CHAPTER XIII

THE THIRD CRUSADE AND THE REIGN OF HENRY VI.[24] (1187–1197)

Europe in 1187—Preparations for the Third Crusade—Crusade and Death of Frederick Barbarossa—Destruction of the German Army—Crusade of Philip II. and Richard I.—Truce with Saladin—The Reign of Henry VI.—Henry’s Coronation and first Italian journey—First attack on Apulia—German troubles—Captivity of Richard I.—Conquest of Apulia and Sicily—The Hereditary Empire and the Conquest of the East—Death of Henry.

[Sidenote: The state of Europe after the fall of Jerusalem.]

In the second half of the twelfth century limits had already been set to the worst forms of feudal anarchy, and strong and well-ordered states ruled by powerful kings had replaced the chaos of the Dark Ages. Frederick Barbarossa, if no effective lord of the world, exercised a very real authority over Germany, and even over Italy. Louis VI. and Louis VII. had put the resources of the French monarchy on a solid basis, and Philip Augustus was now preparing the way for still greater triumphs. Henry II. had bound together his vast but heterogeneous empire so firmly that the power of Anjou was able to survive the blind knight-errantry of his successor. Even in the remoter parts of Europe the same tendency manifested itself towards the growth of strong monarchies. The kingdoms of the east and north, barely redeemed from barbarism, saw rulers like Valdemar of Denmark and Ottocar of Bohemia. The kingdoms of divided Spain, the Norman dominion of Sicily, show the universal drift of the tide. Even the greater feudatories of the larger kingdoms were making themselves centres of an authority that was not far from being national. States like Toulouse and Provence, representing the growing national feeling of the south French nation; opulent and manufacturing Flanders, cutting itself apart from France and Germany alike, and even mere dynastic powers, like the house of Champagne and Blois, show how authority was becoming concentrated into few hands. If the unity of the German kingdom was still rather illusory, the dukes, counts, and margraves, who ruled over its larger subdivisions, were making themselves, like the great French feudatories, centres of a local feeling and of a local order, which, in days when the strongest king’s arm did not reach very far, were real securities for peace and prosperity.

When the terrible news that Jerusalem was once more in the hands of the infidel spread throughout Europe, the result of this development was seen in the shape taken by the movement to re-establish the Christian power in the East. In the eleventh century the Popes had preached, organised, and directed the Crusades. A hundred years later the Papacy had certainly not declined in influence. But it was no longer the only strong power in Europe. Absolutely it was what it had been in the days of Gregory and Urban. Relatively it was much less, since instead of a Henry IV., or Philip I., or a William Rufus, it had to deal with a Barbarossa, a Philip Augustus, a Henry of Anjou. Even the leadership of the Church, as St. Bernard’s career shows, was not necessarily given to the reigning Pope. While the First Crusade was the work of Urban II., and the Second Crusade sprang from the efforts of St. Bernard, the Third Crusade was due to the prompt action of the great kings of Europe, and above all to Frederick Barbarossa. In the First Crusade the leadership of the Christian host fell to the lesser feudal princes, like the Count of Toulouse or the Count of Flanders. In the Second Crusade the Emperor and the King of France took the lead, but they went with insufficient resources, and left their dominions in disorder and anarchy. In the Third Crusade the three chief monarchs of Europe appeared at the head of well-equipped and fairly disciplined armies. However little successful they were, their failure was as much due to their taking with them on their pilgrimage their Western rivalries, as to their military insufficiency for their task. In each case they left their dominions well cared for and well governed, and in no case did their long absence from their homes stop the orderly development of their states.

The absorption of the Western monarchs on their own territorial aggrandisement seemed for a time to lessen the force of the crusading impulse, and certainly during the thirteenth century led to the gradual decay of the crusading ideal. Europe was now breaking up slowly but surely into the great nations of modern times, and was inevitably losing a good deal of her consciousness of unity in the process. Even Frederick Barbarossa, filled as he was with his dreams of reviving the power of Rome, had been, as we saw, obliged to adopt a different policy in Germany and Italy, and had attained his greatest successes in proportion as he acted most fully as a German national king. To kings like Philip Augustus and Henry of Anjou, the Empire was a mere name, and they were conscious of no lord over them save God Himself. Such unity of feeling as remained in Europe was rather the result of common chivalrous and martial ideals, and the steady and persistent international influence of the Catholic Church, than of any ideal unity of the Christian state under the Roman Emperor. The kings of the West had too much work at home to give them much leisure to look abroad. If ambition, restlessness, or principle compelled them to take interest in the affairs of their neighbours, they had not yet attained sufficient strength to make their intervention a reality.

[Sidenote: Preparations for the Third Crusade, 1187–1189.]

It was harder to bring about a combined European movement in the days of Barbarossa than it had been in the days of Urban II. But the news that the infidel was once more lording it over the Holy Sepulchre so profoundly stirred up the mind of Europe that all difficulties in the way of continued action were rapidly surmounted, and within three years of the fall of Jerusalem the best organised of the Crusades was already started. The Papacy proved true to its noblest traditions. It was universally believed that the fall, or the prospect of the fall, of the Holy City had proved Urban III.’s death-blow. His successors, the enthusiastic Gregory VIII. and the conciliatory Clement III., strove, at great sacrifices, to heal the feuds of Pope and Emperor, and to assuage the rivalries of the monarchs of Europe, so that all might turn their resources to the Holy War. Within a few weeks of the receipt of the fatal news, orders were issued from Rome, calling on the faithful to unite to free Jerusalem from the infidel, enjoining public fasts and prayers, and offering ample indulgences and spiritual encouragements to such as would take the cross. The Cardinals talked of living on alms, and devoting their property to the Crusade, while they wandered through Europe, preaching the Holy War. Italy, so little moved as a rule by the crusading impulse, and so accustomed to make a heavy profit from the necessities of Northern and Western pilgrims, was all aglow with enthusiasm. The first succour sent to the East came from a Norman fleet from Naples and Sicily, which took up the work of Bohemund. William of Sicily turned to the succour of Antioch and Tyre the army which he had collected to attack Constantinople. Not much behind the Sicilians were the Scandinavian peoples, who were now for the first time brought within the range of the crusading movement. If Norway, torn asunder by civil war, contributed but few Crusaders, thousands took the cross in Sweden and Denmark. But the individual efforts of the smaller states soon subordinated themselves to the action of the three greatest princes of Europe. Richard of Aquitaine was the first of Western rulers to take the cross in 1187. His father and Philip of France received the cross from the Archbishop of Tyre in the early part of 1188. But though England and France could agree to levy a ‘Saladin tithe,’ to equip the crusading host, the hostility of their sovereigns postponed the Crusade until after Henry II.’s death. When, in 1189, Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion made themselves the leaders of the Third Crusade in the West, Frederick Barbarossa, with his German host, was already on his march for the East. Round these three monarchs groups the history of the Crusade.

[Sidenote: Crusade and death of Frederick Barbarossa, 1089–1191.]

Frederick Barbarossa was the first to start. In the spring of 1189, the German Crusaders gathered together at Ratisbon. Great pains were taken to provide money and equipment as well as men, and every precaution to avoid the swarm of unarmed pilgrims and penniless fanatics, who had destroyed the discipline and military efficiency of earlier crusading armies. In May the German host started on the dangerous land route through Hungary, Greece, and Asia Minor. The friendship of Bela III. of Hungary made the first part of the journey easy. Much time was wasted through the treachery of the Eastern Emperor, Isaac Angelus, yet Isaac dared not face the open hostility of the Germans, and at last made his submission. Winter was now at hand, and Frederick thought it prudent to rest at Adrianople. In March 1190 the Germans resumed their march. April saw them in Asia, on the borders of the kingdom of Roum, where Kilidj Arslan proved as plausible and as treacherous as Isaac. But, like Isaac, the Sultan feared provoking their direct hostility, and after many delays and difficulties, the Christian army was allowed to proceed. By June the Crusaders were descending the passes of the Taurus into Cilicia, then part of the Christian kingdom of Armenia. On reaching the banks of the Salef, the old Emperor, against the advice of his followers, sought refreshment and the shortening of his journey by swimming over the river. But the swift current swept him away, and the sorrowful warriors could only rescue his lifeless body from the stream.

Up to this point the German expedition had been decidedly successful. But the utter consternation that fell upon it after the Emperor’s death did more for Islam than the tricks of Kilidj Arslan and the deserts and defiles of Asia Minor. Many knights hastened to the coast and took ship home. Duke Frederick of Swabia, Barbarossa’s second son, assumed the command of the dispirited remnant, which, after resting a while in the friendly land of the Armenians, entered Syria. [Sidenote: Destruction of the German Army.] The reins of discipline were now hopelessly relaxed. The army broke up into various bands, and the disconnected fragments were so severely handled by the Saracens that German slaves were cheap for many a day in every market of Syria. Duke Frederick at last reached Antioch, where he buried the perishable parts of his father’s body in the church of St. Peter. The plague now decimated the much tried host, and only a miserable remnant followed Duke Frederick to join in the siege of Acre. Before long the Duke of Swabia died, and the Germans were now so utterly demoralised that they lost the sacred bones of their Emperor, which they had preserved in the hope of giving them a worthy tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The great German army was of less account in Palestine than the scattered bands that came from Lower Germany by sea and finally got to Acre after doing good service against the Moors in Spain, or the little host that had sailed from Brindisi under the Landgrave Louis of Thuringia, and also reached Syria in safety.

The German Crusade had already been undone when the kings of France and England met at Vézelai and marched thence to Marseilles. A gallant army accompanied them, conspicuous among the leaders of which were Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, Theobald V. of Blois (the son and successor of Theobald the Great), Henry II., Count of Champagne (the Count of Blois’ nephew), and Philip of Alsace, the aged Count of Flanders. [Sidenote: Crusade of Philip Augustus and Richard I., 1190–1192.] In September 1190 both kings had reached Sicily, where they passed the winter, detained by the critical state of the island. William the Good had died in November 1189, and his throne should have passed to his aunt Constance’s husband, the new king of the Romans, Henry VI. But the rule of the northerners was not popular in Sicily. [Sidenote: Tancred of Sicily and Isaac of Cyprus, 1189–1191.] Despite the efforts of Walter Archbishop of Palermo to keep the Sicilian grandees true to their oaths, the national party, headed by the chancellor Matthew, passed over Constance, and gave the throne to Tancred, Count of Lecce, a young, vigorous, warlike, and popular prince. Tancred was a bastard son of Duke Roger, King Roger’s eldest son, who had died before his father. As the determined foe of the Hohenstaufen, Richard bore no ill-will to Tancred, and, with a little more statecraft, would have seen the wisdom of gaining his friendship. But Richard often neglected policy for adventure, and was perhaps seized by a wild desire to conquer Sicily. Tancred had rashly imprisoned King William’s widow, Joanna, who was Richard I.’s sister, and had deprived her of her dowry. On Richard’s arrival, King Tancred released the lady, but still kept her lands. But Richard took Messina by storm, ‘quicker than a priest could chant matins,’ and forced Tancred to surrender his sister’s portion. He stayed in Sicily all the winter, and at the time of the spring passage, Richard and Philip set sail for the Holy Land. On the way Richard conquered Cyprus, then ruled by the Comnenian prince Isaac, who was called Emperor of Cyprus, and had won an ill name for his ill-concealed alliance with Saladin and his bad treatment of Frankish pilgrims.

[Sidenote: Capture of Acre, 1191.]

The affairs of the Christians in Palestine seemed utterly desperate. Guy of Lusignan [see pp. 193–195], who had been released by Saladin on promising to relinquish the crown, had been absolved from his oath by the clergy, and now again called himself King of Jerusalem, though Conrad of Montferrat held Tyre against him, and the Christians were hopelessly divided. Nevertheless Guy, with the help of the first Crusaders, had undertaken the siege of Acre, the most important of the Saracen conquests after Jerusalem itself. But the Saracens, who came to the relief of Acre, were themselves strong enough to besiege the besiegers, who were soon in a terrible plight. The constant arrival of fresh Crusaders, and the need of dividing Saladin’s army to deal with Barbarossa, enabled Guy to hold his own until the spring of 1191, when Saladin renewed his blockade. In despair Guy hurried to Cyprus and begged for Richard’s help. Philip reached the camp in April, and Richard early in June. Saladin now retired, and the siege of Acre was renewed. In July the standard of the Cross again floated over its walls.

The Western army had taken with them to Palestine their national jealousies, and the quarrels of the rival claimants for the throne of Jerusalem brought these animosities to a crisis. Philip looked upon Richard with deadly hatred as his most formidable rival, and Richard’s insulting repudiation of his long-plighted faith to Alice, Philip’s sister, and his marriage with Berengaria of Navarre at Cyprus, would have irritated a colder man than the French king. Conrad of Montferrat was urged by the great nobles of Palestine to claim the throne, since Sibyl and her children were already dead, and Guy’s title to the throne had entirely disappeared. [Sidenote: Rivalry of Guy of Lusignan and Conrad of Montferrat.] Isabella, Sibyl’s younger sister, now repudiated her husband, Henfrid of Toron, married Conrad, and transferred to him her claims to the succession. While these disputes were raging the army remained inactive, but at last a compromise was patched up by which Guy kept the royal title but shared his power with Conrad, who was appointed his successor. No sooner was this done than Philip Augustus started home. Freed from his presence Richard marched against the infidel, and performed prodigies of valour. But his army was breaking up through sickness, death, and desertion. Many of the French had gone back with Philip. The plague had carried off Theobald of Blois and Philip of Alsace. Hugh of Burgundy, who died in Palestine in 1193, and Henry of Champagne, were now the chief French Crusaders. Despite the arrangement between Guy and Conrad their rivalry burst out afresh, and Conrad became so strong that Richard acknowledged him king. Soon after, Conrad’s murder by the emissaries of the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’ renewed the troubles, though they were for a time satisfactorily settled when Isabella, Conrad’s widow, married Henry of Champagne, who was now accepted as king, both by the Crusaders and the Syrian Franks. [Sidenote: Henry of Champagne King of Jerusalem, 1192.] Richard magnanimously compensated Guy by handing over Cyprus, where the house of Lusignan reigned as kings until the latter part of the fifteenth century. At length the war with Saladin was renewed. But the Crusaders were decimated with sickness and weary of their enterprise, while the elaborate courtesies, now exchanged between the Christian and Mohammedan armies, showed that the long intercourse of Frank and Saracen had destroyed the bigotry and acerbity that had marked the earlier dealings of the two hosts. [Sidenote: Truce with Saladin, and end of the Third Crusade, 1192.] In September 1192 a truce was made by which Jaffa was left in Christian hands and free access to Jerusalem was allowed to pilgrims, though the Holy City remained ruled by the Mohammedans. In October Richard left Palestine, and next year Saladin died. With the passing away of the two mighty antagonists the great epoch of the Crusades ended. Even before this the Third Crusade had shown that a Europe, broken up into rival states, whose kings carried their animosities with them even when they fought as soldiers of the Cross, was less capable of upholding the Frankish power in the East than even the tumultuous throngs of feudal chieftains and adventurers, who had first established it. Yet the Third Crusade had given a new lease to the Christian power in Syria. Acre now became what Jerusalem had been in the twelfth century, and the Latin kingdom of Cyprus afforded a good basis for future operations against the infidel, and bound the East and West together as they had never been bound before. If the Third Crusade marked the end of the heroic period, it made easy the regular flow of bands of armed pilgrims, every spring and autumn passage, on which the future destinies of the Latin East depended.

[Sidenote: Henry VI., 1190–1197.]

The short but most important reign of Henry VI. brings out clearly that intimate interconnection of all Western and Eastern politics which the Crusade had already strikingly illustrated. The puny frame and delicate constitution of the young king stood in marked contrast to the physical strength and vigour of his father. But his strong features expressed sternness and determination, and his mental gifts and character were in no wise inferior to those of Barbarossa. He was as good a general, as active and strenuous a politician, as the old king. His policy shows a daring originality to which his father could make no claim. But the broader, nobler sides of Barbarossa’s character were but little represented in that of his son. He carried out ambitious schemes with cold-blooded selfishness, ruthless cruelty, and greedy treachery. Yet his general objects were far-reaching, and not wanting in nobility, and he ever showed a rare self-restraint. The inheritor of his father’s great work, the husband of the heiress of Sicily, Henry had visions of a power which was not limited to Germany and northern Italy. He dreamt of an Empire as universal as the Empire imagined by Otto III. Like Otto, he strove to make Italy rather than Germany the centre of his power. Like Otto also, he reigned too short a time to carry out his ideals. But, unlike Otto, he strove to realise his ambitions in a thoroughly practical and masterly way. In his reign of eight years he had only one failure.

[Sidenote: Return of Henry the Lion, 1190.]

From the moment that the departure of Barbarossa had left King Henry the virtual ruler of Germany, grave difficulties encompassed his administration. Henry the Lion returned, Lübeck opened its doors to its founder, and was soon in a position to dispute the supremacy of Saxony with the bishops and barons who had divided his ancient powers. In the summer of 1190, the mediation of the Archbishops of Cologne and Mainz concluded the Treaty of Fulda, by which the king allowed Henry the Lion’s restoration, and gave him half the revenues of Lübeck. It was worth while to buy off opposition when the news of the recognition of Tancred by the Pope required Henry’s immediate presence in Italy to vindicate the claims of his wife Constance to the Sicilian throne. Hardly less alarming was the news of the long sojourn of Richard of England in Messina, and of his treaty with the usurper Tancred. It seemed as if Richard, the brother-in-law of Henry the Lion, and the strenuous supporter of the Guelfs, was becoming the bond of union between the enemies of the Hohenstaufen in northern Germany and southern Italy. The news of Barbarossa’s death now further complicated the position.

[Sidenote: Henry VI.’s Coronation and first Italian journey, 1191.]

Early in 1191 Henry VI. crossed the Alps to Italy. The mutual rivalries of the Lombard cities made it improbable that he would have much difficulty with the north. He prudently sought the friendship of both the rival leagues, whose feuds were now distracting Lombardy. He won the support of Pisa and Genoa, which alone had fleets strong enough to convey him to Sicily. In his anxiety to isolate Tancred, he strove to conciliate Clement III., who had been allowed to live in Rome on the condition of recognising the autonomy of the city. [Sidenote: Celestine III., 1191–1198.] But in March 1191 the pacific Clement died, and his successor, the Roman Cardinal Hyacinth, who took the name of Celestine III., was a weak and petulant old man of more than eighty years of age, who feared both the union of the Empire and Sicily, and an open breach with Henry.

Henry demanded his coronation as Emperor, and Celestine strove to defer it by postponing his own consecration as Pope. Henry now marched to the neighbourhood of Rome, and took possession of Tusculum, which, in its bitter hatred of the Romans, had implored for an imperial garrison. He resolved to hasten his coronation by winning over the Romans, and with that object he treacherously handed over Tusculum to them. The Romans wreaked a hideous vengeance on their hated enemy. Tusculum was so absolutely demolished that no later attempt was ever made to repeople it. In later times Frascati, lower down the hill, became a populous town; but the ruins of Tusculum still testify to the completeness of the Romans’ vengeance. Henry’s stroke of policy met with immediate success. On April 14th Celestine was consecrated, and next day he crowned Henry and Constance.

[Sidenote: Failure of the attack on Apulia, 1191.]

Triumphant over the Papacy, Henry now marched against Tancred. At first he was conspicuously successful, and Naples alone still held out for Tancred. It was besieged by Henry on the land side, while the galleys of Pisa and Genoa blocked all access to it by sea. The strenuous resistance of Naples soon shattered the Emperor’s hopes. The Sicilian admiral, Margarito, drove away the Pisans, and re-opened communication between Naples and Sicily. The south Italian summer brought plague and fever into the German host. A fierce national reaction against the Northerners swept through southern Italy. Baffled and beaten, Henry raised the siege and returned to Germany.

Henry of Brunswick, the eldest son of Henry the Lion, who had accompanied the Emperor to Italy as a hostage, escaped from the imperial camp, and established an alliance between Tancred and the Guelfs. During the king’s absence in Italy, Henry the Lion had broken the Peace of Fulda, and was waging war against his Saxon enemies. On the king’s return to Germany, a struggle between the Guelfs and the Hohenstaufen seemed inevitable. [Sidenote: Renewed German troubles, 1191–1194.] However Henry VI. still made it his main object to conquer Naples and Sicily, and Henry the Lion was too old and too fearful of fresh banishment to risk everything once more. Accordingly, negotiations were entered into between the two, and a reconciliation seemed likely to ensue. But the German magnates were more afraid of the Guelfs than the Emperor, and pressed him to go to war against Henry the Lion. [Sidenote: The Saxon troubles and the Liége succession, 1192.] At last, in 1192, Henry took the field against the Guelfs. A new complication followed. There had been a disputed succession to the see of Liége, which had given Henry a chance to annul the two rival elections, and appoint Lothair of Hochstaden as bishop. It was a glaring violation of the Concordat of Worms, and a direct defiance of the spiritual power. The stronger of the wronged claimants, Albert of Brabant, appealed to the Pope, and obtained his recognition. Unable to get hallowed as bishop by his own metropolitan at Cologne, Albert went to Reims, to seek consecration from a foreign prelate. Three knights, vassals of Liége and servants of the Emperor, followed Albert to Reims, and murdered him, in November 1192. A great sensation was created by the dastardly deed, which in many ways recalled the murder of St. Thomas of Canterbury twenty-two years before. But Henry managed to escape direct ecclesiastical censure, though the murderers afterwards received fiefs from him in Italy. [Sidenote: The revolt of the Rhineland, 1193.] However, the barons of the Rhineland, already disaffected at Henry’s masterful policy, and resenting his neglect of the magnates for his faithful officials, took the opportunity to revolt, and, joining the rebellious Guelfs, raised up a formidable opposition to the Emperor, and talked of transferring the crown to their leader, the Duke of Brabant. But fortune was on Henry’s side. At the same time as the news of the rebellion came the joyful tidings that Richard of England, returning in disguise from the Holy Land, had been captured by Leopold, Duke of Austria, who brought a series of charges against him, and handed him over to the Emperor. [Sidenote: Captivity and ransom of Richard I., 1192–1194.] Philip of France, and John, Richard’s brother, pressed the Emperor to keep the captive as long as he could, and Richard remained more than two years in prison, but the delay was due to his unwillingness to accept the hard conditions imposed upon him. At last Richard was forced to agree to the Emperor’s terms, and in June 1193 purchased his release in the Treaty of Worms. Richard was forced to pay a vast ransom and to renounce his alliance with Tancred. But the hardest condition was the surrender of the English crown to the Emperor, which in February 1194 Henry formally handed back to Richard as a fief of the Empire. Some compensation was given to Richard’s wounded feelings by a grant to him of the kingdom of Arles, which had some importance as a fresh declaration of hostility against Philip of France. Moreover, Henry cleverly used Richard to procure peace in Germany. Henry the Lion yielded to his brother-in-law’s pleadings, and again made his submission. Even the barons of the lower Rhine were not unmoved by his appeals. Richard’s departure left Germany at peace with the Emperor, and his ransom made easy a fresh expedition against Tancred.[25] Henry of Brunswick, Henry the Lion’s eldest son, was married to a cousin of the Emperor, Agnes, daughter of Conrad, Count Palatine of the Rhine, and the Emperor’s uncle. The Emperor promised him the succession to the Palatinate, and Henry promised to join in the Sicilian expedition. In 1195 Henry the Lion ended his long and turbulent career. The Emperor was now free to turn his attention to Italy. His self-restraint and his good luck had carried him over his difficulties in Germany. His greatest merit was that, however proud he was of his mighty position, he never left out of sight the necessity of subordinating all minor aims to his desire to win Naples and Sicily. His moderation against Henry the Lion, his reconciliation with Richard, his rejection of the tempting offers of France, and his vast concessions to the German nobles, now attained their object.

[Sidenote: Henry’s Italian policy, 1191–1194.]

During Henry’s absence in Germany, the imperial cause in Italy had declined. Nevertheless Henry had kept up constant communications with his Italian partisans, and had observed a very careful policy with regard to the Lombards. He has often been accused of striving to restore his father’s schemes of supremacy in Italy by violating the Treaty of Constance and seeking again the abasement of the Lombards. But the charge is no more just than the one of extravagant hostility against the Guelfs. As a matter of fact, Henry strove to postpone all other troubles in order to get his hands free to secure his wife’s inheritance. He saw that Lombardy, after Constance, had fallen back into her ancient feuds, and that two leagues, one headed by Milan, the other by Cremona, had arisen, both equally indifferent to the Empire, and both equally willing to invoke its aid to crush the local enemy. Henry strove to make treaties with both confederacies, while he cheerfully replenished his coffers from the treasuries of both Milan and Cremona, and did his best to end the war. He established his brother Philip in Tuscany. Genoa and Pisa again provided him with ships. The Norman kingdom, isolated from its wonted allies, had to meet him single-handed, save for the timid support of Celestine III.

Tancred prepared manfully for the struggle. He obtained in 1192 the formal investiture of Apulia and Sicily from Celestine III. He procured the coronation of his young son Roger as joint-king, and negotiated a marriage for him with Irene, daughter of the Greek Emperor Isaac Angelus. [Sidenote: Conquest of Apulia and Sicily, 1194.] He strenuously and successfully held his own against the Emperor’s lieutenants. But all his hopes were destroyed by the young King Roger’s death, and soon after Tancred himself died. The national party set up his eldest surviving son as King William III., but in May 1194 Henry again reached Italy, and invaded the defenceless south. There was a mere show of resistance. By November Palermo was in the hands of the Emperor, and on Christmas Day he received the Sicilian crown in the cathedral. The young King William was sent, blinded and mutilated, to die obscurely in a German convent. The last upholders of the national power, including the Admiral Margarito, soon perished in gloomy dungeons. The very family of Tancred now secured its patrimonial possessions by a timely recognition of the rival. At Easter 1195 Henry was able to return to Germany, leaving Constance as regent, with the tried court official, Conrad of Urslingen, now Duke of Spoleto, as her chief adviser. The officials from the lower German nobility, who had served Henry so well in Germany, were intrusted with the administration of his new inheritance, and soon abased the great Norman houses.

[Sidenote: Henry’s triumph and further projects, 1194–1197.]

Never was an Emperor stronger since the days of Charlemagne. All Italy was directly under his rule. The Pisan and Genoese fleets conquered Corsica and Sardinia in his name. His troops occupied the patrimony of St. Peter, and his officer Markwald of Anweiler was lord of Ancona and Romagna. His alliance with the Roman Senate kept Celestine III. from doing any mischief. Germany was obedient. The King of England was his vassal, and the heir of the Guelfs his follower and supporter. To add to his triumph, Constance, the day after his coronation at Palermo, bore him the long-prayed-for heir, the future Frederick II., called Frederick and Roger after his two famous grandfathers. Before long the kings of the East sought his friendship and support. The Lusignan King of Cyprus boasted that he was the vassal of the Latin Empire. The King of Armenia received his ambassadors. Henry’s brother, Philip of Swabia, now made Marquis of Tuscany and lord of the inheritance of the Countess Matilda, married young Roger’s widow Irene, an alliance that made Isaac Angelus the close connection of his Western rival. Three great ambitions henceforth possessed Henry’s soul. He would make the Empire hereditary in his own house, and unite for ever the German and the Sicilian thrones. He would rule Europe from Italy as a centre. He would make himself lord of the East, setting on foot a Crusade that would conquer the schismatic Greeks, and establish the Latin power in the whole East under his control. Wild as his schemes seemed, his extraordinary successes made them not altogether visionary.

[Sidenote: The hereditary Empire.]

On returning to Germany, Henry sought to persuade the princes to agree that the Empire, like the French monarchy, should henceforth descend from father to son. At the Diet of Würzburg, in April 1196, more than fifty of the princes agreed to his proposals. But the strenuous opposition of Adolf, Archbishop of Cologne, and the conservative magnates of Saxony taught Henry that it was no time to persevere in an unpopular request. He contented himself for the moment with procuring the election of the two-year-old Frederick Roger as German king at Frankfurt, and in winning over many of the German nobles to his Eastern projects.

Before the end of 1196 Henry was again in southern Italy. The very Pope was now on his side. Celestine, delighted at the prospect of a new Crusade, forbore to press Henry to discharge the long-deferred homage which every Sicilian king had paid to the Papacy. During his absence the tyranny of the German officials had proved too grievous to be borne, and a formidable Sicilian conspiracy had been formed against them. Henry now stamped out all opposition with incredible brutality and harshness. Fresh from the hideous tortures of his victims, Henry now threw himself with all his might into his schemes of Eastern conquest. The new Greek Emperor, Alexius III., was summoned to surrender all provinces east of Thessalonica as part of the Sicilian inheritance, and cheerfully agreed to pay a heavy tribute to avert the threatened attack. Meanwhile a vast swarm of German warriors had collected in Sicily and Apulia under the pretence of the new Crusade. [Sidenote: The Conquest of the East.] In September the first ships sailed from Messina to Acre. But in the moment of the realisation of his ambitions a sudden fever cut down the great Emperor. [Sidenote: Death of Henry VI., 1197.] On 28th September Henry VI. died at Messina when he was only thirty-two years of age. Before his ashes were laid beside his Sicilian ancestors in the cathedral at Palermo, his brilliant schemes were hopelessly shattered.