With the history of the crusade after the death of our hero, we have nothing to do further than to say that his son, Frederick, took the chief command and led the brave followers of his gallant father until a pestilence occasioned his death at Acre, in the following year, when the remnant of the once formidable army returned to Germany.
The Death of Barbarossa.
How Barbarossa still lingers in the hearts of his people even now, when all these hundreds of years divide his time from theirs, is shown by a dozen legends. Most of these profess an utter disbelief in the death of their loved emperor; one of them tells how, in a rocky cleft of the Klyfhaüser Mountains, Barbarossa still sleeps calmly and peacefully; he sits before a marble table into which and through which his red beard has grown; his head is bowed on his folded hands, and though he from time to time lifts it and opens his eyes, it is but to shut them again quickly, for the right time of his awakening is not come; he has seen the ravens flying round the mountain, and his long sleep will only end when their black forms are no longer visible, when he will step forth and avenge the wrongs of the oppressed.
Another story says that he is lying in the Untersberg near Salzburg, and that when the dead pear-tree which, thrice cut down, plants itself afresh, shall bud forth and blossom, the gallant "Rothbart" will come out into the bright daylight, hang his shield on the pink-flowered bough, throw down his gauntlet as a gage to all evil-doers, and, aided by the good and chivalrous few who will still be inhabitants of this bad world, will vanquish cruelty and wickedness, and realize the dream of a golden age they have for so long anticipated.[Back to Contents]
RICHARD CŒUR DE LION
(1157-1199)
Richard I., King of England, surnamed Cœur de Lion, was the third son of Henry II. and his queen, Eleanor, and was born at Oxford, in the king's manor house there, afterward the monastery of the White Friars, in September, 1157. By the treaty of Montmirail, concluded on January 6, 1169, between Henry and Louis VII. of France, it was stipulated that the duchy of Aquitaine should be made over to Richard, who should do homage and fealty for it to Louis, and should espouse Adelais, or Alice, that king's youngest daughter; and in 1170 King Henry, being taken ill at Domfront, in Maine, made a will, by which he confirmed this arrangement. In 1173 Richard, with his younger brother, Geoffrey, and their mother, joined their eldest brother, Henry, in his first rebellion against their father. On the submission of the rebels, in September, 1174, Richard received two castles in Poitou, with half the revenue of that earldom, and, along with Geoffrey, did homage and swore fealty to their father. Nevertheless Richard continued from this time to hold the government of the whole of Aquitaine, and to be usually styled, as before, Duke of Aquitaine, or Duke of Poitou (which were considered as the same title), although it appears that King Henry now looked upon the arrangements made at the treaty of Montmirail as annulled, and that dukedom to have actually reverted to himself. In 1183 Richard refused, when commanded by his father, to do homage for Aquitaine to his elder brother, Henry; on which his brothers Henry and Geoffrey invaded the duchy, and a new war ensued between them and their father, who was assisted by Richard, which, however, was terminated by the death of the eldest of the three brothers in June of that same year, when Richard became his father's heir-apparent. But at an interview between King Henry and Philip Augustus, now King of France, in November, 1188, Richard, apparently impelled by a suspicion that his father intended to leave his crown to his younger brother, John, and also professing to resent his father's conduct in withholding from him his affianced bride, the French king's sister, suddenly declared himself the liegeman of Philip for all his father's dominions in France; whence arose a new war, in which Philip and Richard speedily compelled King Henry to yield to all their demands, and a treaty to that effect was about to be signed when King Henry died, on July 6, 1189. Richard was present at the burial of his father in the choir of the convent of Fontevrault.