According to his father’s testament, King Conrad succeeded on Frederick II.’s death-bed to the Empire and the kingdom of Sicily. Conrad remained in Germany. Manfred, Frederick’s bastard son, acted as lieutenant for his brother in Sicily, and received as his share in the inheritance the principality of Taranto. To Henry, Frederick’s son by Isabella of England, was assigned either Jerusalem or Burgundy, at Conrad’s discretion, while to Frederick, son of the dead Henry VII., Austria and Styria, his mother’s heritage, were allotted. But the hostility of the Church was not abated by the death of the chief offender. ‘Root out the name of the Babylonian, and what remains of him, his succession and his seed,’ was now the cry of Innocent IV. The careful precautions taken by the dead Emperor to maintain the union of the Empire and Sicily showed that the long struggle was still far from its end.

Conrad IV., finding that he made no way against his rival, William of Holland, left his wife with her father, Duke Otto of Bavaria, his chief supporter, and abandoned Germany. Early in 1252 he appeared in Italy. |Conrad in Italy, 1252–1254.| After rallying his partisans in Upper Italy, he took ship at Venice for Siponto, where Manfred and the Apulian barons gave him a hearty welcome. His appearance within his kingdom was followed by a strong reaction in his favour. The magnates generally recognised him, and Naples and Capua were forced to open their gates. But misfortunes still dogged the house of Hohenstaufen. Conrad’s position in southern Germany was now shattered by the death of his father-in-law, the Duke of Bavaria, which was rapidly followed by that of Conrad’s nephew, the young Duke Frederick of Austria and Styria. Early in 1254 Henry, Conrad’s half-brother, also died, and his removal destroyed the last ties which bound the Hohenstaufen to England. Worse than all, Conrad and Manfred began to disagree, and their dispute gave the Papacy an opportunity to intervene with effect in Apulia. |Innocent IV.’s hostility to him.| So early as 1250 Innocent had sought to set up candidates of his own for the Sicilian throne. He had sounded Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., as to his willingness to accept it, and in 1252 he had renewed his offer. But neither Richard nor his brother, the King of England, were willing to break from the Hohenstaufen, though, after the death of Isabella’s son, in 1253, their scruples were removed, and in the same year Henry III. accepted another offer of the Sicilian throne on behalf of his younger son Edmund. Meanwhile Innocent had returned in 1251 from Lyons to Italy, and had, after a progress through the north-Italian cities, taken up his residence at Perugia. Before the end of 1253 he was strong enough to return to Rome. Active hostilities were now threatened. Mendicant Friars vigorously proclaimed the Crusade against Conrad, and in the spring of 1254 Innocent renewed his excommunication. |Death of Conrad, 1254.| But in May 1254 Conrad died suddenly, when only twenty-six years old, leaving Conradin, a child of two, as his heir, and, in his distrust of Manfred, intrusting the regency to the Margrave Berthold of Hohenburg. The body of the deceased king had hardly been laid in its tomb at Messina when the ancient hatred of the Germans and South Italians burst out as violently as of old. Berthold found himself so powerless that he cheerfully gave up the regency, and Manfred was put in his place. |Innocent IV. and Manfred, 1254.| Meanwhile Innocent’s troops had invaded the kingdom, and took possession of the important border stronghold of San Germano. The barons of the neighbourhood sent in their submission, and the Margrave Berthold made overtures to the Pope. Manfred was forced to negotiate with Innocent, and in September 1254 a peace was signed, in which Innocent recognised Manfred as Prince of Taranto and reconciled him to the Church. Nothing was said as to the rights of Conradin, and in October Innocent himself went on progress through the cities of the kingdom, and took up his quarters at Naples, where he posed as feudal lord of the realm, the disposal of which rested entirely in his hands. Manfred had hoped that his submission would be followed by the recognition, if not of his nephew, at least of himself as King of Sicily. He now saw that he had been tricked by the Pope, and that the king whom the Pope would acknowledge was not himself but the young Edmund of England. |Death of Innocent, 1254.| He rode hastily to the trusty Saracens of Lucera, and with their help gathered together an army to withstand the aggressions of the Pope. Before any decisive action could take place, Innocent died on 7th December at Naples.

The Conclave assembled at Naples and elected a nephew of Gregory IX., who took the name of Alexander IV. The new Pope was described by Matthew Paris as ‘kindly and pious, assiduous in prayer and strenuously ascetic, but easily moved by flatterers and inclined to avarice.’ He had not the inflexible will of his predecessor and (though he continued Innocent’s policy) he was not very successful in his efforts, despite the fact that it was easier to carry on the war against the Hohenstaufen now that the legitimate stock was almost extinct and Germany entirely isolated from Sicily. He soon found it prudent to withdraw from Naples to his own territories, but he excommunicated Manfred and renewed Innocent’s offer of the Sicilian throne to Edmund of England. |Edmund of England King of Sicily.| In April 1255 the conditions were drawn up on which Edmund was to obtain the proffered kingship. He was to pay a yearly tribute of two thousand ounces of pure gold, and be responsible for all past and future expenses involved in the prosecution of the war against Manfred, besides sending an army and a general to assist in the conquest of his kingdom. Edmund was still a mere child, and remained in England while papal legates waged war against the usurper in his name and sent in the bills to King Henry, who exhausted his last resources in a vain effort to extract from the clergy and laity of England the sums necessary for their payment. Meanwhile Manfred more than held his own against the papalists, and showed in the struggle a daring courage and force of character that proved that he was no unworthy son of his father. |Manfred conquers Naples and Sicily, 1255–1256.| Before the end of 1255 the bastard of Frederick had established his position on the mainland. Early in 1256 he crossed over to Sicily, and soon subjected the whole of the island to his obedience. Alexander now found that there was no prospect of the promised English army and subsidies. In 1257 the Pope’s difficulties were increased by a popular revolt in Rome, where the Senator Brancaleone drove him to take refuge in Viterbo, while a violent and sanguinary democracy lorded over the capital and entered into friendly relations with Manfred, to whom the Ghibelline towns now turned as their best protector against Pope and Clergy. By politic commercial treaties Manfred secured the active alliance of both Genoa and Venice. At last he grew so strong that he scorned any longer to rule merely as the regent of his nephew. An untrue report of Conradin’s death gave him a pretext for accepting the offer of the throne from the Sicilian magnates, and in August 1258 he was crowned at Palermo. |Manfred’s Coronation, 1258.| He soon learnt that Conradin was still alive, but he did not lay down his crown. For a brief space Naples and Sicily enjoyed peace and prosperity under his rule. The early years of Frederick II. seemed revived, and the strong national traditions of the South Italian kingdom were never more capably expressed than in the brilliant court of Manfred at Palermo.

The cause of the Hohenstaufen seemed once more in the ascendant. Even in Germany, where the little Conradin had hitherto found but scanty acknowledgment outside his hereditary estates in Swabia, things took a turn for the better. William of Holland died in 1256, and nearly a year elapsed before a new election was made. Even then the papalists disagreed, and, instead of a single strong partisan with an undoubted title, two weak foreign claimants, neither of whom were very zealous for Rome, disputed, as we shall see, the title of King of the Romans. |Guelfs and Ghibellines in Northern and Central Italy.| In Italy the success of Manfred had led to a strong Ghibelline revival, and the one apparent reverse which their cause now suffered in the fall of Eccelin da Romano did good by relieving the party from complicity in the odious deeds of the ‘most cruel and redoubtable tyrant that ever was among Christians.’ The cities of north-eastern Italy began to revolt against the horrors of his rule, and the papal Crusade preached against him now found a welcome even among his own subjects. |Fall of Eccelin da Romano, 1259.| But Eccelin lacked neither energy nor ability, and in September 1258 he signally defeated the Guelfic Crusaders at Torricella. But his comrade in victory, the Marquis Pallavicino, soon deserted his blood-stained cause, and was joined by Cremona, Mantua, Ferrara, and revolted Padua. Manfred himself expressed his goodwill to the confederates. Eccelin’s days were now numbered. He made a last desperate effort to regain power by allying himself with the Milanese nobles who had been recently exiled from their city by the popular leader, Martin della Torre. But the attack on Milan failed, and Eccelin himself was wounded and taken prisoner at Casciano by Pallavicino and the Cremonese. Conscious that the game was up, he tore off his bandages and perished (7th October 1259). The allies now wreaked their revenge on his brother Alberic, murdering his wife and eight children before his eyes, and then tearing him to pieces with wild horses. The house of Romano had fought for its own hand rather than for the Emperor, and their fall did little towards helping forward the papal cause. Yet Eccelin was the prototype of the swarm of Ghibelline tyrants who in subsequent generations were the most characteristic upholders of a once great cause in Italy.

The fall of Eccelin made Manfred the uncontested head of the Italian Ghibellines. In 1258 the Guelfic city of Florence had driven out the local Ghibellines, who took refuge in Siena and appealed to Manfred for help. In 1260 the Florentines marched out against Siena with their carroccio. They were utterly defeated on 4th September at Montaperto, a battle which secured the triumph of the Ghibellines over all Tuscany save Lucca. |Battle of Montaperto and Ghibelline triumph in Tuscany, 1260.| The victors proposed to reduce Florence to open villages, but the patriotism and courage of the exiled Farinata degli Uberti dissuaded his fellow-countrymen from this act of sacrilege. Manfred had sent a troop of German horsemen to help the allies at Montaperto. He now, says Villani, ‘rose to great lordship and state, and all the imperial party in Tuscany and in Lombardy greatly increased in power, and the Church and its devout and faithful followers were much abased.’ The baffled Guelfs were now reduced to the sorry shift of sending to Conradin’s mother in Germany, hoping to stir up her and her son to resent the power of Manfred.

Alexander IV. was now so hopeless that he vainly sought to make peace with Manfred. He died in May 1261, and a three months’ vacancy showed even more clearly the impotence of the cardinals and the abasement of the Church. At last the choice of the conclave fell upon the nominal Patriarch of Jerusalem, James of Court Palais, the son of a cobbler of Troyes, who took the title of Urban IV. During the three years of his pontificate, the French Pope lived mostly at Viterbo and Orvieto, while at Rome the Ghibellines again won the upper hand, and talked of making Manfred their Senator. But Urban was a hot-tempered, strong and active partisan, who brought back the Papacy to the policy of Innocent IV., and struggled with all his might to lay low the power of Manfred, and strove, though in vain, to end the schism of rival kings in Germany. He was clear-sighted enough to see that it was no use fighting Manfred in the name of a nominal king like Edmund of England, especially since, after 1258, the Provisions of Oxford had effectually deprived his father of money and power. |Charles of Anjou offered Sicily.| Urban therefore prudently threw over the creature of Innocent and Alexander, and offered the Sicilian throne to Charles of Anjou, the brother of St. Louis, whose successful rule of Provence had shown his fitness for the difficult task of withstanding the son of Frederick. St. Louis shrank from countenancing the aggression of his brother, but Charles was ambitious, and brushing aside all objections, gladly accepted the offer. Manfred meanwhile grew more powerful than ever, and was steadily extending his authority over the States of the Church. Before the Angevin could come to his assistance, Urban IV. died on 2nd October 1264.

There was no delay in electing the next Pope. Guy Foulquois, a native of Saint Gilles, and a born subject of the King of France, who had attained the cardinal bishopric of Sabina, and was at the moment striving as papal legate to uphold Henry III. against his barons, was chosen in his absence by the cardinals, and assumed the name of Clement IV. |Clement IV., 1264–1268.| A capable man and a strong partisan, Clement at once entered into the enjoyment of the results of the labours of his predecessors. He proclaimed a Crusade against Manfred, and in May 1265 Charles of Anjou himself appeared in Rome, where the fickle Romans, among whom the Pope never ventured to risk himself, received him with enthusiasm and named him their Senator. Next month a commission of cardinals conferred upon him the investiture of Sicily, and received his acceptance of the onerous conditions on which he was permitted to occupy the papal fief. |Charles of Anjou crowned King of Sicily, 1266.| He was to pay 8000 ounces of gold as tribute, to surrender Benevento to the Apostolic See, and to renounce the office of Roman Senator as soon as he had conquered Manfred’s dominions. Charles returned to Provence to raise an adequate army. Before the end of the year he was back in Rome, where on 6th January 1266 he and his wife Beatrice were crowned King and Queen of Sicily.

Within a few weeks of his hallowing, Charles invaded Manfred’s dominions with an army of Provençals, North-French adventurers, and Italian Guelfs. The Neapolitans were unprepared to fight a winter campaign, and many towns and castles opened their gates to the French. Manfred retreated from Capua to Benevento, where he resolved to strike his great blow. |Battle of Grandella and Death of Manfred 1266.| On 26th February the decisive battle was fought in the plain of Grandella, north-westward of Benevento. Manfred’s Saracens easily scattered the Provençal foot, but were in their turn overwhelmed by the mail-clad mounted knights. The German cavalry, that were still faithful to the Hohenstaufen, sought to redress the fortunes of the day. Charles hastily directed the flower of his army against the Germans, who after a short sharp fight were outnumbered and defeated. The chivalry of Apulia took fright at the discomfiture of the Germans, and rode off the field without striking a blow. |Charles conquers Sicily.| Manfred saw the hopelessness of the situation, spurred his horse into the thick of the fight, and valiantly met his fate. His wife and children fell into the victor’s hands, and on that one day Charles gained his new kingdom, which he now sought to tame by stern and systematic cruelty. He was soon able to give material help to the struggling Guelfs of Tuscany. On the news of Charles’s victory reaching Florence, the Ghibellines were expelled, and the Guelfs availed themselves of their triumph to reorganise the constitution. It was the first faint beginning of Florentine democracy, and the turning-point in the whole history of the city. |Guelfic Revolution in Tuscany, 1266–1267.| Fearing for the permanence of their power, the Florentines called upon Charles to aid them. On Easter Day 1267, Count Guy of Montfort, the fiercest and wildest of the banished sons of Leicester, marched into the city at the head of a band of French horse. Charles was made lord of Florence for ten years. The Guelfs were almost as triumphant in Tuscany as in Naples.

Conradin was in his fifteenth year when the death of his uncle made him the sole surviving representative of the house of Hohenstaufen. He was a precocious and gallant youth, conscious that there was no prospect of his playing a great part in Germany, and greedily listening to the stories which Ghibelline exiles told of the wrongs of Italy and the violence of the Angevin usurper. The triumph of Charles had been too rapid to be permanent, and a strong reaction set in both in Apulia and Tuscany against the brutal violence of his partisans. A revolt broke out in Calabria. The Pope himself trembled at the completeness of his ally’s success, and Rome chose Henry of Castile, brother of Alfonso X. and an old enemy of Charles, as her Senator. Pisa raised the Ghibelline standard in Tuscany, and the northern feudalists vied with the Ghibelline cities in stemming the Guelfic tide. Conradin judged the moment opportune to try his fortunes in Italy. At the head of a small army, and accompanied by his uncle, Duke Louis of Bavaria, and by his closest friend, Frederick, the nominal Duke of Austria, the young prince crossed the Brenner, and in October 1267 entered Verona. But he was not strong enough to act at once, and Charles profited by the delay to prepare thoroughly for the struggle. At the approach of danger the jealousies of the Guelfs vanished, and Clement was as eager as Charles to destroy the ‘basilisk sprung from the seed of the dragon.’

Early in 1268 Conradin began to move. Welcomed in January in Ghibelline Pavia, in April he was nobly received in Pisa, where he long tarried, hoping to make head against the Guelfic reaction which, thanks to Charles’s energy, was already apparent in Tuscany. In July he entered Rome, where the Senator Henry of Castile joined his forces with the Ghibelline host. He pressed on into Apulia, hoping to join hands with the revolted Saracens of Lucera. But Charles hurried to meet him, and on 23rd August annihilated his army at the battle of Tagliacozzo. Conradin fled from the ruin of his hopes, but was betrayed to Charles, and was beheaded at Naples along with his comrade Frederick of Austria. He was the last of his race, and his death ensured the Guelfic triumph in Italy, which was henceforth to be utterly separate from Germany, and was to go through long generations of anguish before she could work out her destinies for herself. Clement IV. only just outlived the success of his policy. After his death, in November 1268, a three years’ vacancy in the Papacy completed the victory of Charles of Anjou by depriving him of the only control that could be set over his actions. It was during this period that he attained that fatal ascendency over Louis IX. that led to the expedition to Tunis, where even the sacred crusading cause was made subservient to the ambition of the lord of Naples. Yet, fierce and violent as he was, Charles’s power alone kept Italy from absolute anarchy.

While Italy was distracted by the contest between Guelfs and Ghibellines, Germany was equally divided by the troubles of the Great Interregnum which followed the death of William of Holland in 1256. |Germany, 1254–1273.| After Conrad IV.’s departure to Italy, William had begun to make way in Germany, and his marriage with the daughter of Duke Otto of Brunswick connected him closely with the traditional leaders of the German Guelfs. After Conrad’s death many of the partisans of the Hohenstaufen, including the Rhenish cities, recognised his claim, and no attempt was made to set up the infant Conradin as his rival. |King William of Holland, 1254–1256.| But if he thus gained formal recognition, William never aspired to be more than a king in name. The chief event of his reign was the union in 1254 of the Rhenish cities in a league which extended beyond its original limits as far as Ratisbon, and gave a precedent for other and even more memorable unions of German towns. The local alliance between Lübeck and Hamburg, established as far back as 1241, proved the nucleus of the famous Hanseatic League. William’s death was only important because of the troubles that a contested election evoked. The friends of the Hohenstaufen found it useless to pursue the candidature of Conradin, and were anxious to effect a compromise. They sought to find some prince who, while friendly to the Swabian traditions, was acceptable to the Pope and his partisans. Even the Rhenish archbishops, who had procured the elections of Henry and William, felt the need for peace. Thus both the Bavarian kinsfolk of Conradin, and Conrad of Hochstaden, the Guelfic archbishop of Cologne, agreed in the sort of candidate that they would welcome. They soon found no one in Germany who answered their requirements. |The Double Election of 1257.| Ottocar, King of Bohemia, possessed a power that far outshadowed that of any native prince, and his recent acquisition of Austria and Styria gave him a sort of claim to be considered a German. But all parties viewed with alarm the aggrandisement of so powerful and dangerous a neighbour, and looked further afield, hoping to find a candidate who, though not strong enough to overwhelm their independence, was rich and energetic enough to save them from the ambitious Czech. Conrad of Hochstaden, already well acquainted with England, declared himself in favour of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, whose wealth and reputation were great, and whose rejection of the Sicilian throne, afterwards bestowed by the Pope on his nephew Edmund, showed that he would keep clear from the complications of Italian politics. Henry III., delighted that his brother and son should divide the Hohenstaufen inheritance between them, backed up his candidature. Richard was a good friend of the Pope, and yet had been the brother-in-law and ally of Frederick II. He scattered his money freely, and the Jews, his faithful dependants in England, actively furthered his candidature. But France took the alarm at the extension of the power of her English enemies, and the inveterate Ghibelline partisans of the Italian cities would hear of no Emperor indifferent to their ancient feuds. The citizens of Pisa suggested that Alfonso X. of Castile would be a better candidate than the Earl of Cornwall, and the French party eagerly took up his claims. The ancient rights of all the German nobles to choose their king had fallen into disuse during the recent troubles, and the right of election had gradually passed to seven of their leaders, who on this occasion first definitely exercised the power that belonged to the Seven Electors of later times.

In January 1257 the Archbishop of Cologne appeared with the Count Palatine Otto of Bavaria and the proxy of the captive Archbishop of Mainz before the walls of Frankfurt. On being refused admission to the city, they formally elected Richard as King of the Romans before the gates. The Archbishop of Trier, who had held the town against them, was soon joined by the Duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Brandenburg, and on 1st April these three elected Alfonso of Castile. Ottocar of Bohemia, the remaining elector, for some time hesitated between the two, but his declaration in favour of Richard gave the English earl a majority of the votes of the electoral college. |The Great Interregnum, 1257–1273.| In May Richard crossed over the North Sea, and was crowned at Aachen by Archbishop Conrad. He remained nearly two years in Germany, and succeeded in getting himself generally recognised by the estates of the Rhineland. But the rest of Germany took little interest in his movements, and as soon as his money was exhausted, even his Rhenish friends grew lukewarm in his cause. More hopeful was the support of Alexander IV. and the alliance of Milan and other Italian cities. The Castilians refused to allow Alfonso to prosecute his candidature in person, and an absentee competitor might safely be neglected. Richard now hoped to be able to seek the Imperial crown at Rome. But his absorption in English politics required his return to his native land, and the death of Alexander IV. deprived him of his best chance of formal recognition.

Richard paid three subsequent visits to Germany, but never obtained any greater power. Neither his character nor his resources were adequate to the difficult task that he had undertaken, and his divided allegiance to his old and new country made real success quite impossible. His simple policy was to obtain formal recognition from the princes by making them lavish grants of privileges. A striking example of this was when in 1262 he secured the permanent friendship of Ottocar by confirming his acquisitions of Austria and Styria. For all practical purposes Germany had no king at all. The abeyance of the central power forced the princes to exercise all sovereign rights, and their feuds and factions reduced the realm to a deplorable state of anarchy. Richard’s gold had broken up the league of the Rhenish cities, and for the time the feudal party seemed to have it all their own way. Richard, despairing of general recognition, at last agreed to submit his claims to the judgment of Clement IV., though he had refused similar proffers from Urban IV. Clement died in 1268 before anything could be decided, and three years’ vacancy of the Papacy between 1268 and 1271 left the world without either a spiritual or a temporal head. The great days of Papacy and Empire were plainly over.

Henceforth the Empire was little more than an unrealised theory, but the Papacy was still a practical necessity for the age, however much the furious Guelfic partisanship of recent pontiffs had deprived the Apostolic See of its former position as spiritual director of Europe. Only a good and a strong Pope could restore peace to Italy and Germany, and in September 1271 the election of the holy Theobald of Piacenza, Archdeacon of Liége, then actually on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, secured for Europe a high-minded spiritual leader. |Gregory X. and the restoration of peace 1271–1276.| The short pontificate of Theobald, who took the name of Gregory X. (1271–1276), stands in noble contrast to the reigns of a Gregory IX., an Innocent IV., or a Clement IV. With the wise and peace-loving pontiff, who sought to win back Europe to better ways, the highest spirit of the Roman Church was restored. We have seen how Gregory laboured in the second Council of Lyons for the organisation of the Mendicant Orders, for the union of East and West, and for the renewal of the Crusades. He devoted himself with equal energy to ending the long anarchy in Germany. Richard of Cornwall submitted to his decision, but died in 1272 before it could be pronounced. In 1273 the Electors chose Rudolf, Count of Hapsburg, in his stead. Gregory smoothed over the difficulties which might have attended his candidature, and established friendly relations with him. But the peace that the Pope loved was but of short duration. The Papacy again succumbed to the spirit of intrigue and violence, and before long fell at the hands of the grandson of St. Louis, the great-nephew of Charles of Anjou. The glory of the Papacy only outlasted the glory of the Empire for two generations: but while the Empire had become little more than a mere name, the Papacy, even in the days of the Captivity, continued, though with diminished lustre, to command the spiritual allegiance of Europe. Germany and Italy, the chief names of the Imperial idea, had hopelessly lost any prospect of national unity, while losing the wider unity of the Roman State. The real future thus remained with the localised national states, which were best represented by France, England, and the Spanish kingdoms. With their establishment on the ruins of the older system, the age of the Papacy and Empire came to an end.