THIRD CRUSADE (1189-1192).—The old emperor now undertook another Crusade (1189), in which he was supported by Philip II. (Philip Augustus), king of France, and Richard the Lion-Hearted (Cæur-de-Lion), king of England, but of French descent. Having spent the winter at Adrianople, Frederick crossed into Asia Minor, and conquered Iconium. In his advance he showed a military skill and a valor which made the expedition a memorable one; but at the river Calycadnus in Cilicia, either while bathing or attempting to cross on horseback, the old warrior was swept away by the stream, and drowned (1190). His son Frederick died during the siege of Acre. Richard and Philip quarreled, before and after reaching Acre, which surrendered in 1191. Philip returned to France. Richard, with all his valor, was twice compelled to turn back from Jerusalem. Nothing was accomplished except the establishment of a truce with Saladin, by which a strip of land on the coast, from Joppa to Acre, was given to the Christians, and pilgrimages to the holy places were allowed. Richard was distinguished both for his deeds of arms and for his cruelty. On his return, he was kept as a prisoner by Leopold, duke of Austria, by the direction of the emperor, Henry VI., for thirteen months, and released on the payment of a ransom, and rendering homage. He was charged with treading the German banner in the filth at Acre. His alliance with the Welfs in Germany is enough to explain the hostility felt towards him by the imperial party.
HENRY VI.: POPE INNOCENT III.—Henry VI. (1190-1197) had the prudence and vigor of his father, but lacked his magnanimity. He was hard and stern in his temper. Twice he visited Italy to conquer the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the inheritance of his wife. He waged a new war with Henry the Lion (1192-1194), which ended in a marriage of Agnes, the emperor's cousin, with Henry, the son of Henry. It was a project of the emperor to convert Germany and Italy, with Sicily, into a hereditary monarchy; but the princes would not consent. He aspired to incorporate the Eastern Empire in the same dominion. While engaged in strife with the aged Pope, Coelestin II., respecting the Tuscan lands of Matilda, which she had bequeathed to the Church, the emperor suddenly died. His son Frederick was a boy only three years old. On the death of Coelestin II., early in 1198, Innocent III., the ablest and most powerful of all the popes, acceded to the pontifical chair. Innocent was a statesman of unsurpassed sagacity and energy. He was imbued with the highest idea of the pontifical dignity. He made his authority felt and feared in all parts of Christendom. He exacted submission from all rulers, civil and ecclesiastical. The Empress Constance, in order to secure Italy for Frederick, accepted the papal investment on conditions dictated by the Pope. After her death Innocent ruled Italy in the character of guardian of her son. He dislodged the imperial vassals from the Tuscan territory of Matilda, and thus became a second founder of the papal state.
FOURTH CRUSADE (1202-1204).—Under the auspices of Innocent III., a Crusade was undertaken by French barons, with whom were associated Baldwin, count of Flanders, and Boniface, marquis of Montferrat. Arrived at Venice, the crusaders were not able to furnish to the Venetians the sum agreed to be paid for their transportation. The Venetians, whose devotion was strongly tempered with the mercantile spirit, under the old doge, Henry Dandolo, greatly to the displeasure of the Pope, persuaded them to assist in the capture of Zara, which the king of Hungary had wrested from Venice. Then, at the call of Alexius, son of the Eastern emperor, Isaac Angelus, they went with the Venetian fleet to Constantinople, and restored these princes to the throne. The result of the contentions that followed with the Greeks was the pillage of Constantinople, and the establishment of the Latin Empire under Baldwin. Principalities were carved out for different chiefs; the Venetians taking several Greek coast towns, and afterwards Candia (Crete). The patriarch of Constantinople had to take his pallium from Rome. The Latin service was established in the churches. There was no real union between the Greeks and the invaders, but constant strife, until, in 1261, Michael Paloeologus, the head of a Greek empire which had been established at Nicoea, put an end to the Latin kingdom.
CHILDREN'S CRUSADE.—The failure of the stupendous undertakings for the conquest of the infidels was attributed to the wicked wrangles, and still more to the vicious lives, of the crusaders, whose defeat was regarded as indicative of the frown of Heaven on their evil courses. This feeling gave occasion to the Children's Crusade, in 1212. Many thousands of French and German boys made their way, in two distinct expeditions, to Marseilles and the seaports of Italy, in order to be conveyed thence to the Holy Land. But few returned: nearly all perished by the way, or were seized, and carried off to slave-markets. The enterprise grew out of a wild construction of the injunction of Jesus to let little children come to him.
OTTO IV.: CIVIL WAR IN GERMANY.—Frederick had been elected king; but, on the death of his father, his claims were disregarded. The Hohenstaufens chose Philip, brother of Henry VI.: the Welfs appointed Otto, the second son of Henry the Lion. Innocent claimed the right, not to appoint the emperor, but to decide between the rival claimants. He decided, in 1201, in favor of Otto IV. (1198-1214). Philip's party, however, seemed likely to succeed; but, in 1208, he was murdered. Otto, having made large promises of submission to the Pope's requirements, was crowned emperor, and universally acknowledged. When he failed to fulfill his pledges, and began to assert the old imperial prerogatives in Italy, he was excommunicated and deposed by Innocent (1210).
FREDERICK (II.) MADE KING.—Innocent was now led to take up the cause of young Frederick (1212). The latter won Germany over to his side, and received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1215. Otto was restricted to his ancestral territory in Brunswick.
CHARACTER OF FREDERICK II. (1214-1250).—Frederick II., on account of his extraordinary natural gifts and his accomplishments, was called the wonder of the world. He knew several languages, and, in intercourse with the Saracens_ in Sicily, had acquired a familiarity with the sciences. In many of his ideas of government he was in advance of his time. But his reign was largely spent in a contest with the Lombard cities and with the popes. He is styled by an eminent modern historian, "the gay, the brave, the wise, the relentless, and the godless Frederick." He was often charged with skepticism in relation to the doctrines of the Church. The main ground of this imputation seems to have been a temper of mind at variance with the habit of the age,—a very moderate degree of reverence for ecclesiastical authority, and the absence of the usual antipathy to heresy and religious dissent.
FIFTH CRUSADE (1228-1229).—Having caused his son Henry to be elected king of Rome, Frederick, in 1220, left Germany for fifteen years. It was the policy of the popes to keep the Sicilian crown from being united with the empire, and the emperor from gaining the supremacy in Lombardy. Frederick, at his coronation at Aix, and afterwards, had engaged to undertake a crusade. But he had postponed it from time to time. Pope Honorius III. had patiently borne with this delay. But when Frederick, in 1227, was about to start, and was prevented, as he professed, by the contagious disease in his army, from which he himself was suffering, Gregory IX., the next pope, placed him under the ban of the Church. Nevertheless, the emperor, in the following year, embarked on his crusade. His vigor as a soldier, and, still more, his tact in conciliating the Saracens, enabled him to get possession of Jerusalem. No bishop would crown an excommunicate, and he had to put the crown on his own head. That he left a mosque unmolested was a fresh ground of reproach. He negotiated an armistice with the sultan, Kameel (El Kámil), who ceded Nazareth and a strip of territory reaching to the coast, together with Sidon. Fifteen years later (in 1244) Jerusalem was finally lost by the Christians.
CONTEST OF FREDERICK WITH THE POPES.—On his return to Italy, Frederick drove the papal troops out of Apulia. In a personal interview with Gregory IX. at San Germane, a treaty was made between them, the ban was removed, and the treaty of Frederick with the Sultan was sanctioned by the Pope. Frederick now displayed his talent for organization in all parts of his empire. His constitution for the Sicilian kingdom, based on the ruins of the old feudalism, is tinged with the modern political spirit. His court, wherever he sojourned, mingled an almost Oriental luxury and splendor with the attractions of poetry and song. A sore trial was the revolt of his son Henry (1234), whom he conquered, and confined in a prison, where he died in 1242. The efforts of Frederick to enforce the imperial supremacy over the Lombard cities were met with the same stubborn resistance from the Guelfs which his grandfather had encountered. In 1237 he gained a brilliant victory over them at Cortenuova. But the hard terms on which Frederick insisted, in connection with other transactions offensive to the Pope, called out another excommunication from Gregory IX. (1239). The Genoese fleet, which was conveying ecclesiastics to a council called by the Pope at Rome, was captured by direction of Frederick; and the prelates were thrown into prison. Pope Innocent IV. (1243-1254) fled to Lyons, and there published anew the ban against the emperor, declared him deposed, and summoned the Germans to elect another emperor in his place. The ecclesiastical princes in Germany chose Henry Raspe (1246-1247), landgrave of Thuringia, who was defeated by Conrad, Henry's son. The next emperor thus chosen, William of Holland (1247), made no headway in Germany. During this period of civil war, many German cities gained their freedom from episcopal rule, attained to great privileges, and came into an immediate relation to the emperor. A fearful war raged in Italy between the Guelfs and Ghibellines, in the midst of which Frederick died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. Had he been as conscientious and as capable of curbing his passions and appetites as he was highly endowed in other respects, he might have been a model ruler. As it was; although his career was splendid, his private life, as well as his public conduct, was stained with flagrant faults.
THE SICILIAN KINGDOM.—The kingdom of the Two Sicilies was bravely defended by Manfred, son of Frederick II, in behalf of young Conradin, the son of the new emperor, Conrad IV. The Pope gave the crown to Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX. of France. Charles, after the fall of Manfred at Beneventum (1266), gained the kingdom. Conradin went to Italy, but was defeated and captured in 1268, and was executed at Naples. Such was the tragic end of the last of the Hohenstaufens. The unbearable tyranny of the French led to a conspiracy called the Sicilian Vespers (1282); and, at Easter Monday, at vesper time, the rising took place. All the French in Sicily were massacred. Peter of Aragon, who had married the daughter of Manfred, became king of Sicily. The dominion of Charles of Anjou was restricted to Naples.