the Cohort of Death, had sworn to die rather than yield a step or let the holy standard be touched. The cohort of death having invoked God and St. Ambrose, attacked the Germans with irresistible impetuosity, and put them to flight. Frederick was completely defeated; the military chest, all objects of value, and the emperor's own buckler, fell into the power of the victors. It was at first thought that Frederick had been killed, and it was not till some days after that he made his appearance at Pavia. The overthrow at Legnano constrained Frederick to recognize Alexander III. as pope, to recognize the rights of the confederates, to make a truce with them for six years, and to sacrifice the fruit of all his former triumphs. Frederick ascribed his recent disasters, and with justice, to the defection of Duke Henry the Lion. On returning, therefore, to Germany, he placed that powerful chieftain under the ban of the empire, and banished him to England. The truce of six years with the Lombard cities having expired, was crowned on the 25th June, 1183, by a peace memorable in history—that of Constance. When, for the sixth time, Frederick in the autumn of 1184 passed into Italy, it was without an army and without any hostile intention. The supreme object of Frederick's ambition had been to bring the whole of Italy under his sceptre. In this object he was thwarted, not merely by the confederated cities and by the popes, but by the existence of a southern Italian kingdom. Better than by the sword Frederick now saw the probability of realizing his favourite plan. In 1186 his son Henry married Constance, the only daughter and heiress of Roger the Norman king of Apulia and Sicily. The old emperor might now have entered on a more tranquil existence, far from political strife, far from the tumult of battle. But the close of his life was destined to be more active than the beginning. A crusade having been proclaimed, Frederick, perhaps more from military fervour than from religious enthusiasm, declared his intention of joining it. Having regulated the affairs of his various dominions, confided the care of the empire to his son Henry, and announced universal amnesty and universal peace, Barbarossa, accompanied by his son Frederick of Suabia and other princes, went forth in 1189 with one hundred thousand men to vindicate the glory of the cross. In the spring of 1190 he conveyed his army over the Hellespont. Famine and a fierce foe made equal havoc with his troops, as he marched through Asia Minor. Nevertheless he was victorious in two great battles; one at Philomelium and one at Iconium. So mighty a career had scarcely an end worthy of it. When attempting to cross the river Calycadnus on the 10th June, 1190, he was drowned. This served as a signal for the dispersion of the crusaders. A small band of them Frederick of Suabia conducted to Tyre, where he interred the remains of his father. Frederick of Suabia himself died of the plague the following year. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa is one of the most stupendous figures of the middle ages. It is said that he dreamed of being a second Charlemagne, but the times were more favourable to Charlemagne than to him. He cannot be freed from the charge of cruelty; but anarchy in the middle ages was such an immense and imminent evil that strong men, even though not cruel, had often bloodily to suppress it. Warrior, legislator, monarch, Frederick allied an organizing genius to profound sagacity and prodigious energy. His is one of those names round which the richest German legend willingly lingers. There is a German tradition that he is not dead, that he is only sleeping, and that when he starts from his slumbers a golden age will dawn for Germany. Frederick was learned and accomplished, a lover and a protector of literature and the arts. In his castle of Hohenstaufen he surrounded himself with scholars and with poets, and though it was well that he should lose the battle of Legnano, yet was he a potent agent of civilization.—W. M—l.
Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, the most illustrious of an illustrious family, the Hohenstaufen, was born at Jesi, not far from Ancona, on the 26th December, 1194. He was the son of the Emperor Henry VI. and of Constance of Sicily, and the grandson of Frederick Barbarossa. A native of Italy, and speaking by preference the Italian language, he curiously combined German breadth and force with Italian subtlety. He was only three years old when his father died. About the same time Innocent III—a singularly gifted, energetic, and ambitious man—ascended the papal throne. For the sake of her infant son, and to conciliate the pope, Constance, who did not long survive her husband, made almost humiliating sacrifices. It was only on such conditions that Frederick's right to Sicily and Lower Italy could be admitted. Having secured, in name at least, his own supremacy, the pope consented to be the guardian of the young Frederick, who was carefully educated, and whose natural endowments received the very best culture. In 1209 Frederick took into his own hands the government of Sicily and Apulia. The relations between Innocent and Frederick did not hinder the former from doing all in his power to destroy the influence of the Hohenstaufen. It was thus that he supported in Germany the claims of the Guelph—Otho IV.—against Philip of Suabia, Frederick's uncle; though shortly after, finding that Otho was not a sufficiently convenient tool, he excommunicated him. His hereditary dominions in Italy and in Germany could satisfy only a small part of the immense aspirings which Frederick began early to cherish. These extended far beyond Italy and Germany; his desire and design were nothing less than to restore the ancient empire of the Cæsars, when that empire had its intensest unity and most colossal extent. But how, amid circumstances so complicated as were then those of the world, realize a plan so stupendous except by the most wonderful union of courage and circumspection? The first thing to be done was to gain a solid footing in Germany. To the land of his fathers Frederick went in 1212. He soon, by his engaging manners, his generosity, his commanding talents, increased the already numerous adherents of the Hohenstaufen, of whom Frederick was the last male representative. The arrogance, the declining fortunes, and soon after the death of Otho, powerfully promoted the interests of Frederick, who was crowned king of Germany at Aix-la-Chapelle, on the 25th of July, 1214, in the midst of the most gorgeous solemnities, and surrounded by a brilliant company of princes, both spiritual and secular. Innocent III. had been succeeded by Honorius III.—a pious old man whose heart was fixed on another crusade when the taste for crusades was nearly extinct. Honorius seemed willing to aid Frederick in all his plans, if he would only promise to place himself at the head of this new expedition. The promise was not difficult to make, and Frederick made it, though with a very faint purpose of keeping it. In 1220 the coronation, at Rome, of Frederick and his wife Constance as emperor and empress, by Honorius, was welcomed by the peaceful as the herald of universal peace. It was chiefly to works of peace that Frederick now proceeded. He ordered a code of laws to be prepared; he reformed the abuses of the feudal system; he founded a university at Naples; he abolished all obnoxious privileges. But he saw that the waters of strife would ultimately rise, and he expended every effort to revive and reorganize the Ghibeline party. He also took into his service Saracen troops, in order not to be completely dependent on Ghibeline help. The Lombard cities refusing obedience, he put them under the ban of the empire. When he was about to give effect to this supreme act of denunciation, Honorius reminded him more urgently than ever of the solemn oath by which he had bound himself to war with the infidels. Frederick would probably have continued to trifle with this engagement, if, in 1227, Honorius had not been succeeded by Gregory IX., a man of a very different character from Honorius, and the violence of whose temper was only surpassed by the inflexibility of his will. Gregory IX., with less ability, and with fierce, reckless impatience, was faithful to the policy of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. He wished to make the church omnipotent—he determined that the anathemas of the church should be real, living, irresistible thunders. But his attitude towards Frederick was as absurd as it was arrogant. He had to contend with no weak and wicked monarch, but with the most brilliant, stalwart, popular ruler in Europe—one who might be viewed as the type and epitome of whatsoever was grandest and noblest in the middle ages, and who, though his other qualities might be unrivalled, was eminently a politician. It was the keenest instincts of the politician, no doubt, which induced him to enter on the long-delayed crusade. But he had no sooner embarked at Brindisi with the landgrave, Louis of Thuringia, and a multitude of distinguished knights, than he was driven back to Otranto by pestilence and by tempest. The pope treated this, not as a misfortune, but as a crime and a trick, and excommunicated the emperor. Though the emperor shortly afterwards went to the Holy Land, this did not appease the pope, who commanded that the emperor, wherever he went, should be shunned as one accursed. This blind
