The Ten Kingdoms in the Dark Ages.
IN 1056 Henry III. died and was succeeded by his son Henry, six years old, but who had already, at the age of four years, been crowned King Henry IV. of Germany. He was under guardianship till he was fifteen years old, 1065, when he assumed the duties of government, and from that time till his death, forty-one years, between the fierce arrogance of the Papacy and the ambitious jealousies of his own subject nobles, he never knew peace. He it was who waged the memorable contest with Hildebrand; during his reign was the first crusade, 1095; and he made Welf (or Guelf, or Guelph) of Altdorf in Suabia, duke of Bavaria. Henry IV. died in 1106 and was succeeded by his son Henry V. War with the Papacy was renewed, in which Henry's chief friends were two Swabian princes of the Hohenstaufen family, Frederick and Conrad. Frederick had been made duke of Swabia by Henry IV., and now by Henry V. Conrad was made duke of Franconia, which had been directly attached to the crown since the time of Otto I. Henry V. was succeeded in 1125 by Lothair, duke of Saxony, and when he received the imperial crown, Innocent II. claimed that he did so as the vassal of the Pope. Lothair was succeeded in 1137 by the above Conrad, the Swabian duke of Franconia, who became Conrad III. With Conrad III. began the reign of the House of Swabia or Hohenstaufen which continued one hundred and seventeen years, and was the most glorious age of the medieval history of Germany. In 1146 went forth the second crusade headed by the Emperor Conrad, and Louis VII. of France. Conrad died in 1152, when Germany passed under the rule of one of the greatest sovereigns she ever had—Frederick Barbarossa, duke of Swabia—who reigned thirty-eight years. Here we must notice the rise of another Swabian family which has had a notable course in history, and which is inseparably connected with the reign of Frederick Barbarossa. Henry IV. made Welf, or Guelf, of Swabia, duke of Bavaria. He was succeeded in the duchy of Bavaria by his son Henry the Proud, who was also invested with the duchy of Saxony. Henry the Proud rebelled against Conrad III., whereupon both his duchies were declared forfeited; Saxony was granted to Albert the Bear, a Saxon noble, and Bavaria fell to Leopold, margrave of Austria. Henry the Proud suddenly died, and his brother, duke Welf, continued the contest for his duchies. Welf, hoping to succeed Leopold in the margraviate, consented to a compromise by which Saxony, with the assent of Albert the Bear, was granted to Henry the Lion, the son of Henry the Proud. Instead, however, of the margraviate of Austria being given to Welf, it passed, in the end, to Henry Jasomirgott. Welf for years contended with his rival, but without avail, for Henry the Lion finally, at the head of an army, laid claim to Bavaria as his, by right of inheritance from his father, Henry the Proud. Frederick Barbarossa was, through his mother, allied to the Welfs, and he, having a personal regard for Henry the Lion, began his reign by promising to secure for Henry the duchy of Bavaria. The margrave Jasomirgott however persistently refused to give it up, till at last in 1156 Frederick detached the march of Austria from Bavaria, made it a duchy with special privileges, and bestowed it on the stubborn margrave. This honor contented Jasomirgott, and left Frederick free to fulfill his promise to Henry the Lion, and so Henry received his paternal duchy of Bavaria, in addition to the duchy of Saxony which he already held. And from this Swabian—Alemannian—House of Welf, or Guelph, is descended in direct line through Henry the Proud and Henry the Lion, the House of Hanover which has ruled England from George I.—August 1, 1714—to the present Victoria “Regina Dei gracia.” Frederick Barbarossa received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle, March 9, 1152. In October, 1154, he descended to Italy and assumed the iron crown of Lombardy. Then “after apprehending Arnold of Brescia, as an earnest of his purpose to support the Papal cause” he was crowned Emperor, by Pope Adrian IV., June 18, 1155. From this time onward till 1186 the reign of Frederick was little else than a long contest with the Lombard cities and with the Popes. By his marriage with Beatrice, daughter of the Count of Upper Burgundy, he added that province to the kingdom of Burgundy and to the empire. He thus reasserted the imperial authority in Burgundy and received the homage of the Burgundian nobles. Having at last brought these struggles to an honorable close, he started in 1187 for Palestine at the head of the third crusade, but was drowned while crossing a small river in Pisidia, June 10, 1190. Frederick was succeeded by his son Henry VI., and was crowned emperor by Celestine III., March 31, 1191. Richard I., of England—Cœur de Lion—as he was on his way home from the third crusade, had been arrested by the duke of Austria, December 21, 1192, and in the following March was surrendered to the Emperor Henry, who imprisoned him. To regain his liberty Richard was compelled to resign his crown to the emperor as overlord of Christendom, and receive it back as a vassal of the emperor, and to pay a ransom of 150,000 marks. But with all this humiliation he was not released till about the first of March, 1194. With the money that was paid for Richard's ransom, the emperor was enabled to fit out a fine army, with which he succeeded in conquering the Saracen kingdom of Sicily. So great was the authority which he acquired that it is supposed to be almost certain that had he lived a little longer he would have achieved his great ambition of having the crown declared hereditary in his family. But this aspiration was quenched by his death in 1197. In his reign about 1195 began the fourth crusade. Upon Henry's death there was a double election. Philip, Henry's son, was favored by a large majority of the princes; while his opponents pitched upon Otto, son of Henry the Lion. There was no show for Otto, however, had not Innocent III. cast all the influence of the Papacy, which at this time was absolute, into the scale in his favor. Even with the help of the Pope, Otto's success was exceedingly doubtful until Philip was murdered, in 1208. This of course put a stop to the war, and Otto IV. was crowned Emperor. As soon as Otto had been made emperor, he violated all the pledges he had made to the Pope for the Pontiff's favor, and began to act as an independent sovereign. This was what no sovereign could be suffered to do while Innocent III. was Pope. He accordingly played off against Otto, Frederick the son of Henry VI. Otto, thinking to injure Frederick's chances by striking at the Pope, went to the support of John of England against Philip Augustus of France, but at the battle of Bouvines, July 27, 1214, he met a crushing defeat, and fled, a ruined man. He retired to his hereditary possession, the principality of Brunswick, and apart from that had no more place in history, while Frederick II. “ascended the marble throne of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, and received the silver crown” of Germany, July, 1215, and November 22, 1220, received at Rome, from the hands of Pope Honorius IV., the golden crown of the empire. In the estimation of his contemporaries, Frederick II. was “the wonder of the world.” Though perhaps not the strongest in all respects, he was the most brilliant, of the German kings. In the beginning of his public career, in 1208, at the age of fifteen, he possessed but the crown of Sicily, and at his death, December 13, 1250, the splendor of his position was such that it has never been surpassed in human history; for then he possessed in addition to his original and inherited crown of Sicily, the crown of Sardinia, the crown of Burgundy, the iron crown of Lombardy, the silver crown of Germany, the golden crown of the empire, and last, but in that age the most glorious of all, the crown of Jerusalem, with which he with his own hands had crowned himself at his recovery of the holy city from the Saracens and its restoration to the church. In 1245, July 17, he was excommunicated by Pope Innocent IV. When he heard of it he laughed, and said:— “Has the Pope deposed me? Bring me my crowns that I may see of what I am deprived.” Then seven crowns were brought him—the royal crown of Germany, the imperial diadem of Rome, the iron circlet of Lombardy, the crowns of Sicily, Burgundy, Sardinia, and Jerusalem. He put them on his head one after another, and said, “I have them still, and none shall rob me of them without hard battle.”—The Story of the Nations, Germany, chap. 21, par. 8. But though Frederick feared not the excommunication of the Pope, the effect of such a thing was always to turn loose the elements of violence among men, and especially in Germany. Of that time, an old historian says: “After the Emperor Frederick was put under the ban, the robbers rejoiced over their spoils. Then were the plowshares beaten into swords, and the reaping hooks into lances. No one went anywhere without steel and stone, to set in blaze whatever he could fire.”—Id., par. 9. During the reign of Frederick II. the conquest of Prussia was begun, A. D. 1230, under the leadership of the Knights of the Teutonic Order, who “after half a century of hard fighting, found themselves masters of the entire country.” Also, in the beginning of his reign the fifth crusade was proclaimed by Innocent III., 1198, and went forth in 1201. Frederick II. died February 13, 1250, and was succeeded by his son, Conrad IV., who reigned only four years, and such was the condition of the empire through the contending factions of Germany and the intrigues of the Pope that he was never actually crowned Emperor. He died in 1254 and with him ended the line of Hohenstaufen emperors, whose rule formed the age “most interesting in the medieval history of Germany.” “Women never held a higher place, nor, on the whole, did they ever respond more nobly to the honors freely lavished upon them.” “The problems of government were seen in new lights, partly from the study of Roman law which passed from Italy to Germany, partly from the summaries of native custom in the ‘Sachsenspiegel’ [Saxon law] and ‘Schwabenspiegel’ [Swabian—Alemannian—law]. Altogether, Germany has seen no more fascinating epoch, none more full of life, movement, and color.”—Encyc. Brit., art. Germany.