Frederick Barbarossa was the last to uphold the real authority and power of Germany. He was a true hero of romance, one of the noblest expressions of the mediæval character. When he died the real empire fell. What remained was but a semblance and a ruin, and it is little wonder that Germany plunged henceforth into yet greater anarchy, invented the legend that peace and prosperity would not return to her until Frederick Red Beard should come back to rule, that giant among men, falsely reported dead, but who, in truth, was merely resting, sunk in enchanted sleep among the mountains of Bavaria. There he was waiting the hour when the ravens should cease to hover around the cloud-capped peak to emerge surrounded by the trusty Crusaders who shared his slumbers and restore to Germany the golden age of peace and strength.
It is claimed by some that Barbarossa has so returned, that he came back as recently as 1870, but whether this be fact or no does not concern us here. What does concern us is, that in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa we find mentioned, for the first time as a power in the State, a few of the many German cities that had arisen under the fostering protection of Henry the Fowler. Barbarossa found it useful to encourage the growth of that third estate so needful to the healthy existence of the body politic. Thus he could pit them against the nobles when it pleased him to harass his sometime allies; he could also draw from them the moneys that are the sinews of war. In return for such loyal aid the emperor freely granted municipal institutions, rights and privileges, exemptions and favours, little realizing that in so doing he was creating in his own land that very spirit of independence, that breath of modern individual freedom, to quench which he was spending his best years and strength beyond the barrier Alps.
The policy therefore of the "imperial knights" and "knightly emperors" who preceded and followed Frederick, while in one way it tended to destroy the unity of Germany as a political state, in the other was the means by which the cities of Germany, as well as those of Northern Italy, acquired that remarkable independence, that rapid, splendid commercial and intellectual development that raised them to the condition of almost autonomous communities, and made them the wonder, glory, and pride of the Middle Ages. Citizens and burghers became freemen, and enjoyed the privileges that fell to this lot. Hence men loved to crowd into the towns, and these grew up and flourished apace, until they acquired such power and assumed such proportions as their first promoters little contemplated.
It was the Lombard league of cities that broke the might of the Holy Roman Emperors, as the rulers of Germany loved to style themselves, as they styled themselves, indeed, long after the Empire, to quote Voltaire, was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
Ignominiously driven forth from Italy, the German kings at last turned their steps homeward, where they looked to reign with their old strength and might, even though the range of their rule had been circumscribed. They came back to find that long absences, internal and external feuds, pretenders and usurpers, had so weakened their prestige that their subjects had learnt to trust to themselves rather than to their sovereign heads. And when they did return, at last, it was to find themselves confronted with such another league of cities, as had wrecked their power abroad, a federation founded for mutual protection and defence, under whose ægis alone could peace or shelter be found.
This was the irony of fate indeed. To be sovereigns of the world, the German emperors had staked their national existence; staked and lost.
On a murky and disturbed horizon had arisen a brilliant star, the star of municipal liberty, helping men to hope for and aspire towards those better things, to which it alone could lead them. The political anarchy of Germany, increased by forty years' interregnum, not only had given birth but strength to the confederation of cities directed against the brigandage of the princes and nobles, which we first meet with under the name of Hansa, in the year 1241, at a time when both the Papal and Imperial thrones were vacant, when in France St. Louis wielded the sceptre and was strengthening the power of nobles and the church; when in England Henry III. had enraged the barons by his fondness for foreign favourites, and when that outburst was preparing which led to the formation of a popular faction and upraised the patriot, Simon de Montfort; a time, in short, when the long struggle even now waging between the people and their rulers was first begun in modern Europe.
COIN OF CHARLEMAGNE.