DEATH OF FREDERICK II: THE SUCCESSION
[1249-1250 A.D.]
This last check overwhelmed Frederick. He had now during thirty years combated the church and the Guelf party; his bodily as well as mental energy was worn out in this long contest. His life was embittered by the treason of those whom he believed his friends, by the disasters of his partisans, and by the misfortunes which had pursued him even in his own family. He saw his power in Italy decline; while the crown of Germany was disputed with his son Conrad, by competitors favoured by the church. He appeared to be at length himself disturbed by the excommunications of the pope, and the fear of that hell with which he had been so incessantly menaced. He implored anew the assistance and mediation of St. Louis of France, who was then in the isle of Cyprus. He provided magnificently for the wants of the crusade army, which this king commanded; he solicited leave to join it. He offered to engage never to return from the Holy Land, and to submit to the most humiliating expiations which the church could impose. He succeeded in inspiring St. Louis with interest and gratitude. Frederick, while waiting the effect of St. Louis’ good offices, seemed occupied solely in the affairs of his kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where he restored order, and established a prosperity not to be seen elsewhere in Europe. On the 13th of December, 1250, he was seized with a dysentery, of which he died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, at his castle of Florentino, in the capitanate where he had fixed his residence.
The Italian cities, which for the most part date the commencement of their liberty from the conflicts between the sovereigns of Italy and Germany, or the invasion of Otto the Great, in 951, had already, at the death of Frederick II, enjoyed for three centuries the protection and progressive improvement of their municipal constitutions. These three centuries, with reference to the rest of Europe, are utterly barbarous. Their history is everywhere obscure and imperfectly known. It records only some great revolution, or the victories and calamities of princes; the people are always left in the shade: a writer would have thought it beneath him to occupy himself about the fate of plebeians; they were not supposed to be worthy of history. The towns of Italy, so prodigiously superior to all others in wealth, intelligence, energy, and independence, were equally regardless of preserving any record of past times. Some grave chroniclers preserved the memory of an important crisis, but in general the cities passed whole centuries without leaving any written memorial; thinking it perhaps good policy not to attract notice, and to envelope themselves in obscurity. They, however, of necessity departed from this system in the last century, owing to the two conflicts, in both of which they remained victorious. From 1150 to 1183, they had fought to obtain the Peace of Constance, which they regarded as their constitutional charter. From 1183 to 1250, they preserved the full exercise of the privileges which they had so gloriously acquired; but while they continually advanced in opulence, while intelligence and the arts became more and more developed, they were led by two passions, equally honourable, to range themselves under two opposite banners. One party, listening only to their faith, their attachment, and their gratitude to a family which had given them many great sovereigns, were ready to venture their all for the cause of the Ghibellines; the other, alarmed for the independence of the church, and the liberty of Italy, by the always increasing grandeur of the house of Hohenstaufen, were not less resolute in their endeavours to wrest from it the sceptre which menaced them. The cities of the Lombard League had reached the summit of their power at the period of this second conflict. During the interregnum which lasted from the death of Frederick II to the entrance into Italy of Henry VII in 1310, the Lombard republics, a prey to the spirit of faction, and more intent on the triumph of either the Guelf or Ghibelline parties, than on securing their own constitutions, all submitted themselves to the military power of some nobles to whom they had intrusted the command of their militias, and thus lost all their liberty.
[1250-1257 A.D.]
On the death of Frederick II, his son, Conrad IV, king of Germany, did not feel himself sufficiently strong to appear in Italy, and place on his head, in succession, the iron crown at Monza, and the golden crown at Rome. He wished first of all to secure that of the Two Sicilies; and embarked at some port in Istria for Naples, in a Pisan vessel, during the month of October, 1251. The remainder of his short life was passed in combating and vanquishing the Neapolitan Guelfs. He died suddenly at Lavello, on the 21st of May, 1254. His natural brother, Manfred, a young hero, hardly twenty years of age, succeeded by his activity and courage in recovering the kingdom which Innocent IV had already invaded, with the intention of subduing it to the temporal power of the holy see. But Manfred, beloved by the Saracens of Luceria, who were the first to defend him, and admired by the Ghibellines of the Two Sicilies, was for a long time detained there by the attacks of the Guelfs, before he could in his turn pursue them through the rest of Italy. Conrad had left in Germany a son, still an infant, afterwards known under the name of Conradin; he was acknowledged king of Germany, under the name of Conrad V, by a small party only. The electors left the empire without a head; and when they afterwards proceeded to elect one in the year 1257, their suffrages were divided between two princes, strangers to Germany, where they had never set foot; one, an Englishman, Richard, earl of Cornwall; the other a Spaniard, Alfonso X of Castile.