For many centuries the people believed the legend that their hero had not died in Palestine; but they pointed to the mouth of a great cavern on the frowning heights of the Kyfhäuser mountain, where he was said to be surrounded by his knights in an enchanted sleep; waiting the hour when he should awaken and descend with his Crusaders, to bring back a golden age of peace and unity to Germany!
CHAPTER VI.
There are three conditions in national life of which all nations more or less partake. One is where the elements combine with a tendency toward organic development; another, where these elements fall apart with a tendency toward disintegration; and still another, where all processes, constructive and destructive, are arrested as in a crystal. The United States, the Ottoman Empire, and China illustrate these three conditions to-day.
The Teuton, who had been such a powerful element in renovating other European nations, had thus far seemed incapable of consolidating his own national life when left to himself. The tendency was steadily toward disintegration rather than growth.
This was not alone because the strength of the Teutonic kingdom was wasted in pursuit of that glittering toy bestowed by the Pope; but on account of internal strifes and rivalries which employed the hostile schemes of the Roman Pontiff for their own ends and purposes.
The rivalry with the Pope, in itself a destructive element, was made still more destructive when it was thus used by disaffected dukes as a means of annoying and circumventing Emperors whom they disliked.
A Frederick Barbarossa might arrest these processes for a time. But one century later the ruin was complete.
Frederick II., the last of the Hohenstaufens, died, leaving an empty throne and a broken and shattered empire. It was destined to rise again and to wear the name and trappings of its former greatness, but, crippled and degraded, to be in reality a mere shadow and semblance of what it had once aspired to be—the head of the world.
A period of twenty years then followed, known as the "Great Interregnum." A time when there was no King nor Emperor; when robbery and brigandage became the employment of needy knights, and when great barons made war upon and waylaid each other on the highways.