King Richard arraigned before the German Diet.
The six charges against the king.
The emperor then, in order to bring a heavier pressure to bear upon him, arraigned him before a Diet as a criminal. The following were the charges which he brought against him:
1. That he had formed an alliance with Tancred, the usurper of Sicily, and thus made himself a partaker in Tancred's crimes.
2. That he had invaded the dominions of Isaac, the Christian king of Cyprus, deposed the king, laid waste his dominions, and plundered his treasures; and, finally, had sent the unhappy king to pine away and die in a Syrian dungeon.
3. That, while in the Holy Land, he had offered repeated and unpardonable insults to the Archduke of Austria, and, through him, to the whole German nation.
4. That he had been the cause of the failure of the Crusade, in consequence of the quarrels which he had excited between himself and the French king by his domineering and violent behavior.
5. That he had employed assassins to murder Conrad of Montferrat.
6. That, finally, he had betrayed the Christian cause by concluding a base truce with Saladin, and leaving Jerusalem in his hands.
It is possible that the motive which led the emperor to make these charges against Richard was not any wish or design to have him convicted and punished, but only to impress him more strongly with a sense of the danger of his situation, with a view of bringing him to consent to the payment of a ransom. At any rate, the trial resulted in nothing but a negotiation in respect to the amount of ransom-money to be paid.
Finally, a sum was agreed upon. Richard was sent back to his prison, and the abbots returned to England to see what could be done in respect to raising the money.