already crowned and in actual
possession of the sovereign authority; but this calamity, nevertheless, induced
a necessity for various changes and new dispositions. To this business Henry
now addressed himself; and still scarcely alarmed touching his wife’s
succession, he determined to blend his Coronation Progress, with his expedition
against the usurper of her acknowledged birthright.
But Diether
had at length discovered that, misled himself by flattering reports, and by
taking a part as a specimen of the whole, he, in his turn, had misled his
master; and he now, with all earnestness, pressed Henry to hurry to southern
Italy. The loyal portion of the Sicilian and Apulian nobles, who adhered to
their oath of prospective allegiance, added their vehement remonstrances
against further delay, to the Chancellor’s entreaties. But Henry, to whose
nature anything like vacillation was repugnant, wrouId not alter the
arrangements he had made relative to hid own movements. He, however, directed
Testa, the Imperial Vicar in Tuscany, to raise an army with the utmost
possible despatch, and lead it into Apulia, there to enforce obedience and
loyalty. He himself first completed the previous measures that had been planned
for Germany, whilst he believed his right acknowledged in the Sicilies, and was
not ready to begin his march until the autumn of this year, 1190.
These delays
had been most unfortunate, as giving Tancred leisure to secure his usurped
throne, and he, whose dexterity in extricating himself from his difficulties
w'ith the King of England has been seen, did not suffer this leisure to pass
uoprofitably. By a lavish distribution of the treasures, amassed by his
predecessor, he, besides rewarding and securing the attachment of his original Digitized
by Microsoft®
partizans,
daily acquired more. In arms he subdued the Saracens in the mountains,
constraining them to submit to the terms he dictated: whilst a brother of his
wife’s, the Conte di Accrra, overran and subjugated the greater part of Apulia;
and by the atrocious cruelty with which he persecuted all adherents of Constance
within his reach, inspired a terror, that for the moment facilitated his
success, although blended with a sullen resentment unpromising for its
permanence. All this was in full progress when Testa, in obedience to King
Henry, crossed the Apulian frontier with an army, and Was immediately joined by
the Conte d’Andria with a troop of loyal Apulians. Together they recovered many
of Acerra’s conquests, and drove him to seek shelter at Ariano, where they
besieged him. But the victorious Testa ravaged the country with a recklessness
that effaced Acerra’s cruelties from men’s minds; and seeming to corroborate
Matteo’s predictions of the evils that would follow in the train of a foreign
monarch, alienated even the continental Sicilians from Constance. Ac err a
defended Ariano resolutely ; and ere the loyalists could take it, the heats of
summer engendered disease in their army, which, combining \>ith a dearth of
provisions, rendered the raising the siege unavoidable. In September, Testa
retreated with his sickly troops to northern Italy, and Andria shut himself up
in the strong fortress of Ascoli.
Andria was
now’ in his turn besieged by Acerra. Ascoli w as as resolutely defended as
Ariano had been; and Acerra, despairing of taking it by force, made overtures
to Andria for a general pacification. The negotiation meeting with obstacles
at every step, Acerra proposed an interview, a personal conference offering the
best chance of obviating or eluding difficulties, otherwise apparently
insuperable. The unsuspicious, because honourable, Andria felt the justice of
the remark, and left the security of his walls, to hold the proposed conference
according to appointment. But no sooner was he without the gates, with an
insufficient escort, than he was surrounded, siezed, and put to death, by
command of Acerra: who alleged, in his justification, that faith was not to be
kept with a traitor. A doctrine as dangerous as it was nefa- Dig'tized by
Microsoft®
rious—even
could the staunch adherent of the heiress to whom all had, prospectively, sworn
allegiance, be termed a traitor—and so the unforgiving Henry, who forgot
neither precedent., nor promulgator of such doctrine, in. due time taught
Acerra to his cost. For the moment however, the crime seemed to answer its
purpose. Willingly or unwillingly, Apulia submitted : and, in the spring, of
1191, Tancred was unconteatcd King of Sicily, both continental and insular. His
eldest son, Roger, was generally acknowledged as his heir. As such Tancred had
him crowned, and obtained for him the hand of the Con- stantinopolitan Emperor
Isaac’s daughter. Irene, the affianced bride of King Henry’s youngest brother,
Philip.
The latter
portion of this time Henry seems to have idly allowed the usurper of his wife’s
throne, for occupying hirnself v. ith less urgent concerns. Late in the autumn
of
1190, his business in Germany being despatched
and his preparations completed, he crossed the Alps, accompanied by Constance,
and at the head of the feudal army that ever attended the Coronation Progress.
Towards the end of November he reached Milan, where, as everywhere throughout
long-rebellious but now reconciled Lombardy, he was joyfully received, as an
acknowledged and revered sovereign. But, if he encountered no opposition, he
found tlie country in a state of distraction which, in hi* opinion, as
imperatively required his presence and intervention, as the disorders of
Germany had previously done. Postponing, therefore, both his coronation as
Emperor, and the inforcement of his consort’s right to the Sicilies, he devoted
the \\ inter to the pacification of northern Italy.
The Lombard
League, instead of profiting by the Peace of Constance, to insure, through the
establishment of interna! order, organization, and union, the enjoyment of the
rights and liberties therein ceded to its members, had virtually dissolved
itself, by the broils which rivalry and virulent reciprocal hatred had produced
amongst the confederated cities; whilst scarcely less discord and dissension
prevailed within the walls of the most. Thus he found Milan at war with Cremona
and Bergamo, Parma with Piacenza, Verona with Padua, Mantua with Ferrara,
&.C., &c. Within the cities the democratic spirit was be
ginning to
struggle against aristocratic pre-eminence, and when it prevailed, the form of
government varied, as the passions or the caprice of the multitude dictated.
As, for instance, Genoa soon after the middle of the century, added, to her
four, five or six annual Consuls, eight new Consuls, whom CafFari calls de
Causarnm,—judges, apparently, the others being distinguished by him as de
Conmmni. Subsequently, the number of both descriptions of these magistrates
varied; and, in 1190, she substituted a foreign Podesta for her compatriot
Consuls ; but he gave offence by punishing a nobly-born murderer, and was
forthwith superseded by Consuls, for the remainder of his allotted year; whilst
for the next, 1191, a Podesta, this time a Milanese, was again substituted for
the Consuls. He re-established some sort of law and order. Throughout the
whole of northern Italy, the Trevisan march alone enjoyed any degree of
tranquillity:—the mountainous character of the country securing the nobility in
their strong castles against urban domination, and hatred of urban pretensions
serving as a bond of union amongst the nobles themselves.
This was the
condition in which Henry VI found Lombardy, and which he exerted himself to
remedy. He succeeded in formally reconciling the hostile cities to each other,
and bound them, under a penalty of 200 lb. of gold, to keep the peace he had
re-established. With their intermural dissensions he seems not to have
meddled, thinking, perhaps, that their very excess must, by wearying the
citizens, tend to disgust them with their republicanism, and reconcile them to
the Imperial authority. He endeavoured, less successfully, to organize a
Ghibeline League, in opposition to the Lombard, of which he still felt great
mistrust. lie obtained a pecuniary supply, by mortgaging a couple of Imperial
fiefs to Piacenza for 2000 lb. of gold; and he secured the assistance of the
fleets of Pisa and Genoa against Tancred, by promising those cities great
commercial pri\ileges in the Sicilies, privileges amounting to nearly a
monopoly of the foreign trade of liis future kingdom. What more he promised
them is again one of the disputed points of the history of this period. Guelph
writers affirm that, verbally or by letter,
to each
separately, lie promised the cession of great part if not the whole of the
island, vrith cities and districts in Apulia; Ghibelincs aver that the Genoese
and Pisan envoys chose fo to interpret his observation, that the conquest
would be more advantageous to them than to him, since Germans could not live in
that climate, and they could. When the price, at which these commercial states
obliged the Crusaders first, and the Kings of Jerusalem afterwards, to purchase
their assistance, is recollected, it can hardly be doubted but that Ilenry must
have promised, vaguely it may be, cessions somewhat analogous 10 that price, In
the seaports of the kingdom to be conquered; but, assuredly, a promise so
extravagant as of half the island and a quarter of Apulia, especially not being
authenticated by a written convention, must have awakened suspicion of his not
purposing to fulfil his engagement (1S1)
His business
in Lombardy finished, Ilenry, with a con siderable accession of strength from
the junction of Italian great vassals for the Coronation Progress, "n
February,
1191, marched southwards. At Ferrara he
required two oaths from the citizens, one of allegiance, and one not to sign
the Lombard League ; upon receiving which he relieved the town from the ban of
the Empire, under which it seems to have lain ever since Urban III there
excommunicated the late Emperor. He admitted the excusca of Ancona for the
expiulsion of the rapacious Imperial officer, Margrave Gotibald, and to
Bologna, where he was received with due honours, he granted the light of
coinage, in consideration of. an annual tribute.
Northern
Italy, or what was then Lombardy, pacified, Henry proceeded towards Home, where
he found dissensions, as usual, between the Pope and his unruly subjects.
After a prolonged absence from his see, a treaty had, in 1188, been concluded
by Clement III with the Romans, in which they admitted all rights and dues of
sovereignty to be the Pope’s, upon condition of his recognising their Senate
and their c.ty Prefect, and giving Tusculum up to their thirst of destruction.
Upon this compact Clement had returned to Rome, but from compassion or want of
power, had not yet delivered up i usculum to its fate. The Romans were
dissatisfied, and now sought in
the Emperor a
stay against the Pope. They proposed to Henry, that he should gratify their
virulent hatred of Tusculum, as the price of his admittance into Rome, and of
his coronation. The Tusculans simultaneously besought his protection against
the Romans; and Henry, although he temporarily placed a German garrison in
Tusculum for its security, held both parties in suspense as to his ultimate
decision, whilst he negotiated actively with the Pope.
Between the
spiritual and temporal Heads of Christendom, there were too many points in
dispute to leave room for a cordial friendship. Some of these might indeed be
disposed of without much difficulty. Of one, relative to a double election to
the archbishopric of Treves, the Chapter of the see had got rid, by rejecting
both the papal and the imperial candidate, and electing a third, unobjectionable
individual. Another, made by Clement, in observance of his treaty with the
Romans, a condition of his consent to crown Henry, viz. that he should pledge
himself to ratify as Emperor all the rights and privileges the Romans claimed,
the King for the moment suffered, in addition to divers papal pretensions, to
pass, as a matter of course. But, still, grounds of dissension remained.
Clement naturally inherited his predecessor’s resentment of Henry’s harsh and
irreverend treatment of Urban III; and deeply did Henry resent Clement's having
invested Tancred with the Sicilian crown, in disregard alike of the
acknowledged birthright of Constance; and,could that be set aside, of Henry’s
claim to the kingdom as a lapsed fief of the Empire.
Such was the
state of the parties towards each other, when, upon the 25th of March, 1191,
Clement III died; and upou the 28th, the eigthy-five-years-old Cardinal
Hyacinth was elccted in his stead. The new Pope, already mentioned as Celestin
III, thought to wring from Henry, both for himself and for the Romans, the
desired terms, by delaying his coronation until they should be granted; and
this he could easily accomplish, even without apparent design, simply by
delaying the ceremony of his own consecration, which must perforce precede the
other Celestin, who had immediately recognised the Roman
Senate,
hoped, by compelling Henry to comply with the demands of the Romans, to secure
their support of his own. But, in the active negotiations that ensued, the
young king, assisted by his best diplomatist, hifi kinsman, Henry the Younger
of Brunswick, outwitted the aged pontiff. The monarch, with whose policy no
sense of compassion, or regard to implied engagements, was ever suffered to
interfere, gained the Romans to his side by agreeing to withdraw his garrison
from Tusculum, and abandon the place to their vindictive fury, as soon as he
should be received into Rome for his coronation. And now Celestin, in some
small measure conciliated by Henry’s sacrifice of claim to the authoritative
post of patrician, and of some Imperial rights in and over Rome, was
constrained by the Romans to give way.
Upon the 14th
of April. Celestin himself was consecrated Pope. The following day, after
receiving Henry’s oath to protect and honour the Church, he placed Imperial
crowns upon the heads of Henry and Constance as at the altar they knelt before
him for the purpose. There is an idle tale of Celestin’s having, after placing
the crown upon Henry’s head, kicked it off again; apparently a monkish
invention, altogether groundless.(ls5) Few octogenarian princes,
spiritual or temporal, unsupported by troops, and even by their own subjects,
would venture thus to insult a powerful sovereign at the head of an army; and
nothing in Celestin Ill’s pontificate points him out as one of those few;
whilst assuredly Henry VI ■was not the man to suffer an affront, or even
an awkward accident, to pass with impunity.
The German
garrison was now, according to agreement, withdrawn from Tusculum, and the town
thus really delivered up to the Romans; the Pope, upon the brink of the grave,
concurring, it is averred, in this horrible surrender of thousands to butchery.
Even during the festivities with which, when practicable, it was customary to
celebrate Imperial coronations, were the Romans slaking their thirst for blood.
For not content, like the reputedly inhuman Frederic Barbarossa, with
demolishing fortifications and houses, they massacred by far the larger portion
of the adult male population, mutilating those
whose lives
they spared, and putting out their eyes The few sad survivors sheltered
themselves 'vith the women and children, amidst or near the ruins of their
former homes, in huts constructed with leafy branches of trees. Thence, when a
new town arose within a short distance of the annihilated Tusculum, it was
named Frascati, from frasche, twigs or boughs.
Such horrors
were inauspicious accompaniments of coronation festivities, inauspicious as the
inauguration of a friendship between the spiritual and temporal Heads of
Christendom: who, had they honestly co-operated as Christians, to that end,
might have prevented the perpetration of such atrocities. Nor did the
friendship thus heartlessly and calamitously inaugurated long subsist. All
mention of Sicily had by mutual tacit consent been avoided in the agreement
respecting the coronation as Emperor. But now the Pope laboured to dissuade the
Emperor from attempting to recover the birthright of his Empress, and to
prevail upon him even to acknowledge the Papal vassal, Tancred, as King of
Sicily. That he argued in vain hardly need be said, and Celestin, unlike a Pope
who durst kick off an Emperor’s crown, tried no means stronger than argument.
Towards the
end of April, shortly after the departure of the crusading Kings from Messina,
the Emperor crossed the Apulian frontier, and upon the 29th took Rocca d’Arce,
a supposed impregnable fortress, by storm. This exploit breathed confidence
into his party, and so disheartened Tancred’s, that in Apulia the very idea of
further resistance seemed to have vanished. The nobles hastened to do homage to
Henry and Constance; towns and castles threw open their gates at their approach
; and as far as the walls of Naples, the country was theirs. The Emperor sought
to secure the attachment of his new subjects by confirming the charters of all
towns that thus acknowledged him; but he did not, perhaps could not, prevent
his feudal army from indulging in excesses and outrages, which such prompt
submission ought to have averted. The discontented betook them to Naples, thus,
reinforcing the garrison, with which Acerra prepared to
defend his
brother-in-law's continental capital to the uttermost.
In the month
of May, Ilenry laid siege to this important place. Ilis troops were the very
flower of Germany and of northern Italy; both besiegers and besieged made
prodigious exertions ; anti it was soon evident that, the siege would be a
tedious operation. Thereupon a deputation from Salerno waited upon the
Empress, with a petition that she, thei.‘ Liege Lady and (iueen, would not
expose her sabred person to the inconveniences and annoyances of a camp, but
honour her faithful city of Salerno, by taking up her temporary abode within
its protecting walls. Ilenry, eager to cultivate Apulian loyalty, and too well
received himself to feel now much jealousy of Constance, assented, and she was
escorted to Salerno.
The siege
proceeded; the Pisan fleet appeared, blockading the mouth of the bay; and now
Acerra could calculate the hour when famine must compel a surrender. But ere it
struck, a more powerful Sicilian fleet, under the gallant Grand-Admiral,
Margaritone, a zealous partisan of his former colleague, Tancred, appeared upon
the stage: the Pisans were glad to effect their escape by night, and Naples
breathed again. It seemed, indeed, that this would be but a temporary respite,
for Genoa announced the sailing of her fleet to join the Pisan; a union that
must have re-transferred the preponderance at sea to the Imperialists, thus
renewing the complete blockade, But the j 'nction had not yet been
accomplished, when the usual protection of southern Italy against German conquest
effectually relieved Naples.
The heat of
summer produced a fatal epidemic amongst the besiegers, the ravages of which
were not confined to the lower orders. The Archbishop of Cologne, and the Duke
of Bohemia, were carried off by it; Henry himself being at death’s door. In the
midst of this distress came tidings that Lothar, who was held as a hostage for
hi* father, the Duke of Brunswick’s good faith, had died at Augsburg; and
immediately afterwards, the Lion’s second son, Henry the Younger, deserted the
apparently dying Emperor. Flying in disguise from the camp, he first
sought a
refuge in hostile Naples ; thence making his way by the most circuitous
roads—as though dreading pursuit, and some fearful doom if overtaken,—back to
Brunswick. He excused this step upon the somewhat ignoble plea that his
services in the negotiations with the Pope and the Romans had been inadequately
remunerated. But the fact seems to be that, upon his brother Lothar’s death,
Henry the Younger saw that his own escape from the power of the Emperor would
relieve his father from the thraldom, to which the Emperor’s holding the
persons of his sons subjected him. (186)
The Emperor
was not a little troubled by this desertion, which foreboded, at the least,
disturbances in Germany; and was now combined with rumours of cabals amongst
his Italian allies and subjects, consequent upon the offer of large bribes by
Tancred. These manifold apprehensions, added to the fear of losing nearly all
his transalpine troops by the epidemic, and to his own utter prostration of
strength both of body and mind by the disease, determined Henry VI to yield to
necessity. He raised the siege, and retreated northwards, leaving garrisons,
under German commanders, in Capua, Sora, and Rocca d’Arce.
Whether he
would now have ventured to leave Constance at Salerno, in the hope that the
presence of the native lawful Sovereign might keep alive feelings of loyalty,
is doubtful, no choice having been allowed him in the matter. The fervent
attachment of the Salernitans to their Queen, in whose defence they had sworn
to die, had been generated by the triumphs of the Imperialists, and did not
outlive their success. The tidings of the Emperor’s dlness, and of the raising
of the siege of Naples, were quickly followed by a report of his death: and now
the professed adherents of Constance shrank into obscurity, whilst Tancred’s
partisans amongst the citizens rose in arms. It is said that, from the time of
her arrival at Salerno, individuals of that party had been endeavouring to
persuade their hereditary Queen to abdicate in favour of her illegitimate
nephew, Tancred. The story is most improbable; for by what argument, or what
bribe, could they hope to 'nuuce her to renounce her patrimonial crown, thereby
;rremissibly offending her Imperial con
sort, whom
they then knew to be alive and triumphant ? But, whatever their previous
measures, they now tumultuously besieged her in her palace. With calm
fortitude she presented herself, we are told, in a balcony, and addressed the
rioters, first in the language of mild remonstrance and admonition, succeeded,
when these proved unavailing, by that of indignation. This was equally so, for
troops she had none, and could not now threaten them with the only object of
their fear, the Immediate vengeance of her husband, since they believed him to
be dead. She was altogether defenceless, and easily made a prisoner.
Constance was
immediately carried to Sicily, and delivered up to Tanered. She appeared before
him n imperial attire, and angrily he accosted her : “ Could not the splendours
of half a world content thee ? Why earnest thou to grasp at my dominions ? Lo I
a just God has visited such sinful ambition upon thy husband and thyself!”
With the quiet dignity apparently habitual to her, the Empress replied: “ I
sought not the dominions of others, but my own kingdom, of which thou hast
sinfully robbed me. Our star is momentarily eclipsed, thine will set ere long!”
Tanered detained his aunt in honourable captivity.
The Emperor
had for the moment no power of regaining his wife; and, committing to
Tanered’s patron, the Fope, the care of obtaining or extorting her release, he,
as soon as his health would permit, returned in all haste to Germany, where his
presence w'as much needed. So, indeed, was it in Apulia, where Tanered and
Acerra speedily reconquered all Henry’s conquests. Even Capua ihev took, and
only Sora and llocca d’Arce remained Imperialist.
In Germany,
meanwhile, the growl, if not the roar, of the Lion had again been heard. Fear
for his sons, if it somewhat restrained him from openly proceeding to active
hostilities, had not been of force to coerce the Duke of Brunswick into
fulfilling his engagements. He neither ceded half of Lubeck to the Earl of
Holstein, nor dismantled Lauenburg; and, one deviation from the narrow path of
rectitude ever leading to another, he again violated all oaths and laws,
respecting the possessions of absent
absent
Crusaders, to invade the Holstein territories. The news of this aggression
brought the Earl home from Palestine to defend his patrimony; Bernard Duke of
Saxony, and Otho Margrave of Brandenburg—aware of the consequences which the
success of this aggression would produce to themselves—armed to assist him ;
the Lion being, as before, aided by bis Danish and Slavonian sons-in-law. In
this position, Henry the Younger, when he reached Brunswick, found his father,
whom his arrival freed from the last feeble check upon his ambition. War now
blazed throughout the north of Germany, and he, who had enkindled it, was
believed to be further machinating the election of an anti-king.
The Emporor’s
return from Italy interrupted the progressive success of the Duke’s
operations. The Obodrite son-in-law appears to have shrunk from open war with
the sovereign of both his father-in-law and himself; the King of Denmark,
diverted from German concerns by Danish affairs, materially reduced his
succours; and the old Lion made overtures for a reconciliation with his Liege
Lord. But Henry VI, exasperated as he had been by the desertion of the son at
a moment when he most needed true friends and faithful vassals, and by the
father’s disregard of his solemn engagements and oaths, was as yet too angry to
listen to them. The Brunswick envoys were roughly dismissed, and the ban of the
Empire hung for awhile suspended over the head of the perjured rebel.
In December
of this year, died Welf Duke of Spoleto, the uncle of Frederic Barbarossa and
of Henry the Lion. With his heritage, the Emperor, according to his father’s
arrangements, immediately invested Conrad, his next surviving brother: upon
whom he now likewise conferred the family duchy of Swabia, vacant by the death
of their brother, Duke Frederic, before Acre.
The Emperor
then applied himself to settling some feuds in southern Germany, and some
ecclesiastical dissensions in the northern provinces. In most of these he
succeeded to his wish ; but one proved a matter of no lirtle difficulty and
annoyance. This dispute originated in his owii irregular conduct, relative to
the election of a Bishop of Liege. The last prelate had been one of the victims
of the
epidemic so
destructive amongst the besiegers of Acre : and the contentions in the Chapter
relative to the choice of his successor ended in. the double election of Prince
Albert of Brabant and of Albert von Reitest. In virtue of the Calixtine
Concordat,, the Emperor interfered ; lawfully he rejected both; but then, in
direct violation as well of that compact as of all religious feeling, sold the
see foi 300U marks, to Graf Lothar von Ilerstall or Ilerstade, Dean of Bonn.
The second Albert submitted to his rejection ; not so the Brabant prince. lie
procured a recommendation from his kinsman and Metropolitan, Bruno, the new
Archbishop of Cologne, with which he hastened to Rome ; and, whilst his
brother, Henry Duke of Brabant, waged war against his rival, Bishop Lothar, he
obtained from the Pope a sanction of hi« election, together with an injunction
to Archbishop Bruno to consecrate him, and in case Bruno should shrink from
thus offending the Emperor, another to the. Archbishop of Rheims, to act as his
substitute.
When Prince
Albert returned, strong in papal patronage, he found the Emperor in arms,
supporting his own simoniacal bishop; and obstructing the navigation of the
Rhine, as a visitation upon the Archbishop of Cologne for the recommendation he
had given. Bruno dreading, as had been anticipated, further to provoke Imperial
wrath, declared himself incapacitated by illness for the performance of any of
his archiepiscopal functions. Albert repaired to Rheims, where the French
prelate readily consecrated him ; but, beyond the contested title of prince-
bishop, he gained nothing by the ceremony. Lothar kept possession of the see ;
and at Rheims, whilst preparing to enforce his own, as he alleged, preferable
claim, by arms, Bishop Albert was assassinated: why, or at whose instigation,
was never clearly ascertained. The murderers were Imperial vassals, who won
their intended victim’s confidence by announcing themselves as unjustly
despoiled of, and expelled from, their fiefs by the Emperor. Bishop Lothar
attested, on oath, his innocence of the crime, and for the moment retained his
see. The criminals sought an asylum at the Imperial court, and were, in the
first instance, so kindly received as to give some colour to the Digitized
by Microsoft®
Guelph
accusation of Henry VI, as the secret author of the bloody deed; and, indeed,
the chief grounds for acquitting him of complicity, at least, are his subsequent
conduct, and the absence of any adequate motive. Fear of having to refund the
money received for the see, is the only one conceivable; and it seems
Impossible that the simoniacal prelate should have dared to publish his own
guilt by openly demanding it, which, indeed, Henry ere long dared him to do.
For the present, when informed of the falsehood and treachery by which the
murderers had accomplished their nefarious purpose, the Emperor banished them
from his dominions, and sought a reconciliation with the family of the victim.
This he effected by sacrificing Bishop Lothar, and agreeing to a fourth
election, which, by pre-concert, bestowed the see upon Prince Simon, a younger
son of the Duke of Limburg, and near relation of the Duke of Brabant and the
murdered Bishop Albert.
While these
transactions were in progress west of the Rhine, the war which the Duke of
Brunswick—his pacific overtures having failed—was carrying on with his former
vassals, and w'ith his successor in his forfeited duchy of Saxony, grew daily
less successful. The King of Denmark’s attention was more and more otherwise
occupied; he was troubled, if not seriously alarmed, by the aggressive ambition
of an illegitimate scion of his house, Waldemar, a natural son of Canute V.
And, in addition to this domestic disturbance, he was in danger of being
obliged to declare war against France. The cause of quarrel being one in which
divers of our Dramatis Personm were successively implicated, must be explained.
Philip Augustus, upon the death of his first wife, Isabella of Hainault, had
asked the hand of the Danish Princess Ingeborg, with the Danish pretensions to
the Crown of England as her portion. Canute VI was well pleased with the
connexion, but chose rather to portion his sister with money, than to part with
these idle pretensions, and this change was admitted. In 1193, Ingeborg was
sent to France, and married to Philip; who, the very morning after the wedding,
and, according to some writers,(lh7) during the ceremony of the new
CAueen’s coronation, pro-
fessed an
invincible aversion to her person, originating, it has been suspected, in the
alteration of her portion, from what gratified his hatred of Richard Caiur
de-Lion, to money; though in that case it might have been supposed he would simply
have broken off the negotiation upon being refused the portion he had asked,
which he had not done. But however caused, he indulged his dislike. He accused
her of witchcraft, imprisoned her, and upon the strangely imagined plea of
consanguinity to his deceased wife—through Charles the Good, the Danish Earl of
Flanders, to whom Ingeborg was related on the side of his Danish father,
Isabella of Ilainault on that of his Flemish mother—sued for a divorce. His
uncle, the Arch bishop of Rheims, who held legatine authority in France, and
his own clergy granted it. Ingeborg was refused an advocate, closely mewed up
in a convent, and deprived of her Danish attendants; whilst her whole stock of
French seems to have afforded only the ejaculation Mauvaise France. She
succeeded, nevertheless, in appealing to Rome, earnestly supported by her
brother; and the Pope conscientiously refused to sanction a divorce, sought for
the mere gratification of a royal whim, grossly offensive to another regal
house, and the alleged ground of which was manifestly false. Celestin ordered
Philip to take back Ingeborg, and the King disobeyed the Papal mandate. Amidst
such circumstances, the King of Denmark w ould not embroil himself with the
Emperor, and afforded his father-in-law little help. The old Lion at length
really wished for peace ; and, in 1194, he sent his offending son to the
Imperial court to apologize for his own desertion, and express his fathers
wishes.
Henry
VI was less indisposed to a reconciliation now than formerly. Lapse of time,
consciousness of power, occupation with other affairs, and more recent
provocation from other offenders, had all contributed to allay the fierceness
ol'his resentment; whilst the three great objects, to the attainment of which
he now looked, as the glory of his reign, were gradually superseding ali minor
considerations in his thoughts. These objects were—1st, the consolidation of
the political condition of Germany, through the universality of the hereditary
principle, and more especially Digitized by Microsoft®
by its
recognition relatively to the crown, which would secure it in perpetuity to his
own family; 2d, the recovery of his wife’s heritage; and 3d, when thus
strengthened, the reunion of the East-Roman with the Holy-Roman Empire ; and the
consequent re-establishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem, in vassalage, as the
outwork of Christendom. Of these three projects the second must, he felt, take
precedence in point of time, and he was eager to free himself from all
impediments to a second expedition into southern Italy. Hence he received the
deserter more graciously than might have been anticipated; nevertheless he
still refused the concession most urgently solicited, to wit—the confirmation
of the Duke of Brunswick’s usurping resumption of the mesne sovereignty over
the iands north of the Elbe, which he had enjoyed as Duke of Saxony. In the
very crisis of these diplomatic difficulties an incident occurred that,
threatening so to revive the utmost bitterness of Guelph and Ghibeline hatred in
Germany, as to render peace actually impossible, ended contrariwise in a
revival of friendship, through a reduplication of the ties of kindred.
This
incident, one of the few bits of romance that enliven the grave studies of the
historical inquirer, is thus related by contemporary Chroniclers. The Rhine
Palsgrave Conrad, Frederic Barbarossa’s brother, had only one living child
left out of a numerous family. This one was a daughter named Agnes,
acknowledged by both Lord Paramount and vassalage, the heiress of his
principality. Whilst friendship subsisted betv, ixt Barbarossa and the Lion,
her marriage with Henry the Younger, then a second son, had been arranged; and
the intended bride and bridegroom, whilst children, having been allowed to play
together, had attached themselves warmly to each other. When the Lion rebelled
the projected marriage was, of course, broken off.
Agnes
was now grown up, and was yet more celebrated for her beauty, and her qualities
of heart and mind, than as heiress of the Palatinate. Suitors naturally
abounded; but she shrank from every matrimonial proposal, and as yet no match
had offered, for which her family deemed it worth while to constrain her
inclinations. But her fame
VOL.
II. 15
had spread
into France, and, in 1194, King Philip holding himself a single man, upon the
strength of the divorce pronounced by his own clergy, sought her hand. The
Palsgrave laid the offer before the Emperor, who declared it to be his pleasure
to see his lovely cousin Queen of France. Agnes and her mother, the Palsgravine
Irmcn- gard, were then resident at the Castle of Stahleck upon the Rhine; where
a. letter from Conrad communicated to his wife the French King’s offer, the
Emperor’s will, and the day upon which he would arrive for the conclusion of
the affair. The indulgent mother repaired t.o the Princess’s apartment, where
the following dialogue is reported to have taken place.
The
Palsgravine said: “ A splendid lot, a royal nuptial bed, offers for thee, my
child; Philip of France asks thee for his wife.” Agnes, greatly disturbed,
answered: “ Mother, I have heard how causelessly that King has disgraced and
divorced fair Ingeborg of Denmark. Such an example frightens me.’’ lC
Is there any other,” the Palsgravine asked, "whom thou wouldst rather have
to husband ?” And, thus encouraged, Agnes rejoined: “ Never will I give consent
to sever me from him whose bride I was in childhood, whose beauty, valour, and
virtue all tongues commend. He alone has ever been the beloved of my heart,
and he alone—what care I for the feuds of men ?—shall be my Lord and husband.”
Irmen- gard was pleased with her daughter’s resolute words, and said, “ As thou
wiliest, so shall it be.”
There was
little time to counteract the Imperial and royal wills, and the Palsgravine lost
none. She despatched a letter to Henry the Younger, telling him how her
daughter was situated, and bidding him, if he wished to secure his
long-promi.sed bride, hasten to Stahleck. Love, it is to be hoped, as much as
the prospect of succeeding to the Palatinate, winged the young warrior’s steps;
and, disguised as a pilgrim, he presented himself at Stahleck the \er_v day
preceding that upon -which the Palsgrave was expected. 3y command of the
Palsgravine, her own chap. lain immediately united the lovers in the sacred
bonds of \\ edlock.
Early next
Jay, the approach of the Palsgrave was
announced;
and Irmcngard flew to receive him at the outer gate. So officiously
affectionate was she, and withal so evidently agitated, that Conrad could not
but notice it, and inquired if aught were amiss. She replied: “Lord Palsgrave,
yesterday a hawk flew over our fields. He had a brown head and a white throat,
with beak and claws well bent to clutch vigorously, and so widely do his beam
feathers expand that it is clear his sire must have reared him upon a lofty
branch. This hawk, a handsomer I never saw, have I caught and caged.” Before
Conrad had quite made out the meaning of this allegorical intimation of her
unwifelike, independent proceedings, Irmengard had led him into his daughter’s
apartment, where sat Ilenrv and Agnes playing at chess. They sprang from their
seats and knelt hand in hand before him, whilst the mother said : “ Here, my
Lord, is my hawk, the son of the noble Lion of Brunswick, to whom I have given
our daughter as his wife. May you approve what I have done.”
Approve the
Palsgrave certainly did not. Startled at the bold act he stood long silent, and
when at length he spoke it was to say: “ It is done without my knowledge; may
that be my excuse to my Lord the Emperor.”
The Emperor
was enraged alike at the contempt shewn of his advocacy of the French King’s
suit, and at the prospective increase of dominion and power thus assured to a
hostile family. He commanded his uncle instantly to dissolve a marriage so
criminally contracted. The Palsgrave attested on oath his own guiltlessness,
and ignorance of the whole transaction until it was too late; and he strongly
represented to his Imperial nephew both the dishonour which the dissolution of
her marriage must bring upon the Princess Agnes, and from her be reflected upon
all her kindred, the Emperor himself included; and the ecclesiastical
impossibility of dissolving a marriage lawfully solemnized and consummated.(188)
Henry, who however he might momentarily yield to passion, seldom acted upon its
impulse, had now had time to cool; he felt the force of his uncle’s arguments,
and began to perceive that the alliance might be used to promote his own views
and purposes. He forgave all parties, and promised the Digitized by
Microsoft®
bridegroom
hi3 future investiture with the palatinate, upon condition of his now
prevailing upon his father to submit frankly to the sentence of the Diet, and
co-operate like a kinsman and friend in the recovery of the Empress’s
bii'thright.(189)
Henry the
Younger, accompanied byh:« father-in-law, now hastened to Brunswick,
where, with no little labour, their united eloquence at length persuaded the
Duke to purchase the Rhine Palatinate for his son and heir, by submitting to
that decree of his brother Princes of the Empire in full Diet, w'hich he had
found himself powerless to resist; and also to perni’t that son, as his
representative, and leading his vassals, again to attend the Emperor upon an
Italian expedition. The mighty rivals then met, and the old Lion forswore both
his grasping ambition and his consequent enmity to the Swabian dynasty of
Emperors.
This now
cordial reconciliation completed the tranquil- lization of Germany. The Empress
Constance was no longer in the power of Tancred, a sort of hostage for the
quiescence of her husband, whose right depended upon her life. She had been
released by her nephew, it should seem, in compliance with the earnest
entreaty, almost amounting to a command, of Celesiin, whose favour he durst not
risk forfeiting by disobedience. Different authors have indeed ascribed her
liberation to different causes; some to the usurper's fears of the sentiments
of loyalty which the presence of the lawful Queen was awakening in Palermo ;
and others to the sheer magnanimity of Tancred (,90). Thus, all
circumstances being favourable, deficiency of pecuniary means for his Italian
expedition became the only obstacle to Henry’s takii;g the first step towards
the achievement of his vast design and of money he about this time obtained a
supply in a way that shows his sense of honour and justice overborne by his
avarice. For the explanation o f this disgraceful source of profit it will be
necessary to revert to the termination of the last Crusade.
The homeward
voyage of Richard Coeur-de-Lion was yet more harassed and impeded by storms
than that to Palestine; his vessel, after much tossing, being driven to the
part of the French coast of which the Earl of Tou
louse was
mesne Lord. Upon the territories of his old enemy, whom he must have looked
upon as the usurper of one of his maternal counties, the King had no
disposition to land, nor yet to traverse the dominions of Philip, whom he knew
to be in leap;ue with his rebellious brother John, and caballing with his
French vassals, to seduce them from their fealty. The north-western district of
Italy was equally objectionable, the Marquess of Montferrat choosing to
accredit the report of his being the instigator of Conrad’s murder. Richard
resolved therefore to sail back round Italy, and land, as originally designed,
it should seem, at the head of the Adriatic. The Templars having a considerable
Preceptory in Dalmatia, endowed by the blind 15ela of Hungary in 1138, no
curiosity would be awakened by the arrival of a Templar’s ship. And thence, in
Templar’s garb, Richard proposed crossing Germany to the principality of his
brother-in-law, the Duke of Brunswick. That this scheme was adopted, not
through a reckless thirst for adventure, but to expedite his reaching his own
dominions, where his presence was urgently wanted, is evidentfrom Richard’s
avoiding France and Western Italy, where he knew he must find enemies; and from
his judicious arrangements for passing as a Templar; one of the very few'
characters, besides that of the simple Crusader, which could authorize an
expectation of safety in setting foot upon any prince’s land without having
asked and obtained, whether for money or through courtesy, a safe conduct.
Even if discovered, Richard knew of no quarrel with the Emperor that could
imperil him, whilst he probably thought the Duke of Austria would hardly
venture upon a sacrilege so audacious as injuring a royal Crusader; and he
could see little risk of his disguise being penetrated in a country where he
was well nigh unknown.
But
to the success of this scheme delay was fatal, and already had much time been
lost through the tempestuous weather. So much, indeed, that the sister Queens
of England and Sicily, whom the damage suffered by the fleet had induced to
land in Southern Italy, had been sojourners at Rome long enough to make the nonappearance
of the King matter of general remark and surmise. Nor were these delays over.
In the Adriatic
another
storm had nearly thrown the vessel beaiing Richard and his fortune upon the
Greek coast, and the Lion-heart knew that his conquest of Cyprus had made the
Emperor Isaac his enemy. This danger was surmounted, and again the ship stood
out to sea, when she was attacked by two pirate barks, jointly so very
decidedly superior to her iii strength that not even Richard’s arm could render
the issue of the conflict doubtful. But, in the thick of the combat, Englishmen
were discovered amongst the pirates, and the King’s attendants at once, as the
last resource of desperation, announced his presence on board the: i vessel. A
spirit of loyalty, or at least of pride in the glory of their chivalrous
monarch still clung to the hearts of those lawless men. They instantly threw
down their arms; and, as if they had inoculated their comrades with their own sentiments,
persuaded them, not only to do the same, but to offer England’s hero their
assistance. Upon learning his plans, they told him that his having left
Palestine in a ship of the Templars was now generally known, and he would be
looked for wherever such a bark should land her passengers; but i" he
would trust himself with them, they would carry him and his company to Zara,
where, landing from their boats, ho would hardly be noticed Richard accepted
their offer.
Zara,
then apparently a thrn ing commercial town, had long been a bone of contention
between Hungary and Venice: and, subject sometimes to the one, sometimes to the
other, was often sufficiently independent to become the resort of pirates who
had booty to dispose of. There therefore, his new friends landed him without
attracting attention. Richard, finding that his Palestine enemies had put their
European friends on the alert as to his possible appearance in guise of a
Templar, abandoned that jlan, and it was under the name of Hugo, a merchant of
) miascus, that he entered Zara. In that character he adopted the established
mode of insuring protection to mercantile travellers; and sent a present of a
ring to the Commandant, with a request for a free passage for himself and his
people. But the Li jn-heart, who wisely as boldly had trusted his royal person
amongst pirates, was il! adapted to achieve an adventure, the success of which
depended upon
caution and dissimulation. Entirely upon these did it depend; for the Duke of
Austria, aware of his intended journey in disguise, had, in utter defiance of
sacrilege and of papal inhibitions, set vassals, kindred, connexions,
hirelings, and allies on the watch for the object of his hatred. This is
evident from the language of the Commandant of Zara, who, whether he were a Hungarian,
a Venetian, or a Dalmatian, seems to have pledged himself to Leopold. The ring
was so much too valuable for the occasion that the receiver returned it with
this answer: “ Not Merchant Hugo, but King Richard sent me this present; and I
have bound myself by oath to arrest every Crusader. Nevertheless a Prince who
spontaneously thus honours a stranger deserves not unworthy treatment. Let him
take back his gift and freely wend his way.”(191)
Richard
proceeded accordingly ; but halted for a night in a town the Governor of which
being brother to the Commandant of Zara, had learned from him the King’s
journey and assumed character. Less generous than his brother, or perhaps more
intimately connected with the Duke of Austria, he ordered all the houses in
which pilgrims were usually harboured to be searched for the person of the
crusading monarch, with promises of immense rewards if he should be found. A
Norman knight undertook the business in order to foil it, and diligently
visited the hostelries. Upon recognising the King he warned him of his danger,
urging immediate departure; and then returning to the Governor assured him that
the report of his (Richard’s) arrival was erroneous, there being no one like
him amongst the pilgrims These vulgar dangers and escapes were repugnant to
Richard’s temper, and he re-embarked to proceed, as far as was practicable, by
sea; but was wrecked near either Pola or Aquileia,(192) both towns
being named, and the precise locality not very material. Whichever were the
scene of his danger, Richard and his company with some difficulty made the
shore; and the accident, it was hoped, promised to mend his chance of passing
unsuspected. Again he set forward.
But Richard’s
landing at Zara was already known, and Leopold’s friends where everywhere
looking out for hi.n.
The
first whose territories he crossed was Meinhard Graf von Giirz, who attacked
his little band with utterly disproportionate numbers, and captured eight of
them ; the King escaping with the rest into Carinthia Here he learned that Duke
Ulrich was as inimically disposed towards him as Earl Meinhard, and bent his
steps towards Salzburg; certain that in an ecclesiastical state a Crusader must
find security, and be enabled to arrange by negotiation his farther journey.
But, ere he could reach this asylum he w as surprised near Friesach, by so
considerable a body of troops, under Friedrich von Botesow, that his reduced
band was wholly dispersed ; and all who did not save themselves by flight in
dilFerent directions were taken. Amongst those who escaped w as Richard
himself, followed by a single gentleman, Guillaume de l’Estaing, and a boy,
who, speaking German, served them as an interpreter. It was now the depth of
winter, and for several days and nights they wandered amidst forests and
mountains, almost destitute of food or shelter ; till at last they
unfortunately reached the village of Erdberg, now one of the suburbs of Vienna,
where, yet more unfortunately, the King was detained by severe illness, the
effect of bis privations and fatigues.(193)
Leopold,
informed of the several encounters w’ith the detested royal Crusader, had
ordered the strictest watch to be kept upon all travellers; and, whilst the
most active vigilance was thus called forth, the boyish vanity of the lad, who
was habitually sent into Vienna to purchase provisions, might have drawn
attention, if slumbering, to the strangers. The young purveyor’s selection of
expensive delicacies andthorough indifference as to the price,accorded so ill w
ith the lowdmess of his garb, as to provoke observation and questions; and his
answer, that his mastei was a wealthy merchant, was discredited by the
arrogancc of his behaviour; as unsuited to the servant of even the wealthiest
trader in those unlevelling days, as were the knightly gloves that he had at
times indiscreetly displayed, The suspicions thus excited were strengthened by
Richard’s own heedlessness, in retaining .upon his finger a ring, the contrast
between which and his apparel, amazed his hosts.
These
circumstances were reported to the Duke, who
commanded the
lad to be seized when he should next present himself. He was tortured, and
confessed that his master was King Richard. Upon the 21st of December, 1192,
the house \Uiere the Lion-hearted monarch lay was surrounded. He started fx-om
his sick bed to defend himself, when the Duke entered the room, and thus
addressed him : “ In vain, Sir King-, dost thou conceal and disguise thyself;
thou art too well known. Do not idly thus attempt to withstand superior force.
Thou canst not escape; and be assured that I am rather thy deliverer than thy
foe. For hadst thou fallen into the hands of the Marquess of Montferrat, whose
people are out seeking thee, though thou hadst a thousand lives they had not
left thee one.” Richard saw that resistance was indeed hopeless, and yielded to
l.is fate; whereupon he was delivered over to Hadamar von Chunring, to be held
in close custody, in the strong castle of Diirrenstein, upon the right bank of
the Danube.
Leopold,
whose object was rather revenge than the extortion of a heavy ransom, or who at
least meant thoroughly to satiate his vindictive passions before proceeding to
fill his exchequer, involved the whole transaction in as much mystery as
possible. Hence, Richard really seemed to have vanished from the stage of life
; and the joy of his rivals and enemies, if somewhat alloyed by uncertainty,
could be compared only to the intense, and almost despairing anxiety of his
friends and his loyal vassals. Perquisitions were presently set on foot by the
latter, but the most diligent and most successful seeker was his favourite
troubadour Blondel; who had attended him throughout the Crusade and upon his
return, until separated from him amidst the disasters of the journey from Pola.
When Blondel heard of Richard’s disappearance he assumed the habit of a
wandering minstrel; and strolling from castle to castle, of those in which he
thought it possible the King might be a prisoner, sang under the walls the
first stanza of a lay composed by his royal friend and patron in a species of
partnership with himself.
Meanwhile, if
the Duke of Austria hoped to break cr even todepresshis captive’s spirit, and
to revelin hisdespondency, he was greatlydisappointed. Richard, relying upon an
im-
mediate
release by ransom, in lieu of betraying any dejection, amused himself, even
boyishly, with his guards. Sometimes he would try feats of strength with them,
in which they had no chance of triumphing over his incessantly ana skilfully
exercised Herculean frame. Sometimes he wouldinvite them to a drinking bout,
when he plunged them in the deepest intoxication, without damage to his own
head ; and played them divers similars tricks, that, to the refinement of the
nineteenth ccntury, appear unsuited to the character alike of king or knight.
At other times he cheated the weary hours of durance, more congenially to
modern ideas, by singing, and by poetic composition. One day as he was thus
pouring forth a strain of earlier and happier days, a well-known voice took up
the second verse. It was the voice of his attached Blondel! Whether any and
what further communication took place betwixt the roya! troubadour and his
poctic brother; whether Blonde!, by insinuating himself into the castle,
obtained means of receiving a distinct message to convey from the King to his
mother, or to his subjects, or at once hurried off with his discovery to those
who w ere to act upon it, is unknown, and not very important.(19t)
The
very discovery wrought a change in Richard’s lot; for no sooner were his
position, his captivity, and his jailer known, than the Emperor, declaring it
most unseemly for a mere Duke to hold a King as his prisoner, compelled Leopold
to transfer the royal Crusader to his custody; upon receiving either a sum of
ready money, variously estimated at from 20,000 to 60,000 marks; or, what is
more likely, the promise of one half, or at least one third, of the ransom to
be extorted, according to its amount. Henry caused Richard to be removed to
Trifds, a peculiarly strong castle, in what was then Upper Lorrain, but is now
llhenish Bavaria; where he was closely confined and strictly guarded, but
treated with the respect due to a crowncd head, which he had not been in the
Duke’s custody. Negotiations as to ransom were immediately opened, but,
Henry’s demands being exorbitant, little progress was made.
The
sister Queens were still at Rome when the new s of Richard’s captivity reached
them, and they instantly Digitized by Microsoft®
applied to
the Pope. They called upon him to demand, to insist upon his release, urging
that his Holiness was bound to protect, with all the thunders of the Church,
the person of every Crusader, and not least that of the royal leader and hero
of the Crusade. Celestin fully admitted the claims upon him, and interfered ;
but dreading the Emperor’s power, he interfered faintly, and of course
fruitlessly. It is indeed very improbable that the most energetic admonitions,
exhortations, and menaces, would have been of more avail; but such lukewarm
intervention in behalf of her Lion-son, the wronged Crusader, roused the
Queen-mother’s indignation. From England, Elinor addressed a vehement
remonstrance to the Pope. She wrote: “ Of yore, Papal Legates were despatched
for every trifle ; but now, when the most enormous of outrages is perpetrated,
when a free King, a Crusader, a hallowed champion of the Cross, standing under
the peculiar protection of the Church, is flagitiously imprisoned, no effort
is made to procure his liberty, to punish his sacrilegious seizure. Of a truth,
the honour of the Church and the tranquillity of Empires are little thought of
now-a-days, unless something can be got by upholding them.”
This sharp
rebuke touched Celestin’s conscience, and produced a stronger paternal expostulation,
addressed to the Emperor upon his violation of the rights of crusaders; the
sinfulness of which offence was enhanced by his ingratitude, in not requiting
the Pope’s kindness, when, by threats of excommunication, he forced Tancred to
release the Empress, with the like kindness, releasing the royal Crusader at
his request. Of gratitude, Henry VI knew little, but he loved not useless
tyranny; he desired not to keep Richard in prison ; and if he had been dilatory
in negotiation, it was only in the idea that impatience would spur the caged
Lion to pay the higher price for his liberty He listened, not unwillingly, to
the Papal representations ; and prepared to conclude a treaty with his
prisoner, whom he had indulged with the society and assistance of his Chancellor,
the Bishop of Ely. But the first step, that he took in professed obedience to
the Papal injunctions, was designed at once to give a less odious colour to the
seizure and detention of a free monarch, sacred as a Crusader, Digitized
by Microsoft® ■
and to assert
the Imperial supremacy over all European sovereigns: a supremacy which was
then hardly disputed, and to which the most highly esteemed amongst the learned
investigators of the political and legal antiquities of Germany'/5S)
maintain the Emperor of the Iloly Roman Empire to have been entitled. They at
the same time admit that few powerful monarchs acknowledged the claim, even
limited to a purely nominal supremacy, less even than suzerainty, save when
some end was to be attained by so doing.
With this
object, Henry assembled an Imperial Diet at Kaguenau, before which he brought
his royal captive, and caused a sort cf indictment to be laid against him. The
heads of accusation were as follows:—King Richard had supported Tancred, the
wrongful usurper of Sicily, thus obliging the Emperor, at a great expense, to
conquer his inherited kingdom.—He had unjustly attacked Isaac, sovereign of
Cyprus,—a near relation of the Emperor and of the Duke of Austria (Isaac had
married one of the Austrian daughters of the Princess Agnes, according to some
authors, according to others, a sister of Duke Leopold’s, which a consideration
of years renders more likely)— had robbed him of his kingdom, and unworthily
treated both him and his daughter and heiress.— In Palestine he had ill-used
German pilgrims by word and d2ed, and especially had, with intolerable
arrogance, outraged the Duke of Austria.—He had defrauded all of their fair
share of booty.—lie had been the instigator of the murder of Marquess Conrad
of Montferrat, King of Jerusalem, the most active champion of the Christian
cause.— He had received presents from Saladin, to whom he had needlessly abandoned
Gaza, Nazareth, and Ascalon. These were the general charges; to w'hich were
added the separate accusations laid by the King of France, through an
embassador, before the Emperor; Philip Augustus, for the chance of prolonging
his rival’s detention in prison, thus virtually recognising the Imperial
supremacy. Philip Augustus accused Richard of having in various ways wronged
him; of having deserted his long affianced bride, the French King’s sister, jji
order to marry the Princess of Navarre ; of not having shared with him, as
bound by convention, Digitized by Microsoft ®
the
monies received from Tancred and Isaac; of having, in Syria, endeavoured,
although himself a vassal of the crown of France, to lure away his, the French
King’s, knights; and to betray his person to the Saracens; and of having sent
assassins after him to Europe, whose murderous designs had been baffled only
by excessive watchfulness and precaution.
These
accusations Richard boldly and decisively answered, after, first, as boldly
asserting his regal dignity, by protesting against his amenability to the
jurisdiction of the Diet. He said: “Not as being thereto bound, but for mine
honour’s sake, I am willing, in presence of this illustrious assembly, to
refute these base lies with my sword. I made war upon Tancred, whom I found
crowned King of Sicily, because he had wronged my sister of her property; and
when he satisfied her just claims I made peace with him; both without the
slightest reference to his and the Emperor’s conflicting pretensions to that
kingdom, with which I had no concern. I made war upon Isaac of Cyprus because
he had injured Christians, had traitorously robbed and murdered vassals of mine
own, and was in league with Saladin. I opposed Marquess Conrad of Montferrat’s
pretensions to the kingdom of Jerusalem, so long as they appeared to me unjust;
but never did I seek his life or the French King’s. Whether it was I or the
King of France who hastily and prematurely deserted the Holy Land, thus
treacherously abandoning it to Saladin, let impartial men say; and if his
knights forsook his service for mine, it was because they esteemed their
sacred vows above all earthly considerations. King Philip had his due share of
all booty, and took a large sum of money to relieve me from the obligation of
marrying his sister. Thus no ground whatever has he for complaint against ine;
but much have 1 for serious complaint against him, since, in defiance of the
prohibition of the Church, and of his own repeated oaths, he is everywhere
acting hostilely towards myself and my realms. Finally, if in heat of temper I
may have offended any one, I have abundantly expiated it; and there can be no
pretence for longer detaining me, a free King and a champion of the Cross of
God, in
unseemly
and sacrilegious captivity.’’!1"5)
“ 1 r
Richard’s
words and demeanour made a deep impression upon the assembled Princes; and the
Emperor, who now beheld him for the first time, was too clear-sighted not to
appreciate his captive. He rose from his throne, and embraced him with
assurances of the perfect conviction, produced by his vindication, of his
guiltlessness; and with strong expressions of esteem and regard.(Is7)
But, as belief in the calumnious accusations had not been his motive for
detaining the King of England in prison—resentment of his alliance with
Tancred might have been a subsidiary motive—so was the conviction of their
falsehood none for releasing him. The Emperor still demanded an exorbitant
ransom, under the name of damages or compensation to himself and Leopold, for
the alliance ■with Tancred, the treatment of Isaac of Cyprus, and the
withheld booty—of which wit hholding he had apparently acquitted the royal
captive: and Tlichard, being in his power, had no choice but to make the best
bargain he, or his Chancellor, could. The ransom was at length settled at
100,000 marks, to be received before his prison door was opened; and 50,000 to
be pa'd subsequently; for which last payment hostages were to be given, sixty
to the Emperor, and seven to the Duke of Austria. This last sum, however, it
was agreed, might be commuted for the execution of some secret article relative
to the King’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Brunswick; an article that still
remains a secret.
When King
Fliilip and Prince John heard of this convention, they offered the Emperor
larger sums to break it, and detain Richard in prison, until they should have
severally accomplished their criminal objects, vizij have made themselves,
severally, masters; the one, of the captive King’s French duchies and counties;
the other, of his English kingdom. But Henry, if unscrupulous as to the means
of attaining lawful ends,would not break his plighted word for abribe, nor
would the Diet, probably, have suffered him so to do. He not only rejected
their offers, but proposed to Richard, for whom he really seems to have
conceived as much esteem and regard as was consistent with his own interest, to
grant him the Arelat, or part of it, to wit, Provence(198) in
vassalage; which from its proximity to his Duchy of
Aquitaine he
would probably be able to reduce to its former proper relation and subjection:
and this achieved, he would be lord of the whole south as well as of the west
of France. Richard appears to have been captivated with the idea; and why the
scheme W as afterwards abandoned, unless from the busy life and early death of
each sovereign, is not clear. It has been asserted, that Richard was further
compelled to do homage for his kingdom of England to the Emperor, as Lord of
the Universe (domino universorum), and to promise him an annual tribute of
5000 marks.(199) But, though, as before said, the. simple homage
was not held to be degrading, and the nominal supremacy of the Emperor was
hardly disputed, it is more likely that Richard actually received investiture
of the Arelat, and that the old Chronicler mistook the kingdom for which
homage was done.
But, if Henry
would not perjure himself to oblige Philip and John, or even for a bribe, he
was as little inclined to risk sacrificing any possible advantage for the sake
of Richard. Hence new delays and difficulties: the sum being too large to be
easily raised, notwithstanding the hearty zeal of Richard’s vassals and
subjects to redeem their chivalrous monarch from a thraldom that they looked
upon with loathing, as a dastardly attempt to plunder a warrior, whom none of
his enemies durst meet in a fair field A part only of the 100,000 marks could
be paid down, and with that Queen Elinor repaired in person to Germany, to
implore the Emperor to set her son at liberty upon receiving hostages for the
remainder. The German Princes, ashamed of the prolonged unlawful imprisonment
of a royal Crusader, merely to extort a heavy ransom, by which they were not to
benefit, strenuously supported the Queen’s entreaties, and Henry perforce gave
way. Upon receiving the two younger sons of the German Lion, as hostages for
their Lion-hearted uncle, he released Richard from durance i;i February,
11<}4.(2C0)
The
King of England’s passage from the Continent was delayed by stormy weather and
contrary winds, so that he did not land at Sandwich before the 20th of March.
And now, his liberty closing the transaction in
the
eves of liis subjects, who felt little conscientious about
paying an
unjust debt, or redeeming unknown foreign princes, the difficulty of collecting
the sums still due was so much increased, that Richard could pay only trifling
instalments, dissatisfying his Imperial creditor. lie then applied to the Pope,
for the assistance of the Church, in his endeavours to obtain the release of
the hostages and some reduction of the debt. Celestin—whose original view of
the sacrilegious outrage perpetrated upon a Crusading King, under especial
Papal protection, could not be affected by that King’s compulsory acquiescence
in the payment of ransom, and who has, by one historian at least, been
suspected, surely without sufficient grounds, of having resented as an
usurpation of sovereignty the Emperor’s presuming to judge an independent king
(2<n)—more than complied with his requests. He insisted, with
both the Emperor and the Duke, not only upon the release of the hostages and
the remission of the money still due, but upon the restitution of all that had
been received upon so unjustifiable a claim. Neither Emperor, nor Duke, paid
more attention to the injunctions of the Pope, than to the remonstrances of the
King. Celestin excommunicated the Duke; whether fulminating the same sentence
against the Emperor, nr merely renewing, with increased energy, his threat of
so doing, seems doubtful.
Of the
portion of the ransom actually paid, the Duke of Austria is said to have received
about 20,000 marks, or perhaps a third,(302) and a few crusading
princes and bishops triflint; sums, as compensation for claims to withheld
booty. Upon which one modern German historian, Scheller, exclaims : “Little
money for great shame !”
In the first
part of this exclamation Leopold cf Austria evidently would have concurred; he
thought the money too little, and sent Richard word that if the remainder of
his share was not forthcoming within a very' short time, he would put the
hostages to death.(203) lie did not long triumph in this defiance of
Church authority. In the same year, before he could receive from Richard an
answer to this threat, he broke his leg by a fall from his horse; and his own
clergy pronounced the accident a judgment inflicted by the hand of God, for his
contumacious disregard of the Pope’s commands, and of the fearful anathema Digitized
by Microsoft®
under which
he lay. No leech would set the fractured limb, no servant tend his bed of pain.
Not till he had ordered the restitution of the money received in addition to
the release of the hostages, could he obtain absolution, the rites of the
Church, and medical aid. For the last it was now too late, and Duke Leopold
died in the garb of a Cistertian. But his brother monks closed their cemetery
against his remains, until his heir, Duke Frederic, and twelve of his nobles
had pledged themselves to fulfil his promises. How far they redeemed those
pledges is, in regard to the money, at best, doubtful.
HENRY
VI.
Death
of Tancred—Henry’s acquisition of Sicily—Plots— Henry’s excessive
seventy—Affairs of Germany—Progress in great tcitmes—Affairs of the Eastern
Empire—Death of Saladin—Affairs of Sicily and Apulia—Henry’s tyranny— Death. 1194—1197.
Whilst Henry was thus deliberately
preparing to renew the war, Tancred remained master of Sicily and Apull i,
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
checked, 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 T ancred’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 bis Greek wife, Irene. Tancred
•mmediately 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 .mmediately
afterwards taken ill, and died upon the 20th of February, 1194. William III.,
being already crowned, succeeded as a matter of course, and the widowed 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 thr, 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
cla-med. 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 r.\al, 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 suc-: sours for which he
bad 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 Podesta, 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 lirst
acquisition, the apportioning of their respective shares produced violent
dissension. (2W) For the moment, indeed, the quarrtl 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 lauded 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 dir,tant, 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 prematu"e explo.sion of enmity
between the auxiliaries of his Imperial master, whilst the object for which
their assistance had been sought D'giiiz'sd by Microsoft®
was still
unattained; Sicily being apparently quite as much disposed to favour the
pretensions of William III and Sibylla, as Apulia to acknowledge Ilenry and Constance.
He therefore interposed his mediation betwixt the angry rivals, and partly by
persuasion, partly by authority, prevailed upon both antagonists to bind them
selves 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.(205) 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 Caldcn, Calaten or Ivalantlien—thus
variously written is the name of an old Bavarian family, ancestral to
thellcuseof Pappen- heim, 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 arrny to Messina; and he endeavoured to conciliate
the insular port ion of the kingdom, by at once granting Messina a charter,
rich in civic rights and privileges. At Messina the new Genoese loader, Ottone
di Carreta—whom upon the Podesta’s death, the sailors and soldiers of the
armament appear to have elected as his successor—returning victorious from his
short campaign M’ith 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 .ittle inclination to support William and his 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 an 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.
ttder
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 (lueen 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 i’obles, at the head of his army in military array, the Emperor
advanced. lie came alone; the Siculo-Norman Queen, the Empress Constance, was
not present to par- Digitized by Microsoft®
ticipate 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 w'as immediately crow ned writh 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, w ho pointed out Curreta’s want of lawful authority.
But whether so, or wholly Henry’s own, it confirms the accusation of
disgracefully undignified craft brought by Guclphs against this able member of
the Swabian dynasty, and very faintly rebutted by Ghibelines. He said : “You*
Podesta 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.” >d by Microsoft
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 k'ngs, were revoked, and the assumption of the title of Genoese Consul (z08)
within the Sicilian realms was prohibited under pain of deetli.
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 prom'sed
rights, liberties, and exemptions, together with the mesne suzerainty over
Corsica, Elba, and some smaller islands; but in the Sit ilies, it should seem,
only the right to establish factories. It maybe 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 11.
without intervening usurpation or contest. But a scene of savage cruelty, of
at best ultra-Dracoman law, was now to be enacted, which Guelph writers assert,
moreover, to have originated in fraud a.,d 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 Christraas-day,
the Emperor, assembling lils 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
heproposed to refer the whole affair to the regular tribunals; the Council
applauded the 'iberality of the proposal, it was adopted, and the Grand-
Justiciary, 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 modern 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 Podesta, 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 modern writers, upon the system. If, >n those
days, therefore, Celano permitted his assessors to read the letters in
question, he must jo accounted a
most conscientious
VOL.
II. 16
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 ccrtainly
intended to grarify 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 n
the Yorarlberg. Whether the poor boy were or were not robbed cf sight, or
otherwise multilated, 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 wTay 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 51 must, however, be
admitted, that tliore was no humanizing element in Henry YI, to temper the'
spirit of Digitized by Microsoft®
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/207) 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 v\hom 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 king. (308) Upon what ground Elinor should
interfere, is 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 ’Aas contrary
as much to hit, 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 plotting1
to get the kingdom by marryiag the Queen, of course not waiting for tbe
natural- death of her impeding husband, who was some ten years her junior. By
Henry’s command the criminal wa3 seated upon a throne of red hot iron, with a
crown of red hot iron not merely placed upon his head (2(i9) but
fastened on with nails ! Digitized by Microsoft®
But to return
to Christmas 1194. Upon the very day that heard those sanguinary sentences
pronounced, that perchance saw some cf them executed, Constance, under such
fearful auspices, gave birth at Jesi to her only chiid, 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 Ilohenstaufen 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 '
.irt'n 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,(21°) appears to have been then almost
unprecedented.
The birth of
a son and heir was first announced to the Emperor by the Graf von Bcgen, 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 Ilenry, 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
thoir quarrels to judicial investigation. It scarcely need be added that the
offending Earl’s ioyful tidings were recompensed, even by the stem Ilenry, 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 hi<s 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 Yohburg according to some writers, according
to others, a brother of Markwald’s,(2U) he granted the county of
Acerra, as forfeited by Sibylla’s brother; and to lioffredo 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 hud more than encouraged to seize the crown. He was exasperated,
and now actually diil 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 /ejoincd him, and who, if somewhat stern and
unbiiio is, 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,
1193, he did thus quit Sicily, leaving Constance, however, in the position
rather of his vicegerent than of an independent Queen. lie spent some time i a
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 towns, 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
tee^h—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, ar.d 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 tiefs, 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. (312) In fact, all that
the Emperor could accomplish during this sojourn in northern Italy, w as to
give the Imperial sanction and ratification to a Ghibeline League formed by
l’avia, 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 w it, 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 w:ere 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 hi<
naturally restless and ungovernable temper, that he now boic, 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 themselvesconsequentlypowerless against Digitized
by Microsoft® '
foreign
enemies, even could any enlarged national patriotism have existed amongst such
multifarious, often rival, petty states, tixactly how this division of Bruas-
wick 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, Ilaldensleben; 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, bei.ig in a
fratricidal instead of a parricidal form. The old Margrave was dead, mid 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 cf 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 tlieir 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 occu- picd the margraviate as a lapsed lief, to be
disposed of at his ileasure.
The feud
between the Archbishop of Bremen and the
t
Earl of
Holstein, Ilenry 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 succcssion—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, well 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 main-: taincd to be contrary to law
by the Emperors, was now
16 §
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 rght 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, bis 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 then' 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 the’.r Primate, the Archbishop of Mainz.
This prelate, imbued with the very spirit of Rome, asserted that any and every
claim upon property left Qy churchmen, being founded in injustice,(?13)
the renunciation of such an illegal pretension was no concession, was merely
conforming to the law ; and could, therefore, be no compensation whatever to
the priiH .pal prelates, for robbing them of the right of chusing 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 eccle - Digitized by Microsoft ■
siastical
princes of Germany the Emperor felt to be impossible ; wherefore,contenting
himself for the presentw :th the progress made, he postponed all farther
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 compliancc 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 re-union 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, net with him was the
negotiation respecting them carried on. In April, 1193, 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 Euvoya 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 cf 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 ali classes from the monaich 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, lie 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 ot 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 vihilst 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 waa 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 Digitized by Microsoft®
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
Bohacd- din 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 wras 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 Cistertian 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 w hich 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 1
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 '^discreetly :.ideed, 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 ftar 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 Bohaeduin 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 securily of Christian pilgrims, and massacre.those
who, upon the conclusion of the truce, flocked to Jerusalem; (214)
their numbers being so great that their loss must have very decidedly weakened
the Kir.gs of Jerusalem and England. Bohaeddin, who blames this scrupulous
observance of his word by Saladi i, 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, rescupd a Mussulman. The Sultan asked, “Was it an Emir?” and Digitized
by Microsoft®
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.(215) 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 i 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 mercifal,
pardons upon repentance.”(2Ifl)
Saladin had,
during his life, assigned the government of divers provinces and states to hi3
sons, brothers^ and nephews; and appears to lave c’ied without making
testamentary
or even verbal provision as to the succession to his empire.(217)
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 his 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 unnecessarilydeveloped. In
rcspeet to these Kurdish kinsmen it will be enough to say, that, whilst they
were striving to despoil each other of sonic 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 otvn allotted pcrfion of the contested
territories.
Henry, the
new King of Jerusalem, in the absence of a crusading army, hpd 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
Digitized by Microsoft ®
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 Ill’s eldest son and heir, v> ith 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 w ho 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 w hole 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, upnn whom he would most
have relied, Richard, pining, when his nephew first attempted to invoke his
aid, in an unknown prison, and now but i list released from confinement, with
hi> 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
questi- .n, it was the Emperor whom ihe 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 otfence. A
Crusade, for the strengthening of the kingdom he designed for his own outwork
agaiust the Moslem, entered into Henry’s views; us 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 succcss, 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 1300 knights and as many warriors of inferior rank to
Palestine, maintaining them there for a year. He had likewise promised his
suppi.rt to the Legates, vis'j :ng his dominions to preach the Crusade; and it
was preached at the several Diets he had held since his return. The Archbishops
of and Bremen, the Bishops of Wurzburg, Pass am, liatisbon, Prague,
Halberstadt, Naumberg, Zeiz, and \ erden, the new Rhine Palsgrave, the Dukes of
Austria, Digitized by Microsoft®
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 w ith the Peninsular Mohammedans; helped Sancho I to
recover Lisbon; and then proceeded on their voyage The other was joined by
?tlargaret, 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 Vi’s 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
iraudulently 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 ;(318) 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 was 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 aw ay.
In the autumn
of the preceding year, 110(3, the Emperor, deeming sufficient impulse given to
the Crusade,
had returned
to Sicily, leaving his brother Conrad Duke
J >y oi
of
Swabia, as his vicegerent in Germany, charging him, amongst other commissions,
with the chastisement of the Duke of Zaringen, who had in various ways offended
him. The utuitarian inclinations that had been apparent in the early Dukes of
Zaringen—who, it may be remembered, founded Freyburg in the Brisgau in the nope
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 bad 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 amb:t:on to the Dukes of Ziiringen.(219)
And for thase several offences the Duke of Swabia was charged to carry war into
the Zaringen 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 Zlringen
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
Durlaeh, 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 Digitized
by Microsoft®
in 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.(22°)
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 Zaringen, 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 Achen. 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, wras
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 Cttocar, 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 arid
Tuscany returned to Italy, to fetch the infant monarch for his acknowledgement
and coronation.
Whilst his
brother was thus labouring in his scrvice, 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 \\ ill of the monarch, seems more like the caprice or the
temper of an angry tj'rant, 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 Diepliold’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 vi hat 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 :ndisposed to
political hnerality, 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 Digitized by Microsoft®
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
\'hich 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, hie 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, (221)
was disputed at the time, and is so still. When the Emperor’s tomb was opened
in the last century, ftearly 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 ;(222) whilst later
scienrific 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, ii is to be feared, of the massacre of such Germans as fell in their way,
by the Digitized by Microsoft®
Sicilians
on both sides uf 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 Ilenry 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. (22it) 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, necesserily put an end to
his magnificent schemes, and threw the power once more into the hands of the
German Princcs and of the Pope.
Political,
Intellectual, and Social State of the Holy Roman
Empire
and Countries therewith connected, at the close of the
Twelfth
Century.
The death of Henry VI falls so near the
end of the twelfth century, and many reasons, that will appear as the history
proceeds, make the interruption of the narrative at the year 1200 so
inconvenient, that a retrospective survey of the progress, political,
intellectual, and social, which the last three quarters of that century had
produced, may best find its place here,—a survey that need not now7
occupy the time which was indispensable to presenting the condition of the
world, or of the Holy Roman Empire, at the commencement of the period.
The general
position of the European states has been so apparent in the course of the
narrative, that a very few wrords will suffice for this topic. In
the western peninsula, Mussulman Spain, though much diminished, wras
united and powerful under the already mentioned Almohades ;(m)
whilst the Christian portion was split into five kingdoms— Castile, ruled by
Alphonso VIII, Leon, by Alphonso IX, Navarre by Sancho VII, Aragon, including
the county of Barcelona, by Pedro II, and Portugal, by Sancho I; all at war
with each other and w'ith the Almohades. France wTas gaining
strength and importance under the politic Philip Augustus, although her western
provinces were subject to the English crovi n, and most of her southern owed
homage to the Emperor and the King of Aragon, as their respective suzerains.
England, at the epoch of Henry VPs death, still gloried in her lion-hearted
monarch, however hurthened and oppressed by his ransom and his subsequent
wars ; and, although she lost him before the end of the century, John had not
as yet-had time to wreaken or disgrace her. In Denmark, Canute VI
had taken advantage of the Crusade, and Ilenry Vi’s Sicilian affairs,
following upon Frederic Barbarossa's Italian wars, fully to emancipate himself
from vassalage to the Emperor.
VOL.
II. 17
Scandinavia
was still unfelt in European concerns, save asthe heathenism still i.ngering
there, and confirming a general refractoriness in regard to Church discipline,
troubled the Popes. Russia, under her Grand-Prince, was gradually assuming the
form of a more regular monarchy; ■whilst Poland grew daily weaker from
division amongst brother Dukes. In Hungary, Bela III had conquered Bosnia and
part of Bulgaria. At Constantinople the usurper Alexius III revelled and
trembled; whilst Servia became independent. With the condit’on and position of
the Syro-Frank states and of the most important of their Mussulman neighbours,
the reader of the preceding narrative is already acquainted.
The
progressive development of the reciprocal relations: of the emperor, the pimccs
of the Empire, the towns, German and Italian, and the pope, having been traced
in the narrative, a few words w ill bring the actual state of those relations
before the reader. The complication, through the intermixture of feudal
relations, resulting from princes seeking to . nerease their private
possessions, by taking fiefs in vassalage of their equals and even of their own
vassals, was gaining ground. Not only had the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria held
the stewardship of a Tyrolese cloister under his own Bavarian vassal, tlie
Bishop of Brixen, but the Emperor held, personally, the olfice of Trvchsess or
Sewer to the Prince-Bisliop of Bamberg, with the fiefs attached to it, and
hereditarily in vassalage under the Prince-Archbishop of Maine,' Selegenstadt,
which he transu-itted to his lineal successors. In France this was carried
still further, Philip Augustus actually holding lands of his lay vassal, the
Comte de Sancerre.
Still more
had the hereditary principle, which all sought to establish for themselves,
whilst refusing, to the utmost of their power, to admit it for either superiors
or inferiors, gained ground, and, in proportion as it did, had the insti-
mtions of the Empire acquired stability. The emperors had established it in
regard to the sub-vassals, in order to strengthen them against the oppression
of their mesne lords, and thus secure in them an efficient support against the
great vassals who aspired to independence. The great vassals had, practically,
so well established the right in Digitized by Microsoft®
regard to
their own principalities, that they set little value upon Henry Vi’s offer to
legalize it, if to be simultaneously recognised as legal in regard to the
crown. Whilst usually willing to gratify a sovereign, against whom they were
not in rebellion, by electing his heir, even the baby heir of an Emperor in the
prime of manhood, as in the case of Henry VI, they desired to retain the power
of giving or refusing the Empire. Nevertheless, it should seem that they would
in the end have acceded to Henry’s proposal of admitting this principle as the
law of the Empire, but for the determined opposition of the spiritual princes,
none of whom had anything to gain thereby, whilst the three predominant
Archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and Cologne had much to lose. Regardless of all
such considerations, the Pope imperatively commanded the whole body of the
clergy to oppose an innovation, that would be fatal to the papal pretension of
giving the Empire, and the inferred supremacy.
In Italy but
few great vassals remained, and these, though Guelphs might be found amongst
them, were, generally speaking, more disposed to support the habitually absent
emperor, than the habitually present pope, or the cities. But of the few still
fewer were influential. The Italian bishops had, with scarcely any exception,
lost all feudal authority over their dioceses, or rather over the respective
cities that gave name to, and really governed, each several diocese.
The progress
of the cities has in like manner been apparent, as well the actual republican
independence attained by most Lombard and Tuscan cities, as the growing
importance of the German, marked by the partial admission of their
representatives into the Diets. (225) The progress of the latter, if
slow, was gradual, and as a whole nearly uninterrupted. 'J he emperors, it has
been seen, valued and favoured them, both as sources of prosperity and as their
assured support against the troublesome great vassals. That some princes had
likewise become sensible of the pecuniary benefit to be derived from wealthy
cities, has been seen in the conduct of the Dukes of Zaringen. as in the
chartered rights and privileges which the Earl of Holstein and Henry the Lion
vied with each other, and w ith ui L y Microsoft
Frcderic
Barbarossa, in showering upon Lubeck, according as each, in turn, was master
of that seaport town. But none were more steadily di.igent than the archbishops
of Cologne in seeking to promote the trade and prosperity of their respective
cities. And if some towns throve under the fostering care of great princes,
others again were benefited by the very disgust their turbulent ambition
excited ia their mesne lords; many of whom, shrinking from the annoyance,
forsook their urban fortresses, and retired to their country castles, leaving a
burgrave or a steward to occupy the castle and rule the city as he best could ;
and with him ii was of course easier to coatend than with the still honoured
Lord. Under these circumstances almost all large German towns, in Lower Lorrain
even villages, had obtained some portion of self-government, often including
the administration of civil, and sometimes of criminal justice; for those most
highly favoured, even .n capital cases, then the grand object of civic ambirion
But all this authority was hitherto wholly confined to the city patricians,
whom the landed nobility esteemed but little superior to the shopkeepers aad
artisans, whom they, on their part, as thoroughly disdained. The democratic
element had in Germany hardly appealed, even in those provinces which ever took
the lead in democracy as in industry, to wit, the Lotharingian. A revolt of the
Flemish operatives against their masters had i ideed occurred in 1164, but its
motives are not clearly known, and it was quickly appeased through the
reconciliation of the adverse parties, as mediated by Earl Theodore — known to
Germ-in history as Graf Dietrich, and to French as Comte Thierry—the
indefatigable Crusader, who in that character has been introduced to the
reader. His son Philip was, like him, a great patron of his cities; but >'a
\erv few, even of these, had an inferior class as yet attempted to intrude
into municipal offices. The organization that afterwards afforded them the
means of so doing, that of guilds, was however daily becoming more general.
The progress
of the Italian cities, if less permanent, had been far irore rapid, The moral
action of a southern climate upon society would seem to be, if not similar, yet
in some sort ak;n, to its physical action upon the animal
1
frame.
If it “mar” the woman by making the school-girl “ a happy mother,” it also mars
society by committing its guidance to the unbridled impetuosity of juvenile
inconsiderate impulse, instead of to the calmly vigorous judgment of
ripe—there perhaps it might be all the better were it over-ripe—manhood. The
Italian cities, in lieu of seeking the redress of specific abuses and
grievances, the grant, or recognition of specific rights, endeavoured at once
to throw off all authority of the emperor, whilst most fully acknowledging his
sovereignty, which they continued to own near a century longer.(226)
In this seemingly anomalous attempt, however, after a hard and sanguinary
struggle, they had succeeded. The Peace of Constance left them really vassal
republics, that, in one way or another, exempted themselves from all the
services and duties of vassalage, but were very loyal to the Emperor if he
sought not to inforce his rights. One main source of heart-burning was done
away with in the sale of the royalties, of which various Lombard cities, and
especially Milan, had been wont so vehemently to complain : but which now,
submitting to the sentence of the Doctors of law, they recognised as lawfully
belonging to the Emperor, and purchased of him as they could best make their
several bargains; generally for a fixed annual payment, but occasionally by a
sort of barter. Thus Milan, for :nstance, seems to have obtained the
right of electing her Podesta in return for the promise of men, money, and
influence to assist the Emperor in retaining possession of the Matildan
heritage—a happy exemplification, by the way, of the nature of the friendship
between the Popes and the Lombard cities. It is somewhat curious that the
Podesta, when thus elected by herself, as the municipal substitute for the
Archbishop, —still ex officio Conte di Milano—thence entitled for his year
Conte ci Milano, and signing every sentence of death in the prelate’s name, was
still considered and treated by the Milanese as an Imperial Officer.
The
elec'.ion or nomination of this Podesta was now the chief, if not the only,
bone of contention, betwixt the Emperor and the Lombard cities ; and the
position of this temporary despot one if rhe strange peculiarities of
the
age and country. lie was, it will be remembered, necessarily an alien, that is
to say, the native of another city or district, debarred from bringing with him
wife, child., orany near relation, as likewisefrommarrying,or contracting any
familiar acquaintance, in the town that he well-nigh arbitrarily governed. Even
the possibility that the messenger, sent to invite the chosen Podesta to this
despotism of a year, should thereby gain his good will, was guarded against by
commonly employing a monk in that capacity.^27) In some placcs the
Podesta was required to bring with h:-i secretaries, or whatever
instruments of government he preferred, judge and gaoler 'nclusive, paying
them out of Iiis own salary, and in this case they were all insulated like hit
lself. In other towns he was expected to chuse his subordinates, from amongst
his temporary subjects, and in many was obliged to content himself with those
whom he found in office. The insulation was universal; other precautions
against the Pudesta's using his brief despotism disagreeably to his temporary
subjects, varied in different places. Many towns required him to deposit a sum
of money as security for his good behaviour, and to remain some certain time
after the expiration of his year’s reign, to await, either the preferring of
private complaints against him, or the sanction of his government by one of the
city Councils—which do not appear to have immediately gained any other increase
of authority—ere lie received back his own deposited money with his salary, or
was permitted to return home. In other placcs the citizens contented themselves
with the remedy of ill-treating a Podesta who rightfully or wrongfully,
displeased them; and though ihe Ferrarese do not appear to have inflicted
anything beyond a severe flogging upon their offending Podesta, the length to
which this ill-treatment occasionally went has been seen in the loss of his
teeth by a Podesta of Bologna, vet, notwithstanding the certain annoyances and
the contingent evils attached to the post, the greatest Italian noblemen were
eager to fill it, the more prudent often demanding hostages for their safety.
The salary was commonly high ; besides which, a furnished palace with a well
supplied cellar and kitchen, was provided for the use of this ephemeral
mcnarch. Dependent towns, if allowed to
elect their
Podesta, were obliged to chuse him from amongst the natives of the sovereign
city; but in general the Podesta. of that sovereign city named all the
magistrates, this the highest included, of her dependent allies : thus, as an
imperfect sort of mesne superior, assuming the right hardly conceded to the
acknowledged Lord Paramount, the Emperor. Almost everywhere, it will be
observed, had Podestas by this time superseded Consuls, as Municipal Chiefs,
the latter title being now mostly confined to heads of trades, and the like.
Elections of all public officers were becoming more and more complicated; but
as the nature of that complication has been seen in the election of- the
Grand-Master of the Knights Templars, and it attained to almost ideal
perfection in its fulness of intricacy at Venice in the course of the next
century, any further description may be reserved until the time for developing
the Venetian form of election shall arrive.
Even in
Italy, democracy, though now becoming turbulently impatient of a subordinate
position, had not hitherto materially encroached, save in a few places, upon
the privileges of the higher classes. The associations of the different trades,
severally, as Arli, under their respective Consuls, were, however, daily
becoming more general, and everywhere offered the democracy the means of
inforcing its pretensions. At Florence, where from the moment the feudal yoke was
broken the democratic principle prevailed, this organization had already
established a very popular constitution; the whole government being in the
hands of the Consuls of the five Arti maggiori or principal trades, conjointly
with three Consuls of Justice and two of War, all elective. At Milan,
associations amongst the lower classes, for rrilitary purposes, every trade
having its own Gunfalone or banner, under which to assemble for war or for
revolt, were evidently tending the same way.
The contest
between the Emperors and the Popes appeared in some respects to have changed
its character, because the subjects in dispute were different, but shewed
itself, when Viewed under a larger aspect, unaltered In spirit. The aggression
was still on the Papal side; the pontiffs, who now found the papacy emancipated
from all dependence upon the Empire, striving to consummate the
triumph
of their predecessors, by subjecting the Imperial crown to the Tiara: the
monarchs now, as before, struggling to retain prerogatives, habitually enjoyed
by their predecessors. This is allowed by many modern writers of the liberal
school, at least by such as aspire to the epithet of unprejudiced.(22b)
Gregory
VII first disputed the Emperor’s right of p&r- t:cipation, at
least, in the election of a Pope, and attempted to explain the oath taken by
the Emperor at his coronation as implying temporal subjection. An analogous
aggressive character marked the latter conduct of Adrian IV, and nearly the
whole of Alexander Ill’s, to Frederic I. The Emperors, on the contrary, appear
to have gradually and reluctantly, but entirely, abandoned all idea of direct
interference in papal elections. If Frederic supported anti-popes against the
pontiff recognised by the Church as the legitimate successor of St. Peter, he
neither took part m the double election that began the schism, nor did he even
presume to chuse between the rival popes, objectionable to him as one of them
must have been. He respectfully summoned a Church Council to decide which of
the two was lawfully elected. In like manner was Celestin III the
aggressor—through his adoption of his predecessor Clement Ill’s measures—in
his dissensions with Henry VI; inasmuch as Clement sanctioned, if he did not
promote, Tancred’s usurpation of the recognised birthright of the Empress
Constance; although Henry's rapacity, cruelty, and sacrilegious injustice
towards the Crusader Richard, ere long transferring the biame to him, has saved
Celestin from censure. No pretension ever advanced, had the Popes abandoned.
They still asserted that the empire was their free gift; because it was only
after his coronation as timperor by the Pope, that the German monarch was
entitled to call himself the Head of Christendom.(22<,) Towards
the close of the twelfth century this pretension was so far suffered to slumber,
that the aged Celestin did not advance it against the formidable Ilenry VI; but
tt was to guard against the slumber’s becoming extinction, that he opposed and
thwarted that Emperpr’s endeavours to render the crown
hereditary
But the supposition that Celestin excommu-
uigitizea
ay Microsoft
mealed Henry
in resentment of his having assumed an Imperial sovereignty over other
monarchs, in bringing Richard before the Diet, rests upon a misunderstanding
of the nature of the Papal claim, chronologically at least. These Popes wished
the Emperor to be sovereign of kings, but subject to them. This view did not
change much before the middle of the following century. In the twelfth it was
the Crusader, as such under especial Church protection, not the independent
king, that Ilenry sinned by imprisoning.
The original
ground of dissension between the temporal and spiritual authorities, the
Emperor’s long-undisputed right to appoint prelates, seemed to be forgotten. No
Emperor, not even the despotic Henry VI, attempted to interfere with episcopal
election, save as authorized by the Calixtine Concordat, though he, and all of
his race, resisted the papal interpretation of that treaty, to which, as the
price of his crown, Lothar had submitted. Other monarchs, unbound by that
treaty, admitted or rejected the papal pretensions according to the relative
positions and tempers of pope and king. So, for instance, Henry I of England
ended, temporarily at least, his long contests with Pascal II, Calixtus II, and
his own Primate Anselmo, upon this subject, by a compromise not dissimilar to
that Concordat. So William the Lion, King of Scotland, on the other hand, after
an obstinate struggle with the obstinate Alexander III, carried his point,
virtually, though not formally, under the feebler Lucius III. The King had
appointed his Chaplain to the vacant archbishopric of St. Andrew’s; the Chapter
rejected his nominee, electing a different person; and Alexander supported the
Chapter. William banished whoever should obey the Papal Bull; and Alexander,
besides excommunicating him individually, laid the whole kingdom under an
interdict. Lucius III put an end to the fierce quarrel, by claiming the nomination
under such circumstances, and conferring the see, by his Papal authority, upon
the royal Chaplain. Whilst in Sicily, the usurper Tancred was forced to pay for
the Papal protection he enjoyed, by surrendering to Celestin III many of the
privileges granted to his Norman ancestors, and very inconveniently enlarging
the jurisdiction of
the
Archbishop of Palermo, to which he was obliged, upon the plausible ground of
marriage being a sacrament, to assign, exclusively, all questions relative to
marriage. Again, as if to mark the ever-varying balance of power between the
antagonist forces, in the year 1153, at Ulm, the first provincial Diet held in
Swabia after the election of Frederic I decreed that excommunication should be
wholly devoid of temporal action, save as corroborated or confirmed by an Imperial
Diet.
This w as the
actual result of Gregory YIPs schemes for Papal emancipation and Imperial
subjugation ; and he might, probably, have deemed it tolerably satisfactory.
The same could hardly be said of the fruit of his exertions to reform the discipline
of the Church. If his measures had very much freed the clergy from lay control,
thus rendering the body a more useful instrument in the hands of the sovereign
pontiff, they had by no means wrought the internal, moral amelioration, which
he had unquestionably anticipated. The before-mentioned extraordinary
relaxation in the discipline of Chapters,(230) drew the atten tion
of Innocent II, and he commanded all, without exception, to conform to the
Rule of St. Augusthi, which injoined a claustral life. The majority, perforce,
obeyed the papal mandate; but such monastic restraint— ncluding common
refectories and common dormitories—proved distasteful alike to men accustomed
to full, even to licentious freedom, and to those who hoped to be their
successors in their stalls. Hence, monks now began to insinuate themselves
amongst the Canons of Cathedrals, and soon obtained actual possession of very
many Chapters; when, if some of their early elections shewed this innovation in
an advantageous light, they ere long appeared to be quite as open to corruption
and influence as their more worldly predecessors. But a Chapter, thus virtually
transformed into a monastery, derived such strength frcm its concentration of
energy, as enabled it to resist, and frequently to overpower, the will of the
Bishop. Such an inversion of their relative positions soon became intolerable
to the prelates, many of whom willingly connived at their Chapter’s
disobedience to the papal orders, and continued enjoyment of their former easy
life. Where this was the case, such objects of desire Digitized by Microsoft
®
for all
younger branches of noble, and even of princely families, had canotiries
become, that, in the year 1145, the Chapter of Liege consisted, as before said,
wholly of sons of kings, dukes, earls, and inferior nobles. So satisfactory was
this arrangement felt, that Chapters of Canons unconnected with any Cathedral
were presently founded and endowed, professedly as works of piety conducive to
salvation, but really as asylums for the posterity of the founders ; even
Chapters for noble ladies were among the number. Of course such Chapters as
that of Liege, chose the prelates they were called upon to elect from amongst
themselves or their kindred, save * hen the Popes, who had appropriated to
themselves most of the rights they had wrested from the Emperors, forced some
client or favourite of their own upon them.
Nor was this
change in the composition of Chapters the only cause of the relapse of the
higher clergy into all the disorders that Gregory VII and Henry III had
endeavoured, and for a while successfully, to correct. The same sort of
antagonism necessarily existed betwixt a Pope who aspired to absolute
authority, and the Prelacy which constituted the Aristocracy of the Church, as
betwixt a lay Sovereign and his great vassals. Hence the Popes were constantly
encroaching upon the rights, the duties, and the dignity of bishops and
archbishops. They deprived them of all control over almost all cloisters, over
many churches with their ecclesiastical establishments, of the privilege of
granting ordinary dispensations, and the like. Thus, prelates, not selected for
their apostolic virtues, finding little episcopal superintendence — their
peculiar business—to occupy them, their remaining humbler ecclesiastical
duties became distasteful to them. Feeling themselves robbed of their proper
spiritual dignity and importance, they neglected the religious duties still
incumbent upon them, to think only of wealth, temporal power, and sensual indulgence.
It will be remembered that those who have been deemed worthy of a special
introduction to the reader, have appeared in the character rather of statesmen
and warriors than of churchmen. And this will continue to be the case. At the
close of the
twelfth
centurv simonv was more prevalent than ever, the
prelates
selling everything, not only livings, canonries, and ordination, but illegal
dispensations of all kinds, including a dispensation from the clerical vow of
chastity. Such irregular dispensations had indeed always been considered as an
abuse, although the practice of commuting the penances enjoined by the Church
for any sin, for a money payment to some ecclesiastical fund, was early
admitted as lawful. It may, perhaps, be esteemed a natural consequence of the
legal establishment, in lay tribunals, of a fixed, pecuniary compensation for
every possible personal injury. And it is to be noted that repentance, and
renunciation of the sin for which the penance had been enjoined, were never so
commuted.(231)
Gregory had
been more successful in his endeavours to enforce celibacy upon the clergy,
than in those directed against simony and clerical ignorance; yet not
completely. The great body of ecclesiastics submitted to this law; but even in
countries the most advanced in civilization, as France, England, and Germany,
married priests were still to be found, were not only tolerated, but it should
seem as much respected by their flocks as their bachelor com peers. (23Z)
In England, Anselmo’s successor in the see of Canterbury held a mot or synod,
for the express purpose of compelling all English priests and archdeacons to
part from thtir wives, but was himself compelled to renounce the attempt ; and
Henry I, who had but recently compromised his own quarrel with the Pope, gladly
sanctioned wedlock amongst his clergy. Whilst in Scandinavia and in Slavonian
districts, the rule of discipline relative to celibacy was openly or tacitly
rejected. In Norway it was declared to be inadmissible; not only were the
priests avowedly married men, but a priest’s wife held, as such, an
established, and highly respectable, position in society, in Poland and
Bohemia, the rule seems to have been rather evaded, than thus openly defied;
bat in both countries married priests abounded until long after the period
under consideration in these volumes.
Gregory’s
efforts to educate the clergy appear, in like manner, to have been but
partially successful. The constantly recurring decrees of Church Councils to
oblige the clergy to acquire, at least, the portion of knowledge JDig'if*ed
by Microsoft <8
indispensable
to the due performance of Church service, prove the frequent—should it not be
said the general ?— ignorance. Such a decree was enacted by the Council which
Alexander III held in ] 163.
As another
unfortunately downward step in ecclesiastical discipline, it must be repeated
that the dangers, threatening the kingdom of Jerusalem from the mighty Saladin,
led to a measure which must ever rank amongst those most deleterious, in every
conceivable way, to the Church of Rome. This was the sale of indulgences, unheard
of until the year 1184, when it was authorized by Lucius III, in order to raise
money towards a crusade. Thus, at the close of the twelfth century, church discipline
could hardly be said to exist, even under able and conscientious Popes, who
strove in vain to repel or to stem the accumulating flood of evil; whilst, with
some few splendid exceptions, the great body of the clergy, from the highest to
the lowest, were licentious, ignorant, pugnacious, and rapacious, almost to
rivalry with the robber- knights.
The
annoyances suffered by Cloisters, and even by Sees, from their Vogts or
Stewards, now very generally holding the office hereditarily, have been seen in
the course of the narrative, as also the remedy attempted, by transferring the
stewardship, whenever feasible, to the crown.
Perhaps the
most material political feature of the three quarters of a century now under
review is the laying the foundation, if it may be so expressed, of that
essential portion of modern society, a middle class. This foundation was laid
in more than one direction. Trade was gaining importance in the eyes of
monarchs and states, if not of the feudal nobility of Germany, France, and
England^so much so, that regular commercial treaties were negotiated. One such
has been mentioned between Frederic I and Henry II of England, who,
independently of this treaty, by charter freely secured many privileges to
German traders in his dominions. Another treaty was concluded between Philip
Archbishop of Cologne and Philip Earl of Flanders, securing the free navigation
qf the Rhine to the Flemings; and another, between the King of Sicily and
Genoa, by which the former bound himself to exclude Provencal ahips<firof*i
hi* ports in favour
of this
virtually republican city, that had treaties o analogous character with the
King of Aragon, the Moslem King of Valentia, and the Emperors of Constantinople
and Morocco;—and one yet more remarkable with the city of Narbonhe, which
assured to the Narbonnese certain privileges at Genoa, upon condition of their
limiting their intercourse with Syria to a single ship annually, that should
carry pilgrims but not merchandize. All this, added to the riches, and the consequence
inseparable from riches, everywhere acquired by merchants, especially in the
powerful vassal states of Pisa and Genoa, did more than lead the way to a great
change 'n their position. The merchants of Venice were hardly as yet
merchant-princes :—but Venice was so really independent as to lessen her
influence within the Empire, save as an evidence of mercantile wealth and
consequence. In the south of France such progress had this change made, that
the opulent traders of some towns, dwelling ill their turrified and
battlemented mansions, were held capable of knighthood. Thus was the character
of a merchant so raised, that the cnivalrous Frederic Harbarossa permitted the
sword, of which former Emperors lmd granted travelling merchants the use,
exclusively for self-defence, and attached to the saddle, to be thenceforth
worn like a knight's^233) And yet more ; in a question referred to
him, he decided that the nobles of Asti might engage in traffic without
derogating from their nobility.
Another,and
more intrinsic, element of respectability was supplied to the nascent middle
class, in the impulse which the invasion of Imperial rights and prerogatives by
the Popes and by the Lombard cities gave to the study of the law. The Bolognese
Professors of the Civil, or old Roman lawr, by their sentence, not
only confirmed, as has been seen, Frederic's right to all the royalties he
claimed, but assigned him yet greater prerogatives: inasmuch as the Roman
Emperors, from w'hose decisions the civil law emanated, were far mere despotic
than any feudal sovereign. Jurists, henceforth, naturally became frequent
counsellors of the monarch. The Italian cities, nevertheless, vaguely knowing
that Rome liad been a republic, and that from the Roman republic they derived
their municipal organization, still hoped 10 finti id the civil law a sanction to
their
pretensions; and as eagerly consulted, as highly valued jurists, as did the
Emperors. The Popes could not, indeed, look with kindly eye upon a code
necessarily inimical to their pretensions, concocted, as it was, when those
pretensions were unthought of, and as necessarily favourable to the only
power, thelmperial, of 'which they enterLained any apprehension. But, far from
attempting to impugn or depreciate it, they merely defended themselves with a
rival code ; and Alexander III expressly pronounced the Civil law supreme, save
when contrary to the Canon law. This Canon law consisted of Papal instead of
Imperial decisions, of edicts promulgated, and of sentences pronounced,upon appeals
of princes and prelates, by preceding Popes; first collected about the middle
of the twelfth century, by a Benedictine monk named Gratian. His compilation
bore the title of Decretali, and
was sanctioned by Alexander III, although it comprises, amidst authentic decrees
of various kinds, many very little entitled to that character. as, e.g., those
bearing the name of Isidro, and since designated as the False Decretals. P4)
Of course the Professors of Canon law, i. e., the High-School or College expounders
and teachers of these Decretals, ranked as high in the favour of the Popes, as
did the Professors of Civil law in that of monarchs and cities. And in what
class of society arose these various Doctors of Law, to whose decision the
interests of nations were submitted, who gradually introduced themselves into
the cabinet and council of sovereigns ? The nobility still held learning of all
descriptions, except the gai Saber (poetry), derogatory to their knighthood.
The monks, who were long the chief lawyers as well as the chief medical
practitioners amongst Christians, but had, as before stated, been forbidden,
upon grounds that were a sheer substitution of the sound of words for their
sense, to exercise the surgical department of leechcraft, had latterly been
equally debarred from their other non clerical occupation. In the Council of a.d. 11(33, Alexander III had prohibited
the practice of law or physic by monks ; more reasonably, because by such
occupations they were diverted from their own especial duties ; and employed
their skill, not in Christian charity, but as means cf escaping from jheir
monasteries.^36) Legal science, thus driven from the cloister, was
indeed
still in the
hands of clerks, that is to say of men educated for the Church and in Holy Orders;
but, as ambition awoke in the non-noble amongst the laity, the study uf the law
presented itself as the means of gratifying that ambition ; and thu3, in course
of time, under the form of jurists or lawyers, arose one really respectable and
cultivated middle order of society. Not yet, however, had laymen been deemed
fit for the profession.
Another
class, now beginning to acquire consistency ar.d weight, was that of mercenary
soldiers, who, making a trade of war, were ready to fight in any cause whatsoever,
for aggressor or aggrieved, for whoever was able and willing adequately to
reward their services. Such heartless, professional shedders of human blood, at
first little better than half-legalized banditti, then,in progressive
civilization, assuming a less brutal, though still odious character, as the
trained and disciplined bands of noted Conclottieri,(236) form
perhaps the natural transition-state through which the military force provided
by feudal service must needs pass, to become the regular national standing-army
of later times. The demand and the supply were simultaneously increasing. The
Norman Kings of England, during the last half of the century, habitually
employed these Brabancom, Rvptu- arii, or Co ter eh, as they were variously
styled, in their French wars, where English feudal service was of little avail;
whilst the double fealty of many of their French vassals, as well as the
undoubted suzerainty of the King of France over all, and their own foreign
character as Kings of England,(2Sr) might considerably embarrass
their operations. Henry II is said to have composed the bulk of his armies of
these adventurers. In like manner the Emperors Frederic I and Henry VI found it
impossible efficiently to wage war in Italy, with mere feudal service.
Archbishop Christian’s army has been seen to consist almost entirely of
Braban§onS;, and prior to that prelate’s appearance in the field, Frederic
himself is said to have discovered the necessity of employing them.p*) The
smallness of the Pope’s dominions rendered it impossible they should supply him
with troops ; whilst, in Lombardy, the rich, the elderly, and even the
middle-aged citizens of towns, soon discovered that it was more convenient to
hire others to fight for them, than to be always neglecting their own affairs
in order
either to resist the imperial authority, or to gratify their hatred of a
neighbour; also, perhaps, that it was safer for themselves, than to make good
warriors of their rustic villeins and their urban operatives. Of these bands
the subaltern officers must, in part at least, have been non-noble. As yet,
however, this change liken ise was only beginning. The great vassals still
attended the Emperor feudally; in Lombard towns the citizen was still
disgraced,-who, when war was declared, did not passthrough the city gate in
arms, ere a candle placed on it burnt out; and his martial labours, against
neighbours at least, were light, as long as coining money, or riding at the
ring under the walls of the hostile city, was the sufficiently glorious
termination of a campaign. As a necessary part of the change, the custom of
purchasing exemption from service, by vassals who found even their six weeks
upon a distant expedition onerous, became more and more general; and, in
England, Thomas a Becket regularized such a commutation under the name of
scutage. (239)
The rise of a
purely belligerent class of men, as a sort of connecting link between the
warlike nobles and the nascent middle class, prodigiously raising the latter in
mediaeval estimation, was probably fostered by the concomitant changes in
Chivalry; uhich about this time was becoming, not a profession certainly, but a
distinct, selfdependent institution. Stimulated by the crusades, by the
example of the military monastic Orders, Chivalry had become so intimately
connected with religion, as to be no longer conceived capable of separation
from the Church. St. Bernard had pronounced, that only a Christian could be a
knight, and Richard was apparently blamed for knighting a Moslem. Thus, self-existent
Chivalry appears to have very nearly reached its real zenith about the close of
the twelfth century. In this, its palmy state, when all knights were equal
amongst themselves, the poorest of them looked down upon the mightiest earl, if
unknighted, whilst a sultan was deemed undeserving of so high an honour. The
self-willed Lion-heart indeed broke through the rule; perhaps thinking the case
analogous to a sovereign’s knighting a low-’oorn, but highly deserving warrior
upon
the
battle-field: a knighthood which, as has been said,
■
o ■ >
gave, after
all, but an Imperfect equality. In Italy, the PodestiLs and city nobles
conferred knighthood without regard to birth; and it has been seen that, upon
.such an emergency as the >iege of Jerusalem in its defenceless condition,
Sir Bahan of Ibelhi took upon himself to knight the sons of citizens. None of
these were perhaps heli I to be perfect knights; certainly not to be equals of
those more regularly created, w ith the religious rites and ceremonies, never
properly dispensed with, except upon the field of battle. But these rites and
ceremonies, with the concomitant pompous celebration, had -by this time become
so oppressively expensive, that unwarlike or economical nobles often shrank
from the costly honour; and this to so hurtful a degree, that in the year 1200,
Baldwin Earl of Flanders and Hamaiilt published a law for his own dominions,
degrading to the condition of peasants all sons of knights who at the age of
twenty-five should be still unknighted. But, if it was found necessary thus to
spur some of those who should have been eager candidates for admission into
this proud fraternity, that its dignity was not therefore the less valued may
be inferred from the adoption of the same title, Sire, our English Sir,(240)
for addressing a king and a knight; and il seems natural, that this select, if
numerous, body of vowed redressors of wrongs and protectors of the weak, should
have chosen to feel themselves so far unbound by feudal ties, as to be at
liberty to offer their swords at their pleasure to a sovereign to crush
rebellion or repulse invasion, or to a city to defend it from oppression by a
tyrant.
Such was
assuredly the pleasure of the military Orders of the Temp'e and the Hospital,
slill flourishing, though with inspect to their pure ideal, somewhat past their
zenith. Thej were still the first of warriors, and powerful even through the
opulcnce that had tarnished their original si.nple virtues. Their
Serving-Erothers and Turcopoles formed an actual army. The rules of frugality,
or abstinence rather, in dress, life, &c., were now habitually violated. No
longer confining their hostilities solely to misbelievers, they took part in
every quarrel of Christian princes: and the two Orders almost always embracing
opposite ;idcs, were constantly at war with Digitized by Microsoft@
each other,
when not temporarily united against some such formidable foe to the kingdom of
Jerusalem, as Noureddin or Saladin. Against such an enemy they were still its
best bulwarks; and, when unswayed by individual, or by Order jealousies or
interests, the two Grand-Masters appear to have been the trustiest, as the
ablest counsellors of the monarch and of the crusaders. The Knights Hospitalers
are accused of having, in the course of this century, wholly discarded the
distinguishing character of their institution, its blending their original
feminine office of tending the sick, with that purely masculine, of the ever
active warrior; transferring the humbler duties to an inferior class of brothers
of their Order, exclusively dedicated to them.
The
high reputation and wealth of these Orders naturally produced imitation. The
rise of the Marian or Teutonic Knights has been described, and was the most
permanent consequence of the siege of Acre. Another of those which appeared in
Palestine deserves especial notice : this was the Order of St. Lazarus, founded
at Jerusalem by rational and truly Christian charity for the exclusive service
of lepers; but of which it was whimsically ordained that the Grand-Master must
himself be a leper. The Lazarites are said to have been, like the Hospitalers,
knights as well as nurses, and highly favoured by the Kings of Jerusalem; but
being confined to Palestine, to have perished with the Christian kingdom. That no
chronicle records the military exploits of the Lazarites, would seem to prove
thio double character, of service in arms as well as beside the sick-bed, the
mere embroidery of excited mediaeval imagination upon a regular Lazarite
establishment, known only by its care of those outcasts of humanity, lepers.
Yet the silence of chroniclers upon the subject might, if the malady of the
Grand-Master were actually indispensable, be thereby explained. When the degree
to Which lepers, whether through disgust or fear of infection, were excluded
and secluded from all intercourse with their fellow-creatures—they might not
cross a road to pick up alms dropped for them, till the giver should have
reached a prescribed distance—it becomes self-evident that a leper could not
appear ;n an army as one of its generals. The
Lazarites
could not therefore be arrayed under their own Superior, and would probably
fight in the ranks of the Knights Hospitalers, with whom they, like the
Marians, might easily be confounded, by Europeans. In the Spanish Peninsula,
where, as in Syria, war with the Mohammedans was the very condition of
existence, several orders of chivalry, mostly modelled upon that of the Knights
Templars, arose. Of these the greater number aarly died away; but the Orders of
St. Jago, Alcantara and Calatrava, in Spain, with that of Avis, hi Portugal,
survived to do good service against the misbelievers. Ere long, however, they
divested themselves of the monastic character of their prototypes, the Templars
and Hospitalers, transforming the vow of celibacy into one of nuptial fidelity.
If new
classes of society were in course of formation, one of the most valuable of the
original German classes seemed fast approaching its extinction; namely, that ot
non-noble freeholders. In a few favoured situations, i.ideed, as the Swiss and
Tyrolese mountains, and some of the districts dismembered from the erst too
powerful duchy of Saxony, as the marshes of East Frieseland and Ditmursen, they
still existed, almost as of yore. Elsewhere, the sturdy preference of
independence, to the protection and the strength derivable from vassalage, was
rapidty disappearing, as might be inferred from the acceptance of a fief by
the seemingly sturdy free Lord of Keukingen; (241) and these freeholders
were now very generally either absorbed into the lowest class of noble vassals,
or pressed down to form the highest class of the imperfectly free, or even the
unfree. The number of the lowest class of the unfree, the eigenleute, answering
to the English villeins in gros or regardant, was daily diminishing by the
mere fact of the prosperity cf the towns. All articles of dress, furniture, and
the like, were to be procured in them at a less cost than the permanent maintenance
of the mechanic thralls and their families, besides being of better quality
than what was manufactured at home, by less practised workmen. Hence a change
in the condition, if not the manumission, of numbers of these einenlevte
The Jews had
in the course of the century pretty nearly recovered their pre-crusade
condition. They were now, as then, alternately tolerated and persecuted,
according to the degree in which bigotry, rapacity, good sense, right feeling,
or need of pecuniary assistance, prevailed amongst monarchs and their vassals.
By Conrad III, Frederic I, and Henry VI, they were steadily protected. In
France, where they had been allowed to hold landed property, Philip
Augustus—who neglected no means of supplying his exchequer—seized that property
and united it to his private domains; whilst at Beziers, where the Bishop on
Palm Sunday regularly exhorted his flock to avenge their Saviour, they, in the
year 1160, purchased at a high price exemption from being annually driven out
of the town with stones during Passion week. In England it has been seen that
the royal authority, if unable to protect them from horrible persecutions, duly
punished their persecutors, at least under Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Some degree
of stability their condition probably derived from the progressive changes in
the forms, almost in the spirit of feudal government. The sale of royalties and
of exemption from military service seldom proving sufficient to defray the
cost of hired troops, the need of a regular system of taxation was felt. The
idea of such a system had been caught in the East, where the Crusaders had seen
it established in Palestine, and developed amongst the Saracens, even to the
extent of making the vices of mankind contribute to the expenses of government;
as, e.g., the virtuous Noureddin levied a tax upon the courtesans of Damascus,
by obliging them to take out a sort licence to trade in their own infamy. In
those days, need of financiers was, in Europe at least, really need of Jews ;
who, already the creditors of princes, prelates, and nobles, gradually drew the
whole management of the finances of many countries into their own hands; and
thus, being considered as a necessary evil, were, as such, officially
protected, and in Germany called the Emperor’s Exchequer servants (Kammerknechte).
Even the powerful Archbishop, Philip of Cologne, had been heavily fined for
oppressing these Exchequer servants of the Emperor, which
was one cause
of his ill-will towards Frederic I and Henry VI.
In "the
twelfth century, the very idea of a financial system was, however, still in its
infancy; and as the topic did not interest the old chroniclers, they afford
little information concerning it, beyond the occasional mention of a detached
fact, as ol a duty being laid upon the exportation or importation of some
article '11 some town or state. In Italy, more progress had, during the last
half of the century, been made towards the development of this new science,
than in other parts of Europe. Venice is known to have then had a property tax,
custom-duties upon Imports and exports, taxes upon consumption, and a public
debt: for the principal of which, she, in 1172, declared that her creditors
must wait, till she could conveniently reimburse them, but for which she weald
in the mean time pay them interest at the rate of five per cent.:—the ordinary
rate of interest being somewhere between twenty and sixty per cent., one would
fa.n hope she said quarterly, instead of annually, to creditors whom confidence
in her honesty had thrown into her power. It is also known, that, at Sienna,
all property was about the same time officially valued, in order to be
proportionately taxed ; and that the Lombard cities taxed their clergy for the
expense of their civil war against the Emperor:—Alexander III, in his need of
the League’s friendship, shutting his eyes to a course which it was the Popes’
custom to denounce as most sacrilegious. The sale of the right of coinage,
amongst other royalties, to cities, seems to have prodigiously extended that
right; thus, 111 the last quarter of the century, producing an inun- diition of
bad coin of all descriptions, which the Emperor, though aided by many c.iies,
found t impossible to check or to remedy.
The business
of legislation continued, throughout the century, to be what it had previously
been; i.e., the repression of private feuds, by transferring the decision of
disputes from the battle-field to a court of justice; and where that proved
impossible, the diminution of the evils such intestine warfare enta'led, by an
increasing strictness of regulation. Thus, Frederic forbade the destruction of
vineyards and
orchards ,11 the prosecution of private feuds,
and denounced
the ban of the Empire against incendiarism upon such occasions. This Emperor’s
constantly recurring proclamations of a Landfnede, or period of peace within
the realm, shew both how earnestly he was bent upon accomplishing this object,
and how difficult he found success. A similar motive appears to have dictated
his prohibition of confederation amongst themselves to the chartered German
cities, whose martial propensities might, he probably feared, be aroused by
sympathy with the members of the Lombard League. Nevertheless, even the Italian
cities, fond as they were of war amongst themselves, appear to have frankly
co-operated with the Emperor, in his endeavours to regulate private feuds that
could not be prevented; in proof of which a course of proceeding, prescribed by
Lombard law to aggrieved parties, may be here cited. Some citizens of Modena,
having been plundered by a party of Bolognese, were directed to apply for
redress, in the first instance, to the Magistrates of Bologna. If they, as was
their duty, granted it, the affair was well ended; but if they, as was to be
expected, refused to condemn or fine their own townsmen, the next application
was to be to the Modenese Magistracy; who, in the discharge of theirs,
authorized the plundered individuals to wage war upon any or all Bolognese,
until their booty should be sufficient to indemnify them for their losses, but
not a moment longer. Still, the character of the punishments which it was
desired to substitute for this self-redress, was more than sanguinary, was
savage; but occasionally relieved by a species of good nature, at times
incredibly absurd. As, for instance, the Danish law of this epoch required a
considerable length of time to intervene betwixt the passing of sentence of
death upon a convicted criminal and its execution, in order to afford the
doomed man a chance— the reader probably supposes of making his peace with
Heaven? by 110 means—of breaking prison and effecting his escape.(2t2)
A spirit of
legislative improvement was, however, stealing into existence, which, though
more developed in the following century, was already apparent. Frederic has
been seen to sacrifice objectionable prerogatives. Richard Coeur-de-Liun uid
the sarne; by a charter given under his Digitized by Microsoft®
own hand
whilst in Sicily, he renounced for himself and his successors the odious right
of wrecking, or taking the property found in wrecks; except in cases where, not
only no living creature remained on board, but no natural heirs of the dead
could be found. He likewise, in many places, resigned his right of disposing of
single women in marriage. Other princes took a different step in the same
direction, endeavouring to make themselves and their subjects acquainted with
the laws by which they were to regulate their conduct. Baldwin Earl of Flanders
and Hainault commissioned learned clerks to collect and compile the laws of his
two counties^243) in England, Glanvil published his Tradatus de
legibns et consuelndinibus Anglia, a.d. 1181;
and in Poland, Casimir, the able younger brother of the idly ambitious Boleslas
IV, held in 1180 the first legislative diet ever known there, summoning the
clergy to attend, that they might assist in concocting laws. Iceland, a sort of
aristocratic republic, had a regular code of laws early in the century; and,
before its close, the Italian cities, upon the conclusion of the Peace of
Constance, began to make and arrange laws, by which to govern themselves.
International
law’ was a later production, and could as yet scarcely be said to exist, even
in imagination. Nevertheless, its conception, if not its birth, was approaching,
as the result, partly, of the intercourse nduced between the princes and
subjects of different countries by the crusades, and partly of the progress of
civilization Popes were beginning to denounce spiritual penalties against
pirates and wreckers, as common enemies ; and kings granted •what would now be
called letters of marque against the former. But the navigation laws, which
should properly be international, appear to be merely the rules and customs of
different states for the government of their own merchants and sailors, and
although many writers ascribe the celebrated code, known as the laws of Oleron,
to Richard Cceur-de-Lion, and consequently to the close of the twelfth century,
i:i which he died, the better opinion seems to be that, net only has he no claim
to this honour, but that no international maritime code existed until a later
period.(21i)
Letters
had made wondrcus progress during the Digitized by
Microsoft®
century, a
progress mainly owing to the now general cultivation of the previously disdained
vulgar tongues of Europe. Latin was indeed still the language of science of
every description, of the law, and of the Church; that is to say not only the
language in which divine service was performed, but in which the pope held
intercourse with clergy and laity, throughout Christendom. Yet more; it was
still the most approved language of history and poetry: but there were now
almost everywhere, if not yet prose chroniclers, many rhymers—though few indeed
who could aspire to the title of poet—who wrote lays in their respective mother
tongues, in those in which the daily business of life was transacted, which all
understood, in which the Latinists themselves probably thought.
In all this
cultivation of modern languages and literature, the Trouladours of the Langue
d’oc have been generally supposed to have taken the lead, although it has been
shown that their precedency is disputed, and C245) by none more
keenly than by their northern compatriots the T, ■ouveurs of the Langue
d’oil. The discussion, though a marked feature of the times, belongs not to
their general history, but it may be observed that the assumption possibly
originated in the extensive prevalence of this elder, if not eldest born of
Latin, which was understood and, it would seem, habitually spoken, in the
northern districts of Spain and Italy; and, in its poetic form, was carried yet
further by accidental circumstances. Some of the chief princes of the native
land of the Langue d’oc were vassals of the Empire: whence it might be one of
the languages in use at the Imperial court, when Frederic Barbarossa, in
emulation of his Provengal vassal visitors, selected it for his attempt in
verse. Early in the century, Adelaide, daughter of a Marquess of Montferrat,
marrying Roger Earl of Sicily, carried troubadours, with their language and
spirit, to Palermo, in her train. A little later the heiress of Aquitaine,
Elinor, grandchild and representative of him who passes for the first
Troubadour, hereditarily a patroness of “ bis tuneful brethren,” and herself it
is said at least a dabbler in their art,(216) carried her own poetic
court and tastes with her to the court of France, first; and, upon her divorce
and second mar-
VOL.
II. 18
nage, to that
of England, in both of which the Troubadour seems to have associated and
coexisted with the Trouveur of Normandy and northern France. To enumerate the
Troubadours who delighted the twelfth century, belongs to the historian of
poetry, or to the poetic antiquary; but <t few words relative to their
literary, intellectual, and social position, are requisite to illustrate the
character and progress of their age.
And here two
points especially command attention ; the one, the high station of a great
number of the troubadours, the other, the peculiar character of their poems. It
will be recollected that the troubadour jnst referred to, as lor.g enjoying the
fame of having firut committed his vernacular poctic effusions to writing, was
a Duke of Aquitaine and Earl of Poitou; a Duke of a very different class from a
Duke of Choiseul or Lauzun of later times, being less a subject than a
vassal-sovereign of something like a fifth or sixth of France. In this same
century are found, in the ranks of his emulators, his grand-daughter Queen
Elinor and her son Richard I, Alphcmso JI King Aragon, who, as the son of Queen
Petronilla by Raymond Ear! of Barcelona, first permanently united Catalonia—
where the language was nearly identical with Provencal—to Aragon; his son
Pedro, who however belongs more to the next century, and the Emperor Frederic-
liarbarossa, whose verses strongly mark that the Gai Saber of the troubadour
was then esteemed a right kingly accomplishment. But the Emperor’s value for
this Art is perhaps as much proved by his constituting Orange in the Arelat, a
principality for the Troubadour Bertrand de BauX—the first Prince of Grange,
and so really founder of that great house—as by his own production. Of
enthroned votaries of the Muse there are, necessarily few; but, in looking
through the list of names of princes, and of princely nobles preserved by the
historians of Troubadours, it i-a matter ot no little surprise to
see the number of the rude and ever-warring feudal lords of those ages who
figure there; for a while, at least, those of humbler condition really arc the exception.
Not less striking, perhaps, in proof of the lofty position assigned to the Art,
than the exalted station of these high born professors of the Gai Saber,
is the
political use it served that most pugnacious of the class, Bertrand de Born,
Seigneur de Ilautefortin Poitou. His passionate Sirvenles were the instrument
of the crime, for which Dante places his head, lantern-like, in his hand: the
crime, not of robbing his brother of their joint patrimony, but of so killing
the filial sense in il lie Giovanni,(247) the son of Henry II and of
Elinor, the poet’s own liege lady, as, severing son from father, to make him a
parricidal rebel. De Born’s object in thus misleading his royal friend appears
to have been to rid himself and France of his English suzerains, by their
destroying each other. His success ended in Ilenry II taking his rebel vassal
prisoner. Whether it is to be considered evidence of the Troubadour’s really
poetic powers, or only of the King’s parental feelings, that a lay declaring
he, Bertrand, had been crazed by the death of Henry the Younger, procured him
the restoration of his forfeited estate, may be a question.
The strain of
the troubadours was almost exclusively lyric; the character usually erotic, and
far too often licentious. When not inspired by Venus or Bacchus, the lay was
either martial or satiric, though the penalty occasionally incurred by the
satirist was calculated to deter from that style. It is recorded that a
troubadour knight, Luc de Barre, who had lampooned Ilenry I, of England, being
taken in battle, that monarch, in a mood little accordant with his surname of
Beauclerc, ordered his eyes to be put out; and so savagely was the mandate
obeyed that the lampooner died of the operation. The effusions of the earliest
troubadours, who wrote from genuine impulse, are generally allowed to be the
best, as the simplest, the truest to nature, the most impassioned of this class
of poetry.(24S) When it became a fashion to write, and to write love
songs, because a poet must be in love, and that most properly with a lady who
ought to be unattainable, verses were produced, rather fantastical than
imaginative, rather gallant than passionate ; difficulties of rhyme and metre
were devised as substitutes for the deep spirit of poesy, and for genuine
sensibility. Can true feeling be looked for in the outpourings of such
factitious passion as that of the noble troubadour, Geoffroi Hudel Yicomte de
Blaye, who,
in the south of France, w anting an object of his poetic flame, fixed his
affections upon the reported beauty of the Tripolitan princess who had lost an
Imperial crown through sea-sickness ? lie sang her charms and his own adoration
of them, till throughout Europe his amorous sighs resounded. He then embarked
for Tripoli to look upon the hitherto unknown, unseen, idol of his fancy. But,
upon his voyage he was seized with a malady, which, even if originating in
sympathy with the worshipped Melusina, incapacitated him for landing when he
reached the goal. Countess Melusina, touched by the tuneful sighs that had
spread her fame so widely, hastened on board to reward and cheer him with a
sight of the beauty he had celebrated, and with a soft smile. But even her
smile proved inefficient to revive the exhausted lover, and he expired during
the interview. The adventure was one to touch woman’s heart, and the lady is
said to have immediately taken the veil. Ere leaving this part of the subject,
Petrarch's praises of iiis “Famoso Arnaldo,> seem to claim
the specific mention of Aruauld de Marveil, as one of the most admired
troubadours of this century.
It has been
supposed that 110 narrative poem was written by any troubadour, and reasons for
the fact were found. Was it not natural that poetic princes and knights should
pour forth their emotions i.i song, without bestowing upon their art the time,
labour, and study required by the rudest attempt at the epos? But a principal
German poet of the next century, Wolfram von Eschenbach, expressly says that
he translated or imitated his Paecifal, from
the pcem of a Provencal troubadour, Guyot or Kyot, of whom nothing more is
known. Besides which, Sharon Turner asserts that three narrative poems, written
in the Longue d'oc during this century, still exist, and respectively celebrate
the cycles of Arthur and of Charlemagne, and a war waged between Charles
Martel and Gerard de Roussillon.(348) It has also been supposed that
troubadour genius was wholly undramatic; but more accurate research has shown
this to be a similar mistake. More of this presently. Another point to be
remarked is that, of Latin chroniclers and versifiers in the south of France,
little or no mention now occurs.
It should be
added that the train of high-born troubadours regularly comprised musical
attendants, who sang the compositions of their Lords. These indispensable
auxiliaries were called ministeriales, to distinguish them from menial
attendants; and thence comes our “Minstrel.” So established was this
custom,that before the end of the century the singing of other men’s
compositions appears to have become a sort of profession, in which jugglery or
sleight of hand was blended with music and recitation. GeofFroi Gaimar, an
Anglo-Norman, in his history of the Anglo-Saxon Kings, published early in the
century, represents the minstrel Taillefer as performing jugglers’ tricks ;(249)
of course painting the manners of his own times, if not of Taillefcr’s.
Inferior troubadours sang their lays themselves as they wandered from court to
court, from castle to castle, meting out fame or ignominy to their hosts, in
proportion to the liberality or parsimony of their own treatment. Indeed it is
a fact which must, however reluctantly, be confessed, that all troubadours
reprobate economy, as the most detestable of vices, eulogizing extravagance as
one of the chief virtues.(250)
In the
catalogue of the authors who wrote in the language of the northern provinces,
the Langne d’oil, no royal or princely, and not many noble Trouveurs or Trou-
veres are found. Even Richard Cceur-de-Lion, to whom the vernacular of Normandy
and of Aquitaine must have been equally familiar, confined his poetic attempts
to the strain of the troubadour. The Scandinavians had brought their
professional Scalds with them; their new neighbours, the Armoricans of Britany,
had, like the Welsh, their distinct caste of Bards; the business of whose
lives, as of the Scalds’, was weaving the poetic record of the glories of their
ancestors; and these Normans—who naturally marrying French wives, speedily
forgot the old Norse, unintelligible to their families—appear, as before
intimated, to have breathed their own spirit into all around them; even into
their French neighbours. They breathed it even into those who still disdained
to write in any language but Latin. The first of these trouveurs, whose narranve
poems have survived was Wace, Gace, or Eustace, as the name is variously given,
a native of Jersey,
who, about
the middle of the century translated nto French verse the Latin history which
Geoffrey of Monmouth, at the desire of Robert Earl of Gloucester, the Maecenas
ot the age, had written some quarter of a century earlier, thus to embody and,
by translating, preserve both the traditions and the volume, brought by Walter
Calenius, a learned archdeacon of Oxford, from Armorica; where he liad zealously
and diligently collected the whole.(250) Besides this translated
chronicle, called in its new form Le
Brut, and the Roman nu Rou,
the tale of Rollo or Ilrolf, the first Scandinavian Duke of Normandy, Wace
wrote romances to the number of eight. A contemporary rival, Maistre Benoit, in
addition to a rhymed chronicle of the Dukes of Normandy, written at the desire
of Henry II,p1) produced a Trojan War, professedly take ft from
Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis. Rhymed chronicles, and rhymed romances of
Arthur and his Round Table, of Charlemagne and his Paladins, followed: and such
was the passion for what was called poetry that Justinian’s Institutes, and Les
Cousfnmes de Nomandie, were, it is positively asserted, versified.(252)
But as the
lyrics of the troubadours did not absolutely exclude narrative poetry, so the
more epic genius of the north was not intolerant of lyrics. The lost love lays
of Abelard appear to have preceded the rhymed chronicles; and the hymns of St.
Bernard were at least contemporary with them; those hymns, together with his
sermons, still existing in MS., are held to have much contributed to the
formation and development of the French language. The moral tone of the
trouveurs is held to be superior to that of the troubadours, though stili far
from unobjectionable ; the love upon which the interest turns being often such
as it is criminal to indulge, and the language, to modern ears, offensively
course. Later in the century, prose romances began to be written by trouveurs,
whose powers of versification did not keep pace with their inventive faculties^256)
To these were added the short stories or anecdotes, real or fictitious, almost
invariably as well gross as licentious, bearing the title of Fabliaux. It is
not a little remarkable that these Fabliaux are found, well-nigh :.den-
tical, in
French, German, Latin, and Greek stories, and in the East, whilst the kind is
unknown to Scandinavian and to Welsh literature.(254)
French
history in French is as yet not found; but the idea of it is. We are told that
Baldwin Earl of Flanders and Hainault—already mentioned as a collector of laws
—ordered Latin histories to be collected, abridged, and the abridgment
translated. The result of the command is unknown, very probably its execution
interrupted by the Earl’s departure upon his crusade. (255)
But, amidst
this torrent of French, authors of higher pretensions still wrote Latin, not
only historians but poets. Gaultier de Chatillon produced a Latin Alexandreid, or Life of Alexander the
Great in the disguise of a noble knight of the twelfth century; rivalled by
Guil- leaume le Breton’s epic upon the exploits of Philip Augustus ; which,
however, must be considered as more properly belonging to the thirteenth
century, the pro- tagonista’s life being prolonged far into that century, and
his most successful operations belonging to his later years.
In England,
Xorman-French was as yet so exclusively the language of the higher orders, and
Elinor and Richard I bad so surrounded themselves with troubadours, that the
state of letters in this country has been half depicted in speaking of their
condition in France. Wace wrote wholly for the English court, and native
Englishmen emulated him in his own language; into which Anglo-Normans
translated whatever they deemed interesting in Anglo-Saxon. King Horn is
supposed to have been so translated about the middle of the century^256)
A life of Thomas a Becket, in French stanzas of five ten-syllable lines, is
ascribed to one Guernes de Pont St. Maxence, and the close of this century.
Anglo- Saxon, was not, however, altogether neglected. According to Marie de
France, an Anglo Norman poetess of the next century, Henry I translated ^Esop’s
fables from Latin into English or Anglo-Saxon, from which she, a century later,
re-translated them into French verse.(257) From an early period of
the century Anglo-Saxon (which up to that time had continued pure) declined,(258)
remaining in what
may bn called
a progressive transition state towards English; and it was really :nto
English verse that the Lives of the Saints were translated late enough i» the
century for Thomas a Becket, already canoni/ed, to take his place amongst them,
and that before its close Layamon made the Brut of Wace accessible to his
non-Norinan countrymen. But Latin composition still flourished in England—as
might be expected when Cicero and Quintilian were studied in the London
schools—beyond French or English literature. It was especially patronized by
Henry 1, who was the personal friend of the Latin historian, William of
Malmesbury; who conversed with every man of letters, however mean or poor, and
suffered no press of business to prevent him from reading for some hours every
day. Thus, under him and his successors within the century, —besides William of
Malmesbury, and many of inferior reputation—Henry of Huntingdon, Roger de
Hoveden, Gyraldus Cambrensis, and John of Salisbury, who in purity of classical
diction is held to have far surpassed all contemporaries, wrote history or
chronicles iu Latin. Geoftml de Vinisauf, an Anglo-Norman, whilst he sang love
and war, in the Langue d'oe with his master Richard I, chronicled that master’s
crusading exploits—in which he shared—in Lat:n, and in the same
language composed a metrical Art of Poetry. Joseph of Exeter emulated Maistre
Benoit in an Epic upon the Trojan War, but written in Latin; whilst the English
satirist, Walter Mapes, in his De Nugis Curialium, lnughed at scholastic
subtleties and Aristotle.
In Germany,
as in France, the South produced lyric, the North narrative, vernacular poetry
: but both arose so much later in the century than the first Strains of the
troubadours and trouveurs, that the Teutonic poets must needs have been much
influenced by their more advanced contemporaries. The generally received
opinion is that Frederic’s great Mainz festival, in the year 1184, with its
unprecedented magnificence, its agglomeration of half the magnates of Europe,
acted as a potent stimulus upon the German imagination, calling a sudden burst
of poetry into existence. The lyrists of the South entitled themselves
Minnesinger, literally, singers of love; Minne being an old
German word
for pure or sentimental love. These Minnesinger were mostly Swabians, who, by
their Alsatian and Swiss frontiers, were in immediate contact with the Arelat,
the very cradle of troubadourism; and they appear to have borrowed from their
poetic neighbours the form and manner of their lays, with their artificial
structure and complication of rhyme, whilst happily avoiding their licentiousness
and occasional infidelity—if the word be applicable to what seems merely
dislike of the priesthood. Their effusions offer less variety of topic, being
more exclusively devoted to the love of the noble knights who wrote them for
their chosen ladies, and breathe genuine passion in simple language. Some hymns
written by priests are among the few exceptions to the amatory strain. If at
times it appears that the Minnesinger’s flame burns, like the troubadour’s,
unlawfully, for one whose nuptial vow makes such homage insult; their lays are
allowed generally to place woman in a sphere of ideal sanctity, incompatible
with the light, as illicit, amours celebrated by their Provenjal masters and
rivals, and even when the attachment is immoral, it at least appears to be
genuine and sincere. Their strains are likewise less witty and less fanciful
than those in the Langue d’oc.p9) Need the reader be reminded that
Henry VI once enrolled himself amongst the Minnesingers who, in this century
at least, appear to have been almost invariably high-born.
Narrative
poems, the Germans, it has already been stated, had in the earliest times; and
the demand for novelty in this department of literature appears to have constantly
produced an adequate supply, if of inferior quality. Ballads commemorating
contemporaneous feats they never seem to have been without. The extravagant
exploit and death of Earl Egbert and his comrades, before Milan, for instance,
is said to have called forth many such. Nor was Germany without longer works, original
or translated; one of these, Herzog
Ernst, being proved to have existed prior to the Mainz festival, by the
circumstance of Berthold von Andechs having, in 1180, asked the Abbot of
Tegernsee for a copy of it. This work, half dull history, half adventures in
the style of the ‘ Arabian Nights,’ speaks of a Latin original.(26°)
But such "long tales were few ;
and the
ballads were now apparently somewhat slighted, as mere popular ditties,
unworthy to be classed with the epics, and the lyrics that burst into existence
at the close of the century,—known under the general title of Kunst- j)oetsie,
or artistic poetry,—'and were designed for the recreation of the educated
port'on of society. But these nairative poems, of superior pretensions, if the
offspring of the Mainz festival, had not time to acquire their full development
in the short remainder of the 12th century; and may therefore more fitly come
before the reader with their maturer, immediate successors of the 13th. For the
present it may be enough to say that the German poets chiefly occupied
themselves in translating Norman and Breton romances, although one, Albert von
Halberstadt, more ambitiously devoted his labours to presenting Ovid in German
attire. He inrich von Yeldeke, or Waldeck, however, must, upon the very first
mention of the rise of Germany poetry, be specifically named. He was at once a
minnesinger and an epic poet—if the high title may be used as descriptive of
the species, regardless of the success or failure of the attempt—and was highly
admired for his introduction of proper mitme, i.e., love scenes between Eneas
and Lavinia, into an Eneis that he
at the close of the century was translating, or imitating, from the French,
rather than from Latin; but, yet more, he was the writer who regulated and
systematized German verse, with respect both to metre and to rhyme; who taught
the distinction between perfect and imperfect rhymes, the con- sonancias and
asonancias of the Spaniards.(261)
Early in this
century a peculiar, comic style of popular satiric poetry, called by the
Germans the T/iier-ejm, or Animal-epic, arose. In it animals are endowed with
human faculties, qualities, and passions—in accordance with their own
respective natures, and without deviating from their own appropriate habits—and
represented as acting their parts, wittiiy and naturally in a lrng and somewhat
complicated story; and this German critics hold to be quite a distinct
species of poem from the short didactic fables of the ancients and the moderns,
in which animals are the actors. Of the peculiar style in question, Reynard the Fox is believed to be the
oldest, as it is by far the best speei-
men, and
perhaps the only one that has survived. It is believed, by the best critics, to
have arisen in the Netherlands, though early overlaid there, together with
poetry of a higher strain, by the commercial character of the country. In
Germany, where that character could never quite smother the love of mental as
well as of sensual enjoyment, it was much cultivated; and Reynard the Fox was translated from
Flemish into high and low German; as it was also into French and English.(263)
Richard Coeur-de-Lion in a Sirvente, speaks of the wolf by the name he bears in
that poem, Isengrim, and in the oldest portion of the beautiful Freyburg
Cathedral, built prior to 1150, is carved a wolf in a monk’s cowl, evidently an
allusion to the poem—an extraordinary place in which to lind such a solid
lampoon upon monks.
Butin
Germany, yet longer than in France or England, the authors most esteemed were
those who \u’ote in Latin. Historians would have deemed it an insult to Clio,
to employ in her service, any humbler form of speech; and many chroniclers
there, as the writers flattered themselves, classic cally recorded the events
of their own and of preceding times. The names of some of them have been cited
when contradictory accounts of any occurrence were mentioned, and two only of
this century appear to merit distinct specification here. These are Lambert of
Aschaf- fenburg, who ranks amongst the best writers of his day, and Otho Bishop
of Freising, one of the sons of Princess Agnes by her second marriage, uncle
and biographer of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa. This princely historian,
revered by his contemporaries alike for his talents, his virtues, and his
learning, was esteemed the ornament of his order and of his country.(263)
One merit, however, which has frequently been assigned him, to wit, the having,
upon his return from the Crusade, in which he accompanied his half-brother
Conrad III, introduced Aristotle to Western Europe, has latterly, upon good
grounds, been denied him; ample proof existing in the writings of authors who
lived earlier in the century, that the Stagyrite was known and admired, whether
understood or not, prior to that Crusade. Of Latin poets it will suffice to
name Gunther, an Alsatian monk, who had
been
secretary to Frederic I, and, at the end of the twelfth century, produced a
poem, entitled Ligurinus, upon
that Emperor’s Lombard wars. This bold attempt at an epic, in a genuine spirit
of emulation, perhaps, in its turn, produced the lately mentioned Philippeis of Gulielmus Brito.
Italy was the
last of all the countries under consideration, to cultivate her vernacular
with its “syllables that breathe of the sweet South f* and, at the earliest, it
was very late in this century before any one thought it capable of being
written. For this there might be two reasons. The one, that Latin would
naturally linger longest in its native country, where it must, when elsewhere a
sort of cypher of the learned, have remained to the people a living language,
as well as a living monument of those glories of their ancestors, in which, as
wrell classical as political and military, they took pride. In proof
of the degree to which mediaeval Italians clung to the classical past, it may
be told that, late in this century, Mantua assumed the title of the Yirgilian
city ; and a statue of her venerated poetic son, in Parian marble, adorning the
market-place, was annually, upon the 15th of October, which tradition calls his
birthday, crowned with laurel by the youth of both sexes, as they sang and
danced around it.(26i) Hence whoever did write, ^rote in Latin. The
other, that the similarity of the Langue d’oc to the dialect spoken in Lombardy,
rendering it generally understood there, naturally led, in leaving Latin,to
writing in the neighbouring already cultivated language. Even in southern Italy
this similarity, though much fainter, aided by Countess Adelaide’s importation
of troubadour s as wellasof troubadour tastes,may not havebeenuninfluential;
less powerful, however; than in Lombardy; and, accordingly, in the
South is the first Italian found. Attempts have, indeed, been made to claim for
Italian poetry precedence to that of the troubadours, upon the strength of two
inscriptions in a cathedral; but critical investigation, even by Italians who
would have rejoiced in substantiating the claim, has discovered irrefragable
internal evidence that these inscriptions are of a very much later date.(206)
This pretension being abandoned, Italian poetry was supposed to have owed its
birth to the thirteenth century;
thus making
it as decidedly too young;: for a fragment exists, written by Vincenzo Ciullo
di Alcama, or del Cama, a Sicilian, bearing internal evidence of having been
composed before the year 1194; since it speaks of Saladin as alive, and
threatening Christendom.(286) One solitary exception, however, being
insufficient to render Italian poetry a subject for the present chapter, it must
be reserved for the review of the thirteenth century; with the single remark
that not only was this Ciullo a Sicilian, blit so decidedly did Sicily take the
lead of Italy in verse, that Sicilian was long the comprehensive designation of
Italian poetry.
With this
single exception the historians and poets abounding in Italy throughout the
century, and fostered by Frederic I, as a patron of letters and learning, wrote
Latin orProvengal; and the chief praise awarded the first is that they, like
their contemporaries elsewhere, wrote it better than their predecessors. Of
these it may be enough to name the prose historians, Arnolfo, the two
Landolfos, Ser Haul, Ottone and Acerbo Morena (the last of whom Frederic named
Podesta of Como) in the north; and in the south, the very learned Rotnoaldo
Archbishop of Salerno, who has been introduced as a princely-born prelate,
statesman, and physician, Falcone da Benevento, and Ugo Falcando, a Sicilian,
long called the Sicilian Tacitus. Another contemporary writer, Goffredo di
Viterbo,—chaplain to the Emperors Conrad III, Frederic I, and Henry VI—
presented to Urban III, in the year 1186, a history, partly in prose, partly
metrical, entitled Pantheon, recording
all the transactions of the human race from the creation to the marriage of
Henry VI. In addition to his fame as an historian and a poet, he was celebrated
as a great traveller and linguist, being master of Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic.
Italian antiquaries have hesitated to claim, Goffredo as a compatriot; but
Muratori explains and positively rejects their doubts. A Venetian monk about
this time translated Aristotle’s Topics and Analytics into Latin. But the glory
of Italy, in the twelfth century, was Pietro Lombardo, surnamed The Master of
Sentences; a native of Novarra, and disciple of Abelard, who died Bishop of
Paris in 1160. His four Books of Sentences, in which he discusses and decides
questions
beyond the
reach of human reason, at once superseded the writings of Lanfranco and
Anselmo, as the text book of scholastic theology, being esteemed both more
methodical and fuller of matter. (2C7) It must be added that the
Norman Kings of Sicily favoured Arab literature, or at least Arab authors, and
Edrisi Eschcritf either wrote, or translated into Latin, his Arabic Geografia Nubica, by King Roger’s
desire: and that Genoa marked her value for literature, historical at least, by
appointing a regular historiographer.
The remainder
of Europe may be briefly despatched. In Arab Spain, under the lenient sway of
the Almohades, more civilized and cultivated than the Almoravides, Arab
literature and philosophy revived. But, even under the savage Almoravides, had
arisen one of the brightest intellectual stars of that country, Averrhoes of
Cordova, who, banished by them, taught chiefly in Morocco under the victorious
Almohades. He translated several of Aristotle’s works into Arabic, and devoted
his life toexpounding them, whence his surname of the Commentator. Moslem Spain
then contained seventy public libraries. In Christian Spain it has been seen
that the language and poetry of the troubadour were cultivated, but not every
where alike. In Castile, least; and there, during the first half of the
century, a secretary of the Gid’s wrote a Spanish poem upon the life of the
admired champion, with as much, if not more, genuine poetry, and of the really'
epic character than any mediasval production that had previously appeared
could boast.(268) Alfonso II of Aragon is said to have written
verses in Aragonese; and, as early as 1135, the vulgar tongue of Castile was
introduced into political life, by its employment in a municipal charter,
granted to Avila, in the Asturias, f151')
In the north
of Europe, Denmark boasted her Latin historian, Saxo Grammaticus, one of the
most esteemed of the age, and her Latin poet Helmhold, whilst Scalds, it :s
said, still sang at court in the old Norse tongue. The most remarkable Dane of
the twelfth century was, however, Absalom, Archbishop of Lund. But, although
it was professedly for his great learning, that, at his royal foster-brother
Waldemar’s recommendation, he was elected
Bishop of
Roeskild before attaining the canonical age, he is distinguished rather as a
patron of learning than as a writer, and yet more as a statesman, a general,
and an admiral, than as either.(27°) In republican Iceland, Snorre
Sturlcson was writing history and compiling tlieprose Edda. By his labours he acquired fame and such wealth as
provoked the enmity or excited the cupidity of his own family, and he was
murdered by the husband of one of his daughters.C271) In Norway,
feudalism gained a footing during this century; but neither that kingdom nor
Sweden yet aspired to much literature beyond the singing the feats of reigning
Kings, by Icelandic and native Scalds. Russia, where Moscow had now succeeded
to Vladimir, as the Grand-Principality„ is said to have had chroniclers during
the twelfth century; but little seems known of them, the Mongol desolation of
the thirteenth having temporarily swept away all progressive civilization in
the eastern Slavonian states, and more completely as more lastingly in Russia
than in Poland and Hungary. It is said that Servian MSS. of the twelfth century
are still in existence, and the names of the canonized Servian Archbishop St.
Sabbas, of Archbishop Daniel, and of the Benedictine Dometian, are recorded as
Servian chroniclers and legists. (222)
In the
Eastern Empire letters were still cultivated; but their decline, the degeneracy
of the fruits of human intellect, does not and cannot attract attention like
their development out of non-existence, in younger countries. The Syro- Frank
states produced one only writer whose name has any claim to the respect of
posterity ; to wit, William Archbishop of Tyre, whose virtues equalled his
abilities. He was the preceptor of Baldwin IV, and historian of the Kingdom of
Jerusalem. Throughout the century, Persia, Egypt,-and most of the Saracen
states abounded in poets, historians, and philosophers; but so slightly are
they connected with the Holy Roman Empire or with Christendom, save as the
enemies of the kingdom of Jerusalem, that this brief notice of their decline
not having yet begun, may suffice.
In the course
of this century the drama showed symptoms of germination, which, how faint
soever, promised
future blossoms
and fruits, and this in divers places. In Spain, Autos Sacramentahs, i. e.,
Mysteries, are said to have been performed during this century. (27S)
At Paris, returned palmers frequently gave representations in the open air of
scenes and events of the Crusades in which they had participated, for the
edification, rather than for the amusement,of the non-crusading spectators,(274)
and partly, it maybe suspected, for their own glorification. In England, a Mystery of Antichrist appears to have
been performed before Queen Elinor; and a letter from Pierre de Blois, then
Archdeacon of Bath and Secretary of Henry II, to his brother, Abbot ‘William,
Master of the Revels, congratulates him upon the succcss of his tragedy of Flaura and Marcus, when performed before
the same enlightened patroness of letters.(273) In Germany, another
Mystery of Antichrist was played, probably before Frederic I, certainly during
his reign; as appears from an old MS. found in the Tegernsee monastery ; which
describes it as an Easter pastime of the Advent and Destruction of Antichrist,
(27e) in which Popes and Emperors conversed with Antichrist and with
Ladv Heresy. Both the tragedy and the mysteries may be presumed to have been
Latiii compositions. But, as before said, the troubadour genius produced one
drama, if no more. This one, a comedy, entitled Heregia
bb i-os Preyres, was written by Anselmo Fa'idit, a Provencal troubadour
of inferior condition, who, marrying a beautiful courtesan, led wiili her a
vagrant histrionic life. The comedy was performed at the Court of the Marquess
of Montferrat, chiefly, !t seems, by the husband and wife.f77) The
Crusades did more for science than for literature ; inasmuch as Western Europe
received less of Greek philosophy from the degenerate children of ancient
Hellas, subjects of the Eastern Empire, than from the Arabs. If much of this
came from Arab Spain, that much also came from Asia may be inferred, even from
the erroneous belief that Bishop Otho first made Aristotle known in Western or
Latin Europe. lie must liave brought home new Greek copies of some of his
works, and very possibly some that were scarcely known, save through Arabic ver
sions. Both in Italy and in England monks are said to
have been
occupied early in the century in translating Euclid from an Arabic version.
Original Arabic treatises upon physics and geometry were brought to Europe from
the East, chiefly by Englishmen. Individual Italians appear to have been
acquainted with Algebra, as far as quadratic equations, but to have kept their
knowledge a profound secret(278)—possibly lest they should be burnt
as sorcerers. Geography was still so little advanced that much doubt prevailed
touching the shape of the earth ; and although the Blessed Alpais de Credot in
a vision beheld it as a spheroid, the general opinion still inclined to hold it
a square, surrounded by the sea, and so suspended or floating in the air. This
science was, nevertheless, advancing, and that from its legitimate source of
information, travel. To the crusades, some knowledge of eastern countries was
due, which would naturally awaken a desire to know more, besides giving the
missionary tendencies of the age an impulse towards the land of the morning;
and the missionary monks were amongst the most judiciously observant travellers
of those days. Again, the great fairs, drawing together merchants from the most
remote regions, would, by the intercourse of these strangers with one another,
give rise to so much knowledge of each other’s remote homes, as might excite
the curiosity of Europeans respecting the countries, whence costly wares were
brought, and half a wish to visit them. Thus it is averred, that, towards the
close of the twelfth century, at the fair held at Kiew upon the Dnieper,
Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, and other Orientals met the natives of every European
state.(279) Thus, perhaps, might the Spanish Jew, Benjamin of
Tudela, be induced to undertake the long and adventurous peregrination of
which he has left the record to posterity: a record not to be rashly rejected,
because he speaks of vessels from Cracow—vessels which, having to descend the
Vistula, must have been adapted to river navigation — meeting those of England
and Russia, in the port of Alexandria. Another traveller, Leonardo Fibonacci, a
Pisan, confined his researches to the Greek empire and northern Africa, and
gave his contemporaries the result of his journeyings in a treatise on
arithmetic or the Italian Abaco, from which treatise Italy is supposed to have
ob- Digiilzed by Microsoft®
tairved the
first idea of Algebra. Goffredo di Viterbo’s travels have been mentioned ; and
from all this actual observation, geography improved. In the year 1200, Guyot
de Provins, a French poet, speaks of the mariner’s compass as in familiar use
;(280) and :n an inventory, dated 1138, of the property
cf a German convent, is a distinct description of a burning glass.
In the course
of this century, Iligh-Schouls and Colleges began to assume the title of Ut
iversities, although some difference of opinion still exists, as to what, i;?
those times, wae held to constitute an university. Those, who give the title
early in the century,(281) think that, in schools one or two
sciences only were taught, or at most the trivium, and that where the
qwadrivium was superadded, the universal character of the instruction
afforded, impressing itself upon the school, converted it into an university.
Others, arguing from the description, Unirersifas JJoctorv. m et Scholarium,
think that the association of professors and students, natives of different
countries, gave the seat of learning that dignity; and others again contend,
that authority to grant the degree of Doctor constituted, or was the
distinctive mark of, an university.(282)
Tne last
theory, which agrees with Savigny’s opinion, tlia not the school but the
constituted school-corporation was the university, seems ever}7 way
the most plausible : the others leaving a title, that appears to have been much
valued, really open to occupancy] inasmuch as, whenever a school was celebrated
for an}’ one science, students would resort thither from all parts; as would
teachers of other sciences, to profit by the concourse of students; since
professors, depending for remuneration wholly upon payment by those who
attended their lectures, required no appointment by brother professors. This
theory, moreover, pre-supposes a charter by a Sovereign ; and although the
immediate connexion may not be ea ilr traced, it is certain that the title of
University appears much about the time, when Frederic granted various
privileges by charter to the schools of Bologna, whose :urists had
emitted opinions so consonant to his own views. The most important of these
privileges was the exemption of students from the jurisdiction of the city
magistrate?;, Digitized by Microsoft®
subjecting
them solely to a tribunal formed of the Professors and Heads of the
University—but, when it is recollected that the students were then mostly
preparing to take, or already in, Holy Orders, and that to be able to read v\as
long sufficient proof of the clerical character, this privilege, strange as it
seems, becomes little more than a recognition of the clerical claim to
exemption from lay jurisdiction. The name of university was not borne by any
Moslem Colleges, universal as they were in tuition.
Universities,
as well as High-Schools, were arising throughout France, England, and Italy; in
Germany, only the latter. Cities, that were ambitious of the higher institution,
endeavoured to seduce professors and their scholars from established universities;
whilst, upon the slightest offence given by a municipality, or even upon a
quarrel amongst themselves, a party of professors with their respective
students would migrate in a body to plant an infant university elsewhere, as in
both cases they seem to have believed that they carried their share of the
charter, or of the corporate character, with them. It was through such a
quarrel that the Paduan grew out of the Bolognese University. Bologna sought to
prevent the recurrence of such desertions by requiring all professors and
students to take an oath, the former never to teach, the latter never to study,
elsewhere. But the Popes steadily prohibited the demanding or taking of so
illiberal an oath; and professors and scholars continued to desert and return
at their pleasure. Bologna had no need to resort to such arbitrary measures,
for her University bore the highest of characters, being held supreme in civil
law, second, probably in canon law and all other sciences ; it was frequented
accordingly. There the statesman-prelate, Thomas a- Becket studied; there the
troubadour chronicler of llichard Coeur-de-Lion’s Crusade, Geoffrey de
Yinisauf, had been Professor of Grammar, equivalent to Belles Lettres, in
modern phraseology; and thence Theobald Archbishop of Canterbury in\,ted
Vacarius, to establish a Chair of Civil Law at Oxford. By the end of the
century Bologna boasted 10,000 students. (2S3) Oxford, that had
declined under the early Normans, revived under Henry II, and though Vacarius
could not quite raise it to the first rank Digitized by Microsoft®
in Civil law,
or Pulleync, in the Scholasticism which he had learned at Paris, it had its
distinction; becoming pre-eminent in Canon law, fcr which students from all
parts of Europe repaired thither. Cambridge had been favoured by Henry I, but
does not appear to have as early acquired great celebrity. The Parisian
University, retaining the direction given it by Lanfranco, Auselmo, and
Abelard, excelled all others in Scholasticism; before which the trivium and
quadrivium speedily disappeared. This did not satisfy the popes, who strove to
make scholastic theology not only the principal but well-nigh the exclusive
study there. Alexander III actually forbade, the perusal and expounding of the
pagan poets of classical antiquity within its walls. In this, however, lie was
not obeyed. To the University of Paris the sons of German princes were now sent
for education, notwithstanding the merited reputation of the German High
Schools—not universities —of Corvey, Fulda, and St. Gall, and at Paris
Archbishop Absalom acquired his far-famed learning. At the close of the
century, Philip Augustus granted the University of Paris privileges and
exemptions similar to those granted by Frcderic Barbarossa to that of Bologna.
Without further particularising, it may be stated that, in this century, the
Jews established, for their own race soiely, a Iligh-School at Lunel, in
France, where medicine and the Talmud were chiefly taught; and which, in
medicine, speedily rivalled the Salernitan institution. At all uni versities
and high-schools, the course of study required from six to ten years’
attendance.
Of the fine
arts, Architecture only can be said to have made any progress during these
three qua.iers of a century. The passion for bbilding churches, the rise of
which was related in the Introduction, (lb3*) stimulated, it should
seem, by the impression that Oriental magnificence and Oriental
fantasticalness, made upon the imagination of the Crusaders, had continued to
develop itself, and produced the Gothic style.(284) Grand religious
edifices everywhere sprang up to embellish the land, whilst testifying to the
piety of its inhabitants. In Italy the Pisan Cathedral was completed, the
Baptistery and Campanile, otherwise the leaning tower, were built, the fashion
of
detaching
campaniles or belfries, from the church to which they belong, being then
introduced. Cremona and Mantua had begun their cathedrals, Yerona had completed
hers, which Urban III consecrated whilst accidentally resident in this city.
The Siculo-Norman kings mostly contented themselves with converting the
splendid Arab mosque at Palermo into a cathedral, and building a few churches
in Apulia. William II, however, deviating from this parsimonious course, built
the magnificent church dedicated to the Virgin at Monreale. In Germany many
cathedrals previously begun were finished; and, amongst others of less
celebrity, Freyburg Cathedral was built, Strasburg Minster begun; but nowhere
perhaps was the feeling, that impelled what maybe termed patriotic piety, to
the erection of such costly edifices, dedicated to religious purposes more
vividly exemplified than at Vienna. There, St. Stephen’s Cathedral was, in the
year 1140 or 1144, begun by Henry Jasomir, who is said to have invited from
Cracow a Polish architect, named Octavian Wolzner,(285) a name that
sounds, it must be owned, somewhat German, to plan and construct it. But such
was the general zeal for the combined sanctification and adornment of the city
by this magnificent pile, dedicated to prayer and thanksgiving, that persons of
all ranks and both sexes not only carried food to the workmen employed upon the
building, but, for the purpose of sharing in the holy labour, harnessed
themselves to the waggons conveying stone, lime, or other of the materials
required. So efficient was this ardour, that, in 1147, the cathedral was
actually completed, opened, and consecrated by the Bishop of Passau, then, as
before said, virtually the Metropolitan of Austria.
In France,
ecclesiastical architecture had not yet taken much hold of the public mind; but
the Abbe Suger, prime minister of Lewis VI and Lewis VII, began the Abbey and
Church of St. Denys; Alexander III, whilst sheltered in France, laid the first
stone of Notre Dame at Paris, at the solicitation of the Bishop of Paris, its
founder. This prelate was Maurice de Sully, whose name must not be mentioned
without the addition of an anecdote, characteristic of the man and in some
measure of the times. Digitized by Microsoft®
He was the
son of peasants, and raised to the prelacy by his talents, learning, and
virtues. After his elevation, his mother walked to Paris to visit him. Some
women, of whom r-he asked her way to the episcopal palace, with maternal pride
explaining her errand, were shocked at the idea of their prelate’s mother ia so
poor a garb, and dressed her better. Thus attired, she entered her son’s
presence, crying, “ My child ! my child !” but ha coldly answered, “My mother
wore only linsey-wolsey. Yon fine lady,'•cannot be her.” She went out, resumed
hei russet garb, and he received her with filial reverence as well as
affection. The Order of Clugny built the magnificent church of the Mother
Abbey. In Spain, England. Scotland, and Ireland, cathedrals everywhere started
into existence; and in every country the Templars built churches, which, when,
as in Spain, frkhin reach of misbelievers, were distinguished by combining the
character of a fortress with that of a place of worship. (2ft6) Even
to Russia this devotional architectural impulse extended; and Andrei,
Grand-Prince of Vladimir, whilst Vladimir was the sovereign principality,
applied to Frederic Barbarossa for an architect, capable of building him a
cathedral in his capital.
The taste for
architecture did not, however, quite limit itself to churches. If, again, at
Palermo, the Norman kings contented themselves \. ith inheriting the splendours
and luxuries, in the shape of palace and gardens, of their Arab predecessors,
at Naples they built the fortress-palaces of Ca«tello Capuano, and Castel dell’
Uovo, whence to control the turbulent population. The Doge completed the ducal
palace at Venice; the Pope commenced what must rather be termed re building
than repairing the Vatican, so thoroughly was the old palace in ruins. In
Germany, Frederic Barbarossa, about the year 1140, before lie was even Duke of
Swabia, built a small palace upon the banks of the Kinzig, a stream but little
known ; his choice of the site is believed to have been determined byapassion
for a beautiful damsel there resident, from whose name, Gela, he. named the
edifice Gelnhausen. Of this palace, situated nearly at the foot of a hill,
there remains, amidst the town that grew up around it, just enough to Digitized
by Microsoft
show that the
architecture was chastely decorative. The chief fragment non to be seen is part
of a sort of colonnade screen, apparently the separation between the Hall of
Justice and some other hall; “ simple, grand, well-planned, and proportioned,
and, as far as the ruins afford means of judging, well adapted for
habitation.”(2b7) It must be presumed that the Emperor enlarged what
the young Prince built for a hunting-lodge, Gelnhausen being frequently
mentioned as his favourite residence, when, as sovereign, he would need very
different accommodation. In France, Philip Augustus began the Louvre.
Painting,
sculpture, and mosaic work seem to have remained throughout the century much
what they were at its opening. Cultivated, or rather practised, they indisputably
were ; of this there are various proofs. The consecration of the Cathedral of
Verona by Urban III, was portrayed, with likenesses, it is believed, of the
Pope and of all the Cardinals present. The Abbe Suger invited an artist from
Lorrain, to paint the leading incident of his sovereign’s Crusade, upon the
windows of St. Denys, which he was then building; and the German painters
formed themselves into a guild, choosing St. Luke for their patron. But, amidst
all this zeal, those Galleries, that profess to exhibit the history of Painting
from its infancy to the fulness of its mature perfection, as those of the
Academy at Florence and of the Pinakothek at Munich, show that in these
seventy-five years the graphic Art had not advanced. Of Sculpture much the same
may be said, as far as means exist of judging for ourselves, and appreciating
contemporary praise by the eulogist’s standard of comparison. Statues of
distinguished persons were prepared to adorn their monuments. Thus an effigy of
the Empress Beatrice was placed upon her tomb at Wulz- heim in Franconia, and
one of Frederic Barbarossa by her side, far distant as were the Imperial
veteran’s ashes. The art of the humbler Carver, if not actually preferred to
the Statuary’s, appears to have been throughout the century in more general
request—perhaps as easier—for the decoration of churches, whether the subject
upon which it was exercised were men, animals, flowers, or unmeaning ornaments.
The carved lampoon of the wolf in a monk’s cowl Digitized by Microsoft®
in Freyburg
Cathedral has been already mentioned, and St. Bernard’s earnest objection to
disturbing the absorption of prayer by the introduction of the Arts into
churches, will hardly have been forgotten. The date of the carved altar at
Parma is fixed by a Latin distich to the year 1178 ; and that of 1200. assigned
to the carved doors of Sta. Sabina at IJome, shows them to be the work of the
same century with which we are occupied.(288) Figures of Saints and
Martyrs in Mosaic are to be seen in the principal churches built during the
century; and even in the Venetian St. Mark’s, though already consecrated, Byzantine
Mosaicists were still at work upon the internal decoration. The Art that
appears to have made most progress is that of casting in metal. Towards the end
of the century the custom of casting church doors, covered with historical
groups from the Bible, began and gradually became prevalent; and if there were
little merit in the execution of the figures, this was, at least, a bold
conception. The doors of the Pisan Cathedral date from 11 BO. The coins appear
unimproved, but Frederic’s bear witness to his admiration of Charlemagne, whose
head adorns one side of his gold pieces, his own the other. But stationary as
the Arts may seem, a very decided promise of future progress is discoverable,
in a nascent sense of the superiority of classic art, and the high value of
_ts remains. At Rome, before the close of the century, the Popes had positively
forbidden the removing, or in any way damaging, any of these remains of whatsoever
description : and a Cardinal Orsini had even begun, it is affirmed, to collect
antique busts and statues.
Of the
progress, or no progress, of music it is more difficult to form an opinion,
there being no means of testing the praises of contemporaries. It was to be
conjectured that, after the invention or general adoption of musical notation,
improvement would be rapid; and some advance from the state, needing sucli
directions, as, that all persons performing one piece should begin together, &c.(289)
there certainly must have been; cr the holy Abbot of Clairvaux could hardly
have found it necessary to protest against church music, so elaborate and
ornamental as to divert attention from the rites of worship.
In the art of
war changes were preparing by the mere existence of a military profession and
mercenary troops. But this novelty being as yet in its infancy, the consequent
changes were barely in embryo. In military engineering mention is occasionally
made of more skilfully constructed mangonels and other stone-hurling or
battering machines; but still they are only improvements of the former engines,
no new invention, or real innovation appears. The Greek fire, till near the
close of the century, was scarcely known to the warriors of Western Europe, and
by them looked upon as magic, the gift of the fiend to those enemies of God,
the idolatrous worshippers of Alahound and Termagaunt, for such they deemed the
rigidly monotheistic Moslems. This Greek fire, never employed, seemingly, by
the nations of Western Europe, is described as one of many combinations of
saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal, devised by the Chinese; and that from them the
Arabs received their knowledge upon the subject, appears from the names of
Chinese flower, Chinese arrow, &c., given to some of the projectile forms
in use amongst them. The chief difference between these compositions and
gunpowder, with which the latest investigators of the subject, Reinaud and
Fave, hold the Arabs in the 12th and 13th centuries to have been altogether unacquainted,(29°)
is the absence of detonation, and of consequent intense projectile force, even
when explosion there was; and this they ascribe to the defective preparation of
saltpetre. The vessels containing the mixture were thrown by hand, or, like stones,
from machines ; their destructive power lay in the certainty of their setting
whatever they touched on fire, in the rapidity of the combustion they produced,
and in the difficulty of extinguishing the conflagration.
In the
science of navigation, the familiar use of the mariner’s compass must
necessarily have produced much improvement, though it is not recorded; and the
size and character of the vessels then employed is left to be inferred from
such incidentally occurring statements as these: that, at the close of the
century, Norway possessed a fleet of 292 ships, manned by 12,790 sailors ;(291)
that Venice, upon a sudden quarrel with one of the Constantinopolitan
VOL.
II. 19
usurpers,
equipped, and provided for iOO days, a fleet of 100 ships; and the like.
The progress
of the useful arts comes next under consideration. In civil engineering, the
only very perceptible advance is that one of the above-mentioned explosive preparations,
cr one analogous to them, supposed to have been a sort of bad gunpowder, is sdd
to havei been used for blasting rocks in Saxony^292) In agriculture,
horticulture, and manufactures, it is yet more difficult to learn anything.
The before-menfioned disdain of the old chroniclers, for all sucli matters,
leaving us to seek scanty information from the most casual notice or
i.itimation bearing-thereon. In agriculture, improvement can be but slow, ar.d
none is discoverable; although, if the culture of the vine be included, England
must be said to have retrograded since the twelfth century, when William of
Malmesbury describes the Vale of Gloucester as abounding in vineyards, the
grapes of which were good, yielding wine little inferior to French.(253)
But vines should perhaps come under the head of horticulture, which was
evidently attracting attention. The poems of the day speak much of gardens; and
as it may be conjectured that the gardens of Damascus wauld excite the fancy of
the Crusaders, as much as other branches of enjoyable Oriental luxury, it may
be further conjectured that princes and great nobles now had gardens for fru:i
and flowers (known in England under the name of Pleasaunce) attached to their
castles : although, where defence was the main object, such gardens must
evidently have been either within the walls, and therefore very confined, or
sacrificed at the first siege.
As to
manufactures, Falcando speaks of making sugar from the cane, in Sicily, by
boiling. Queen Elinor is stdd to have introduced the rearing of the silkworm
and silk-weaving, into her duchy of Aquitaine. But, whilst in the south of
Spain every branch of the silk manufacture appears to have flourished, under
the Christians, as it had under the Arabs, it does not seem as yet to have
exteaided much into Italy, either from Sicily or from Provence. 'She poets of
the century describe great magnificence in
hangings,
dress, goldsmith’s work, and the like; but it were hard to discriminate between
these, and the similar splendours described by Donizo a century earlier. And,
with these slight exceptions, all that is known is that manufactures were
spreading, that more and more towns were acquiring wealth and reputation by
their industry, and that more and more laws were enacted for the protection of
trade, internal and external. It may be added that copying and illuminating
MSS. were occupations no longer confined to the cloister, but had become a
distinct business, or rather a branch of the bookseller’s.
The habits
and feelings of social life change so slowly, that three-quarters of a century
hardly suffice to produce any very perceptible alteration. The character of the
age was still exaggeration and contrast, both rather increasing than otherwise.
Whilst the houses of the wealthiest merchants in the arrogant Italian cities
still knew not the luxury of lamps or candles,—being lighted as before with
flakes of fir wood,—and glass windows were a yet greater and rarer luxury,
sumptuary laws were required to restrain the expenditure of the merchants
themselves, as of their wives and daughters, in dress. In regard to the
nobility, their occasional profusion is hardly explicable, even by the homely
saying, that the money burnt in their pockets, for want of every-day comforts
and luxuries upon which to expend it. This excess appears to have reached its
climax in the south of France, vvhere a Baron de Martel caused his meals to be
regularly cooked by the heat of wax candles. Are the absurdities of
extravagance committed at a tournament given by the King of England, with the
object of reconciling the King of Aragon to the Duke of Narbonne, worth adding?
Both Kings failed at the appointed time, and the intended scene of political
business turned to one solely of pomp and pleasure. There, Bertrand Rambaud
sowed a field, ploughed for that express purpose, with 600 marks of silver, in
the shape of small coins; and Raymond de Venours gratified or shocked the whole
assembly, with the spectacle of thirty of his own finest horses offered up as a
holocaust to his vanity,—literally burnt before them.
These last really
insane instances of extravagance were Digitized by Microsoft®
not resorted
to as compensation for the paucity of occasions upon which publicly to display
senseless profusion, tournaments, now in their glory, being every year more
frequent. Earnest had been the remonstrances of the sainted Abbot of Clairvaux
against so idly risking human life, risking yet more, the eternal salvation of
those who, in pursuit of amusement, might be thus unexpectedly sent,
“unhouseled, unanointed, unannealed,” to their account; and Alexander LII,
weary of fruitless denunciations to the same effect, at length forbade giving
Christian burial to anj man so dying. Nor were these few, since, as though to
give weight to the Church’s condemnation of this favourite pastime, at one
tournament, held in Saxony, in the year 1177, sixteen knights were slain. The
question had been fairly contested with the Pope two years before, when, a.d. 1175, a brother of the Margrave of
Misnia died of a wound received in a tournament. Wic'nmann, Archbishop of
Magdeburg, forbade the interment of the corse with church rites, or in
consecrated ground, and excommunicated all who had taken any part in the
tournament. The Margrave was obliged to send an embassy to Rome, and there make
oath that his deceased brother had both confessed and received absolution, and.
further, to pledge himself never to suffer another tournament to be held in his
domii.'ions, ere he could obtain papal permission to bury the dead body. And so
little did all this check the passion for the dangerous, and, even therefore,
exciting amusement, that, within ten years, A.n. 1185, Geoffrey, third son of
Henry II of England, and Duke of Britany in right of his wife, being unhorsed
in the melte of a tournament, was trampled to death by the charging steeds
before he could be extricated. This accident occurred at Paris, tournaments
being little known in England until introduced in their splendour by Richard
Coeur de-Lion. The papal throne was, at the moment of this last catastrophe,
occupied, not by Alexander III, but by the dying Lucius III, or by Urban III,
just elected, and it does not appear that any difficulty touching the Duke of
Britany’s interment occurrcd. The splendour and expense of tournaments
increased with their frequency. Mimes, joculatores, and minstrels, though
treated as vagrants by the law, were
now deemed
indispensable at every, the poorest, tournament; and at one that had any
pretensions to be esteemed first-rate, a tenzon, or poetical jousting, of
troubadours was expected. But these pleasures did not supersede gambling,
which was a decidedly prevalent vice, as appears
from the laws
made against it. Some were mentioned in . . ® » • ... the Introduction ;
Richard, in his code of discipline for
his Crusade,
forbade games of chance to all under knightly
rank,
limiting the amount to be risked by all under
princely
station. Grand festivals, as e. g. the nuptials of
Henry the
Proud with the Imperial Princess Gertrude,
were
celebrated in the open air, no house being sufficient
to contain
the number of guests.
Progressive
change was most apparent in the extraordinary exaltation of woman. The
troubadours set the fashion both of being always in love and of professing
devotion to the whole sex, as such, indiscriminately. This devotion the
minnesinger, it has been seen, idealized as well as purified, and woman took
her station accordingly. It is to be regretted, that the effect upon society
of her enthronement, was, in the first instance, either so trifling as to be
scarcely disceiTied, or, where considerable, not productive of unmixed good. In
France, where she aSsumed most sovereignty, mentally intoxicated with the
homage she received, she forgot that there are two essentially feminine
virtues or qualities, the absence of which renders the loftiest virtues, the
most powerful and most cultivated intellect, in her valueless;—namely,
chastity, and its attendant, modesty. Thus, if she softened the ferocity of
manners, she can hardly be said to have refined them, when she made no effort
to guard them from the taint of licentiousness, and even encouraged tasteless
luxury. The tenor of the amorous elegies, addressed by troubadours to the lady
of their heart or of their fancy, shows that conjugal fidelity was seldom an
obstacle to the success of an enamoured poet; and did this proof want
corroboration, it might be found in the verdicts of the Cours d1Amour,
or Love’s Tribunals, that fantastic Proventjal creation of the twelfth century.
The ladies, who sat as Judges in those regularly constituted tribunals, for
deciding with all legal formalities, the, as regularly pleaded, quarrels
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and
complaints of lovers, and the reciprocal duties of couples of lovers, married
or unmarried, towards each other, the claims and rights of the latter were
almost invariably esteemed superior to those of the former, whilst the questions
they discussed were not unfrequently of a description to which hardly could an
allusion at the present day be borne. These <Jours d’Amour were pretty much
confined to the South of France ;("94) and of all this over-
exaltaticn of woman there was far less in Germany. Iler seclusion, il‘ secluded
she were, being the offspring of the respect rather than of the jealousy of the
stronger Rex, had been free from slavery; and when she calmly issued from it,
the chaster sentiments breathed hy minnesingers and narrative poets did not
quite turn her brain, like the lighter gallantry of the troubadour, or at least
the intoxi cation was of a more ethereal kind. Yeldeke represents the
intercourse of the two sexes as unstained by immorality, being consonant to
pure minne:—the sentimentality of later German poetry, the c\il influence of
which appertains to a very different state of so< iety.
But, on the
other hand, woman seems to have been unable here to exorcise either refining or
softening influence upon manners. Whilst the boy pages in noble households were
taught to profess respectful passion, and practise innocent 1 ntry
as a tribute due from the strong to the weak, a lesson which it wras
judged best to teach prior to the awakening of instinctive feelings, the Lurd
of the castle with his male guests, would still sit days and nights immoveable
at a table, until they should have swallowed some certain, predetermined,
fearful as unimaginable quantity of liquor, or till all but one, the victor in
the drinking contest, were laid prostrate.
To these
remarks upon the over-exaltation of the female sex, connected, whether as
cause, or as effect, with the mystically enthusiastic devotion of the age to
the Yirgin, may be added, in illustration of mediaeval contradictions, that the
evidence of women was inadmissible in some courts of law, especially those of
Bavaria, where it still was so two centuries later, except in reference to
dying bequests, to matrimonial questions, and to accusations of violence
offered to one of their own sex.
Coarseness of
manners was not the only, nor yet the most crying social evil, which needed
reform in the twelfth century. The sanguinary character of legal punishments
might still be conceived to be designed as a lure, by which private vengeance
should be tempted to rest content with public redress. But the utter want of
humanity still displayed towards prisoners of war—fellow creatures not even
accused of any offence, and who might be supposed to command the sympathy of
brother warriors—shews more than recklessness of the physical suffering of
human beings; shews an actual pleasure in it, when the sufferer was an enemy.
This barbarous treatment of such prisoners is averred to have been worst in
Lombardy, where, from the mercantile character of the cities, there was little
of the chivalrousness that could alone counteract the blended insolence and
cruelty of the savage, brought into civilized life. Iron cages for prisons, are
said to have been there invented in the course of the century. (20S)
Of the nature of the feelings that victory engendered, instead of allaying, the
mode in which the Milanese shewed mercy to their Pavian captives, in actually
dismissing them, will afford a sufficient exemplification. Having stripped them
of their nether garments, they supplied the place of the hinder portion by a
quantity of straw, to which, after so securing the hand of the victims that no
one could help either himself or his neighbour, they set fire, and so drove
them blazing away.(290)
But more
painfully revolting to modern feelings than even this insolent cruelty, is it
to find equivocation, if not something worse, still deemed compatible with the
knightly character; at least, when it could be considered in the light of
military stratagem. Something of this may have been observed in the conduct of
the admired Henry the Li-on: but two anecdotes of Lewis VII will more strongly
illustrate the degrading view, not from any peculiar chivalrousness in this
monarch, but because they do not appear to have exposed him to contemporary
censure. In 1173, Lewis, being at war with Ilenry of England, besieged
Vcrneuil; w'hich, upon his swearing, together with his great vassals, that the
inhabitants, ’f they sur-
rendered,
should be unharmed in liberty, person, or purse, capitulated, to surrender if
not relieved in three days. Upon the morning of the fatal third da.y, Henry II
arrived within easy reach of the besiegers, at the head of an army so superior
to theirs, that their defeat and the relief of Yerneuil seemed inevitable. 'But
Henry knew not of the capitulation, and Lewis deluded him through the day with
negotiations for peace; whilst Yemeni], unconscious that the covenanted relief
was at hand, needing but a summons, opened its gates according to agreement.
Possession being by this stratagem obtained, the town, in violation of the
oaths of King and Nobles, was sacked and burnt, the inhabitants being dragged
away prisoners. But the excess of the perjury foiled its success. A retreat
thus encumbered could not be expeditious, and Henry, discover' ng 'that he had
been duped, pursued the triumphant French King, defeated him, and recovered all
the prisoners, with all the plunder taken at Yerneuil. The following year Lewis
laid siege to Rouen, made a truce to allow of the celebration of St. Lawrence’s
festival; and, when he judged the townspeople to be absorbed in either their
devotions or their subsequent merrymaking, was proceeding to storm the walls.
But a Rouen priest, who fortunately preferred a solitary walk to festivity, had
espied the movement in the hostile camp, and warned the intended victims. Again
the hopes built upon treachery were disappointed.
Of these follies,
faults, and crimes, piety and charity, blended as they are most especially in
the injunctions of the Roman Catholic Church, were the redeeming concomitants.
Churches, it has been seen, were everywhere built. Convents were simultaneously
every w here founded, and an anecdote relative to the manner in which one of
these last acquired its name, may illustrate the forms of endowing such
hallowed edifices. Henry the Bearded, Duke of Lower Silesia, grandson of the
despoiled Vla- dislas, Grand-Duke of Cracow, and husband of the canonized
Hedwig von Andechs, built a nunnery, endowing it largely with lands; pprt of
which, that the whole might lie conveniently )o the convent, he obtained by purchase,
or barter, from neighbouring proprietors. This Digitized by Microsoft®
arranged, he,
with his great vassals, rode the boundaries of the convent-estate, then still
the only way of insuring the general recognition of the nuns’ right of
possession; and having so done, he publicly and formally asked the Abbess
whether she wished for anything more. The Silesians were at this time still
Poles, speaking Polish; and in that language the Abbess answered, “
Trzebanyez,” signifying “ Nothing morewhence the nunnery received and retained
the name of Trzebanyez.
But works of
devotion that were likewise works of charity were yet more esteemed; and
hospitals of all imaginable descriptions, for all imaginable wants, everywhere
arose in emulation of, and in connexion with, the churches. Berjharth and Beg
nines, or monks and nuns only half bound by monastic vows, but wholly devoted
to the care of the indigent sick, and to attendance upon hospitals, were instituted.
In 11Q8, an Order of Regular Augustinian Canons of the Holy Trinity was
founded, whose sole business and duty was the redemption of Christians from
Paynim slavery. They were called Mathurins, after their founder Jean de Mat ha;
and, in token of humility, designated themselves not Canons but servants, i. e.
Ministri, and their houses not cloisters but hospitals. As an act of merely
worldly charity, the rich in times of scarcity opened their granaries, either
gratuitously or at the ordinary price of plentiful seasons, to the poor; not
only the lord so relieving the vassals and the villeins whose existence and
well-being, constituted his wealth and power; but even the city noble and
patrician, thus opening his stores to his distressed fellow-townsmen. It seems,
indeed, that, when a compassionate spirit and obedience to the dictates of the
ministers of religion proved an insufficient counterpoise to self-interest,
charity became compulsory under the control of the sovereign; a control,
however, sometimes fearfully resisted or resented. By such a benevolently-intended
exertion of authority, Charles the Good, Earl of Flanders, one of the four
candidates for the Empire at the election of Lothar, incurred the murderously
vindictive hatred of some of his vassals. His principality was suffering, in
the year 1127, under a scarcity, which, for the lower orders, presently became
famine. This he, in the
first
instance, endeavoured to relieve by easy measures, such as a prohibition of
brewing, and of all unnecessary consumption of corn; including an order to
kill all dogs, and accompanied by the distribution of bread in vast quantifies
to the poor. Buts when ail such means proved ineffectual, he
commanded a search to be made upon the premises of the rich for accumulations
of corn, beyond what was needful provision for their own families, and all such
superabundant stores to be sold at a moderate price. The largest stock was
found in the warehouses of the van Straaten family, to whom tlie Earl had
previously given other cause of offence. A nobleman, with whom one of the
members of this family had quarrelled, having refused his challenge because van
Straaten was not his equal by birth, the challenger appealed to the Earl, who
of course required the parties to prove each the nobility of his race. Rut to
van Straaten this was impossible; the founder of the family having been a
menial who, finding illicit favour in the eyes of his lady, in concert with
her, murdered her husband, his lord; when she married him (227) The
van Straatens could not forgive the disgrace of being compelled to own their
origin (how they had ever passed for noble is the enigma, possibly the lady had
been an heiress), and the whole family now conspired with other compelled
sellers of corn, against Charles, whom they stabbed in church, at the. very
altar where he was kneeling in prayer. The assassins fled, but were all seized
and put to-death, with tortures, the most ingenious of which was the doom of
the Earl’s Chancellor, and as such the most criminal; he was hung by the feet
with an unoffending dog, as at once partner of his fate and his executioner;
being so situated that in agony, rage, or hunger, he would naturally gnaw his
human fellow- victim’s face.
That the
religion, graced by active charity’ should still be disfigured by intolerance
and superst’tion, cannot be matter of surprise, how much soever of regret. The
intolerance has been abundantly shown, and will continue to be so ; of it,
therefore, nothing more need here be said; and the nature of the superstition
may best be exemplified by an anecdote or two, which, even if one of them
should Digitized by Microsoft®
be thought
better adapted to a ballad than to sober history, are too characteristic of the
times to be omitted. In the rirst half of the century a Grafinn von Berg, upon
a calumnious accusation of adultery, was beheaded, and her two sons, being pronounced
the offspring of her guilt, were, as spurious, disinherited. After her death
her innocence was irrefragably demonstrated, according to tradition, by her
headless ghost; whereupon her sons were reinstated in their birthright. Like
most of their contemporaries, they were at war with their neighbours, and it
should seem upon a grand scale, since one victory that they gained cost the
lives of 924 men. Graf Eberhard, the youngest brother, had been dangerously
wounded in the battle, and, during his tedious convalescence, became so
sensible of the sinfulness of thus sacrificing human life, that, upon his
recovery, he undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem ; and there, concealing his
name, entered a monastery, apparently as a lay brother. He seems to have been
as yet unbound by the irrevocable vow, when some Crusaders, formerly his
comrades, chanced to seek hospitality in the monastery, and as he, in a menial
capacity, waited upon them, they recognised him by a scar. He, more devout than
veracious, denied his identity ; but they satisfied the Abbot that he really
was Graf Eberhard von Berg, and the Abbot sent him home to his family.(298)
Possibly he might yet be a minor, unauthorized thus to dispose of himself.
The
adventures of the Countess of Berg and her son rest upon local tradition, but
the strange incidents now to be related are avouched by legal documents,
preserved in the archives of Bologna. In the year 1160, a Greek hermit, named
Theocles Iimnia {sic), being at his devotions, felt himself divinely impelled
to visit the renowned church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. He repaired
thither, and amongst other sacred objects beheld a picture of the Virgin and
child, with an inscription, stating it to be the work of St. Luke, Chancellor
to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and destined to be placed over the high
altar of the church dedicated to St. Luke, upon the summit of Monte della
Guardia. The much-admiring Hermit asked
the attendant
ecclesiastics, why this sacred portraiture was
in their
church, and not in that for which it was painted; he was answered, “ Because no
one knows where Monte della Gvardia is.” The Hermit undertook to find the
place; and the picture was solemnly committed to hio charge, to be by him
conveyed to its destination. After long and fruitless wanderings in search of
the unknown hill, Theocles Kmnia determined to ''visit Rome, in order to
consult the successor of St. Peter as to the means of executing his sacred
task. As he traversed the streets of Rome, he attracted the attention of the
Bolognese embassador, as the Bolognese narrator entitles the city envoy to the
Papal Court, who chanced to be looking out of his window; and his Excellency’s
curiosity being excited, he sent for the Hermit to inquire what it might be,
that so holy a man could be so carefully carrying. The Hermit told his tale,
and the Embassador exclaimed “ Monte della Guardia overlooks Bologna.” He
accordingly despatched the reverend picture-earrier, with his hallowed
burthen, well escorted, to Bologna; the work of the Evangelist was delivered
over to the nuns of a convent situated upon the summit of Monte della Guardia,
and its possession secured to them by legal documents; a proctA verbal, or
protocol, of the whole transaction being drawn up, authenticated by the
signature of the magistrates then governing the city. A very handsome church
•was subsequently built there, to contain and do honour to the sacred picture;
and since, that no weather may interfere with pilgrimages to i’s shrine, a
covered colonnade, Italice loggia, has been constructed from the town gate, up
the hill, to the church, each affluent Bolognese family undertaking a portion
of the pious work.
The last
circumstance to be noticed relative to this subject, n ight almost encourage a
hope, that, as the century advanced, superstition had slowly dindnished. The
end of the world not having occurred, as predicted, at the close of the year
1000, had been again fixed for the month of September, 1185, when it was to be
preceded by terrilic tempests, and the Advent of Antichrist! “But,” observes an
old Chronicler, l£as though to shame the wisdom of man, God then
sent especially fine weather.”
A word
concerning dress, followed by another or two of Digitized by Microsoft ®
kindred nature,
may Dot inaptly conclude this chapter. Although Lewis VII perhaps lost
Aquitaine by submitting his curls to clerical shears, in emulation, it may be,
of Henry I of England, who, however, guarded himself against ridicule by
inducing or compelling his vassals to follow his example; these were but
temporary and individual triumphs of the Church, the exceptions, not the rule.
If she conquered powerful monarchs, against fashion itself she found herself
impotent. She continued to thunder against the long hair of men, the trains of
women, the points of shoes turned up to the knee, &c. &c.; and to
thunder in vain: alike in vain against such idle follies, as against the idle
dangers incurred at tournaments. Equally in vain, did John of Salisbury denounce
the indecency of the fashion requiring the silks and satins, which in
masculine attire had superseded the woollen garments of Charlemagne, to fit so
tightly that a knight in his garb of peace seemed to wear only a second skin ;
denouncing also the ruinous expense of the materials in which both sexes were
clothed. The gorgeousness of festal apparel rivalled the other splendours of
the tournaments. The armour and weapons of the tilters shone as dazzlingly with
gold and jewellery, as did the brilliant array of fair spectatresses, who
anxiously watched the exploits of their favoured servants. A more permanent
change was, that each gilded shield now displayed, in lieu of a fanciful
emblem, the coat of arms of the bearer.
The
concluding points are, that some attention was beginning to be paid to sanitary
police regulations, as e. g., Philip Augustus paved Paris, and issued some laws
touching cleanliness; examples that were happily, though slpwly followed; and
the last that even the stern Henry VI kept a Fool or Jester.
CHAPTER VI.
PHILIP CTIIO IV.
State
of the Sicilies—Election of Innocent III—II>$ Character
— Vietvs—Immediate measures—Death of
Constance—Factions in Sicily—In Germany. [1197—1199-
The
Duke of Swabia was on his way to Jesi, thence to convey liis little nephew' to
Germany, in order that an immediate coronation might confirm the boy’s previous
election as King of the Romans, when, at Viterbo, he met the startling
intelligence of his imperial brother's death in the very prime of lire.
He paused to reflect upon the difficulties of his thus altered position, which
were not lessened by the accompanying information, that he himself had been
appointed, by the deceased Emperor, Imperial Vicar during the minority of
Frederic II, in Italy and Sicily, as well as in Germany, where he already held
the office. Philip, being invested, as Duke of Tuscany, with a considerable
portion of the Matildan dominions, lay, like Henry VI, under sentence of
excommunication; and he felt that, unless he renounced the duchy, his brother’s
gift, papal enmity must greatly impede his measures for hia nephew’s service.
This consideration would strengthen his conviction, that Constance, bcth as
hereditary Queen and as mother of the infant heir, would be better able than
himself to conduct the Sicilian regency; whilst he knew his own presence in
Germany indispensable, if the allegiance, of which he had so lately and so
laboiiously obtained the promise, was to be secured to Frederic II. To carry
through the immediate coronation of the little King of the Romans, as arranged,
would have been most desirable, but to convey so young a child so long s Digitized
by Microsoft®
journey, with
the despatch now requisite, and this through Italy, in the actual state of the
country, he judged impossible. For the customary re-action upon the removal of
a heavy pressure was already apparent. The news of Henry YI’s death had
produced a sudden outbreak of tumult, sedition, and disorders of every
description, all over Italy; the whole population seemed on the brink of
insurgency. Philip determined, therefore, to leave the Sicilian kingdom to the
widowed Empress, and hasten in person back to Germany, to secure, if possible,
the fidelity of the German princes to their recent engagements with himself;
but, perforce, deferring the journey and coronation of the infant monarch to a
safer opportunity.
The Duke had
good reason to rejoice at his determination, when he found even his
unincumbered journey thick set with dangers and impediments. He had to make his
way by actual force through mutinous rioters, through fierce broils, and, in
effecting his passage, lost several of his attendants. He himself, however, got
through, and found Germany much in the same state in yrhich he had left central
and northern Italy. Immediately after his own departure for the South, a false
report of the Emperor’s death—the exaggeration most likely of his first
seizure— had reached Germany; when the feuds and other disorders, then and
there ever consequent upon the absence of a strong controlling hand, had
instantly broken out. The falsehood of the report had been discovered, and
tranquillity as suddenly restored ; but the tidings, being only a little
premature, had revived, as truth, reproducing the former consequences. The Duke
of Swabia and Tuscany, on his arrival, found not only all his work to do over
again, but more work to do; for cabals and factions were already forming for
the exclusion of the almost unanimously elected, lineal heir from the
succession. Vigorously Philip set himself to his task.
Before
the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany had even reached the theatre upon which he was
to contend for his nephew’s rights, the Empress had secured her own Kingdom to
her son. Immediately upon the Emperor’s death she had sent for the child from
Jesi, where he had hitherto remnined in the care of the Duchess of Spoleto; and
in Digitized by Microsoft® •
lieu of
assuming the crown as hers by inheritance, caused him to be proclaimed King.
The government she, however, took upon herself as Regent, in utter, and
assuredly justifiable, disregard of Philip’s nomination by her deceased
consort; but in consonance apparently with the wishes of Philip himself. Her
task was not much easier than his. Henry VPs tyranny had provoked, in her
Italian and Sicilian subjects, a hatred of Germans so intense as to hamper all
her measures. She found herself compelled to chuse between the two nations, and
naturally preferred her own compatriot and hereditary subjects. She, therefore,
banished the Germans, including the Grand-Seneschal, Markwald von Anweiler,
Duke of Ravenna, •nho thereupon retired to his domains in Romagna. But all the
Germans had not duchies to which to retire; and numbers, endeavoured to make
good their footing; distracting the Kingdom on both sides the Strait, with
insurrection and bloodshed. Constance had, upon the Emperor’s death, solicited
Celestin Ill’s friendship and support; he required that she should
preliminarily acknowledge his sovereignty, to which she had demurred; and a
negotiation upon the subject was pending, when a new death complicated both her
embarrassment and Philip’s.
In little
more than three months, the aged Celestin III followed the prematurely cut off
Henry VI to the grave, dying upon the 8th of January, 119S, and was succeeded
by a pontiff w ho would have been a fitting antagonist for that able,
ambitious, and little scrupulous monarch. Upon the assembling of the Conclave,
a majority of voices declared in favour of Cardinal Giovanni di Salerno, whom
the deceased Pope had recommended as his successor; but he, declining the
arduous honour of the papacy, recommended Cardinal Lotario di SS. Bacco e
Sergio, as better suited than himself to be the Spiritual Head of Christendom.
Three doves are said to have hovered over the Conclave during -ts
deliberations, one of which, a milk white bird, now settled upon the right hand
of the designated candidate for the crown.i2^) The double recommendation
by a Prince of the Church, and by a bird, the acknowledged emblem of the Holy
Ghost, proved irresistible. Cardinal Lotario was unanimously elected, Digitized
by Microsoft®
and, as Pope,
received, in honour seemingly of the white dove, the name of Innocent; he was
the third, who bore it. The first act of Innocent III was to entreat, by
letter, the prayers of all Christian priests, imploring for him, from on High,
enlightenment and strength adequate to the arduous duties of the exalted,
important, and, above all, responsible office assigned him.
Innocent III,
a younger son of the Conte di Segni, had studied scholastic theology and civil
law at the most celebrated schools of those sciences, the Universities of
Paris and Bologna. He had been much employed in the conduct of the temporal
affairs of the Church by his predecessors, Lucius III, Gregory VIII, and his
own uncle Clement III, and upon every occasion had been distinguished for
diligence, ability, and success. These worldly occupations had not, however, so
engrossed his time or thoughts, as to prevent his equally distinguishing
himself by writings upon religious and theological subjects, and upon points of
canon law. Thus trained and prepared, Innocent assumed the Tiara in the very
vigour of manhood; at the age of thirty-seven.
This
remarkable Pope has naturally been much compared to his remarkable
predecessor, Gregory VII; by some with decided preference, by others with
comparative contempt ; whilst others, Luden being one, can see no resemblance
between these two really master minds. In point of fact, the resemblance may be
termed essential, the difference being the fruit of casual, external
circumstances acting upon and modifying the original mental conformation of
either; and a few words touching this difference may fitly introduce the
statement of Innocent’s views, which must supply the key to his conduct
throughout his pontificate. Commandingly powerful intellect, austere, as
submissively uninquiring, piety, pure morality, firm self-reliance, and intense
pride, seem to have been common to both. But the pride of the low-born Gregory
was fiercely, impetuously aggressive, though capable of bending when expedient,
that of the high-born Innocent—besides being probably the least intense of the
two-—was calm, unbending, supercilious, and conservative. Both were deeply
imbued with the ereat panal objects of establishing the supremacy Digitized
by Microsoft .
of the Pope
over all lay sovereigns, and his absolute authority over the Church. The
celebrated metaphorical illustration of the relative character and position of
the Papal and the Imperial authority, by those of the sun and moon, was
Gregory’s, developed by Innocent.(3no) But even these objects, which
to Gregory had been a scheme of real, if not, avowed encroachment, had for
Innocent become the maintenance and inforcement of an avowed though contested
claim. Even their intellectual cultivation had been different, Gregory’s
education having been, probably, somewhat limited, and, ccrtainly, completed
before the full prevalence cf scholasticism^301) He had passed early
from the school or cloister into activc life, had felt the evils of indigence,
had risen slowly from an inferior condition, and looked at all things in a
practical light. He aspired to actual temporal sovereignty over the Emperor,
whom, even whilst no doubt revelling in the humiliation of the Emperor Henry
IV, he wished to see the Sovereign of all other European Princes, inasmuch as
the greater the servant, the greater his master. Innocent, on the contrary,
educated to the very highest degree then conceivable, was an erudite Divine, a
subtly reason'ng, scholastic theologian, whose peculiar views and opinions of
the world, and of the papacy, are to be gathered from his writings, in which
they are distinctly enunciated; and they have been so gathered and collected
with careful diligence, by his admiring and conscientious, if not very
eloquent biographer, Hurter—the authority here chiefly relied upon respecting
this great Pope.
Innocent’s
views of the world are characterized, if not by gloomy asceticism, yet by a
natural inborn melancholy, tempering pride, and by enthusiasm. Man, physically
and morally,—in the origin, structure, and wants of his body, n his desires and
pursuits, his love, his ambition, Ins avarice,—he thoroughly' disdained. lie
took the various sufferings of humanity as so many demonstrations of the
worthlessness of life; and he saw, in religion, which, like St. Bernard, he
reverently accepted as it presented itself, the sole object deserving a
thought.(3(rt) Of the papal office he had conceived a beautifully
sublime theoiy, the main defect of which is its utter impracticability. He Digiiiz&d
by Microsoft®
considered
the whole mass of mankind as constituting, or designed to constitute, one
Chureli, over which the Pope, as the Vicar of the Redeemer, should preside. It
was in this character of the Vicegerent of Christ, appointed to see His divine
will executed,(303) rather than as the successor of St. Peter, that
Innocent claimed for the Pope superiority to all worldly sovereignty; a
superiority, through which the immutable Church and her Head would be a secure
anchor to those needing succour, a terror to the wicked, a purifier of temporal
sovereignty, a comfort in earth’s slavery. The Pope, without an atom of
temporal power, was to exercise authority—Innocent always thus distinguishes
power from authority—over all monarchs, even as the soul rules the body. With
these views, and upon these principles, Innocent required the princes of the
earth, not indeed to obey his commands in matters of government, but yet to be
swayed by him therein, because the priest, unbiassed by selfish objects, whilst
trained by study and holy pursuits, must needs be wiser than the rude warrior;
and the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, the best judge of what is good for Christ’s
flock.
This
was Innocent’s theory of the papacy; and who shall say that, in days of so much
lawless violence and rude ignorance, such a benevolently controlling, spiritual
authority, partially supplying the place of public opinion, might not, could it
have been exercised as conceived, have acted most beneficially ? But, not to
speak of his successors, often weak, narrow-minded, or inordinately ambitious
or rapacious men, Innocent himself could exercise such awfully immense
authority only vicariously, or according to information received from his
emissaries; and the course of the narrative will show that, with what anxious
care soever he selected both emissaries and spiritual lieutenants, otherwise
Legates, they were accessible. if not to corruption, yet some to seduction,
and very many to prejudice; few acting up to, or even comprehending, his lofty
views; and thus necessarily misleading him. Ay, and yet more, it will finally
appear, that even he himself, by aiming at too much, often foiled his own
principal object. Innocent strove to mark the difference between the authority
he claimed, and temporal power, by Digitized by Microsoft! ? .
the
clerically humble character he gave his Court. He substituted sheepskin for
ermine in the furrier’s department ; w ood and glass for gold and silver in
the service of his table; and, in the attendance, monks for noble pages, who
had formed part of preceding Papal Courts: but, on dismissing these last, he
presented each with a sum sufficient to equip him for attaining knighthood. His
meals were limited to three dishes; and from this frugal simplicity he deviated
only upon great festivals, when noble household officers performed their proper
functions, and the Spiritual Head of Christendom appeared in due splendour. .
In order to
exercise the papal office with such full authority, Innocent felt, that, to be
master at home, and possessed of territory sufficient to insure perfect independence,
was necessary anu this was far from having been his predecessor’s position.
Clement III had purchased his admission into Rome by signing a convention that
nearly annihilated his sovereignty. He afterwards managed, by intrigue and a
liberal distribution of money, very considerably to enlarge his power; and,
taking advantage of the known instability of the modern Remans, he seized the
opportunity, when they were momentarily angry at the Senate, to persuade them
to substitute a more pliable single Senator for that body; which he pensioned
off, and thus freed himself from a really controlling magistracy. This increased
power Celestin III had suffered to be gradually pilfered away by the governed,
and the government really to be varied and modified at their discretion. Since
1191, Rome had been nominally ruled, like other Italian cities, by a Podesta,
though called a Senator This Senator was always a stranger to the city: but, in
lieu of being papally appointed, was elected for a year or more ; and, at the
expiration of his term, re-elected, or superseded, and even imprisoned, as was
Benedetto Carasomi, at the popular pleasure; whilst the Imperial Prefect tried
to conceal his own nullity by concurring with, in lieu of opposing, all these
proceedings.
Innocent’s
first measures were directed towards remedying tl is state of public affairs.
Circumstances, of which he ably took advantage, favoured him. And, if his mea- Digitized
by Microsoft®
sures were
not always consonant to the expectations that might be entertained from so
really high a character, it must again be recollected that popes, as well as
emperors and kings, are to be measured by a mediceval standard, not by the
opinions of the 19th century; and that Innocent must have felt, yet more
vividly in respect to the Papacy, than Frederic did in respect to the Empire,
the preservation of its every right as his supreme duty, the duty being, not
to his successors, but to Christendom.
The
consecration and enthronement of a pope was ordinarily accompanied by a
distribution of money. The treasure that Innocent found accumulated by
Celestin, combined with his own simple and abstemious habits, enabled him to
make this distribution ample, beyond all expectation. Hence, although by
another act of unusual liberality he ordered that the Jews, who, according to
custom, as part of the ceremonial, had presented him with their Book of the
Law, should be included in the official distribution, the amount of the gifts
received, won him, for the moment at least, all hearts. The whole population
of Rome swore fealty to him, and, in this ebullition of loyalty, he obtained
the acknowledgment of the papal claim to appoint the Senator. He immediately
deposed the popularly elected Senator, then holding the chief magistracy in the
Eternal City, substituting for him a Senator of his own choice. Innocent next
sent for the Imperial Prefect, granted him a dispensation from his oath of
allegiance to the Emperor—fortunately for the Pope there was no emperor at the
moment—and alternately exhorted, admonished, persuaded, and threatened, until
he prevailed upon him to renounce that allegiance, transferring it to himself,
as supreme over all sovereigns. He then regulated the several administrative
duties of these papal officers, reserving to himself the judicial decision of
important causes and appeals, temporal as well as spiritual, which to receive,
investigate, and judge, he three times every week presided in the consistory.
Secure at
Rome, Innocent turned his thoughts to the domains claimed by the Holy See, and,
as imperial fiefs, granted by Henry VI to his German followers. The principal
of these grantees were the Dukes of Ravenna
and Spoleto,
the possessions of the former extending- well- nigh to the gates of Rome. To
him Innocent despatched two Cardinals, to demand in his name the immediate
restitution of the property of the Church, usurpingly seized and bestowed upon
him, by the late Emperor Mark\vaid, cunning as be was bold, endeavoured to
elude the demand, and gain time ; looking probably to assistance from the Duke
of Swabia and Tuscany, when that Prince should be in full and undisputed
possession of power as Regent; perhaps from the Empress also, who, though no
German, must feel it desirable to support a vassal of her sou’s, against the
ex-officio enemy of his family and of all hereditary claims. But Innocent was
not a sovereign, temporal or spiritual, to be trifled with. I3e excommunicated
Markwald, released his vassals from their oath of fealty, and without much
difficulty prevailed upon them, noble vassals and townsmen alike, to prefer the
proverbially easy yoke of the Church, to that of a rude, oppressive, and
extortionate foreigner. Deserted by all, the ex-Duke of Ravenna returned to his
Apulian county of Molise, of which, or of his office of Grand-Seneschal,
Constance had not attempted to deprive him; and now, despoiled of his duchy, he
saw in the Sicilian kingdom his best chancc of fishing in troubled waters. The
Duke of Spoleto, taking a different course, strove to retain his duchy by
professing the most entire submission to the Holy Father’s commands, and his
willingness to hold it of the Pope instead of the Emperor. But Innocent, who,
as though imbued with the modern passion for exclusive nationalities, would
have no German vassals, scared him away from Spoleto and across the Alps.
The new
Pontiff having thus recovered one portion of the Matildau dominions, turned his
thoughts towards the principal part which has given its name to the whole,
Tuscany. As a first step towards wresting it from Duke Philip, he excited the
Tuscan towns to emulate those of Lombardy, assert their independence, and form
a League for mutual defence, under Papal protection ; further pledging
themselves never to acknowledge any Emperor not approved by the Pope.
Not less
resolutely than over Ravenna and Spoleto did
the Pope
assert the Papal suzerainty over the Sicilian kingdom. He required from
Constance, as had Celestin, the acknowledgment of this suzerainty, and
immediate attendance to do homage in person, or a solemn pledge so to do it for
herself and her son at the earliest convenient opportunity; he required further
the renunciation of the legatine authority conferred by the original
investiture, the reception of a legate appointed by him in proof of such
renunciation, and the additional renunciation of the extraordinarily liberal
subsequent concessions, touching ecclesiastical nominations; all this he
required as the price of his sanction of her son’s accession. Constance was
very reluctant to transmit her ancestral crown to her son, denuded of any of
its proud prerogatives; but her position was embarrassing, and she attempted a
compromise. She now frankly acknowledged the suzerainty, and negotiated as to
the rest. In the month of May, pending the negotiation, she had her child, the
infant Frederic Roger, crowned, and most of the great vassals swore allegiance
to him. This was a material point gained : nevertheless she still felt the
Pope’s sanction and support indispensable to a safe and prosperous regency;
and, in the end, she agreed to pay a yearly tribute of 1000 gold pieces, to do
homage in person, with her son, taking the oath of allegiance, and to make the
renunciations required. The triumphant Pope sent her, for her son, the
investiture with her own birthright.
Constance
did not live to see the result of her concessions, dying the 27th of November
of this same year ] 1Q8; and although she was only in the forty-third year of
her age, wonderful to say, in her case no suspicion of poison occurs. By her
will, she appointed Innocent Guardian to her son and Regent of his kingdom;
partly, it may be supposed, to avert his assumption of both offices as Lord
Paramount, and partly from the same sense of difficulties, which his hostility
must render inextricable, that had induced her submission to demands so
revolting to her queenly spirit. She named the Archbishops of Palermo, Capua,
and Monreale, and Gualtiero della Pugliera, Bishop of Troja, then
Grand-Chancellor, a Council of Regency under the Pope, committing to them . Digitized by Microsoft®
the care of
the infant King’s person and education, Innocent accepted the trust, or rather
left it doubtful whether he did so, or assumed the authority as Lord Paramount,
not admitting the Empress-Queen’s right to give it. And upon this occasion he
declared, that when the Yicar of the Redeemer of mankind and the Holy Roman
Church undertook the parental office, every earthly loss was more than
compensated. He discharged his duties as guardian and regent faithfully, and as
zealously as might be compatible with his multifarious important avocations,
and his constant absence from the realms he had to govern. For his royal ward
he really seems to have conceived a sincere regard, and for his education he
sedulously provided. He selected for him the ablest instructors to be procured,
and he appointed a conscientious superintendant of their proceedings in
Cardinal Cencio, afterwards Pope Honorius III.
In this
posture of affairs ambition extinguished in Markwald every sentiment of
attachment, or fide!:ty to the grandchild of the warrior Emperor,
who first distinguished him, and whose death he bad wept amidst a weeping host
of Crusaders; the only ch'ld, moreover, of the Imperial giver of his lost duchy
and retained county. He appears to have now projected the appropriation of the
infant heir's southern kingdom, though his first attempt was only upon the
regency. He produced a document, w'hich he asserted to be the duly signed and
witnessed will of the deceased Emperor, Henry VI, appointing Markwald Duke' of
Ravenna, Regent of the Sicilies and Guardian of the minor King-—in which appointment
the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany had, I it asserted, concurred—and further
ordering the restitution of the Matildan heritage to the Pope, for w hom the
testator professed the profoundest veneration. This will, genuine or forged,(304)
Markwald exhibited to the Germans in Sicily and Apulia, who, despite all
internal evidence of forgery, influenced probably by compatriot feelings,
professed their belief in the genuineness of this testamentary paper, as really
Henry Vi’s, and supported the’r countryman, Mark Wald’s cause as their own. He
now communicated it likewise to the Pope, soliciting
His
Holiness’s sanction of the appointment, and promising all submission to his
supreme sovereignty. But Innocent at once pronounced the will spurious, ami
rejected Markwald’s pretensions. The ex-Duke, thus disappointed, varied his
plan of operations. Letting the will drop, he now declared the already
acknowledged and crowned Frederic Roger, a supposititious child, purchased by
the deceased Empress of a miller or other person of mean condition; and, as a
lapsed fief, he solicited of the Pope, the kingdom, for himself, offering in
return 20,000 ounces of gold down upon the nail, and as much more when he
should be master of Palermo, with double the annual tribute that Constance had
covenanted to pay. These offers Innocent repulsed as execrable, refusing even
to relieve Markwald from the excommunication under which he lay, save upon his
entire and unconditional submission. Even whilst carrying on these negotiations
with the Pope, Markwald had been intriguing at Palermo, to wrest the person of
the infant King and the authority attached to its possession, from the Council
to which the dying Empress had committed him. He had been intriguing at the
same time with the Sicilian Saracens, naturally opposed to papal sovereignty,
as likely to be intolerant of their religion. In the first of these attempts he
failed, but so far succeeded in the last, that the baracens concluded an
alliance with him against the sovereignty of the Pope. This done, and
unwillingly convinced that Innocent was not to be bribed, Markwald again
changed his plan ; he abandoned the idea of rejecting Frederic Roger as a
supposititious child, which was not likely to take with the Germans; resumed
his claim to the regency upon Henry YI’s supposed will; and actually sought
assistance from the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany, upon the plea that, for
supporting his right to the regency was he persecuted. He now left the care of
raising a rebellion in Sicily to the Mohammedans, and returned to Apulia, where
he began the civil war at the head of the Germans.
The
kingdom was still distracted by three parties, contending for possession of
the royal child’s person—which, enabling the possessor to act in the royal
name, seemed to convey more real power than any appointment as regent vol. ii. 20
could
give—and bv two other parties, yet more rebellious, attacking them. The Pope,
occupied with the affairs of all Christendom, as well as with securing bis
authority over the papal dominions, could, of course, execute his office of Regent
of the Sicilies only through the legates, whom he .sent thither to act as his
deputies; and they often displayed more zeal to augment his power, than wisdom
or discretion, even if they are to be acquitted of worse faults. They early
offended the prelates whom Constance had selected for the guardians of her
sou’s person, by demanding from them au oath of allegiance to the Papal See,
and endeavouring to remove the little monarch from their custody. The Grand-Chancellor
and his colleagues, exas perated by this attempt, retaliated by striving to
assume the government wholly to themselves, as the Council of Regency; whilst
Markwald accused the Grand-Chancellor of designing to place Frederic’s crown
upon the head of his own brother, the Conte di Monopello, and the Grand-
Chancellor, with more apparent grounds, Markwald, of designing to usurp it
himself. Two of these factions, the German and that of the Sicilian prelates,
either alternately tore the royal child and the government from each other, or
again, holding different towns and forts, ruled simultaneously over different
provinces; and again, alternately submitted, when defeated, to the Pope, in
order, through a:i easily duped Legate, to use his authority against a more
hated adversary. Whilst the Papal party disowned the authority of both the
others; and the Saracens joined either Markwald or the prelates against the
Pope, or carried on a guer la warfare against all three, ravaging and
plundering the whole island. To the Baronage, bcth :nsular and continental,
this state of anarchy seemed to offer another opportunity, too favourable to be
neglected, of breaking the rod of iron of the early Norman kings, which, half
broken in the hands of William II and Tancred, had in Henry YI’s grasp, if not
controlled, at least cruelly annoyed them; nor were they neglectful. And as it
the3e broils and civil ware were insufficient to ruin any kingdom, the Genoese
and Pisans at Syracuse were fighting tor possession of that city, one of those
alleged to be promised them by Ilenry VI. This state of things lasted Digiiiz&d
by Microsoft®
for some
years well nigh uninterruptedly, creating confusion and disorders
indescribable. Farmers of tolls and receivers of taxes refused to pay rent, or
cash in hand, to any party, upon the pica of not knowing to whom it was justly
due; and all the contending parties were driven to raising money by violent
means. Loans were extorted from merchants, from municipalities, even from
churches; grants of land, fiefs, mills, privileges of butchery, and the like,
were recklessly sold, or given as bribes, by the contending factions; and only
the Pope had the moderation to iimit his remunerative grants, his mortgages of
tolls, &c.—his sanction was indispensable to such acts of his legates—-to
the duration of his own regency, submitting their further continuance to the
pleasure of the young King, when of age.
Germany,
meanwhile, was in a condition somewhat similar to that of Sicily and Apulia,
though so far better off as to be a prey to t.wo only, instead of a
complication of factions. The Duke of Swabia and Tuscany, upon his arrival,
made the most vigorous exertions on behalf of his nephew. That nephew’s
election he treated as a complete and irrevocable fact; wherefore, instead of
desiring the Archbishop of Mainz, or his substitute during his crusade, to
summon an Electoral Diet, he simply convoked an ordinary Imperial Diet, to
renew the oath of allegiance to the acknowledged sovereign, to fix a time for his
coronation, making all requisite preliminary arrangements; and, further, to
confirm the regency to himself during the monarch’s nonage, according to the
deceased Emperor’s appointment. But the professions ami promises of
co-operation that he had so recently obtained from the ambitious and restless
Adolf von Altenau, the new x\rchbishop of Cologne, “ made themselves air ” when
the pressure that had extorted them was taken off. That the see of Cologne owed
an immense accession of territory to Frederic Barbarossa proved no tie upon the
prelate’s gratitude. He had feared Henry VI, and promised to crown his infant
son ; he saw nothing to fear in the royal boy’s young and nearly untried uncle,
the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany; and, without actually revoking or denying his
promise, be Digitized by Microsoft®
alleged that
the Emperor’s death, wholly alteilng the posture of affairs, rendered an
Electoral Diet indispensable, the convoking of which, in the absence of the
Archbishop of Mainz, in command of the crusade, devolved upon himself and the
Archbishop of Treves conjointly. The concurrence of this prelate he is said to
have purchased, at the price of not less than 4000 marks; and, in their joint
names, a Diet was summoned to meet at Cologne, not Frankfurt, upon the 1st of
March, 1193, for the purpose of electing a sovereign.
Upon the 1st
of March, the two Archbishops opened their Electoral Diet, and were
unpleasantly surprised by the very small number of the Estates of the Empire,
even of the spiritual Estates, present. But, how much soever disappointed as to
the support upon which they had calculated, they did not relinquish their hope
of now wrenching the sceptre from the Swabian dynasty of Emperors, and
proceeded to look out for a competitor who might be successfully opposed to the
already elected infant King of the Romans. The Welfs no longer appearing strong
enough for this purpose, their choice fell upon Bertold, the opulent and
powerful Duke of Z'aringen, who had so lately been in arms against the young claimant’s
deceased father. Him they invited to come forward, as a candidate for the
vacant throne, with assurances of almost certain success; and, whilst awaiting
his grateful acceptance of the proposal,—the Duke had not obeyed their summons
to the Diet,— they hoped to see the numbers of the assembly increase.
But Philip,
if disappointed, had not been daunted, by the opposition of the two mighty
Archbishops, and was even then holding the Diet he had previously summoned at
Arnstadt, or Erfurt, in Thuringia—for his Diet, not being electoral, might be
held wherever convenience dictated, and appears to have moved from place to
place in Saxony, so as to render it difficult accurately to mark the locality
of every transaction. But, wherever it were, around Philip were gathered all
the adherents of his family, all the princes who felt gratitude to Frederic I
or Henry VI fcr fiefs granted them; all who respected their plighted word. Upon
this numerous assemblage of Digitized by Microsoft®
the Estates
of the Empire, Philip was even then calling to take anew the oath of allegiance
to his nephew, as Frederic II, and to confirm his own nomination as Vicar of
the Empire. But to his demand even this Ghibeline Diet hesitated to accede.
They remonstrated that the child had been elected in reliance upon the
prolonged life of a father, then in the very prime of manhood, at least until
the son should have attained to years of discretion ; that the Emperor’s
untimely death in frustrating this expectation, really annulled the election by
rendering it nugatory as to its object, namely, the providing the Empire with
an efficient Head. Hence they inferred that Philip himself, as the only
surviving son of Frederic Barbarossa,(305) was now the only person
who could, as the representative of his family, be seated on the throne.
Philip, virulently as he has been accused by Guelph writers of selfish
ambition, of usurpation, and of treachery to the nephew committed by a dying
brother to his care, appears to have honestly and resolutely opposed these
arguments, pledging himself to exert, as Regent for that nephew, all the zeal
and energy expected from him as Emperor. It was not until he was convinced of
the absolute hopelessness of his efforts to obtain the recognition of the
lawful heir, that, at last yielding, he accepted the proffered suffrages for
himself. Upon the 6th of March, 1198, Philip was elected and proclaimed King,
by the Dukes of Saxony, Bavaria, and Austria, the Margraves of the northern,
eastern, and southern Marches, the Archbishops of Salzburg, Magdeburg, and
Bremen, and several princes, bishops, and immediate nobles of inferior
dignity. The Duke of Bohemia does not appear to have been present; but more
faithful to his word, at least to its spirit as modified by his brother
princes, than their reverend graces of Cologne and Treves, he instantly
acknowledged Philip as King, and received from him, according to his promise,
the royal title hereditarily conferred.
The two
Archbishops, having by this time learned how much more numerous than their own
was Philip’s Diet, despatched the Bishop of Munster to the anti-diet, as they
deemed it, to warn the princes there assembled, against proceeding to an
election which, through the absence of Digitized by Microsoft®
thcmseives,
the principal ecclesiastical electors, must be irregular, find therefore, as
illegal, void. He was likewise commissioned to invite them to a meeting at
which all might deliberate in common upon their common interests. The Bishop
found the election over, and returned with the tidings to Cologne. The
Archbishops and their party were indignant; they pronounced the election void,
as well from the absence of the three Prince-Archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and
Cologne, as because no Electoral Diet had ever sat in Saxony; and they sent to
press their previous proposal upon the Duke of Z'iringen, who had not as yet
returned any answer. Bertold had now apparently made up his mind ; he accepted
the offered crown ; bound himself by oath to appear at Cologne, at the head of an
army of Zaringen vassals a«d allies, upon an appointed day; gave two nephews,
the youthful Earls of Urach, as hostages for his keeping his oath; and paid
down the sum of 6000 marks of silver to defray past or future expenses.
But Bertold’s
ambition, it has been seen, was of a cautious rather than an enterprising
character, and at least equalled by his economy. He quickly took alarm at the
number of princes who had acknowledged Philip; and he shrank from seeing hi3
dominions, so flourishing under his judicious policy, again devastated by civil
war. lie did not appear at Cologne upon the appointed day: and finally,
accepting from Philip a sum of 11,000 marks, a3 compensation for his expenses
and pretensions, acknowledged the election of his successful rival as valid,
ar,d did homage to him for his duchy. It is added, that the frugal Duke, after
irritating those whose hopes he had excited but to disappoint them by rejecting
their offers, exaspe-
- rated them further by the insulting
message, that he desired not a purchased crown, and finally neglected to redeem
his hostage nephews. They not only had to pay their own ransom, but were
constrained by the angry prelates to swear to take the cowl. They kept their
oath, and rose high in the church, Earl Conrad becoming a Cardinal.
The
Archbishops, not disheartened by the failure of their first candidate for the
Empire, sought for a substitute. They invited the Duke of Saxony to ioin them.
J Dignizeaby Microsoft<Br J
with
assurances that upon so doing he should be elected. Duke Bernard was a prudent
elderly man, who, even had he been less attached by gratitude, inclination, and
interest to the race of the Emperor from whom he had received his duchy, had he
not just concurred in electing, just done homage and sworn allegiance to, the
son of his benefactor, would hardly have risked his still contested duchy by
grasping at a crown. Unhesitatingly as positively, he rejected the invitation
and the offers of the Cologne Diet.
Whilst these
negotiations were in progress Philip’s position was daily improving. More
Estates of the Empire, with many towns, successively acknowledged him, and
hopes of his recognition, even by the Pope, arose. The Bishop of Sutri, a
German by birth, crossed the Alps as Papal Legate, bearing letters from the
Holy Father to the German prelates, charging them to obtain from the Diet and
the Duke of Swabia—the Pope did not admit Philip’s right to his Tuscan
duchy—the freedom of the Archbishop of Salerno, of Tancred’s family, and of the
other Sicilian prisoners of Henry VI. The Bishop had a separate commission to
the Duke of Swabia ; he was empowered to exempt him from the necessity of
repairing to Rome, not only in person to solicit relief from the sentence of
excommunication under which he lay, but even to take off the sentence, so soon
as the captive Sicilian prelate should be at liberty, and Philip should have
solemnly sworn to obey the Pope in all those points, disobedience in which had
incurred the doom—an engagement evidently importing the surrender of the
Rlatildan heritage. The family of Tanered, Philip had already released, in
compliance with the earnest entreaties of his sister-in-law, the widowed
Empress, in behalf of those so nearly allied to her, supported by the influence
of his wife Irene, daughter in-law and sister-in-law to the captive Queen and
Princesses. Upon their liberation they had retired to France, where the
daughters married. The exKing William is not mentioned upon the occasion,
whence it is generally inferred that he had died at an early period of his
captivity, unless by such as believed the tale reporting him to have vanished
into an Alpine hermitage. His disappearance in one way or another from the
scene., is confirmed by the claim to the principality of Tarento and Digitized
by Microsoft®
the county of
Lecce, ivhi?h was soon afterwards advanced in the name of his eldest sister
Albina, as his heir, by her husband the Comte de Briennc.
The portion
of the Legate’s commission relating to Tancred's family was therefore forestalled.
To negotiate touching the remainder, Philip met him at Worms, and at once
promised to dismiss all the remaining Sicilian pri .sorters. So much did
Philip, by his virtues and amiable disposition, grin upon the Legate at this
interview, that, exceeding certainly the letter, though not, as he might
presume, the spirit of his instructions, upon receiving thi3 promise, without
awaiting its fulfilment, he at once relieved the nesv monarch from
excommunicat' jn, readmitting him into the bosom of the Church. Philip
immediately released the eyeless Archbishop, and gradually the other
prisoners, enjoining them all to present themselves to Innocent, in proof of
his obedience. But the liberated captives thought more of one brother’s
harshness than of the other’s clemency; and throughout Italy endeavoured, by
the exhibition of their blindness and mutilations, to excite compatriot hatred
against the family of Henry VI. Whether the Legate exacted, and, if he exacted,
whether he received from Philip, any specific promise of obedience beyond the
customary svljectionem debit am, is another of the many disputed questions in
the history of this period.
Philip
flattered himself that the revocation of his excommunication, joined to his
adversaries’ second disappointment in an opposition candidate, would produce a
general peaceable acknowledgment of his election. He therefore abstained from
hostilities ; and though he caused Achen to be garrisoned for him by Prince
Walram, son of the Duke of Limburg, he made no attempt to proceed thither for
his coronation, waiting probably till the Archbishop of Cologne should, a3 he
hoped, be disposed to officiate. This hope bid fdr, as it seemed, to be
realized, when the Archbishop of Treves, weary of unsuccessful manoeuvres,
withdrew from the adverse faction ; he did not, however, acknowledge Philip,
merely remaining neutral.
But not so
was Adolf of Cologne to be turned from his
purpose. When
he found that no really powerful German
prince
would stand forward against Philip, he listened to r .. f e> .j
the proposals
of Richard of England, in behalf of his favourite nephew, Otho of Brunswick,
who, having been one of the hostages for his ransom, had upon his liberation
hurried over to the English Court, and been invested with the duchies of York
and Aquitaine, and the county of Poitou. The Archbishop now seems to have felt
that his last chance of success against the representative of the Swabian
dynasty, was to oppose him -with a Welf; reduced as that family then was from
its pristine preponderance. Palsgrave Henry, who would have been preferable as
the elder brother, the most powerful prince, and a tried warrior, and through
his marriage with Frederic Barbarossa’s niece, less repugnant to the
Ghibelines, was absent upon the Crusade. The impatient prelate therefore
accepted the younger brother, who had scarcely completed his twentieth year,
praying King Richard to support them at the election with his presence ;
whether as a member of the Empire, in his character of vassal King of the
Arelat, or having made himself such in that of King of England, by pleading in
vindication of his conduct before the Diet, or simply as a powerful foreign
friend of the candidate, is not clear. But the lion-hearted monarch’s
reminiscences of Germany were the reverse of agreeable ; and he judged it
sufficient to send his nephew, accompanied by embassadors well supplied with
money, to assist the Archbishop’s operations. Even thus reinforced, Adolf
gained very few partisans east of the Rhine, but was more successful amongst
the Lotha- ringians upon the left bank. The Duke of Brabant, in some measure
the representative of the once potent Dukes of undivided Lorrain, and, at all
events, the chief of the Lotharingian princes, was won by Otho’s affiancing
himself prospectively to his daughter, Maria; the Earl of Flanders, next in
consequence, was personally attached to the royal Crusader; and even the Duke
of Limburg, whose son was then Governor of Achen for Philip, repaired to Archbishop
AdolPs Diet, to vote for Otho. At Cologne, this young Welf Prince was elected
and proclaimed King ; the Cologne Metropolitan being the only prince present,
whose right of suffrage was indisputable, whose principality was finally and
permanently established as an electorate. From Cologne, Otho, whom English
money had provided with
20 §
an army,
hastened to besiege Achen, in order to compensate, by the perfect regularity
of his coronation, the irregularity of his election.
Philip bow saw that hs must needs oppose force
to force, and he assembled an army to relieve Achen. Ottoear of Bohemia brought
his Czech troops to his support; and Philip Augustus of France, alarmed at the
immense accession of power that his abhorred rival and vassal, King Richard,
must derive from the possession of the Empire by a nephew, and of the Arelat by
himself, eagerly concluded an alliance offensive and defensive with his namesake
of Germany. Thus strengthened, the Swabian Philip led his army with all
convenient speed down the Rhine to relieve Achen, that, when it should be relieved,
he might there receive the crown: but whilst he was upon the march, Prince
Walram, influenced by his father, and by Otlio’s lavish gifts or promises,
surrendered the important city intrusted to him. Otho being now in possession
of the ancient seat of the Carlovingian empire, was crowned by the Archbishop
of Cologne in Charlemagne’s cathedral. Perfectly regular, nevertheless, his
coronation was net; the proper regalia being in Philip’s hands, his crown,
sceptre, &.C.. were merely substitutes provided for the occasion.
Philip,
finding himself thus foiled in his principal object, desisted from his
expedition into Lower Ltrrain, and determined to uolemiiize his own coronation.
He had hitherto delayed the ceremony, in the hope of inducing Archbishop Adclf
to perform his proper office ; but now felt it could no longer be postponed
without ceding an advantage to his rival; and, treachery having closed its
established theatre against him, he resolved that the celebration should take
place in that, which, except as the scene of coronation, ranked highest of all
in public veneration as the metropolitan church of Germany, the Mainz
Cathedral. The Archbishop being still absent upon his crusade, Philip tried to
prevail upon the Archbishop of Treves to officiate; but this prelate, although
he had refused to take any part in electing or crowning Otho, would not so far
commit himself against his former confederate
as actually
to place the crown upon the head of the
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OylvlfcroSun w
Swabian
Prince. Why one of the other German prince- archbishops, who had concurred in
electing Philip, did not undertake the office of the refractory Cologner, is
not stated; but it may possibly have been thought, either that the usurpation
of his functions by one of them would yet more exasperate the mighty spiritual
prince, whom it was bo desirable
to conciliate ; or that it was desirable thus to implicate one yet a stranger
to the transaction. Whatever the motive, the Archbishop of Tarentaise, in
Savoy, a princely prelate of the Empire, though hardly one of the chief of the
class, was chosen as his substitute; and, in the Mainz Cathedral, in the
presence of almost all the German Princes, spiritual and temporal, east of the
Rhine, and of the Bishop of Sutri, Papal Legate, he placed upon Philip’s head
the genuine crown of his ancestors and predecessors.
The rival
Kings nov» waged war on each other, with little result beyond inflicting great
sufferings upon the subjects they desired to govern. Philip, indeed,
endeavoured by rigorously punishing every act of violence to repress the
licentiousness of his army. For instance, whilst he was besieging Andernach, a
town that had declared for Otho, some of his troops broke into a nunnery of
that vicinity, plundered it, outraged the nuns, and stripping one of them of
all clothing, smeared her with honey, rolled her in feathers, seated her
backwards upon an ass, and thus, amidst the grossest insults, paraded her about
the camp. Philip ordered the offenders to be drowned in boiling water. His strict
administration of justice, his protection of the weak against the strong,
against even his own partisans, is said to have gained many to his side; but
this gain was heavily counterbalanced by the defection of the potent supporter
upon whom he had hoped he might rely.
Innocent III
had not, indeed, declared himself for either King, both of whom he deemed
irregularly elected; whilst he held himself, unless appealed to by one of the
parties, not authorized to interfere in a matter so purely temporal, until a
demand to be crowned Emperor, should make it his duty to satisfy himself that
the applicant for the Imperial crown was the duly elected monarch Digitized
by Microsoft®
entitled to
reccive it. But his bias was evidently against P liilip, on account partly of
that prince’s claim, as Duke of Tuscany, to the Matildan dominions; partly of
the protection, however trifling-, which Markwald’s misrepresentations had
obtained from Philip(3C3j—though that was little more than a prayer
to the Holy Father for justice to him—and partly of his alliance with Philip
Augustus; who, in contempt of Celestin’s injunctions, not only refused to live
'w ith Ingeborg as his wife, but had publicly married the beautiful Agnes von
Andechs, daughter of the Duke of Meran; and resisted even his, Innocent’s,
threat of laying the kingdom under an interdict. But most of all, perhaps, was
he strongly, if unconsciously, influenced by the desire almost instinctive in
the papacy, to prevent hereditary succession in the Empire. He taxed the Bishop
of Sutri with having, through partiality, transgressed his instructions; and
recalling, degraded and imprisoned him In an island monastery. He pronounced
Philip to be still under excommunication, inasmuch as the revocation of the
sentence, being contrary to his will and commands, was unlawful and invalid.
And he courteously received, and answered, an address from King Richard, Otho,
and Otho’s German and Lombard partisans, at the head of which last stood Milan.
But, however courteous, the Pope’s answer was nothing more ; it expressed
good-will towards Richard’s nephew, but did not recognise him as King. No
trilling proof of Innocent’s desire to act fairly between the parties, when all
the anti-Philip influences, and the Pope’s Ligh value for the lion-hearted
champion of the Cross, are considered.
PHILIP—OTIIO
IV.
Negotiations
touching the Double Election—Innocent’s Decision—Civil War in
Germany—Fluctuations of Success— Change m Innocent's Vieics—New
Negotiations—Murder of Philip. [111)9-1208.
The return of the Crusaders from
Palestine brought pretty nearly equal advantages to both of the parses then
distracting Germany. If Otho was powerfully reinforced by the arrival of his
brother the Rhine-Palsgrave, Philip was scarcely less so by the return of his cousin-german,
Hermann Landgrave of Thuringia, and of the Ghibeline Archbishop of Mainz,
Conrad of Wittelsbach. This prelate, visiting the Papal Court upon his road
home, was commissioned by Innocent to strain every nerve to persuade the two
irregularly elected monarchs to resign ; if successful in this arduous task, he
was to conduct a new election, taking care that the name of the prince so
chosen should be submitted to his, Innocent’s, approbation prior to his being
generally acknowledged. Should he find this radical cure for the existing
disorders impossible, he was to endeavour to prevail upon one of them to
abdicate in favour of the other ; and, should it prove impracticable, to obtain
either a double or a single abdication, he was to inquire into the circumstances
of the double election of Philip and Otho, and address a report thereupon to
the Pope, for the guidance of his judgment. Marquess Boniface of Montferrat,
brother to Conrad of Tyre and Jerusalem, appears to have been joined with the
Archbishop in this commission.
The prelate,
aided by the Marquess, exerted himself earnestly and diligently to prevail upon
both rivals to reDigitized by Microsoft®
sign, in
order that a new election, conducted according to all the forms of law and
custom, might put an end to the civil war. Failing in an attempt so unlikely to
succced, he seems to have thought more of the interest of Germany than of the
Pope’s directions. He endeavoured to negotiate a five years’ truce, during
which the princes of the opposite factions should meet, deliberate in common,
and so decide which of the two irregularly elected kings had most claim to be
considered as the lawful sovereign of the country. He could obtain a truce but
for a fifth of the time proposed, one year, and even that imperfectly, the
Saxons refusing to be bound by any such convention. The
Archbishop-Arch-Chancellor nevertheless summoned a Diet to meet at Boppart,
upon the Rhine, during this year of greater tranquillity, to consider the
question; but be did not make the report enjoined him to Innocent; which he
felt would, in fact, be to submit the question, and with it the rights of free
Germany, to the Pope. The competitors for the empire, being more personally
interested in the results, were less independent in their proceedings than
the prelate. Both applied to Innocent, severally soliciting his support at
Boppart. Otho and bis party, in letters signed by one king (of England), two
princc-arch- bishops, one duke, three prince-bisliops, and divers earls,
abbots, and nobles, asserted the regularity of his election and coronation, and
promised all concessions that could be required. Philip and his party, on the
other hand, urged the all but unanimity with which he bad been electcd, merely
promised, according to the usual oath, to respect and protect all the rights of
the church; and ended by ask:ng for the Imperial Crown, to receive
which he would as early as possible visit Rome. But his missives bore the
signatures of one king (of Bohemia), five prince-arch- bishops, seven dukes,
five margraves, twenty-one prince- bishops, besides palsgraves, earls, abbots,
and nobles of inferior rank.
Again
Innocent returned answers, so far vague, as that he recognised not the right of
either claimant to the crown; but the pretension of the Diet, summoned by the
Archbishop of Mainz, to decide between them, he utterly denied. If the Princes
of the Empire could not save their country
from the
evils of a double election, and the two competitors would not, by abdicating,
put an end to those evils, then with the Vicar of Christ upon earth, who had
already transferred Empire from the East to theWest, and with him alone must it
rest to interpose his authoritative decision.
Both Kings
were disappointed at these answers, and neither attended at the Boppavt Diet,
whence several of the chief princes likewise absented themselves, as though
feeling its proceedings invalidated beforehand. The assembly separated without
pronouncing any decision ; the subsequent endeavours of the reverend mediator
proved equally fruitless, arid civil war again raged in Germany.
Archbishop
Conrad, despairing for the moment of effecting a reconciliation amongst his
countrymen, proceeded to execute a second commission with wlich the Pope had
charged him. It was, to visit Hungary, where, if a worse civil war between two
brothers, Emmeric and Andreas, for the crown of their deceased father, Bela
III, no longer raged, the reconciliation on the part of the younger appeared
to be so imperfect and reluctant, as to induce apprehension that a renewal of
this fraternal conflict might impede the passage of the Crusade, which Innocent
was labouring to raise, organize, and despatch to the relief of the Holy Land.
The Archbishop’s mission was to wring from the conscience of the refractory
younger, Andreas, a frank submission to the lawful sovereignty of the elder,
Emmeric; and so well did the good prelate succeed, that both brothers received
the cross from his hand, solemnly pledging themselves to join the crusading
army upon its passage through Hungary, and to commit the government of the
kingdom, during their joint absence, to their kinsman and neighbour, the Duke
of Austria. Pleased with this success, the Archbishop hastily left Hungary for
Mainz, where, independently of his anxiety to resume his negotiations with the
rival Kings during the continuance of the truce, his presence was much wanted.
But, visiting the Duke of Austria in his way back, he incautiously disturbed
the plan he had so happily arranged by persuading that prince likewise to
assume the cross, instead of remaining at home as guardian of Hungary. Soon
after taking leave of the Duke, Archbishop Conrad Digitized by Microsoft®
was sc’zed
with a malady that detained him at Passau, and there he died. His death was
speedily followed by renewed hostilities betwixt the Hungarian brother rivals
for the crown of Hungary.
As might be
anticipated under the circumstances, a double election ensued at Mainz. Philip
was then residing in the city, and in his presence, of course somewhat under
his influence, the Chapter elected Leopold von Schonfels, Bishop of Worms, a
faithful adherent of the Imperial family, who had accompanied Henry VI through
all his Italian and Sicilian expeditions. Philip immediately invested the
translated Archbishop-elect with tlit: temporalities, and installed him in his
archiepiscopal see. Some three or four partisans of Otho’s, amongst the Canons,
refused to concur in this election; and, withdrawing to Bingen, there elected
Siegfrid, Provost of St. Peter’s at Mainz. The Guelph Archbisliop-elect
hastened to Otho, who similarly invested him with the temporalities, but,
Mainz being Philip’s, could not instal him in the see.
This schism
in the German Church, combined with the irrepressible civil war, convinced
Innocent of the absolute necessity of placing a generally acknowledged
sovereign upon the German throne. He now, therefore, pronounced in favour of
the competitor to whom he had always been inclined, drawing up a long statement
of the reasons npon which his decision was founded. And this paper he sent to
Germany, by legates who were also charged with separate, monitory epistles,
addressed to various Princes of the Empire, spiritual and temporal. Innocent,
who evidently prided himself upon his skill as a dialectician and a writer, was
a somewhat prolix reasoner; and to translate this Deli deratio Domini Pap^e Innocentii, or even one of the
several abstracts thereof, made by divers German historians, would severely tax
the patience of English reader or English writer. But, the document being
valuable, as illustrative of the opinions and feelings characterizing the age,
even in one of its master minds, a summary, as condensed as may be consistent
with the object in view, will hardly be unacceptable.
In this paper,
drawn up in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy
Ghost, the Pope first proves—by references to the Old Testament, by argument,
and by the self- evident superiority of him who gives over him who receives, of
him who anoints and crowns over him who is anointed and crowned—tbe supremacy
of the spiritual over all temporal authority. The Papal right to select the
sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire thus established, he proceeds to exercise
it. He regrets the triple election of his own ward, Frederic, of Philip, and of
Otho, but, the evil having occurred, each claimant must be tested by the
criterion of what is allowable, what is seemly, and what is expedient. —To
begin writh Frederic King of Sicily. lie was freely elected; homage
was generally done to him, the oath of allegiance to him was unanimously taken;
and he is the ward of the Holy Church, whose part it therefore is to maintain
him in all his rights, not, by despoiling him of any, to incur his enmity in
lieu of his gratitude, w'hen he Bhall be of man’s estate. Nevertheless it is
allowr- able, seemly, and expedient to reject Frederic’s election.
The Princes had elected and sworn allegiance to a person incapable of Empire; a
two-year-old infant, not yet received by baptism into the Church ; and they had
done so trusting that the father would live and govern at least till the son’s
majority. The Emperor’s premature death, by annulling these expectations, had
annulled the election and the oath. If the Princes thought to govern the Empire
by the substituted authority of a regent, the Church required an actual
efficient Emperor for her protection. It was no part of a guardian’s duty to
maintain a ward in unlawful rights; and, if Frederic’s were lawful, the Church
did not despoil him of them. It was his maternal inheritance, the Sicilian
realm, that she had undertaken to preserve for him, and this engagement she
would fulfil: if he were entitled to the Empire, his uncle, the Duke of Swabia,
was the person who robbed him of it.
Secondly, as
to Philip. It appears unallowable to object to him who is elected by, and has
received the homage and the oaths of, a great majority of the German Princes;
unseemly for the Pope to visit upon him injuries suffered from his brother and
his forefathers ; inexpedient to oppose one so powerful. But, again, the
election has fallen upon, Digitized by Microsoft®
homage been
done, and a'legiance sworn to, a person incapable of Empire, the Duke of
Swabia. lying at that very time under excommunication. The revocation of the
sentence by the Bishop of Sutr: was illegal, and is therefore void;
and, had it, been valid, the Duke has incurred the sentence anew by supporting
an enemy of the Church, Markwald von Anweiler. His election was unseemly, because
he was perjured, having broken his oath of allegiance to his nephew, in order
to usurp what he himself called that nephew’s birthright. And it is inexpedient
alike to place supreme power in the hands of one whos« whole race have been
enemies and persecutors of the Church ; and, by permitting one brother to
succeed to another, immediately after a son has succeeded to his father, to
suffer the Empire to become hereditary, and the Princes to lose their right of
election.
Thirdly, as
to Otho. If his election appear unallowable on account of the small number of
his electors, yet of the especial electors the numbers were equal (evidently,
Inno cent, recurring to the original five nations, considers the Duke of
Brabant as representing the Duke of Lorrain, and disallows the Margrave of
Brandenburg, notwithstanding his areh-chamberlainship, as not being at the
head of a distinct nation), and he was regularly crowned by the proper prelate
at the established place. His person :s unobjectionable, and if he be less
powerful than his antagonist, this is immaterial to the Pope, who is exalted
above all human fears.
Upon these
considerations, Innocent permits his ward’s ckim to drop, and positively
rejects the. Duke of Swabia’,s. He advises the German Princes either to unite
in a new election of an unobjectionable person, or to refer the whole to his
decision. If neither of these courses be adopted, His Holiness will be under
the necessity of recognising Otho, Duke of Brunswick and Earl of Poitou, as
King of the Homans, supporting him in every way, and inviting him to Rome to
receive the Imperial crown.
This Papal
Deliberation is said to have offended even Otho’s partyr, as a
flagrant encroachment upon the rights of the Princes of the Empire.(307)
Oeitainl}- it did not induce a fingle Ghibcline to desert Philip, but elicited
from his
party an earnest remonstrance against the Holy Father’s usurped pretensions,
and provoked from the King of France a strong protest against such an invasion
of the rights of monarchs. Otho felt very differently as to an usurpation, by
which he was likely to obtain possession of the royal rights to be so invaded :
and after some months of fruitless negotiation and exertion on the part of the
Legate to prevail upon both Kings to abdicate, he endeavoured to secure
Innocent’s future protection, whilst repaying the decision in his favour, by
taking, upon the 8th of June, 1201, the following singularly circumstantial
oath in the Legate’s hands: “ I, Otho, by the Grace of God King of the Romans,
&c., assure, vow, promise, and swear to thee, my Lord Pope Innocent, and to
thy successors, that all the possessions, honours, and rights of the Roman
Church, I will, to the best of my power, and in good faith, protect and
preserve. The possessions that the Roman Church has already recovered, I will
suffer her freely and quietly to retain, and faithfully assist her so to do.
Those which she has not yet recovered, I will, to the best of my power, assist
her to regain and to keep, and those that may come into my hands, I will,
without delay, deliver over to her. Herein are comprehended all the territories
between Radicofani and Ceperano, the exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, the
march of Ancona, the duchy of Spoleto, the county of Bertinoro, and the domains
of the Marchioness Matilda, and all adjacent lands, as described in divers
charters from the time of the Emperor Lewis. Also, I will assist the Roman
Church to preserve and defend the Kingdom of Sicily. Further, I will render to
thee, my Lord Pope Innocent, and thy successors, all the obedience and
reverence that pious and Catholic Emperors are wont to render to the Apostolic
See. I will govern myself by thy counsel and direction in maintaining and
confirming the customary privileges of the Roman people, as also in the affairs
of the Lombard and Tuscan Leagues. Even so will I obey thy counsel and
direction respecting peace and alliance with the King of France. Should the
Roman See bo involved in war on my account, I will assist her, as her need may
require. And all here promised, I will con
firm by oath,
and in writing, when I receive the Imperial crown.”
There is
here, it may be observed, no specific renunciation of such right of
interference in episcopal elections as the Calixtine Concordat left to the
emperors. Such renunciation was either held to be comprehended in some of the
vague expressions used, or more probably none was thought necessary, all right
of the kind whatever, being assumed by the Popes to have been always illegal
usurpation, and long since abandoned to them. The Bishop of Palestrina, then
Papal Legate in Germany, delighted with this cession of all the long disputed
territory, and probably deluding himself into the belief of what he wished,
wrote to Innocent that Philip was no more to be heard of, his few remaining
partisans only awaiting an opportunity of deserting him. whilst Otho would
forthwith take the field at the head of 100,000 men. So far were these
statements from being realized, that their self-evident falsehood might serve
to shew how much Innocent had been deceived by the misrepresentations of his
legates, with respect to this double election, as he \rill be seen, in the
course of the narrative, to be upon more than one other occasion.
It were
tedious and uninstructive to relate in detail the hostilitier and intrigues
that tilled Germany during the next few years; whilst to dwell upon the
concomitant atrocities, were both painful and revolting. The main incidents and
results will be fully sufficient. The first point of interest is the effect of
the Pope’s intervention ; and it is not a little astonishing to note the
disregard displayed by the German Princes, spiritual as w ell as temporal, for
excommunications and interdicts, such ns had blighted the reign and virtually
overturned the throne of Henry IV. Not a single partisan of Philip’s, though
all were cumulatively, hypothetically, and prospectively anathematized, did the
thunders of the Church scare from his side. When he was deserted, the lure was
palpable. In defiance of the interdict, all rites of the Church were everywhere
celebrated; bishops-elect were consecrated by excommunicated prelates ; the
Chapter of Magdeburg refused to depose their Ghibeline archbishop at the
Pope’s command, in order to substitute a
Guelph; the
Archbishop of Besangon invited the excommunicated Philip to visit him, and
receive in his Cathedral the homage and oaths of allegiance of the Burgundian
vassalage ; the Bishop of Spires seized and imprisoned two Papal messengers,
&c. It would, indeed, be surprising if a contempt of his authority, so
strikingly contrasted to the implicit submission he generally met with, had not
embittered Innocent’s feelings towards Philip.
The fortune
of war and negotiation at first favoured Otho, who took the field in both more
actively than his rival. If he failed to make himself master of the great
object of his father’s amibition, Goslar, he built a fortress over against it
that kept the citizens in constant alarm, besides obstructing their trade. His
relations with Denmark, though costly, were satisfactory. To Canute, the
husband of his half sister, succeeded Waldemar, who married his full sister,
Richenza, giving his own sister Helena to Otho’s younger brother, Duke William.
Waldemar celebrated his coronation at Lubeck, as King-
t S O
of the Danes
and Slavonians, Duke of Jutland, and Lord of all the German lands north of the
Elbe; by this last title asserting his sovereignty over the whole district from
the frontier of Holstein to the Oder, from the sea to the margraviate of
Brandenburg, including all the Slavonian territories left to the Lion when he
was reduced to the dukedom of Brunswick, but which his heirs had been unable to
defend against Denmark. Waldemar further took advantage of the weakness of the
divided and disputed Imperial authority, to renounce all vassalage to the Emperor,
not only for Denmark, but even for these German provinces. But Otho felt this
impairing of a patrimony, only part of which could be his, and of an Empire
that he still had to win by the sword, compensated by the security derived
from having a firm friend and powerful ally in his rear. Two of Philip’s
adherents Otho moreover seduced from him. The Landgrave of Thuringia, who was
somewhat unstable in his political attachments, be bribed with the promise of
two or three towns, and of assistance to subdue the Free Imperial city of
Nordhausen. The second, the King of Bohemia, was yet more disgracefully won.
Ottocar, having grown weary of his Queen, Digitized by Microsoft®
a sister of
the Margrave of Misnia, by whom he had a large family, sought to repudiate her,
and marry a young Hungarian princess, sister to the rival brothers, Einme- no
and Andreas. Elis Bohemian clergy, freely or coerced, sanctioned these
licentious proceedings; but it should seem that the intended bride’s royal
brothers, warned by the contested legality of the marriage of Philip Augustus
with Agnes von Andeehs, required more certainty of the wooers b(ing at liberty
to offer his hand. For this, a Papal sanction of his divorce was indispensable,
which Ot- tocar hoped to earn by supporting the Pope’s favourite candidate; and
Otho warmly recommended his suit to Innocent’s kind consideration. The Holy
Father, according to his usual practice upon such applications, directed
certain Cardinals to repair to the residence of the parties, inquire into the
facts of the case, and report to him whether there were or were not grounds for
annulling the marriage, that is to say, whether the husband and wife were or
were not related within the prohibited degree. A step seemingly indispensable
under the circumstances, though held by Ghibelines to indicate undue partiality
to Ottocar, or rather to his patron, Otho. The inquiry lingered through years,
without doubt purposely prolonged through such partiality, by the Cardinals, who
were reluctant to alienate Ottocar by speaking the truth; and during its
continuance, Ottocar managed to accomplish the nuptials he desired. Innocent
certainly never sanctioned this second marriage; he complained to the
Archbishop of Salzburg of Ottocar’s wedding another wife without waiting for
his decision,(3<IS) and never spoke of the Hungarian Princess but
as Ottocar’s concubine; but he does not appear to have taken any steps towards
compelling the unlawfully united pair to separate.
Philip,
himself an attached and constant husband, a devout, moral, and domestic man,
was disgusted by the King of Bohemia’s conduct, and willingly listened to the
family of the wronged Queen, amongst whom were some of the mightiest of the
German princes. Upon the complaint of her brother, the Margrave of Misnia, he
pronounced that Ottocar had by h<s misconduct forfeited his kingdom; which
he at cnce granted, strangely enough,
not to the
deposed monarch’s son by his discarded wife, the nephew of the Margrave, but to
a nephew of that deposed monarch’s, named Ladislas, Germanice Theobald, then a
student at Magdeburg, and likely, he perhaps thought, to introduce German
civilization among the Czechs. At the same time, seeing that only force could
decide the contest for the empire, Philip assembled troops and invaded
Thuringia, to begin by chastising his own renegade nephew the Landgrave.
Hermann applied for succour to his brother deserter, the King of Bohemia, who
hastened to his aid with an army against which Philip was, at the moment,
unable to make head. He evacuated Thuringia, escaping in person from Erfurt
under cover of the night. Ottocarnow resumed his original title of Duke of
Bohemia, not certainly as acknowledging his deposal by Philip, but as
considering the grant of his regal dignity void, because the act of an
unlawfully elected sovereign. Otho repaid the efficient assistance of his new
adherent, and the sacrifice, by a grant of the title that Ottocar had laid
aside, and crowning him king at Merseburg. But the atrocities that marked the
Czech line of march in Thuringia, by disgusting the Germans with such
partisans, ultimately proved as beneficial to Philip, as the seasonable aid had
momentarily been to his adversaries.
And here
Otho’s success ended. His grand reliance^ Richard of England, was no more : and
though John equally professed himself the champion of his nephew’s right to the
Empire, neither in power, valour, ability, nor yet in influence or inclination,
could he supply the place of his lion-hearted brother. The English money
promised to the Archbishop of Cologne, as well for himself as for Otho’s
service, was not forthcoming; and even this factious prelate gradually became
lukewarm in the cause of which he himself had been the originator. Philip
meanwhile profited by the growing unpopularity of C-tho, whose arrogant yet
coarsely rough demeanour presented a contrast, offensively striking to his own
courteous deportment and general affability. Again Philip led an army into
Thuringia, when evacuated by the Bohemians. Several of the Thuringian great
vassals joined him, and the Landgrave now returned to his natural
allegiance,
giving one of his sons as a hostage fur his fidelity to the nephew of his own
mother. The next desertion from Otho to Philip, was one more painful to the
feelings, and inauspicious to the hopes of the deserted. Palsgrave Henry, now
the head of the Welfs, was a warrior of known prowess, an approved skilful
diplomatist, and a returned Crusader. If he had felt hurt at being passed
over—because absent in the performance of a sacred duty—in favour of his yet
untried young brother, he had not discovered any such sentiment, strenuously
supporting Otho. In resentment of this support, Philip had invaded and occupied
the Palatinate, of which he now threatened to dispossess his cousin’s husband;
and Henry, therefore, demanded a new division of the territories left to the
three brothers by their father, of which he, though the eldest, appears to have
had a very small portion, probably because deemed amply endowed as lthine Palsgrave.
Being threatened with the loss of his wife’s patrimony, the Palatinate, as the
penalty of his aid to Otho, he now claimed Brunswick, with some other towns, in
compensation. This Otho resisted, upon the plea that any such measure, before
he should be undisputed master of the Empire, would look like weakness, and be
prejudicial to his interests. Henry, in his anger at the ungrateful refusal,
recovered the far more valuable Pali- tinate, by doing homage and swearing
allegiance to his own as well cs his wife’s kinsman, Philip, whose army he
reinforced with all his vassals. Otho was marching upon Goslar to renew the
siege, when he learned his brother’s defection, and he immediately abandoned
the attempt. Fhilip committed the government and defence of that key of Saxony,
as Goslar was esteemed, to the Rhine-Palsgrave.
Philip, at
the head of the army with which he had recovered Thuringia, now invaded the
principality of his most dreaded opponent, the Archbishop of Cologne; and Adolf,
who had sickened of the task he had undertaken, ever since his disappointment
of the promised pecuniary supplies from England, now became seriously alarmed
for the result. The Archbishop of Treves thought this a favourable opportunity
for prevailing upon his former
colleague to
give up his enterprise; and, in concert with the Earl of Juliers, like himself
a seceder from the anti- Swabian faction, he made overtures both to the now
vacillating Archbishop of Cologne, and to the Duke of Brabant; who was at once
irritated by Otho’s non-completion of his marriage contract, and less desirous
of its completion, as clouds seemed more and more to overshadow his intended
son-in-law’s prospect of the Empire. Philip upon this occasion lavished money,
of which his lay negotiator, William of Juliers, was greedy; and in November,
1204, the Earl, conjointly with his archiepisco- pal colleague, concluded
treaties with both Archbishop and Duke. Philip restored to the see of Cologne
all the territories he had conquered from it, with some small addition ; the
Duke of Brabant obtained the admission of women’s right of inheritance to
Utrecht, Nimeguen, and some other of his Imperial fiefs. Each received a sum of
several thousand marks, as well for himself as professedly to buy off
Lotharingian partisans of Otho’s; and both did homage to Philip before the end
of the month. Their example was of course followed by many of Otho’s prelates
and nobles.
The two
Archbishops, Philip’s original enemies, now appointed a Diet to meet at Achen
upon the 6th of January, 1205, for the purpose of remedying the irregularities
that had been held to invalidate that Prince’s election. The Diet was most
numerously attended, even of the Lotharingian princes only the Duke of Limburg
appearing to have absented himself. Philip laid down his crown, and as Duke of
Swabia and Tuscany solicited the suffrages of the assembled Estates of the
Empire. All present having repaired to Achen for the express purpose of giving
them, deliberation was needless. He was at once unanimously elected, and, with
his wife Irene, duly crowned in Charlemagne’s Cathedral, with the proper
regalia, and by the proper prelate, the Archbishop of Cologne. In his election
and coronation there was no longer a flaw in the estimation of Germany, where a
papal sentence of excommunication was not then allowed to incapacitate for any
dignity.
Innocent and
Ottocar were Otho’s only remaining
vor, rr 21
efficient
supporters, Waldemar II taking no active part in behalf of his brotfcer-in law.
Far otherwise the Pope. He exhorted Otho to be firm; he wrote to King John to
send bis nephew the money promised him by Richard; he upbraided the German
princes, by letter, with tneii desertion of their lawful sovereign for the
excommunicated Duke of Swabia. He excommunicated the Archbishop 01 Cologne,
and authorized Siegfrid, the Guelph Arehbishop-elect of Mama, whose election he
had instantly confirmed, but who was yet unccnsecrated, jointly with the
Archbishop of Cambrai, to depose Adolf and procure the election of a successor
to that see. The two Guelph prelates willingly obeyed, and the choice of the
equally Guelph Chapter fell upon Graf Bruno von Sayn, Dean of the Bonn church,
and bis election again the Pope instantly confirmed. But so offensive were these
measures to the German Hierarchy, that no compatriot prelate of adequate
dignity could be found to consecrate these doubtfully elected anti-archbishops,
Siegfrid and Bruno; and it became necessary to invite over two English prelates
to perform the indispensable ceremony.
This deposal
of Archbishop Adolf is the most arbitrary act recorded of Innocent, and little
estimable as that, fickle, as well as factious, prelate may appear, it is one
difficult to reconcile to the thorough singleness of purpose, ascribed to this
pontiff, since he deprived a canonically elected, lawfully installed prelate,
of ecclesiastical office and dignity fcr a cause purely political With respect
to Mainz the case was different; there a double election having occurred, he
might, not very unfairly, argue that the exercise of the acknowledged Imperial
right of intervention by Philip, whom he did r.ot recognise as a scvereign,
vitiated Leopold’s election by the great majority of the Chapter, thus leaving
Siegfrid the only candidate elected. Apparently, the tendency of the human mind
to adhere to any purpose, opinion, or feeling, with a pertinacity increasing
in proportion to the opposition encountered, and to give the reins to passion
when temperate measures fail of success, really blinded the Pope to the
injustice he was committing.
Philip raised
an army to reinstall Adolf: Otl.o des-
patched what
troops he could collect, under the Duke of Limburg, to assist Bruno in
defending Cologne, of which he was in actual possession; the usual political
opposition between every prelate and his episcopal city having overbalanced,
in the Archbishop’s flock, the usual loyalty of towns to the Swabian Emperors.
The archbishopric Mas ravaged by the allies of the rival archbishops; and
Philip besieged Cologne, where Otho had joined Bruno. After some alternations
of success, Philip won over the Duke of Limburg to his side; and the Duke,
aided perhaps by the fact that the Archbishop present in the city was a Guelph,
persuaded the citizens to follow his example. Otho, upon discovering this
defalcation, fled, accompanied by Prince Walram of Limburg, who had formerly
betrayed Philip’s trust; Bruno was detained as a prisoner, and Cologne sued for
pardon and peace. Both were freely granted, Adolf wtS reinstalled, and this
important city was Philip’s.
Much about
this time he recovered his other deserter, Ottocar of Bohemia, who having at
length obtained his Hungarian princess, without a papal ratification of his
divorce, cared little about obtaining it; though, whilst his matrimonial sin
was incomplete, the dilatory proceedings of Innocent are said to have so
angered him, as to have indisposed him towards the cause favoured by the Pope.
And this, whilst Ghibelines aver the dilatoriness to be an unfair mode of
avoiding to displease a supporter of Otho’s, and severely censured Innocent for
not compelling Ottocar, as he did Philip Augustus, to take back his lawful
wife. The fact seems to be that the Holy Father was perplexed by unsatisfactory
reports: for as late as in 1810, after Philip’s death, judges in the matter
were again appointed both at Rome and in Germany.(309) Ottocar’s new
brother-in-law, Lewis Duke of Bavaria, who had married another Hungarian
princess, negotiated his reconciliation with Philip, one condition of which
was the marriage of Ottocar’s eldest son and heir, Wenceslas, with Philip’s
eldest daughter, Cunegunda. Her son’s alliance with the Imperial House possibly
tended to satisfy the repudiated Queen of Bohemia, and her Misnian kindred,
with Philip’s thus leaving her cause wholly to the Pope; and they appear to
have made no complaint, when
iii the year
1206, Ottoear, declaring openly for Philip, was again well received by hirn,
and acknowledged as King.
To
countervail oil these triumphs of his antagonist’s, Otho had only the capture
and plunder of Goslar by his troops ; and so helplessly forsaken did he feel
himself, that, abandoning the field as it seemed to Philip, he passed over into
England. But he went in search of means to renew the contest, by pressing his
royal uncle for the promised effective support. John received the Imperial
petitioner with a profuse magnificence, in which he wasted the money that might
have given an army to Otho, who carried back to Germany only about 5000 marks.
The following
year, Philip, at the earnest prayer of Cologne, kept the Easter festival in
that reconciled city. It was attended by Burgundian and Italian princes, as the
Marquess of Este, though related to Otho, and the Earl of Savoy, who came to do
homage and receive investiture of their fiefs, from him, in whom they now
acknowledged the undisputed King of the Romans and future Emperor. Upon the
same occasion he affianced his second daughter, Mary, to the eldest son and
heir of the Duke of Brabant.
In this
triumphant condition, Philip earnestly strove to conciliate his only remaining
formidable enemy, hitherto so inveterate, the Pope : thus to obtain certain and
absolute relief from the sentence of excommunication, under which he and his
adherents still lay. For this purpose he sent aa embassy, headed by the
Patriarch of Aquileiu, to Rome, to endeavour to open a negotiation with
Innocent. The Patriarch bore a letter addressed by Philip to the Holy Father;
narrating and vindicating his conduct generally, ever since the death of Henry
VI, and especially in regard to his nephew Frederic; offering to submit all the
points, upon which the Pope conceived he had grounds of complaint against him
to the arbitration of Cardinals and German Princes, good and just men ; and
referring his own grounds of complaint against Ilis Holiness, to the conscience
of His Holiness himself, in whom he acknowledged the Vicar of Christ upon
earth. It has been alleged that he further offered one of his daughters, with
the larger part of the Matildan heritage, to wit, Tuscany, the duchy of
Spoleto, and the inarch of Ancona, as her Digitized by Microsoft<8>
portion, for
one of the Pope’s nephews. Whether the offer were made is very doubtful, (sl°)
and that nothing came of it is certain.
Innocent was
manifestly pleased with the communication, and appointed two Cardinals,
Ugolino di Segni, his own near relation, afterwards Pope Gregory IX, and Leo
Brancaleone, to accompany Philip’s embassadors back to Germany, and treat with
the monarch—but still only as Duke of Swabia, his second election being
vitiated, in papal judgment, by his excommunication. This mission was, however,
more of a proper Christian Churchman’s. The instructions of the Legates were,
to require the Duke of Swabia’s oath to obey the Pope in those points, disobedience
in which had incurred the anathema of the Church, and to abandon his two
Archbishops, of Mainz and Cologne, to their fate; upon receiving which oath the
Legates were to relieve him from excommunication, and readmit him into the pale
of the Church. This done, they were to mediate peace between Philip and Otho.
The required
oath was vague, and a reconciliation with the Pope of vital importance to
Philip; he therefore took it, and prevailed upon the two prelates to submit
their claims, voluntarily, to Papal decision, repairing to Rome, there to plead
their own cause. The two Cardinals thereupon relieved Philip, and the nowT
submissive Archbishops, from excommunication ; and Innocent, by letter, congratulated
Philip upon his readmission into the Church.(311)
The mediation
between the rival monarchs experienced greater difficulties; but, the disorders
in Germany appearing to be the main obstacle to that chief object of Innocent’s
desires, an Imperial Crusade, indefatigable, inextinguishable was the zeal of
his Legates. Years before, when the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Grand-Master
of the Templars had attended a Diet at Nordhausen to solicit aid for Palestine,
Philip had pledged himself to undertake its relief, as soon as he should be in
uncontested possession of the Empire. Stimulated by such a prospect, the Legates
journeyed backwards and forwards from court to court; but fruitlessly they
journeyed ; fruitlessly did they even bring about two interviews between the
rivals, and press upoii them tjjje irrms which the Pope
desired both
parties to accept. These were, that Philip should be King of the Romans and
Emperor, giving Otho the eldest of his still unaffianced daughters to wife,
with the duchy of Swabia and some of his Franconian fiefs fcr her portion; a3
the price of O^ho’s renouncing his pretensions to the crown, and doing homage
to his future fathei-in-law, as King.(ala) To facilitate an arrangement
so desirable the Legates offered the two necessary dispensations; the one,
releasing Otho from his inchoate engagement to the Brabant princess; the other,
more difficult, and never granted by Innocent but for some urgent political
object, such as the present, a dispensation sanctioning the proposed marriage,
notwithstanding the consanguinity of the parties—Philip and Otho were second
cousins. Philip readily acceded to the Pope’s proposals ; but to all the
Legates’ arguments, Otho. at both interviews, arrogantly replied, that only
with his life would he renounce his crown, but that he would remunerate
Philip’s renunciation with gifts far more splendid than what were offered to
himself. What the splendid gifts designed for the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany
and Lord of nearly halt' Franconia, by the heir of a third of the duchy of
Brunswick, might be, was neither stated nor asked. The proposal was at once
declined, and ail the Cardinals could achieve was the conclusion of a
twelvemonth’s truce, during which to continue their pacific endeavours. Even
this armisti< e was a real concession and sacrifice on the part of l’hi|ip,
who had a considerable army to disband ; a gain on Otho’s, who had only the
vassals of Brunswick and Liineberg in arms.
During this
year of truce, negotiations were carried on at Home, under the mediation and
arbitration of Innocent in person. Tbnir tenor is unknown, having been kept
secret whilst in progress, and their significance being annihilated by the
course of events. Otho professed apprehensions of an unfavourable papal decision,
and loudly complained that, in Germany, the Legates had been bribed; an
accusation abundantly refuted by the character of one cf them, at least, namely
of him who was to be Gregory IX. Otho’s apprehensions might likewise have been
allayed by the letters Innocent addressed to him, Digitized by Microsoft®
which spoke
the language of encouragement. Philip, equally and more justly, distrusted the
arbitrator to whose sentence he had submitted his claims; and this, although
the Legates had more than insinuated that the Holy Father had nearly made up
his mind to abandon Otho’s cause, both as hopeless, and as the principal
obstacle to the ardently desired Crusade. Meanwhile, as the year of truce drew
towards a close, Philip summoned the Princes of the Empire again to assemble
around his standard, in order to crush the anti-king. Otho, on the other part,
had obtained a promise of active support from Waldemar, whom he now called upon
to fulfil his engagements, and take the field with him. On neither side, were the
military preparations interrupted by the intelligence that the Legates—who
appear to have been recalled to Rome there to assist in the negotiations—were
on their return, charged with the result of all these diplomatic labours, and
the Pope’s own decision.
All
the horrors of civil war were again impending over Germany, in addition.to the
evils inflicted by ten years of not only virtual interregnum, in the want of an
efficiently controlling, sovereign authority, but of struggle for that
authority. This last was a fearful calamity, since it obliged the contending
monarchs to court partisans; and therefore to connive at the transgression of
those wise laws, by which their predecessors had laboured to suppress
intestine wars, and the plunder of the weak by the strong. Again, princes and
nobles were deluging the land with the blood of their vassals, shed in their
private quarrels; again, robber-knights sought the maintenance of themselves
and their followers upon the high roads, whilst the rival kings endeavoured not
to see evils they were powerless to remedy. An instance or two of this wiH
sufficiently shew the state of the country. Palsgrave Otho of Wittelsbach, a
younger branch, it will be recollected, of the ducal house of Bavaria, having
some quarrel with a nobleman bearing the name of Welf, though quite unconnected
with the great Welf family, murdered him in the very court of the Duke of
Bavaria; and the only notice Philip durst take of the crime, by no means the
single deed of violence laid to the Bavarian Palsgrave’s charge, Digitized
by Microsoft® ,
was to revoke
a promise previously given him of the hand of one of his little daughters. And
for this step he alleged a different motive, namely, consanguinity within the
prohibited degrees, for which it was most unlikely that the Pope would grant
the requisite dispensation. Again, a brother of the Bishop of Wurzburg, upon
some alleged idle suspicion, seized the Dean of the Chapter of Magdeburg, upon
the public road, and put out his eyes. And the Bishop of Wurzburg, himself,
upon h'is way to church, was assaulted by private enemies—whom his endeavours
to repress robbery are supposed to have provoked—murdered, and after death
brutally mangled. These atrocities were perpetrated prior to the negotiations
conducted by the Legates. Innocent, in his epistles, dilates upon such crimes,
as the inevitable consequences of the schism in the Empire, caused by Philip’s
pertinacious retention of the usurped crown. The Germans, with the sole exception
of the now' very small Guelph faction imputed the schism itself, and the
consequent disorders, to the Pope’s unjust protection of Otho, in which they
saw no object, but the weakening cf the Imperial power.(313)
Philip had
promised his niece Beatrice, the only child of his deceased brother Ctho Earl
or Duke of Burgundy —his title seems uncertain—to Otlio Duke of Meran. But the
lady, though an only child and a princess, does not appear to have inherited
her grandmother’s county of Burgundy, with the vicaricte of the whole of Burgundy
thereto annexed; bringing her bridegroom, already the first Tyrolese nohleman,
only some Burgundian and Tyrolese domains, to which her royal uncle added the
Burgundian palatinate, as her portion. The Bishop of Bamberg, Egbert von
Andechs, being a brother of the Duke of Meran, requested that a marriage, so
flattering to his family, might be celebrated in his own Cathedral, and invited
Philip, with his whole court, to visit him for the purpose at his magnificent
episcopal fortress-palace, the Altenburg. Philip accepted the invitation, and
the nuptial festivities being so arranged as immediately to precede the end of
the armistice, he appointed Bamberg as the place of assemblage for his
Ghibeline army. Upon the 21st of June, Philip, though somewhat indisposed, led
his niece,
attended by his vrhole Court, to the high aitar of the Bamberg Cathedral, and
there bestowed her upon his reverend host’s brother. The maiviage solemnized,
the royal party returned to the Altenburg.
The Altenburg
is, or was, one of the most remarkable of the fortress-palaces adjoining
episcopal cities, which, in addition to the intramural episcopal palace annexed
to the Cathedral, the prince-bishops of Germany appear to have very generally
possessed. These external castles served for an asylum from the violence of the
prelate’s often tumultuary, even rebellious flock; whence, when situated like
the Altenburg, they, in a military sense, commanded the city. But its military
strength was not the only merit of the Altenburg, the original ancestral castle
of the Babenberg race, prior to their connexion with Austria. The position was
majestically beautiful. Standing upon the Eastern extremity of a range of
hills, although protected in its rear by yet loftier heights, so elevated is
its site, that the almost panoramic view thence enjoyed is only in one place
interrupted. Upon three sides, it overlooks an undulating country covered with
villages, gardens, vineyards, woods, and cornfields, watered by the
serpent-like winding Main, and its tributary the Regnitz, and bounded, by the
distant mountain ridges of Saxony and Bohemia. Immediately at the foot of its
precipitous acclivity, appears, in what looks like a hollow, the singularly
hilly city of Bamberg, running up and down, at least five steep, if not very
lofty, hills, one of which is crowned by the Cathedral, with its four
distinguishing towers.
To this
Altenburg the bridal party returned, when the ceremony was over; and Philip,
his malady somewhat increased by the exertion he had made to do his niece
honour, retired to his own apartment. There, whilst his Queen sat down with the
company to the wedding banquet, he was bled, and remained with two favourite
companions certainly, his Chancellor, Conrad Bishop of Spires, and Heinrich
von Waldburg, his Sewer, and perhaps a Chamberlain. Philip is said to have been
a patron of the Arts, a lover of poetry. As such he could hardly be insensible
to the beauties of nature; and may be supposed to have beeu reposing in
untroubled enjoy-
merit of the
smiling prospect, and of friendly conversation, when disturbed by a tap at the
door. The King’s domestic tastes and habits rendered the restraints of court
ceremonial irksome to him, and little regular attendance seems therefore to
have been exacted of his household officers. Upon the present occasion, all
would be drawn away from their posts, by the nuptio.l celebration and
pleasures. Neither page, chamberlain, nor even a menial servant was in waiting
upon the retired King. The tap was therefore followed by the unceremonious
entrance of Palsgrave Otho of Witfcelsbach, newly arrived to join the army, who
has already been mentioned as a faithful adherent of Philip’s, though so
recklessly violent in character and conduct that even in his adn’iuistration of
justice, he actcd mere like a savage than the officer of an organized society.
The Bavarian Palsgrave’s occasional outrages, if they had caused Philip to
revoke his acceptance of him as a son-ia-law, bad not, seem: ngljf,
impaired the intimacy to which the monarch had admitted his vassal; an intimacy
resulting rather from mutual admiration on the battle-field, where both shone
conspicuous for prowess and valiancy, than from any congeniality of
disposition. The scene, that ensued upon his entrance, is so astounding, as
well as unaccountable, the two, or at most three witnesses must have been so
bewilderingly agitated, that the few discrepancies occurring in the narratives
of different contemporaneous writers cannot be matter of surprise. Nor are they
very material, since, respecting the principal facts, no doubt has ever
existed. These are authenticated by the report which the Legates, then 011
their way to Philip’s Court, transmitted to the Pope, relating what, upon their
arrival, they had learned.
The scene is
as follows. The Palsgrave unannounced, entered the King’s chamber, his sword
either in his hand, or immediately drawn, flourishing it about, and fencing —i
making passes without an antagonist may bs so called—much as he was wont, it is
said, to do, for the amusement of Philip, who took much pleasure in observ- b.g
his great dexterity in the use of his weapon. The King, whether in his invalid
condition he felt the flashing of the steel an annoyance, or because fhe
Bishop, as has
been
supposed, was frightened—though Churchmen were in those days no strangers to
the use of arms—desired him to sheath his sword, the place not being suited to
such play. The Palsgrave answered, “NGr is it play! Thou shalt now pay for thy
falsehood!” rushed upon Philip and struck him in the neck. This is the most
general account; but one old Chronicler says, that Otho entered with a drawn
sword concealed under his garments, and, instantly brandishing it, fell upon
the King, thus rendering the introductory dialogue impossible. Whichever were
the previous course, no sooner was the blow struck, than Waldburg springing
upon the assassin, grappled with him, and was cut in the cheek—the scar, an
honourable monument of his loyalty, he bore till his death Upon feeling the
wound, he momentarily relaxed his grasp, when the Palsgrave, breaking from him,
fled. Philip had started from his couch, he took a step or two forward, and
fell dead upon the floor, the main artery being cut.(sw)
The tumult
and confusion in the castle may be better imagined than described. The King’s
death once ascertained, his faithful friends thought, for the moment, only of
rescuing, from what seemed the explosion of a formidable conspiracy, the
imperilled remaining scions of the Imperial house of Swabia, Philip’s infant daughters
and pregnant widow, upon whom—the Sicilian Frederic being little known and less
considered—rested well nigh the last hopes of the Ghibelines. Irene, stupefied
by the suddenness of the overwhelming calamity, was removed, scarcely
conscious, by her attendants, to the ancestral castle of the Hohenstaufen;
where, sinking under the blow, she prematurely gave birth to a dead child, and
died. The Bishop of Spires carried off the two children to what he judged a
secure asylum—the two affianced princesses appear to have been previously
delivered ever to their respective future fathers-in-law, to be educated at the
courts over which they were to preside ; no unusual or unwise practice of early
times. These measures of precaution on the part of the Ghibelines are very
intelligible, and not unreasonable; but what is absolutely incomprehensible is
the coaduti; of ive brothers cf the bridegroom
just received
into the Imperial family, the Bishop of Tlamberg and the Margrave of Istria.
They—whether Otho, after the deed was done, did or did not seek a refuge in the
Bishop’s apartments, whether he were or were r.ot accompanied to Philip’s door
bv ten or fifteen of the Andechs men-at-arms, the story is told all four ways—
lied, as precipitately as the murderer.
The possible
motives impelling the Palsgrave to the regicide, and the complicity or
non-complicity of the fugitive Andechs brothers, are questions that have exercised.
the ingenuity of innumerable historians, and have been, and can only be
conjecturally answered. A very remarkable circumstance is, that no one appears
to have even suspected the sole person w ho could profit by the crime, Otho IV,
of having instigated ;t. To individual resentment only, can it
therefore be ascribed; and the purity of Philip’s moral character puts the
usual cause of resentment against princes, jealousy, out of the question. The
vindictive feelings of the Palsgrave are attributed by some writers to Philip’s
retracting his promise of the hand of his infant daughter; by others, to his disappointing
him in regard to another matrimonial projcct. According to thece, Palsgrave
Otho, when he had lost all hope of an imperial and royal wife, desiring to wed
a daughter of Henry the Bearded, Duke of Lower Silesia, by Hedwig von Andechs,
sister to the Duke of Meran, the Bishop of Bamberg and the Margrave of Istria,
asked the King for a letter of recommendation to the Duke. He received a sealed
packet; in a somewhat indecorous fit of curiosity, broke the seal; and found a
statement of the conduct which had prevented Philip from fulfilling his own
engagement to give him one of his daughters; and, it has been added, advice to
make away with the suitor. No part of this story is generally ciedited, whilst
the sanguinary portion is almost unanimously rejected. If the other part be
true, such a revelation of liis faults—though seemingly due to a father whose
child he sought in marriage—not being the recommendation Otho had asked, might
well exasperate such a man to a sudden passion of revenge. But only by one of
those who thus account for the Palsgrave’s tary, is the transaction represented
as recent; and .he very manner Digitized by Microsoft ®
of its
perpetration proves, that neither symptoms of resentment on Otho’s part, nor
consciousness of having given cause for such feelings on Philip’s, had interrupted
their habitual familiar intercourse. Again, this story, if true, affords no
light relative to the Andechs brothers. The bride, whom the Palsgrave lost
through the letter, ■was the daughter of their sister, the canonized
Hedwig; and a warning of the ungovernable temper, and reckless disregard of
human life in him who sought her, might be expected to awaken her uncles’
gratitude. Assuredly, it could never provoke them to conspire with the
disappointed wooer, in the very palace of the Bishop, against bis royal guest,
who was even then receiving their elder brother, the head of their house, into
his own family. That historians so generally admit their complicity as certain,
is not the least strange part of this singular regicide. Would not the
bewilderment of terror, produced by the sudden catastrophe in the episcopal
palace —especially if the assassin did, in the first instance, seek shelter in
his reverend host’s private apartments—be a more rational explanation of the
flight of the brothers ? And that flight is not only the sole proof against
them, but the solitary suspicious circumstance. The whole affair is so
unaccountable, that, with Raumer’s remark— “A veil still hangs over the crime,
which none of the sources of information at our command enable us to lift”— the
problem must be left, unsolved, to future investigation, with the chance that
some as yet unknown document may be found to throw light upon Palsgrave Otho’s
motives^3'5)
,
■ '
■
■
.
■
■
>
(1) p. 3. Vol. i, p. 367.
(2) p. 5. This division of the army into Free and
Non-Free, or Servi, has given rise to disputes amongst later historians, one of
whom, Luden, conjectures the non-free to have been the townsmen. But it is
difficult to see how the word servi could be applied to a class of which even
the inferior portion, the handicraftsmen, were by this time very generally
enfranchised in most countries; in Germany, by a charter of Henry V’s. It seems
more likely that tlie villeins (leiteigene), whom their lords brought with them
as their personal attendants—and perhaps others of the higher grade (hiirige),
as a sort of infantry—were the servi whose good conduct was to be thus insured.
The code is valuable, as the proof of a step towards superseding Judicial
Combat and the Ordeal, by evidence.
(3) p. 6. Tacitus.
(4) p. 6. Vol. i, p. 100.
(5) p. 8. Gospel of St. Luke, ch. 6, v. 38.
(6) p. 8. Radevicus, Ser Raul,
Luden, Raumer, Johannes de Mussis, Vincent, Prag. This
small proportion of cavalry, in days, when knights, with their complement of
men-at-arms constituting a Lance, seem to have been the main force of armies,
is perplexing: hut though the old chroniclers differ as to the numbers of the
foot—Radevicus makes the 100,000 include the whole—nearly all agree in the
15,000 well-armed horsemen.
(7) p. 11. Radevicus. He does not explain whether
this right of confirming included that of rejecting; but if it did not, it was
so mere a form as hardly to be worth snch special reservation.
(8) p. 11. It is impossible not to remark the
inconsistencies of the enemies of Frederic Barbarossa, in their inculpations of
this great Emperor. ■Whilst Sismondi infers, from the great leniency of
the conditions imposed upon Milan that he must have felt himself virtually
defeated,—an idea not very compatible with the account of the Imperial army,
the submission of Milan, and tbs other facts of the case—Lud:n, who allows
those conditions
not
to have been really degrading to tlie Milanese, adduces the manner in which
they were obliged to ask pardon, as a proof of Frederic’s hatred and contempt
for cities and citizens. The reader has aheady seen, and will farther see,
vassal princes submitting to the same humiliating furm ; stated by (acob Grimm,
in his Rlchts. Alierthumer, to be the
regular mode in which freemen asked their sovereign’s pardon; the sword hanging
from the neck of the noble and the cord round that of the non-noble, being the
confession of having deserved, the first, decapitation, the last, hanging.
(9) p. 13. The title of Doctor of Law appears to
have come into use about this time. Early in the century, Irnerius is. in legal
documents, called Judex and Co.usidims, in contemporary chronicles, Magitttr;
never Doctor. A. little later Walfridus is indiscriminately termed Judex,
Maguter, and Doctor, which last title the jurists long endeavoured to
monopolize
(10) p. 15. Hallam..
(11) p. 16. These words may require some
qualification. The first mention of a Podesta in modern history and as a
mediaeval magistrate, this certainly is. But in ancient tim.is, if Cicero only
uses the word potestas vaguely, as meaning any one possessing authority,
Juvenal distinctly employs it as the title of a specific magistrate:
“
Fideriaruin, Gabioruinve esse Potestas.”
(12) p. 19. As both letters are extant, and most
historians reckon them amongst the chief causes of irritation between the
correspondents, they have been named as such; but it is proper to add that
Muratori doubts their authenticity; whilst, if admitted, the cause seems -very
inadequate to the effect.
(13) p. 20. Saugny, Vincent. Prag.
(14) p. 21. Old Guelphs and modern liberals call
Frederic a faithless tyrant, for this breach of the term:, spontaneously
granted to Milan after her surrender;—capitulation, as called by some, it was
not;—even Mr. Ilallam thus condemning him. No doubt both parties were in the
wrong;—in what quarrel, public or private, is this not the case ? But does he
deserve tlie uame of a faithless tyrant for indulging the idea—if a strained
interpretation, one in which Diet and Jurists concurred—that the subsequent
oath of the Milanese, to obey the laws by which all their fellow countryman
were to be governed, superseded that grant ?
(15) p. 22. Radevicus; who thus gives and remarks
upon their answer: “ Juravimus quidem, sed juramenium attenuere non
promiaimus.” Digna lesponsio, at moribus oratio consonaret, et qui
pravo et perfide vivere et faeere, consueverant, aliter ac perfide et pravo
looui non potuissent. Otto Morena does not cite the words,
but after stating that all swore j erpetual peace and observance of the
Roncaglia laws, giving hostages for tueir good faith, proceeds to say: “
Quamvis minus de mensibus septem Mediolanense*
et
Cremonenses haec obscrvaverint, imo ante hoc spatium Laudenses, cum nullum
adliuc ipsis malum ullo modo intulissent, invadentes, ipsam pacem violaverunt.”
.
(16) p. 30. Otto Morena.
(17) p. 33. The words “Professor of Theology” are
something of an anachronism, the diligently investigating Tiraboschi deeming no
such Chair to have been established at Bologna before the thirteenth century.
But Ban- dinelli had taught religion and expounded the Bible there, and it is
not easy to devise another title that as simply expresses this duty.
(18) p. 41. Hasse.
(19) p. 41. Muratori, Acerbus Morena, Ser Raul, and
Otto de S. Blasic, expressly mention the permission to take away as much as
each could carry.
(20) p. 41. Historians, even of the present day, e.
g. Raumer on the one side and Luden on the other, dispute with a vehcmence
quite uncalled for, whether the fortifications only, or the edifices public,
private, and sacred also, were destroyed; whether a ploughshare was or was not
passed over the site, and salt sown in the furrow; as if such corroboration
rather than enhancement of Milan’s doom—stated by Luden and Voigt, upon
Lombard authority— stamped Frederic an actual barbarian. What should the
expelled citizens care for the condition of the empty houses they were never
more to inhabit ? Whole or in ruins they would equally serve the purpose to
which, in Italy, as elsewhere, deserted temples, palaces, and houses, were, if
they no longer are, habitually applied; namely, to furnish materials for new
buildings. The fate of private dwellings—with the exception of the lofty towers
of the fortress mansions, which he might think fostered the pride and temerity
of their owners—wTas probably of little moment in the eyes of the
Emperor. The churches he would hold it sacrilege to destroy ; and Raumer
proves, even by Milanese authorities, that they were, by his orders, spared,
whilst the Guelph Muratori admits that spared they were. His real ohject,
though he might consider it fair to retaliate upon Milan the ruin of Lodi and
Como, evidently Was, in punishing the past, to prevent the future rebellions of
this mighty city, by extinguishing its municipal and belligerent vitality;
w'hich the dispersion of the citizens effectually accomplished. In a letter of
his, in Martene’s Thesaurus, after
saying he had given the rebels their lives through clemency, he adds: “ Ne
prsedictis hostibus occasio malignandi vel facultas rebellandi praestetur,
fossata complanamus, muros subvertimus, turres omnes destruimus, et totam
civitatem, in ruinam et desolationem ponimus.” So far, indeed, were Frederic
and his contemporaries from deeming the fate of Milan a blot in his escutcheon,
that, whilst Acerbo Morena, the continuator of Otto, in narrating it, calls him
“ clementissimus Imperator,” he himself for a while dated from it as 8 glorious
epoch. Muratori, from a legal document, quotes these words; “ Datum apud
Taurinum, post destructionem Med'olani xv
Kalend.
Septem.’" It may be added that whether the Lodesans, Comascans, and their
allies, invigorated by their thirst for vengeance, razed the fortifications of
Jlilan—the estimated work of months—in three weeks, or were compelled by the
masshe strength of the wall*, to return again and again to the welcome task, is
likewise still disputed, and Sismonrli was one of the disputants.
(21) p. 41. Ilurter.
(22) p. 41. Vol. i, p. 131, note 282.
(23) p. 43. Ib., p.
322.
(24) p. 17. Stenzel.
(25) p 48. Id. Abbt' Raynal.
(20) p. 62. Luden, Helmold.
(27) p. 67. Saugny.
(28) p. 67. Alanno.
(29) p. 68. The name is variously spult, Barasone,
Barassonc, Bariso, Barisone uid Barissone; the choice amongst these forms seems
immaterial.
(30) p. 68. Raimer, Oberti Anna!.
(31) p. 69. The
modern historian of Sardinia, IIanno, a decided Guelpn, represents this whole
transaction as an unwarrantable usurpation on the part of Frederic, whom Barasone
bribed thus wantonly to despoil his uncle Wolf; thus confirming Muratori, who
calls him venal, in reference both to this affaii and to his occasional
acceptance of the offers of cities, partly to defray the expense of expeditions
against their rivals. The transaction relative to Sardinia is, perhaps, in
point of justice, the most questionable of this reign: but the charge of
usurpation rests wholly upon the papal claim to countries reconquered from
unbelievers. Frederic would naturally consider a conquest made by a member of
the Empire (which Pisa was), as becoming thereby a part of the Empire, held by
the conqueror in v assalage, liable, as a fief, to forfeiture, end in sach
cas». at the disposal of the Emperoi and Diet conjointly. His exempting the
new made king from the mesne suzerainty of Pisa, would -eem only an angry
retort ot Pica’s denial of his paramount sovereignty over the island. With
respcct to Duke Wt{f, it is not clear whether he did or did not intend to
deprive him of his feudal superiority,—ai all events a mer“ name,—which he had
never even attempted to enforce over either Sardinia or Pisa, and for which he
could easily make him compensation. W elf made no recorded complaint, upon the
lubfect; and indeed, after his acceptance of the Matildan heritage in lieu of
his eupty claim to Bavaria, showed no dissatisfaction with his Imperial nephew.
In regard to venality, it is to be recollected thst whilst there was no
established system of taxation, the redemption of services, sale of privileges,
offenngs upon specific occasions, and casual voluntary offerings, were regular
sources of the sovereign’s often very scanty revenue. That Frederic reiected
such offerings when he sup.
posed
them made with objectionable views, has been seen; bat why should he decline
them when the purpose of the offerer harmonized with his own designs ?
(32) p. 69. The word sensuous to express the relations of the
senses— as sensuous impressions, sensuous pleasures, untainted by sensuality,
is now so well established in the language of metaphysics, that its adoption in
history scarcely seems to need explanation or apology.
(33) p. 75. Thierry.
(34) p. 76. James, in his Life of Richard
Coeur-de-Lion, represents Archbishop Reginald’s visit to England as purely a
pilgrimage to Thomas a Becket’s tomb, of which Henry II availed himself to
reconcile the prelate to the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, making the matrimonial
negotiation originate in the intercourse of the several parties. Upon this
representation, it will suffice to remark, that the most ardently active
partisan of Pascal, as Reginald had been, and will the very next year still be
found, would hardly have volunteered a pilgrimage to the tomb of a Saint
canonized by Alexander, whom he esteemed an anti-pope, even had that Saint
already, in 1164, been the Martyr of papal pretensions, instead of living till
1170; that, prior to these matrimonial negotiations, Henry II had no such
relations with Henry the Lion as should enable or induce him to effect such a
reconciliation ; and, finally, that no quarrel is known to have existed between
the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and the Archbishop of Cologne,in 1164; their
violent enmity having broken out some years subsequent to this, their
imaginary, reconciliation. It is evident that our talented novelist-biographer
confuses Archbishop Reginald’s political mission in behoof of Pascal, a.d. 1164, with his successor Archbishop
Philip’s pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket, twenty years later, a.d. 1184 or 5, when Henry II’s daughter,
Matilda, had for some years been the wife of Henry the Lion.
(35) p. 77.
Bottiger.
(36) p. 78. Voigt.
(37) p. 82. Capecelatro.
(38) p. 82. Giannone. Queen Margaret has been so
generally accused of illicit love for Maione, that it were idle at this distance
of time to undertake her defence: else the praises heaped upon her in her
widowhood, and Maione’s undisguised profligacy in regard to women, seem little
consistent with the imputation.
(39) p. 88. Capecelatro. “ Secohdo l’uso di quei
tempi assai dotto in medicina.”
(40) p. 93. Muratori.
(41) p. 93. Denina ascribes the idea of the League
to the habitually Ghi- beline Marchese Obizzo Malaspina; and fickleness must be
confessed to have very much prevailed in I ombardy, Milan and Pavia excepted.
Buf Mala-
spina
seems only to have joined the League when it was very clearly the strongest.
(42) p. 93. Seemingly the natural policj of
rebellion. Our Roundhead! long called themselves the royal army.
(43) p. 91. The conclusion of commercial treaties
with foreign cities, even with foreign potentates, by sea-port towns, was not,
in the Middle Ages, proof, was nnt even a symptom, of rebellious disposition.
Ghibeline Pisa made such conventions as freely as Guelph Genoa, with foreign
cities and foreign potentates, both Christian and Moslem. Will it be »aid that
loyal Pisa was influenced, if unconsciously, by sympathy with Lombard
passions; whilst Marseilles, and the other commercial tow ns of the South of
France, most of them parties to such treaties, had plainly discovered
republican tendencies ? Then let Harcelona’s acts be adduced in evidence of the
fact. Barcelona avowedly »nd really subject, first to her Earls, and then to
the Kings of Aragon, when the marriage of Earl Raymond to Queen Petronilla
united the county and the Kingdom, had commcvcial treaties of her own with
Pisa, Marseilles, and other parties.
(44) p. 94. Mnratori.
(45) p. 91. Voigt.
(16) p. 97. Id.
(47)
p. 97. Morena, Muraton. Voigt says the discrepancy between different writers
extends upon this point to from 1700 to 15,000 men ; but the last seems mere
idle exaggeration.
(18) p. 99. Since no Emperor could after his
coroi.ation be required to take an oath, except, as before said, to clear
himself of heresy, to the Pope, these oaths of Frederic’s must have been
chiefly designed to exalt Pascal in the. eyes of the Romans.
(49']
p. 101. A controversy subsists among both German and Italian historians as to
which Henry, IV or V, is meant. The greater number opine for the father; but
Luden, adopting the views of the minority, reasonably argues +hai the last of a
name would more naturally than his pre decessor be thus spoken of as the only
one; anu that Hi nry V’s death occurring soon after Matilda’s, when the cities
were beginning to struggle foi enfranchisement, was <*n epoch more
favourable to their pretensions than his father’s.
(50) p. 103. Muratori.
(51) p. 103. Otto de S. Rlasio.
(52) p. 104. Muratori.
(53) p. 106. Of this confederacy against Henry the
Lion, old Helmold calls Archbishop Reginald the soul, even from Italy. Hence
Luden argues that Frederic—the trusty prelate being only his instrument—had
projected and organized the whole, in order to crush his dreaded and,
therefore, hated
kinsman,
whilst his own absence from Germany would seemingly acquit him of complicity.
He further takes it for granted, that bribes and promises were lavishly
employed to get up such a hostile confederacy. The anti-imperialist historian's
inference is hardly warranted by the Guelph chronicler’s statement. That the Archbishop,
as one of the princes who had suffered from the Duke's aggressions, may have
known of the confederacy, and encouraged the allies to take the opportunity of
the Emperor’s absence for redressing their own wrongs, is not unlikely; not so
that bribes should be needed to induce men to attempt the recovery of property
violently torn from them. But such underhand plottingappears asaliento the
character of Barbarossa,as is the forbearance of his supposed dupes from
reproaches, when he almost took his cousin’s part against them, to the usual
conduct of men deserted by their seducer. Not one of them is said to have
taunted him with treachery.
(54) p. 106. A German old saw asserts : “Es lebt
sich gutunter dem Krummstab Anglice, “ ’Tis good living under the Crosier.”
(55) p. 109. Hallam,
(56) p. 110. Some historians suppress the offer of
the heritage—perhaps deeming it superfluous to the natural heir—merely making
Welf request, and Henry refuse, pecuniary assistance. One of them, Luden, even
grounds that refusal upon the nephew’s moral repugnance to encourage his uncle
in a vicious course—admitting, at the same time, that the nephew’s own morality
was far from austere—and, not at all, upon either resentment of Welf’s attempt
at usurping Bavaria, or reluctance to disburse money.
(57) p. 111. Modern German historians, as Pfister
and Raumer, so designate the subordinate colleague and successor of the
reigning emperor in the twelfth century; and, in the next, the title was
certainly borne by this Henry’s grandson, to whom it is given by Villant,
almost his contemporary.
(58) p. 111. Pfister.
(59) p. 112. This feudal right, evidently as much
envied by those who possessed it not, as valued by those to whom it was a
source of profit, seems to have been most comprehensively assumed by Milan, in
regard to the towns she inthralled. At least Testa asserts that, in the days of
her sovereignty, no Lodesan of either sex could marry without permission from
the Milanese magistracy.
(60) p. 112. Hormayr thus gives the designations of
these wealthy franklins: Die Reichsfreien oder Dvnasten (viri summse ingenuee
libertatis, Domini, Domicilii, Barones regni) manchmal sogar, Dei gratia,
(61) p. 112. Vol.i, p. 52.
(62) p. 116. Thierry. Michelet.
(63) p. 116. This Papal pretension did not originate
either in the meanness of John Lackland, or the perplexities of his father;
but, if hitherto permitted to slumber, had been prepared by Hildebrand.
William of Normandy
had
appealed to Pope Alexander II to sanction his invasion of England, upon the
plea of his object being to punish The sacrilegious perjury, by which Harold
had defrauded him, and recover the stolen bequjst of Edward the Confessor;
when, at Hildebrand’s suggestion, Alexander immediately excommunicated Harold,
authorized 'William to reduce England to the obedience of the Holy See—no word
be it noted of heresy or schism needing conversion—and sent him a consecrated
banner and ring; thus, according to Thierry’s authorities, giving him
investiture of the kingdom, as though it were a country to be reconquered from
the Heathen. The cla.im was not advanced, or even mentioned, until
circumstances favoured its assertion.
(64) p. 118. Scott’s Dugald Dalgetty.
(65) p. li‘2. Raumer; Voigt.
(66) p. 123. Luden, Vita Alex&ndri. Romoaldus
Salernitanus, and Ser Raul, who ascribes the perfidy to Frederic’s being, “
Accensus ira et dolore Longobardorum qui erant in loco.” Muratori, in his
Annali ir It u.l\, adopts the same view, upon the authority of Otto de Bias.
(67) p. 128. The naturally Guelph, Nicolas Cardinal
of Aragon, who, Muratori says, interwove (intescwit) contemporaneous
biographies in his Com- mt:ntario of the Popes, i nil whose every expression
marks his party zeal, makes ro allusion to treachery. His words, or those of the
equally Guelph, older writer, upon whom he relied for Alexander Ill’s life, are
worth quoting as those of an enemy. “ Cum autem rteqfie terroribus, neque
blanditiis, neque promissionibus, Cives ipsos ad deditionem inclinare nulla
tenus posset, sub- terraneos meatus occulte fieri fecit, per quos civitatem
ipsam ex improviso in- trare speravit atque invade re. Sed, resistente Domino,
inde pernieiosam jacturam ineurrere meruit.” Could he have said pjrfide, would
the Cardinal have been content with occulte ?
(68) p. 128. Raumer, Sigonius.
(69) p. 123. Voigt.
(7C)
p. 123. Considerable confusion occurs in the numbering of the Ez- zelini da
Romano, from there being two obscure, as well as early, so named, whom some
writers reckon as the first and second; whilst others admit only the second as
Ezzelino I; and Maurisio, overlooking both, calls Ezzelino the Stammerer,
Ezzelino I. Hence it is moot convenient to distinguish them bj their surnames.
(71) p. 132. Weber.
(72) p. 133. Raumer,
Avent. annal. Baiersehe Chronik, in freibergs his- torischen Schriften. Bottiger
observes that Ilenry the Lion's Duchess, and William H of Sicily’s Queen, were
sisters, as a sufficient reason tor the Duke's declining to become a party in
this war. But, even if William’s marriage with Joanna of England were already
celebrated, which it does not appear to have been till the following year, the
King took too little share in the war to allow
the
suggestion mueli weight. Voigt quotes another Guelph chronicler, Arnold Chron.
Slav., who explains Henry’s refusal now, and the preceding year, when Frederic
was collecting his forces, upon the plea that the Emperor had tried to seduce
some of the Duke’s vassals during his pilgrimage; hut brings no proof of the
charge. It must he added, that the astute dialectician, and decided
anti-imperialist, Luden, who would fain strip history of all pleasing legends,
asserts this whole scene to be fictitious, denying even that Frederic
especially sought his relation’s aid upon the present occasion. A strange omission
assuredly it would have been not to apply for help in extremity of need, to him
who could best afford it. Luden’s chief argument is, that Frederic did not
afterwards swell the ranks of Henry’s accusers, contenting himself with his
proper place of President of the Supreme judicial and legislative body, the
Imperial Diet, whose office it was to judge between accusers and accused.
(73) p. 136. Voigt.
(74;
p. 137. Is it worth naming, that Luden, always on the look-out for deep
Machiavellian policy, regards this whole transaction as a comedy played by the
Pope and the Emperor to dupe the Lombards ? This historian being favourable to
Alexander, only whilst the Pope is the Emperor’s enemy.
(75) p. 133. Mnratori.
(76) p. 138. Rainner, Dumont, 100, Urk. 172. Ludec.
(77) p. 140. Voigt.
(78) p. 140. Buckley’s Great Cities of the Middle Ages.
(79) p. 142. Bottiger.
(80) p. 145. Luden, Arnold Lubei.
(81) p. 147. Whether these arch-offices were finally
allotted and made hereditary at the breaking up of this too formidable duchy of
Saxony, or, a little later, at the celebrated Mainz festival of a.d. 1184, seems jnot quite certain, and
is not very material; but the doubt itself is an argument that may be added to
those previously adduced against their then conveying electoral rights.
(82) p. 148. Hormayr. The Dukes of Meran having
large territorial possessions in the Tyrol, the Tyrolese Meran has been usually
supposed their especial dukedom. But recent researches have shown that this
Meran was always the property of the Earls of the Tyrol; and as the house of
Andechs had also large possessions in Dalmatia and Istria, the prevalent
opinion has latterly been in favour of a town or district of the same name in
Istria.
(83) p. 149. The very quarrel of the King and
Hotspur, in the First Part of IIenry IV.
(84) p. 154. Hallam.
(85) p, 155. Muratori says, in “ i piu scabrosi.”
(86) p. 156. Luden. Muratori would fain insinuate
that the Emperor was actuated by resentment of Christian’s recent services to
Alexander, but shows no ground, in Frederic's conduct, for the supposition.
(87) p. 158. Denina. <
(88) p. 159. Even some modern liberals appear to
think this treaty conceded a very satisfactory degree of liberty. The
Piedmontese Rirotti, in his Stoiu \ pelle Compagnie di Ventura At Italia, says,
“ Nel tratta^o di Costanza venne a’ Communi accordata quanta indipendenza
sarebbe stata piucche bastevole a farli graudi e felici, se pari alia fortezza
avessero avuto la modestia, ed all’ ardire contro i nemici esteriori la
prudenza verso gl'interiori.”
(89) p. 161. Schmidt.
(90) p. 165. James ; who has already been shown to
labour under some confusion touching the visits of the Archbishops of Cologne
to England. (P. 499, note 34.)
(91) p. 101. Capecelatro.
(92) p. 168. That the Guelph, or rather Papistical
Baronins, admits Con stance not to have been a nun, has been stated; and the
moderately Guelph Muratori treats even the idea of her having been destined to
take the veil as a fable ; averring that no contemporaries allude to anything
of the kind, whilst some of them speak of her having grown up amidst the
luxuries of the Sicilian palace. The Ghibeline Dante, on the other hand,
positively as;ertsthat she was a nun, or at least a novice; and “ Contra suo
grado, e contra buona usanza,’’ (Purgitorio, Canto 3, v. 113,) taken from her
convent to be married. And, owing chiefly to Dante’s genius and evident
Ghibelinism, this has long been the popular opinion. The >-bove stated
Guelph admissions might, perhaps, suffice to refute it, and to prove that
Frederic Barbarossa did not, tempted by the chance of a kingdom, sacrilegiously
seek an apostate nun for the wife of his son; but the course of events so
decidedly clears him, that a summary of these proofs may be admissible. A nun
covltl not have married without a papal dispensation, which, certainly, neither
Lucius III nor Urban III granted; and had a dispensation by Sicilian and German
bishops been substituted, Urban could not have overlooked such an usurpation of
papal authority, when he deposed all the prelates who officiated at the
marriage. Nor, indeed, had the bride been even a novice, could he have omitted
specifically to notice such an aggravation of the offence of merely officiating
at a marriage to which he objected. Innocent III would hardly have accepted the
necessarily illegitimate child of an apostate nun as a ward of the Church ; nor
would Popes hostile to that child, Frederic
11, nave omitted to brand him with such palpaole
illegitimacy. With respect to Dante, a few words may be allowed, tending to
explain the startling fact, that the Ghibeline poet not only believed and
propagated this and other calumnious Guelph gossip, but despite his hatred for
the Capetian race, show s
indulgence
to the one of that race for whom its warmest friends hardly attempt an apology;
namely, Charles of Anjou. The fact is, that Dante was originally and naturally
a Guelph. Not only did he live, till between thirty and forty years of age, and
hold office, in Guelph Florence, but his family had been twice banished for
Guelphism, when the Ghibelines had the ascendancy. In those thirty years, he
heard and believed this Guelph scandal, and formed his opinion upon all the
past accordingly. When theGuelphs split into the Bianchi and Neri (Whites and
Blacks), or the moderate and the ultra- Guelphs, he adhered to the former, who
were called Ghibelines by their antagonists. With them he was banished,
outlawed, and plundered; and, the exiles of different shades and even different
parties associating, the Bianchi, exasperated against their former friends,
became more or less Ghibeline, Dante with the rest. But this new Ghibelinism
would not affect previously formed and long established opinions; so that he
judged and felt of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a Guelph, of the
incipient fourteenth as a Ghibeline: and censured the Frederics for doing what
he censured the Henrys and Lewises for omitting to do. For the Poet’s indulgent
view of the tyrannical usurper Charles of Anjou, there was another cause,
besides his early Guelphism. He had visited Naples, as Embassador from
Florence; Charles II, the son of Charles of Anjou, with his son Charles Martel,
King of Hungary in right of his mother, had visited Florence, where the latter
sojourned a second time ; and, upon all these occasions, the Angevine-Neapo-
litan heir of Hungary had associated intimately with the Florentine Poet,
inspiring him with a warm friendship. Could he be otherwise than lenient
towards the grandfather of his royal friend ? It must have required all the
offences of which Philip le Bel was then still incurring the guilt, to prevent
his forgiving all the Capets.
(93) p. 170. Denina.
(94) p. 170. Napier.
(95) p. 171. Stenzel says, that Frederic secured the
support of Otho II of Brandenburg, by making him mesne Lord of Pomerania. But
Waldemar had deemed the Pomeranian Princes his vassals, and they still claimed
to be immediate vassals of the Empire. In fact, some degree of uncertainty
seems to hang over their condition at this time.
(96) p. 176. Wilken, Wil. Tyr. Michaud argues that
the Templars could not be thus rapacious, because they had highly distinguished
themselves during the siege ;—a somewhat inconclusive syllogism, that might
equally acquit the Buccaneers of robbery. The Histoire des Templiers, in like manner, would fain logically
refute the accusation; and Rauraer, in a second edition, holds the exclusion of
the rest of the army abundantly explained by the despatch with which the
Saracens repaired the breach. But the Archbishop
vol. ir. 22
is
high authority j and it may be observed that no attempt from without, to
relieve the Templars within the walls, is mentioned.
(97) p. 184. Baron Ilaxthausen, a Russianized
German, in his 1 Transcaucasia,’
a
work known only in translation, says that a Prince named Rupin, of the Armenian
royal family, deposed a.d. 1097,
emigrating with his partizans, conquered Cilicia, and there established a new
kingdom of Armenia; to wit, the Lesser Armenia. The Barun’s account rests upon
viva i<oce
•authority,
and is, of course, the Armenian version of the Greek account, but, till
established by documents ran only be regarded ah tradition, without weight
against contemporary history.
(98) p. 190. Wilken, W’il. Tyr.
(99) p. 191. The must erudite Orientalist of our
crusade-historians, Wilken, thus speaks of Saladin : “ Respecting few great men
has contemporary evidence been so unanimous. The Christians, against whom he
so indefatjgaulv, and, for the most part, so successfully fought, and the Mohammedans,
whom his valour so powerfully defended, whose l'aith he honoured and exalted,
with one voice proclaimed him magnanimous as brave: and that most chivalrous of
kings, tne lion-hearted Anglo-Norman Richard, esteemed li'rn worthy of
knighthood. If Moslems sang the praises of his pure zeal for Islam, and his
scrupulous observance of its precepts, Christians admired his honour,
uprightness, and humanity to his captive enemies. From this last virtue he
never swerved, unless provoked to reprisals by Christian cruelty or Christian
breach of faith.” This eulogist might have added, “ or religious zeal,” as will
be seen in due time. Whether Saladin accompanied liis uncle upon this his first
Eg} ptian campaign, or only upon the next, is another of the points in dispute
amongst historians; that he did, seems most consonant to occurrences respecting
which there is no question.
(100) p. 195. Addison.
(101) p. 196 Vol. i, p. 147, and note 160.
(102) p. 197. Funcke. The mis-spelling of this
name, or, more properly, the mistake of the name of Funk, a philosophic writer,
for C. W. F. von 1 uncke, the orientalist and historian, was unfortunately
overlooked in vol. 5.
(103) p. 197. Ilammer-I’urgstall.
(104) p. 200. Vol. i, p. 20.
(105) p. 203. This is Wilken’s description of
the payment, for which he cites William of Tyre. It seems very strange; but
that of other writers^ who call it interest upon a debt, is more so.
(106) p. 203. Hammer-Purestall.
(107) p. 203. Wilken, WK. Tyr.
(108) p. 207. Ilammer-Purgstall says more; “the
first Moslem hospital known.” But this, after hearing of Nonreddin's charitable
institutions, to
say
nothing of probable establishments of the same kind in Moslem Spain, seems so
incredible, that he must be conjectured to have meant either the first in Egypt,
or the first so amply provided.
(109) p. 209. This seems to be the first
mention of Mamelukes: and it may be presumed that Saladin, not finding a
national army in Egypt, that could render himself independent of Noureddin’s
Kurds and Turks, sought to supply the want by forming this corps. As yet they
were only his bodyguard, and are described as clad, like himself, in
yellow—the earliest idea, perhaps, of an uniform. Hammer-Purgstall says, the
word Mameluke means slave; if so, it is a curious instance of a name marking
degradation, retained by bold ambitious warriors in their triumphant
prosperity.
(110) p. 210. Ante, p. 184.
(111) p. 211. Wilken, Abulfaradge, Abulfeda.
James, Ibn Alatir, Abu Shami. Reinaud; from whose version of Saladin’s letter
the following passages are taken: “ The Giaours have violated the asylum and
cradle of Islam; have profaned our sanctuary. If, as Allah forefend ! we should
not prevent another such insult, we should be guilty in the eyes of God and
man. * * * Let us purge the earth of these men who dishonour it. Let us purge
the air, which their breath contaminates. They are vowed to death.*’ No mention
of annual sacrifices of sheep, so contrary to the general notion of the rites
of Islam, is here found. But Reinaud, to whom we owe the letter, distinctly
says, always speaking upon the authority of Arab authors, reviewed, as it were,
in Michaud’s BiBLiOTHilauE des Croisades—from
whom his book is drawn—that at Mecca the pilgrims slaughtered these prisoners,
in lieu of the usual sacrifice of sheep and lambs.
(112) p. 211. Reinaud.
(113) p. 212. James says, at Easter; but in
that season of rejoicing, what impropriety could there be in a wedding? And he
ascribes the precipitation to Bohemund of Antioch’s arrival in Jerusalem. Can
any old chronicler have supposed that Bohemund, already the husband of one
living wife, if not of a second, came to insist upon having the presumptive
heiress of Palestine, as another, whether second or third? And that, with a
prospect of success ? It should be added that .Michaud, who casts such a
suspicion upon Sibylla, avows that he relies upon the single
authority of Benedict of Peterborough.
(114) p. 213. Funcke.
(115) p. 215. Vinisaufs Itinerarutm, translated in
Chronicles of the Crusades.
(116) p. 216. Funcke.
(117) p. 223. Reinaud, in excuse of the
injudicious abandonment of the course decided upon, states, that Saladin burnt
the suburbs of Tiberias, for the express purpose of drawing Guy from his strong
position, by fears for the town, and even for the castle.
(118) p. 224. The allegation of the enemies of
Raymond, that his charge
through
the" Moslem host and subsequent flight were preconcerted with Saladin,
might, perhaps, be sufficiently rebutted hy recalling his advice in the Council
of War:—advice manifestly honest, because endangering the wife to whom he was
devotedly attached, and her children—so beloved by him that he wa? generally
believed to be the true father of his nominal step-sons ;—and which would have
rendered such traitorous desertion impossible. He is, however, further
exculpated by the letter of a Cadi, which, giving an account of the battle,
ends the tale of Raymond’s charge and flight, with an adjura tion to Allah to
curse him. Surely the Cadi thought him an enemy. The utmost blame to which the
Earl is fairly liable, is that he did not strain every nerve for the army j
persevering in a really hopeless attempt to avert the ruinous consequences of
weakness or rashness. And it was hardly to be expected that a man of uncurbed
temper, angry at the rejection of his advice, should make a desperate struggle,
should charge back apain, in order to perish with the King who had offended
him, and with the man he liated, who had just triumphed over him, the
Grand-Master of the Templars.
(119) p. 224. Wilken, chiefly upon the
authority of Vinisauf, Cogge'ihall, and Iloveden, says that the True Cross was
part of the Moslem booty at Hittin. Other writers assert that it was there
buried to preserve it, and the precise spot where it was deposited forgotten.
The former account is con- frmed by Bohaeddin, who explicitly states that it
was taken, and the testimony of Paladin's friend is, and ought to be, decisive
upon the subject j besides which it will appear in the progress of the
narrative to have been in the Sultan’s possession; whilst the silence of other
Arab writers is fully explained by their contempt for the object of a
rtvarence, which they considered as idolatry.
(120) p. 225. Vinisauf. Prior to his arrival in
Palestine with Richard, he can, indeed, only vouch for what he relates being a
current report; but if Baron Reiehenbach’s odyle theory he admitted, the
phenomenon need not be deemed supernatural.
(121) p. 232. A sort of joint-tenancy, when
arising by inheritance called Ganerien, but often a merely voluntary, really
socialist, association.
(122) p. 231. Pfister.
(123) p. 234. Luden, upon the authority of old
Arnold of Lubeck, says— the proposal was, that Henry should ratify the
confiscation of his duchy, make the Crusade at the Emperor's expense, and
receive all back at their return. A somewhat inconsistent scheme, but which the
Duke would surely have caught at, considering the end j whilst it is impossible
to suppose the. Diet and the Emperor willing to reconstruct the formidable
power they had so carcfully broken up, or the princes thereby enriched, to
resign their grants.
(124) p. 237. Quicquid delirant reges
pleetnntur Achivi.
(125) p. 238. Such are the letters given by
Yinisauf, and accepted by Wilken, who further says that Saladin was much alarmed
at the impending
crusade.
A feeling, scarcely in harmony with his demand of these [three important
places, pretty nearly the whole remainder of the Syro-Frank states. The whole
negotiation is unnoticed by Oriental writers, and denied by Luden, because the
letters in question are manifestly fabrications; the pseudo- Saladin’s calling
Islam Paganism, whilst the pseudo-Frederic’s is absurdly pompous and
rhetorical, besides being incorrect in various representations touching
Germany. But of the mission of Heinrich von Diech to Saladin, to declare war, a
ceremony Frederic was too truly chivalrous to omit, there is no doubt j and the
un-Moslem language of Saladin’s epistle may possibly lie at the translator’s
door. Or, indeed, as State Papers were not then, as now, published, or archives
opened to literary research, the letters found in the old chroniclers may be
rejected, as unquestionably factitious, without implying the least doubt of
real letters, to the same effect, though differently worded, having passed.
(126) p. 240. Fessler.
(127) p. 243. Unless Kuman is to be taken as a
sort of generic desigua- tion, applied in the Christian states of Eastern
Europe to all their Tartar neighbours indiscriminately; which, from its
frequent recurrence, in connexion with Russia, Poland, Hungary, and the Greek
Empire, might seem to be the case.
(128) p. 244. Raumer.
(129) p. 244. It seems remarkable that, whilst
the Truce of God enjoined abstinence from private feuds upon every Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday, in commemoraiion of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, those
most hallowed days themselves rarely appear to have interrupted public
hostilities. It may be worthy of notice relative to this subject, that the
devout Saladin held it desirable to ghe battle upon a Friday, the Moslem
Sabbath, and at the hour of public worship, that he might fight whilst all
Mohammedans were putting up prayers for blessings upon Mohammedan arms.
(130) p. 240.
Funcke.
(131) p. 251.
Vinisauf. Raumer, Cogges. Hemingford, Guil. Neubrig
(132) p. 252. Wilkin, Otto de S. Bias, Jac. de
Vitry, Bohaeddin, Abul- feda, Abulfaradge. Vinisauf deems this last account
insulting. He says. “ At si libido natandi, ut plerique asserunt, mortis causam
intulisse dicatur, ipsius viri gravitas in contrarium disputat; nec fidem
meretur, quod tantorum salutem natator invalid us, undis fallacibus
commisisset.”
(133) p. 253. Upon that character there can be
no need here to expatiate. Henri de Blois, who as a Frenchman had no especial
partiality for a German Emperor, calls Frederic Ilarbarossa, “ A strong lion,
whose majestic countenance and mighty arm, scared wild beasts from their prey,
and bowed rebels to the yoke.” And Tiiaboschi, whose prejudices as an Italian
must be anti- Teutonic,describes Frederic, as a “Principe d; nagnanimi
spiriti e d’indole
• ‘
gcnerosa.
e che dovrebbe essere annoverato tra i piu famosi soirani, se la rea condizione
de’ tempi, il trasporto dell’ impetuoso suo sd-gno, e lo sc:sma, ds
!ui lungamente fomentata e sostenuta. non l’avesser condotto spesso a tai passi
p a tali risoluzioni, cui, segonda la naturale sua rettitudine, avrebb’ egli
stesso. in altre circostanze, disapprovato.” Sismondi’s character of FrederL'1
Bar- foarossa has been previously given: and Mariotti, a modern revolutionary
Italian, if he does not eulogize this Emperor, speaks of his wars against
Alexander III, and the Lombard I,< ague, as the natural result of
circumstances, rather than of any unreasonable ambition on his part.
(131) p. 257. “ Si
Christianua esse non vult, homo Biaboli sit.” This account
is taken from James, who quotes liromton, and alludes to other contemporary
chroniclers, as corroborating his statement. But it must be adiied that
Buckley, in his Great Cities of the
Midole Ages, says, Richard drove the unwi'ling convert out of
his presence, to the ill-usage of which he died; whilst some contemporaries
depict this massacre as one of the older fashion; e.g., Richard of Devizes, who
cabs it “ a sacrifice of Jews to their father the Devil.”
(135) p. 263. Vinisauf.
(136) p. 264. Vinisauf says, Philip requirtd
that his banner should supersede Richard’s. But this, which was not attempted
at Acre, seems so impossible a demand, one Richard’s yielding to which was so
utterly impossible, that the more ordinary account has been preferred. Probably
the crusading Chronicler did not, like a modern journalist, write up his diary
evening by evening, trusting to his memory when at home again, and might not
always be accurate in recollection.
(137) p. 265. Ilere Richard was eer*ainly in
the right, be it observed; Philip not being entitled to service, or,
consequently, obedience from his royal vassal. The Dukes of Normandy owed the
Kings of France not liege homage, which implied these, but f>nmagrum per
paragivm, or simple homage, a mere acknowledgment of feudal superiority; the
homage usually due by sovereign princes, holding fiefs of other princes or of
vassals. Hallam.
(1381
p. 266. Janies.
(139) p. 269. Vniken, Funcke, Michauu, upon the
authority mainly of Vinisauf, Bernard js Thesaurarius, and Bohaeddin. The last adds to the
oath, 1 hat Guy, upon abdicating, should immediately quit Syria for
Europe, and he and liis twelve companions hold themselves evermore Saladin’s
slaves. The worthy Cadi ends with an adjuration to Allah to puriah the
unbelieving King’s perjury. The Sultan’s breach of faith, in demanding further
payment for that, the price of which, viz., Ascalon, he had already received,
no one notices except Vinisauf? and the somewhat illogical remarks, with which
Michaud dismisses the transaction, are too odd to be uassed over in si'enee.
They are, that . t Digitized by Microsoft®
Saladin
probably never expected Guy to keep his oath, and really released him lest a
better king should be elected; yet detained him beyond the appointed time, and
made him swear to leave the throne vacant for that better king!
(140) p. 271. James, Bohaeddin.
(141) p. 271. Bohaeddin estimates Guy’s army at
2,000 horse, and 30,000 foot, but must either speak of a later period of the
siege, or desire to conceal the small number of the Christians who checked his
master's triumphant career.
(142) p. 271. Wilken.
(143) p. 277. Michaud. The Duke of Austria’s
enmity to Richard Cceur- de-Lion makes it an English historian’s duty, in
fairness, to mention the statement; though it is difficult to believe either
that a man in full armour could perform such a feat, or that, in those days, a
knight wojld assault a castle divested of his armour.
(143*)
p. 278. A curious argument, highly illustrative of the view then taken of
female succession ; treating Sibylla's birthright rather as a motive for
electing her husband, than as investing her with hereditary sovereignty ; the
exercise of which, with its duties, she was, in those days, expected to delegate
to him. It is equally illustrative of the mystic virtue then attributed both to
the material crown, and to the actual coronation.
(144) p. 279. Conrad has been charged with
polygamy instead of bigamy; with having left his real wife in Italy, whilst
marrying, first, an Imperial Princess of Constantinople, and then the lawful
Queen of Jerusalem. But the charge is absurd. That he had been married in
Montferrat,is certain, since that was the sole reason of his younger brother’s
being selected for the husband of the Emperor Manuel’s daughter; but it is
equally certain that he must have been a widower, when, at Montferrat, he was
publicly contracted to the Emperor Isaac’s sister; and it was to complete his
marriage with this princess, that he went to Constantinople, instead of
accompanying his father to Palestine.
(145) p. 281. Vol. i, p. 24.
(146) p. 282. Weber.
(147) p. 282.
Id., Wachsmuth.
(148) p. 285.
Wilken; Nicetas.
(149) p. 287. Richard is very commonly accused
by modern writers, especially French and German, of cruelly paltering with
Isaac “ in a double sense,” keeping “ the w ord of promise to the ear, breaking
it to his hope,” when he put silver chains upon him. But James shews that,
according to the statement of HoveJen, Bromton, and William of Newbury, the
prayer of the faithless tyrant explicitly was not to be disgraced by iron
fetters ; to which the conqueror replied, “ For the sake of your dignity, your
fetters shall be silver.” Vinisauf gives the same request, “ Not to be put in
irons,” without
explanation
; but adds, tbat Richard was touched, raised him to a seat beside his own, sent
for the emperor’s little daughter, to soothe him with her ca.'esses and put him
into, not iron, but silver chains.
(150) p. 287. So strange a species of ammunition as
snakes, would naturally be rejected hy modern inquirers as an absurd popular
rumour, did it not rest upon the authority of an eye-witness, Vinisauf,
corroborated by Tacques de Vitry, as well as by lladevici'S. Wilken accepts
their statements as unquestionable. ** _ .'jy 1
(151) p. 288. James.
(152) p. 289. Vinisauf.
(153) p. 289, Richard of Devizes, in CnRo shcle ov Crusades.
(151)
p. 293. Mailath, Raumer, Vachsmuth, Otto S. Bias, Godof. Mon. Hem-ningf.,
liromton, Rigord., Hugo Plagon. Mailath asserts that the Duke, upon receiving
the affront, immediately returned home. Yet he is named by contemporary
chroniclers as present in most of the subsequent operations; nay, Wachsmuth and
Raumer, who adopt this cause of quarrel, allow that he only left the Crusaders
at Ascalon. During those movements, it will be seen, that other and more
probable causes of offence are stated.
(155) p. 296. Wilken, Guil., Neubrig, Funcke.
(156) p. 296. Id., Hugo Plagon, Ja. de Vitry.
(157) p. 293. Id.
(158) p. 296. Id. Michaud quotes Enmadeduin for
Saladin’s withholding the Cross, in order to pain the Christians.
(159) p. 297.
Wilken.
(160) p. 297.
James, Ibn \latir.
(161) p. 29*. Vinisauf thus relates the
transaction, in a tone of perfect satisfaction: “ King Richard, aspiring to
destroy the Turks root and branch, and to punish their wanton arrogance, as
well as to abolish the law of Mahomet, and to vindicate the Christian
religion, on the Frida} after the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
ordered 2700 of the Turkish hostages to be led forth from the city and hanged.
His soldiers marched forth with delight to fulfil his commands, and to
retaliate, with the assent oi the Divine Grace, by taking revenge upon those
who had destroyed so manj of the Christians, with missiles, &c.” Chronicles of the Crusades. The
translation of the mediaeval Latin might be better ; but when an English
version eiists, it seems idle to translate anew, unless the language he a
material point, when the original should be given.
(162) p. 298. This prelate, according to Michaud,
had bitterly complained of Acre’s having heen given up to the two Kings,
without anj booty for the army; whence it may be inferred that he was not
disposed to seek the best motives for Richard’s conduct.
(163) p. 298. In the next century, these words
“ut decuit,”will be found
habitually
used in speaking of the far more cruel execution of heretics, their cremation.
(164) p. 298. Michaud says, that, some Arab
authors impute the chief blame upon this occasion to their admired Saladin, for
continuing to procrastinate, after Richard’s threats of the terrible
consequences should the terms longer remain unfulfilled.
(165) p. 299. This slaughter seems at first
sight actually incompatible with the inviolability stated, apropos of
Chatillon's death, to be consequent upon the giving meat or drink to a captive.
But a moment’s reflexion shews that, to produce such inviolability, the meat or
drink must be given by the hand, or at the express command, of the sovereign,
or of the captor. Else all prisoners of war must become inviolable, or die of
hunger within the first fortnight.
(166) p. 300. The words are given by Vinisauf,
“ Sanctum Sepulehrum ad- juva!” strange as to modern ideas it seems to call
upon that for help which had been so unable to help itself, as to require the
aid of this very European army for a chance of relief from thraldom.
(167) p. 303. In this rage, some modern French
and German writers sympathize; although the anti-English and anti-Richard
Michaud lauds the wisdom of the retrograde movement; and Wilken, after
ascribing it to Richard’s levity, ultimately allows the weight of the reasons
upon which it was decided.
(168) p. 304.
Wilken, Raumer, Michaud, Bromton. Whether the
Duke meant this insolent answer to insinuate any mistrust of Queen Elinor’s
connubial fidelity to the unfaithful husband of her choice, that might palliate
her son’s intemperate resentment, is not said. It is somewhat remarkable that
Vinisauf mentions neither quarrel with the Duke of Austria nor that prince’s
desertion of the Crusade: and, yet more, does not name him even relative to the
seizure and imprisonment of Richard upon his return, which he imputes solely to
French intrigue. But upon that disastrous return he is very short; and, as he
evidently did not accompany the royal Crusader, no authority.
(169) p. 305. James, Ibn
Alatir.
(170) p. 306.. It
must not be concealed that James and Michaud quote Moslem authority against the
Sultan, Michaud more generally; James, Ibn Alatir, who, he says, distinctly
states that Saladin offered the Sheik of the Assassins 10,000 gold pieces to
rid him of Richard and Conrad; and that the Sheah Sheik offered to kill one of
them; but would not free the abhorred Soonee Sultan from both his enemies, well
knowing that,if undisturbed Sovereign of Egypt and Syria, he would at once
exterminate himself and his Assassins. But were this true, would not the Sheik
have published the offer as a blot upon the reputation of the heretic hero ?
(171) p. 306. To the usual grounds upon which
the murder is imputed to Richard, Bernardus Thesaurarius adds, that Marquess
Conrad had offended him by refusing to marry his sister. Conrad, who had
married Queen Isabel before
qo X
Richard
set foot in Palestine, and, as her husband, had long been ackncw - lodged by
Richard as Guy’s successor—though not his supplanter—upon the throne.
(172) p. 307. Wilken.
(.173)
p. 307. Campbell’s Lives of the Chancellors.
(174) p. 307. Mills.
(175) p. 309. Wilken.
(176) p. 309. Id. Matt. Paris. Joinville.
(177) p. 310. Joinville. Richard’s conduct of
the Crusade is still, as before said, a topic for bitter censure to French and
German—not military— writers. That, haughty and self-willed as he shewed
himself, he was little adapted to the command of an army of independent
volunteers, or for cordial co-operation with such a suzerain as Philip, and
that, in all periods of inaction, he indulged a boyish passion for idle
adventure, is undeniable. But it is equally so, that during his Palestine
campaigns he displayed all the generalship of the age, sacrificing his personal
inclinations, and even that boyish passion, to considerations of prudence, in
a degree not to have been expected from his nature. Also, that Saladin fully
concurred in the opinion, that possession of the sea coast was ind'spensable to
the existence of the Christian Kingdom, especially to the preservation of the
city of Jerusalem when taken; as he proved, by destroying the fortresses which,
since the loss of Acre, he could not hope to defend against the Crusaders, and
felt to be, in their hands, dangerous to his own retention of Jerusalem. But
this is a consideration easily overlooked by French rashness in pursuing a
favourite project. Surely the reputation Richard left in Syria amongst the
Mohamedans might he deemed sufficient argument that he did not act there like a
petted child. It must be added, that, of the two accusations brought against
the Duke of Burgnndy. one, that of caballing successively with the Prince of
Tyre, and w ith the Sultan, is as destitute of probability as of foundation.
The Duke’s interest, or his master’s, was diametrically opposed to theirs;
Philip wanted to keep Richard in SjTia that he might steal his French
possessions; Conrad and Saladin, to get out of Syria the only cnemv they
feired. The other, of grudging Richard the glory of recovering Jerusalem from
the misbelievers, and therefore counteracting him, is less improbable, and
rests upon better authority. Bemardus Thesaurarius, the continuator of the
Archbishop’s history, and certainly no anti-Gallican, lays it directly to his
charge.
(178) p. 310. Vinisauf.
(179) p. 311. Richard is said in those days to
have been Dronnunced Rickard—whence Melek Rik was the cry raised—was “the viord
of fear,” with which Sjrian mothers long frightened their mutinous urchins into
obedience, while Syrian cavaliers asked their starting coursers, “ Dost think
-Melek Rik is there ?” as recorded bv Bemardus Thesaurarius.
(180) p. 314. Some writers make the time five
years, five months, five weeks, five days, and five hours. The addition of a
regular gradation of shorter periods, governed by the numeral of the years,
being characteristic of a fanciful age, seems more important than the precise
length of the truce.
(181) p. 315. Michaud, Wilken. Vinisauf says
300,000, and Bohaeddin, according to Mills, 600,000.
(182) p. 315. For the appreciation of infantry
Michaud is the authority ; not for its resting upon the excellence of the
English archery; the memorandum concerning which has been lost in a wandering
life, and the work whence it was taken has unluckily slipped from the writer's
memory.
(183) p. 316. Readers who are familiar with the
German language may not be sorry to see a stanza of one of the juvenile
love-songs of the tyrant Henry VI, which has been preserved, and is published,
modernizing the orthography, if nothing more, by Vogt, in his Rheinische Sagen
csd Geschichte :—-
“ Ich gris.se mit Gesange die Siissen
Die ich vermeiden nicht will noch vermag,
Da ich sie von Munde recht mochte griissen,
Ach ! da ist leider so mannich Tag.
Wer nun dies Lied singe von ihr,
Der ich so unsanftlich entbiihr,
Es sey Weib oder Mann, der hab’ sie gegriisset von mir.”
(183*)
p. 319. The words “Vestigia Leonis,” are still to be read there.
(184) p. 326. The Genoese historiographer,
Caffari, gives, as the words of Henry’s letter to the republic, “ Si per vos
post Deum, Regnum Sicilian acqui- siero, meus erit honor, proficuum erit
vestrum. Ego euim in eo cum Teutonics meis manere non riebeo, sed vos et
posteri vestri in eo manebitis. Erit utique illud regnum non racum sed
vestrum.” A letter, supposing it to be correctly copied by Caffari, skilfully
and vaguely written, as to what is likely to happen; calculated to awaken
expectation of much, without binding the writer to anything. The actual grants
are of a later date, and will appear in their proper place.
(185) p. 328. Modern Italian writers have
rejected this story as contemptuously as can any German.
(186) p. 331. Luden adopts the old Guelph
assertion that Lothar was poisoned by the Emperor’? orders, and that only by
flight did Henry the Younger escape the same fate. Henry Vi’s character bore
not the stamp of that pure and lofty chivalrousness, which is in itself the
refutation of such calumny; but, if a tyrant, he was a rationa1
being; not the tyrant of early Italian tragedy : and far too sagacious a
politician to risk, fo.- the mere plea
sure
of committing a couple of murders, robbing himself of the power by which he
coerced a dangerous enemy into tianquillity and submission.
(187) p. 335. Baluzins says, that “inter ipsa
coronationis bolemnia, sug- gerente Diabol.o. ad aspectum ipsius coepit
vehementer horrescere, treinere ac pallere, ut nimjum perturbatus vix sustinere
posset fineni solf mnitatis.”
(1H8j
p. 339. It is probable that a papal dispensation from the bar of consanguinity
had been secured when the marriage was projected : otherwise the union of
second cousins, being unlawful, could not be difficult to dissolve.
(189) p. 310. This is another of the agreeable
legends that the pjp-honi'm of a modern historic school denies and argues away.
Luden asserts that Henry VI planned the marriage, as a mode of converting
dangerous enemies into useful friends: and that its secret solemnization was a
device to avoid both delay and expense, by previous negotiations, and the
pompous festivities.
(190) p. 340. Raumer, Denina, Luden. The last
asserts that Tancred, shocked at her treacheruus capture, instantly released
Constance, making it his only condition that she should visit the Pope and bear
witness to his magnanimity. Now as it does not appear that the Empress did so
visit the Pope, and as it is pretty certain that she did not for many months
rejoin the Emperor, while there is no conceivable motive for her failing to
perform so easy a condition, and no account given of how she spent the time
between her supposed release anu her return to Germany—perfectly intelligible
if she remained a prisoner at Palermo—I.mien’s account must be considered as
the least probable of the three.
(lyl)
p. 313. It appears, that various places in Dalmatia claim a visit from the
lion-hearted Crusader upon this disastrous occasion. Sir J. G. Wilkinson, in
his Dalmatia and Montenegro, tells us, he was assured 'hat Richard not only
visited Ragusa, but founded its Cathedral; which, however, has since been
burnt down, if it was not rather destroyed in the tremendous earthquake of
1067, in which 6000 Ragnsans perished. Mr. Paton, iu his Highlands and Islands
oi thf, Adbiatic, gives a Ragusan traditionary detail of the visit, pretty in
itself, but inconsistent with Richard’s plan of passing unknown. The
Lion-heart, it is averred, during the stoim that threatened him with shipwreck,
vowed to build a church to the Virgin, wherever lie should land in safety; to
have so landed upon Chroma, a small island close to Ragusa, and announced
himself and his pious intention to the Superior of a Monastery, there
established ; but to have been prevailed upon by the Ragusan Senate to accept
the hospitality of their republic, and transfer his church thither, where it
was much wanted.
(192) p. 343. Raumer, Rad. a Diceto, Tiro
niton, DauJolc, Cogges., Admont chr., Rigord. Ileramingford, Funcke, Hoveden.
(193) p. 334. The description of Richard’s
prodigious strength might seem haruly consistent with his constant illnesses
after great exertion,
fatigue,
or hardships. Oi are to to suppose
that what the old chroniclers regarded aa t nparalleled rohust vigour, was
merely unparalleled power of exertion ? v
(194) p. 346. Blondel’s ministry towards
Richard’s release is another romance, reasoned away by some historians, and v
ariously told in regard to many of the incidents by others. The argument
against it, turns upon the uselessness of concealment towards extorting a
ransom, and the publicity of Richard’s imprisonment at Trifels. But this is
confusing the two periods of Richard’s captivity, and his two gaolers, Henry
and Leopold. The latter wanted vengeance ; wanted to make Richard suffer ; and
concealed his capturc in order to keep him in his power j the Emperor wanted a
ransom, and at once treated for it, which of course he could not do without
owning that the king was in his hands. Some writers transfer the scene of
Blondel’s discovering him to Trifels, where Henry placed his captive, and
permitted his Chancellor to attend him ; perhaps it is this error that has
given the whole adventure an air of uselessness. Again the tale is variously
told. Some writers making Blondel sing the first verse, as was their wont, and
Richard answer; as being probably the way in which the minstrel would seek the
royal Troubadour. Wilken omits Blondel, in the narrative of Richard’s captivity
; but his authority is, as already observed, less high touching the European,
than the Asiatic history of the Crusaders. Scheller makes Richard’s disguise
that of a Templar, probably from finding that such had been his original
design; and several chroniclers and later historians assign different
localities to some of the incidents. But the strangest view' of the whole
affair is Luden’s, who conceives that Richard traversed Austria in order to
offer the Duke his sword, in atonement for the old affront, and assumed the
disguise from sheer love of a frolic, without any idea of concealing himself
from the enemy he was going to visit; and either at once revealed himself to
Leopold, or was only waiting for his convalescence to do so; but that the Duke
of Austria had not sufficient magnanimity to appreciate the King’s.
(195) p. 348.
Eichliorn.
(196) p. 349.
Matt. Par.
(197) p. 350. Pfister. It seems a pity to
deprive this striking scene of the melo-dramatic coup de theatre with which
some historians have adorned it:—bringing Richard in chains before the Diet,
and making Princes and Emperor tear them off upon hearing his dcfence. But such
a scene is consonant neither w7ith the usual treatment of accused
princes by the Diet;—and a king would hardly be subjected to indignities to
which it was held unmeet to subject dukes and margraves—nor with the respect
paid to Richard at Trfels ; nor yet with Richard’s own letter to his mother,
giv mg an account of the whole transaction.
(198) p. 350. Pfister, who asserts that the
grant was made, and Henry’s
object,
to have a King of England for his vassal, (um den Konig von England dls
Lthenmann betrachten zu dilrfen.)
(199) p. 351. Thierry, Rog. de Iloved.
(200) p. 351. Mailath says, that Richard upon
his release promised his niece, Elinor of liritany, to the Duke of Austria’s
eldest son. That no such marriage took place is certain, and it seems unlikely
that the angry Lio.i-leart should contract with his lawless captor—through whom
he had so heavy a ransom to pay, part of it to himself—an alliance not only so
intimately amicable, but one actually giving a chance of inheriting his crown.
Elinor stood next to her brother Arthur in the line of succession. The promise
might, however, he extorted like the ransom; and Richard, in the prime of life,
think little of his niece’s prospects. It is to be observed, that the design of
recapturing Richard, to earn the bribes of Philip and John, imputed to Henry by
Hume, is treated by German writers as an idle, calumnious rumour, disseminated
by malcontent Guelphs, and totally without foundation ; yet it alaimed Richard
into putting to sea in a storm.
(201) p. 352.
Funcke.
(202) p. 352.
Raumer, Muratori.
(203) p. 352. Williin, Ep. Ccelestini Papse ad
Yeronensem Episcopnm, Ep. Adalberti Archiep. Salzb. ad 1'apam Coelestinom;
Calles Annal. Austr.; Matt. Par., Bromton, Guil. Nenbrif. Rog. de IIov. The observation,
that no German historian seems shocked at the savage tenor of Leopold’s threat,
cannot be omitted. Is his not living to put it in execution, the plea ? At all
events it marks the habits and feelings of the age.
(204) p. 356. The qu.irrel shows that, of Gaeta
at least, the grant must have been to the two cities jointly.
(205) p. 357. Galtngal is an aromatic, bitter
root, of old well known in pharmacy, now forgotten.
(206) p. 360. Ratiir.er.
(207) p. 363. Joh. Muller.
(208) p. 363. Giannone.
(209) p. 363. Pfister.
(210) p. 364. Of the princes whose birth has
been questioned for want, or in spite, of such precautions, it were needless to
remind the reader. But it is proper to state that strange stories of more
extraordinary measures adopted by Constance to establish her maternity w’ere
once current; which, though now too universally rpjected to be admitted into
the narrative, may find their place in a note. One is, that her son was born in
an open tent in the marketplace, in presence of whoever chose to intrude;
another, that she exhibited herself in the streets of Palermo, whither she
hastened as soon as equal to the journey, with the milk dropping from her
uncovered bosom.
(211) p. 305. Capecelatro.
(212) p. 367. Caffari, upon this occasion,
observes, that Henry nerozavit.
(213) p. 370. The royal claim to the property
of deceased priests sprang naturally, like all ff-udal rights, from the idea
that all landed property—with rare exceptions—was held by grant from the crown.
And the claim, in the case, in question, would be strengthened rather than
weakened by the character hnd spirit of church endowments. The income assigned
a churchman was designed to support him respectably, according to his sphere,
including a due allowance for charity, and hospitality to wayfarers. All,
beyond the sum wanted for these purposes, was expected to be expended upon w
hat may be called supererogatory' works of charity and piety, not hoarded to
enrich relations.
(214) p. 374. Sharon Turner. Even the tolerant
Fatemite Caliphs of Egypt found it impossible to carry out their principles.
Hammer-Purgstall relates that the second of the dynasty, in the fulness of
manhood’s energy, successively raised a Christian and a Jew to the Vizierate,
but was forced by his subjects to sanction the execution of both.
(215) p. 375. Hammer-PurgKtall.
(216) p. 375. Wilken, Bohaeddin.
(217) p. 376. Id., id.
(218) p. 379. Muratori says, his Chancellor,
Conrad Bishop of Wurzburg . perhaps confusing, as an Italian was not unlikely
to do, the two Conrads, the Emperor’s acting Chancellor, with the
Arch-Chancellor of the Empire, nhose high rank in some measure probably
entitled him to the command of German crusaders in the Emperor’s absence. It
was the Emperor’s own contingent that was committed to the Bishop of Wurzburg.
(219) p. 380.
Pfister.
(220) p. 381.
Id., Eaumer, Sachs.
(221) p. 383.
Luden, Urspergenais.
(222) p. 383.
Eaumer, Daniele.
(223) p. 384. Mozzi dei
Capitani.
(224) p. 385. Vol.
i, p. 308.
(225) p. 387. Vol. i, p. 315.
(226) p. 389. A Milanese law, dated 1216,
sanctions, or authorizes, itself by the words—“ Ab imperio omnis jurisdictio
descendit.”
(227) p. 390. Testa. This evidently liberalist
Italian exile distinctly admits that Lombardy’s severance from the Empire was
of no earlier date than Lotliar’s embarrassed reign.
(228) p. 392. Wolfgang Menzel, for instance.
(229) p. 392. The best German legal
antiquaries, as, e. g., Eichliorn, admit this foundation of the papal
claim—though not the superstructure— that, when crowned emperor, and not
before, the elected German monarch was supreme Head of Christendom.
(230) p. 394. Vol. i, p. 91.
(231) p. 396, Vogt.
(232) p. 396. One proof alleged for the early
date, and consequent originality, of the Flemish Reyneke Fcchs is the
introduction of a married Roman Catholic priest with his legitimate wife and
family, just as much as a matter of course as if he were a Protestant
clergyman, whilst in French and high German versions the wife sinks to a
concubine.
(233) p. 398.
Raumer, I.andfriede Fiiedrichs I. Lunig. cod. 1. Schwaben- spiegel, Molino.
(234) p. 399.
Tiraboschi.
(235) p. 399. Id.
(236) p. 400. Is it worth noticing that,
peculiar as the Condottiere bands seem to Italy, they originated north of the
Alps, in France and Lowe1' I.orrain? Or to point out Ricotta’s
remaik, that fewdo, from the Teutonic fe or fen and od (wages and property) was
the name long given in Italy to all public salaries and even grants ?
(237) p. 400. The German Funcke is decidedly of
opinion that, had not their title of Kings of England given them p foreign
character, Henry II or Richard I, from the extent of their French possessions,
must have become Kings of France.
(238) p. 400. Accordi lg to Ricotta, Frederic
Barbarossa’s first company of mercenaries entitled itself Figliuoli d’Arnaldo
(da Brescia being of course understood); probably in proof of enmity to the
Pope. This would mark Frederic’s second expedition into Ital} as the epoch of
his first employing mercenaries.
(239) p. 401. Lord Campbell’s Lives of the Chancei lors.
(240) p. 402. If we, unlike the French, now
distinguish Sire from Sir, the old English address to a monarch would seem to
have been, 'Sir King. It is somewhat remarkable that the Germans, with all
their love of titles, and strongly marked lines of severance, use the same
word, Herr, whether addressing sovereign, kniglit, or tradesman. Herr Herzog,
mein Herr Konig, and Herr Fleischer Schmidt, answer to my Lord Duke, my Lord
the King, and Mr. Smith the butcher, or rather Mr. Butcher Smith.
(241) p. 404. Vol. i, pp. 37, 52; vol. ii, p.
113.
(242) p. 107. Dahlmann.
(243) p. 408. II charf,e,a de
grarus clercs de rediger toutes les coutumes du Hainault et de la Flandre; thus
concocting a civil and a criminal code. Warnkoenig.
(214) p. 408. Hallam.
(245) p. 4C9. Vol. i, p. 118.
(246) p. 109. Miss Strickland.
(247) p. 411. Dante—Inferno, C. 28. The metre
requires Re Giovanni,
not
Re giovane: “ Che diede al Re Giovanni i ma’ conforti.” Yet is Henry the i
ounger the person generally supposed to be meant by the Poet j as, indeed, he
is the only one to whom the concluding incident can apply.
(248) p. 411. Michelet thus
describes the poetry of the Troubadours “ Gracieuse, legere, immorale
litterature, qui n’a pas connu d’autre ideal que l’amour de la femme, qui ne s’est
jamais elevee a la beaute etemelle. Parfum
sterile, fleur ephemere, qui se fanait d’elle meme.” The German Gervinus, who
could fain admire them, praises the Troubadours for faithfully expressing the
passions and feelings of the day. He says:
“ Alles was der Provenzalen ausseres Leben bewegte, spiegelt sich in ilirer
Kunst. * * * Von Kriegs- lust, von Wetteifer, von Vassallentreue, von
Ritterpflicht, singt dort Jcder.” Yet this
admirer of the troubadours ends with the admission, that they want variety and
manhood: “ Die Lyrik der Provenzalen hat nicht eben grosse Mannichfaltigkeit. *
* * Von eigentlicher Mannlichkeit findet sich scgar wenig.”
(248*)
p. 412. One of these, named Fierabras, has been published since this chapter
was written.
(249) p. 413. Roquefort.
(250) p. 413. Millot.
(250*)
p. 414. Wharton’s History of English Poetry; Ellis’s Specimens
of Early English Romances.
(251) p. 414. Green, Princesses of England.
(252) p. 414. Sharon Turner.
(253) p. 414. Whether the supematurnal of these
romances be Scandinavian or Oriental, is another qutzstio vexata foreign to
general history. It may, however, be allowable to suggest the possibility of
its being both ; i. e., Scandinavian, Orientally modified by the Crusades'.
Northern imaginations must have been prodigiously excited by Oriental
splendour, physical, visible, and ideal, revealed to the partakers of those
hallowed expeditions.
(254) p. 415. Gervinus.
(255) p. 415. Warnkoenig, who quotes from
Jacques de Guyse : “ Fecit historias a mundi creatione, abbreviatas usque ad
tempora sua, sub brevi epilo- gatione, recolligi et conscribi * * * quas in
gallicano idiomate redigi fecit, quae ab ipso Historise Balduini
nuncupabantur.”
(256) p. 415. Roquefort. The French critic,
ascribing the original to England; whilst an Englishman, Ritson, gives that
credit to France.
(257) p. 415. Sharon Turner. Marie de France
does not specify which Henrj, King of England; but assuredly the historian is
right in thinking Henry Beauclerc a more likely translator, notwithstanding the
state of the language under him, than Henry II, or his son the younger King
Henry. Had Ilenrj
III, under whom, and for whose amusement, she
wrotp, been an English writer, she would haruly have translated his version
into French for him and his Court.
His
Queen, a Provencal, would have required a translation into Langue d'oc, not
Langue d’oil.
(258) p. 415. Hippisley, -wlio says the middle
of the century. Rask fixes upon the year 1100, as the end of pure ADglo-Saxon.
(259) p. 417. Gervinas.
(260) p. 417. Id.
(251) p. 418. Id.
(262)
p. 419. Id. French and Germans, a* well as Flemings have laid claim to the
Thier-Efos in general, as well as to Reynard the Fox individually; and the
reader who wishes to knovt more of the pretensions of the conte nding nations,
without w ading thruugh the many volumes written upon this controversy . will
find the arguments upon all sides collected in No. 20 of the British and
Foreign Review.
■ (263) p. 419. Rauschnik.
(264) p. 420.
Hasse.
(265) p. 420. Tiraboschi.
(266) p. 421. Is it worth mentioning,
even in a note, as a new theory, that Testa would fahi prove Italian to have
been long enough cultivated as a written language to have fitted it for Dante’s
use, and that Italian troubadours, if not poets in the vernacular, preceded the
Provenjaux. .
(267) p. 422. Tirahoschi. “
Piil suocosi.” '
(208) p. 422. It
must be added, that a Spanish author of the-ratiocinative unbelieving Niebuhr
school, Masdeu, in his Historia Critic a, very much doubts that the Cid himself
ever existed. But as he seems to stand alone in this piece of incredulity,
■whilst Vrabic au+hors attest his existence by execrations, it
may be sufficient to mention this Historic Doubt in a note. Ticknor’s History
of Spanish Literature.
(269) p. 122. Tirabuschi.
(270) p. 423. Saxo Grammaticus, the warn
eulogist of his patron, Archbishop Absalom, at -whose desire he wrote his
history, says of him: Non minus piratam se quani pontificem gessitmeaning, it
is ie be hoped, against, not with, pirates: unless “ pirata” be Latin for “
sea-king."
(271) p. 423. Dahlmann.
(272) p. 423. Baroness Blaze de Bury's
Germania.
(273) p. 124. Ticknur.
(274) p. 424. Ilallam.
(275) p. 424. Miss Strickland.
(276) p. 421. The words quoted by Ilormayr, who
is the authority for this German Mystery, are Ludus Paschalis, sub Frederiro I.
Imp. de Adventu et Interitu Anti-christi in scena exhibitus.
(277) p. 424. Tiraboschi.
(278) p. 425. Ilallam
l
(279) p. 425. Karamsin.
(280) p. 426. This mention is sufficient to
prove the compass then known, whilst the line given by Funcke from Gingueni, is
of a date so much later as to prove nothing. “ E dirizzar lo ago inver la
Stella,” is pure Italian, and Italians then, almost without exception, wrote
Latin or Provencal. Whence, perhaps, Ledru Rollin conceived the strangely
unfounded idea that the invention of the mariner’s compass was nearly
synchronous with the discovery of America, and the Art of printing (Decadence de l’Angleterre.)
(281) p. 426. Muratori believes the Bolognese
school to have been an University, a.d. 1100.
(282) p. 426. The title of Legis Doctor is
found in documents of Pepin’s reign; but Savigny holds it to have been then
merely equivalent to Schoeffen, and utterly irrelevant to the degree given by
Universities, as attesting the highest legal knowledge; which, as before said,
came into use in the second half of the twelfth century.
(283) p. 427. Ilallam.
(283*)
p. 428. Vol. i, p. 120.
(284) p. 428. The question, whether the style
of architecture called Gothic, be of Arabic or Teutonic origin, like other
antiquarian inquiries, artistic or literary, if ancillary to general history,
is too subordinate to be here made a subject of investigation, even in a note.
The rise of this Order of Architecture, amidst the religious enthusiasm of
this warlike, and especially crusading age, is all that imports the historian
of the times.
(285) p. 429. Bronikowski. The name is still
less Slavonian as given by Thompson, and in Murray’s Handbook, to wit,
Falckner. Unfortunately this first St. Stephen’s was accidentally burnt, and
only two of its towers w ere saved to form part of its successor.
(286) p. 430. Probably Mr. Curzon’s description
of the Vatopede Monastery upon Mount Athos, governed by an Abbot, an actual
prince, with his ecclesiastical Court, built round courts, its church safe in
the centre of one of them ; inhabited by 300 monks, and accommodating 500
guests; gives a fair idea of a Mediaeval Abbey, or Preceptory.
(287) p. 431. An extract made in Germany,
neglecting to note the author.
(288) p. 432. Rumohr.
(289) p. 432. Vol. i, p. 124.
(290) p. 433. The idea, that the Arabs were
thus early acquainted with gunpovt der as ah implement of war, is by Reinaud
and Fave supposed to be a mistake, arising from contemporary descriptions of the
effects of the burning naphtha which it was then the practice to throw amongst
their enemies.
(291) p. 433.
Dahlmann.
(292) p. 434.
Humboldt's Kosmos.
(293) p. 434. Berrington.
(294) p. 438. Mali, in his History of Chivalry, says that
once, and only once, Cours d’Amour w ere introduced into Germany; but he does
not give his authority, and other mention of them, out of France, the Author
has vainly sought.
(29j) p. 439. Michelet.
(296) p. 439. In the nineteenth century to
plead in behalf of cruelty seems f unnatural but, in sooth, it can
hardly be disputed that tenderness toward* aa enemy—might it not he said,
tenderness of others’ feelings ?—is the slowest developed of all human
qualities. Children delight in torturing animal*—and for enemies! All know the
horrible desolation of the Palatinate by Turenne, in Lewis XIV’s youth; the
horrible treatment of the Huguenots in his old age: and, according to Miss
Strickland, his great rival, William III, at the siege of Limerick, being
askedwhat was to be done with the prisoners, answered:
Burn
them 1” Whereupon, whether he meant it or merely uttered an idle ejaculation of
impatience at being troubled about prisoners, 1000 human beings were burnt to
death.
(297) p. 442.
Warnkonig.
(298) p. 443.
Vogt.
(299) p. 448. Ilurter;
who, upon the authority of Eusebius, says that a Pope was, in like manner,
recommenced by a dove, in the third
century.
(300) p. 450. “ Inn': III Epistola. Porro sicut luna lumen suui.i a sole ,-ortitur, qua? revera minor est
illo quantitate simul et qualitate, situ pariter et. effectu, sic regalis
potestas ab auctoritate pontificale suse sortitur digniiatis splendorem, cujus
conspectui quanto magis iiihcrrct, tanto minori lumine decoratur; quo plus ab
ejus elongatur aspectu, eo plus proficit in splendorem.”
(301) p. 450. To increase the resemblance,
between the two Popes, the credit of authorship has been claimed for Gregory
VII, ps the writer of a
Commentaiy upon the Gospel of St. Matthew and an Expounding of ihe Seven
FenitentiaJ Psalms. But in the first treatise is a quotation from St. Bernard,
who vs as unborn when Gregorj died: and the second is more commonly believed
the work of his predecessor Gregory the Great. The arrangement of the several
services of the Roman Church in the Breviary, as still in use, seems to be all
he can re ally claim of the. kind.
(302) p. 450. Hurter,
Innocent. De coNTEMTr mundi, sue de miseria
HITMAN.®
C0NDITI0NIS.
(303) p. 451. Id. “Inn'. Veri Dei vices gerit
in terra,” 1,302, 326, 335, xi, 89.
(304) p. 456. Muratori treats this Will as
genuine; saying that it was found amongst Markwald’s papers, when, in a defeat,
his baggage was taken ;
and
disregarding, apparently, the strong internal evidence against its genuineness,
in its glaring contradiction to the supposed testator’s whole conduct and known
sentiments, and the almost equally strong external evidence to the same effect;
to wit, that the ambitious, restless Markwald never, according to Muratori’s
statement, produced the document investing him with the regency, even when the
Empress, as Regent, banished him from the kingdom. It docs not appear to have
been produced upon the provocation of banishment, nor yet later, when the death
of Constance offered a fair opportunity to advance his pretensions ; nor yet
earlier, when its language and bequests might have facilitated the negotiations
for the Christian burial of the supposed testator, certainly the benefactor of
the supposed legatee ; but is withheld until accidentally found. This paper
may, however, not improbably be the ground upon which the allegation rests,
that Ilenry had, before his death, purchased absolution, and the recognition of
his son as his successor, from the Pope.
(305) p. 461. The date of Otho Earl or Duke of
Burgundy’s death is sometimes j>laced later. But it seems doubtful; and, had
lie been alive, that both Henry and the Diet should pass him by—Henry to heap
Swabia, Franconian fiefs, Tuscany, and two regencies, upon the younger
brother, the Diet to elect him—would be so strange as to need explanation. The
earlier date of his death has, therefore, been preferred.
(306) p. 468. Pfister.
(307) i). 474. Luden.
(308) p. 478. Fessler; Hurter, Decretales.
(309) p. 483. Baronius.
(310) p. 485. Rauiner, Pfister, Tiraboschi,
quoting Raynald. Annal. Eccl., Chron. Ursperg. The arguments against such an
offer having been made, are, that it had no result; that no notice of it
appears in Innocent’s Epistles ; and that Philip's two unaffianced daughters
were mere babies, one actually in arms. To which it is answered, that such an
offer would of course be made privately, and therefore, if it had no result,
would never appear in the public negotiation or correspondence; and that the
infancy of the proposed bride would no more be an obstacle, than the childhood
of her sisters had been to a matrimonial treaty altogether political; although,
joined to the early death of Philip, it might sufficiently account for the
failure of result. It is difficult to find any grounds upon which to form an
opinion ; nor is this the only perplexity caused to historians, by Philip’s
daughters.
(311) p. 485, Baronius.
(3127
p. 486. Innocent’s proposal of this marriage is no argument against his having
received and liked the offer of one of Philip’s daughters for his nephew. There
was still a little princess in arms to bring the Matildan
heritage
into the Segni family, and there was reason to expect ere long another prince
or princess.
(313) p. 488. The feelings aid opinions of
German Ghibelines upon the subject may he exemplified by the following lines of
Walther von der Yogel- weide, one of the most admired poets of the thirteenth
century; Englished in metre emulating the freedom of the original:—
“
IIow Christianly, in Rome, the Pone laughs loud and higji To his Italians,
saying, ‘ See my dexterity!’
(That
which he now is saying were better far unthought.)
‘
Two German lubbers I under one hood have brought,
The
Empire let them burthen, and rack with many an ill Our empty coffers whilst so
quietly we fill.
My
tributaries they, and all they have is mine ;
To
my good strong box comes their German silver fine.
Then
feast on chickens, priests, quaff of good wine your fill;
Let
Germans fast!—if fast they will.’ ”
(314) p. 491.
Bottiger, Luden, Hurter, Godrf. Mon., Chron.
Ursp.; Raumer, Otto S. Bias.
(315) p. 493. The arguer away of received
historical facts, Luden, represents the regicide as a mere accident, the
Palsgrave really at play, the Bishop so frightened at the brandished sword that
the King and the Sewer interfered, and that awkwardly; whence the accidental
wound—a conjecture too idle for the text, though, in deference to Luden’s
reputation, not to be altogether omitted. Vogt adopts the story of the letter,
speaks of it as having just occurred, and as nearly a justification of the
murder; add'ng the remark, that Philip's career was almost uninterruptedly
successful, until he broke his promise to Otho von Wittelsbaeh, and gave him a
Uriah-letter for Poland: as though hindering a somewhat brutal warrior from
obtaining an unknown, unseen bride, were tantamount to ordering his death.
Wolf changes the scene of the catastrophe to an imperial palace in Bamberg,
which would no otherwise affect the story than as taking away all conceivable
motive for the flight of the Andechs brothers, if innocent; as, unless proved
guilty, they must be supposed, not only by English law, but from their position
relative to Thilip. Pfister, who holds them guilty, gives Otho a band of ten
men, waiting for him at the door; and quotes from Cardinal T’goliro’s report to
the Pope, that the murderer fled to the Bishop. If he did, that certainly might
terrify a timid man, as bringing suspicion upon him. But it must be observed
that the Cardinal was not then upon the spot, being still upon the road from
Rome; and in his report, as given by Baronius, he seems to have accredited
every rumour he met with: e.g., he states that Palsgrave Otho, after knocking
at the door, entered the room accompanied by the Duke of Bavaria, the Mar
grave
of Istria, and ten armed men. Hormayr acquits the Bishop, but holds the
Margrave guilty. It is, however, possible, that the brothers might have
previously plotted with Otho—though hardly in resentment for his loss of their
niece—have changed their mind upon their eldest brother’s marriage, and have
fancied the scheme equally given up by him ; but, upon its unexpected
perpetration in the episcopal palace, have fled, fearing that their previous
conspiracy would be detected.
ERRATA.
Page 173,
liues 5 and 7, for “dissentions” read "dissensions.” „ 185, line 11, for “
Antioch” read “ Antiochsean.”
„ 254, line
10,/or “1189” read “ 1188 j” and top line of pp. 56, 58, 60, 62, and 64 „ 446,
line 5, insert “ Double Election.”
Digitized
by Microsoft f
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of Accession. |
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of Sicily. |
Kings
of Jerusalem. |
Kings
of France. |
Kings
of England. |
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Anastasius
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Charles
IV |
Edward
the Elder. |
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911 |
Conrad
I (a Franconian) |
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913 |
Landonius |
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914 |
John
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[Saxox dynasty.] |
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919 |
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Ilenry |
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924 |
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Atheist
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925 |
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928 |
Leo
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929 |
Stephen
VII |
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931 936 |
John
XI Leo VII |
Otho
I |
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Lewis
IV |
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939 |
Stephen
VIII |
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Edmund |
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941 |
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942 |
Martin
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Edred |
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946 |
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■.H- Lothar |
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934 |
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Edwy |
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956 959 |
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Edgar |
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965 |
John
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972 |
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Henry
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Henry
III
Henry
IV
Edward
the Martyr Ethelred
Lewis
V Hugh Capet
Robert
Edmund
Ironsides Canute
Henry
I
Harold
Harefoot Hardicanute Edward the Confessor
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of France. |
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of England. |
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1058 |
Nicolas
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Pascal
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1118 |
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1124 |
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Apulia |
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1137 |
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Lewis
VII |
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1138 |
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1143 |
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Melisenda
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Lucius
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1150 |
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1152 1154 |
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Frederic
I |
William
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1159 |
Alexander
III |
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Amalric |
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1166 |
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William
II |
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1173 1180 |
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Baldwin
IV |
Philip
II |
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H81 |
Lucius
III |
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Baldwin
V |
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1185 |
Urban
III |
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1186 |
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Sibylla
and Guy |
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1187 |
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VIII |
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1189 |
Clement
III |
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Tancred |
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Richard
I |
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1190 |
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Henry
VI |
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1191 |
Celestin
III |
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1192 |
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Isabel
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1194 |
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and Constance |
Isabel
& Amalric II |
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1197 |
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Philip
and Otho |
Frederic |
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1198 |
Innocent
III |
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John |
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1199 |
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1205 |
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Maria
Yolanthe. |
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1210 |
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with
John de Brienne |
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1212 1216 |
Honorius
III |
Frederic
II |
|
John
with Yolanthe |
|
Henry
III |
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of Accession. |
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Fmprrors. |
Kings
of Sicily. |
Kings
of Jerusalem. |
Kings
of France. |
Kings
of England. |
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1223 |
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Lewis
VIII |
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1226 |
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Lewis
IX |
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||||||||||
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1227 |
Gregory
IX |
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||||||||||
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1228 |
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Frederic
and Conrad |
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1241 |
Celestin
IV |
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1243 |
Innocent
IV |
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1250 |
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Conrad
IV |
Conrad
IV |
Conrad
IV |
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1254 |
Alexander
IV |
William
of Holland |
Conradin |
Conradin |
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1256 |
|
Richard
aiid Alfonso |
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1258 |
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Manfred |
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1261 |
Urban'
I\ |
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... |
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1264 |
Clement
I\' |
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12G6 |
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Charles
of Anjou |
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1268 |
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Hugh
de Lusignan, |
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d (0 O 1239 |
See
vacant |
/ Interregnum |
... |
descended
from Isabel’s second daughter |
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