XVII. 1245-1250. the pattern of his Master who teaches us to forgive CHAP. our debtors, he would not heap wrong upon wrong, or send the Bishop of Ferrara to harm us.' He then begs the burghers of Spires to forbid their town to the Legate's messengers. The Pope had not the least intention of forgiveness. He despatched a strong letter to the Archbishop of Mayence, referring to Frederick as the scourge of the clergy; seculars and regulars alike were to preach the Crusade against the tyrant through the cities of Germany. All who would fight, and all who would give their money for this object, should have pardon for their sins, just as if they were on the road to Palestine. The Pope expressly forbade the pious to succour the Holy Land; they must take up the Cross against Frederick. In Alsace, as we learn from the Imperial letters, the Bishop of Strasburg refused the sacraments of the Church to all who bore arms for the Kaiser. The Papal party even suggested to Conrad that he should quit the side of his father, an excommunicated man. The youth sent back a stern defiance to the traitors, and took the field at the head of 15,000 men; he surprised King Henry, and defeated him in a most bloody battle. A part of the Pope's money fell into the hands of the conquerors, who hanged many of their captives.* Henry fled home to his native Thuringia, and died on the 17th of February at the Castle of the Wartburg, so famous in German history. It is said, that on his unwillingly assuming the crown, he had foretold that he should not live a year. The Papal party lost heart at the death of * M. Paris. СНАР. their champion; even Philip, the Legate, thought with dismay on the chance of his falling into hostile 1245-1250. hands. He enjoined on the Guardian of a Franciscan Convent the task of getting him out of the city where he was, and of bringing him to a place of shelter. He ordered the friar to speak in Latin, never in German; forbidding the revelation of his secret until leave should be given. Philip and a companion put on the garb of St. Francis; the Guardian, acting as their guide, tried the various gates of the city, but found all shut. At last they saw a great dog creep out by means of a narrow passage under one of the gates; they tried the same method, but Philip was too fat. However, he lay down upon his belly and struggled through, while the Guardian stood above, pressing down with toe and heel the more prominent parts of the holy man's person. That same day, the party reached another Franciscan Convent; the foreigners were passed off as illustrious Lombards. On making himself known, when all danger was at an end, the Legate cried; I was always a friend to the Order of blessed Francis; and a friend to it I will be all the days of my life.' He kept his word.* Germany was distracted by disputed successions to her Duchies, as well as by disputed claims to her Crown. Three Princely houses came to an end, as regards male heirs, in three successive years. In 1246, the old line of Babenberg, so rich in Saints and heroes, which had ruled Austria for almost three centuries, disappeared. Frederick, the last Duke of his race, had parted in anger from his Im * Salimbene. CHAP. XVII. perial namesake at Verona. Early in the next year, after escaping a murderous plot of his nobles, he routed the Bohemians with great loss. But on the 1245-1250. 15th of June, the warlike Austrian fought his last field. King Bela of Hungary, who was by this time delivered from the Tartars, marched to the Leitha with a mighty host, aided by the barbarian Kings of Russia and Prussia. Frederick defended his Duchy at the head of a small army; many of the invaders fell beneath the German sword or were drowned in the Leitha; but the Duke of Austria, although victorious, was slain, probably by treachery. His mother Theodora, a Greek Princess, died of grief within a week; the provinces of Austria and Styria are described as sitting groaning in the dust. The traveller, who finds his way from Vienna to the cloisters of Heiligenkreutz, may still behold the sculptured form of the last of the Babenbergs; in that Abbey Duke Frederick found the rest to which he had been a stranger for most of his life. The state of Austria for the next thirty years was most wretched. Margaret, the sister of the late Duke and the widow of the Kaiser's son Henry, was the first claimant who came forward. Hermann the Margrave of Baden wedded Gertrude, the Duke's niece who had been so near becoming Empress; he put forward her rights and disputed the Duchy. This pretender, who was backed by Rome on the understanding that he would take the Cross against Frederick, died within a very few years; the issue of the match was a son, the faithful friend of Conradin both in the field and on the scaffold. The Austrian nobles, now that the strong hand of Duke Frederick was for ever gone, broke out into the XVII. 1245-1250. CHAP. most furious civil wars. Otho von Eberstein, who had been named their Captain by the Kaiser, could make no impression upon them. They were invited to a conference at Verona, but were robbed on the way by the new Archbishop of Salzburg; Frederick then appointed the Duke of Bavaria to be Captain in Austria, and the Count of Goritz to be Captain in Styria. The state of these once fruitful provinces became worse and worse; the poor cried out, the Churches were robbed, fires were kindled, and there was not a corner of the land that did not groan under oppression. The export of provisions and wine ceased altogether. The Duke of Bavaria was held in scorn as a mere woman; his son was equally unsuccessful in asserting the rights of the Crown. The chief exploit of their troops was an attack upon the Abbey of Garsten. 'I trust in the Lord that so great evils shall not be unavenged,' says the Chronicler of the Convent, who has left a picture of these awful times. Austria had her full share of the general misery, the result of the Papal policy. The King of Russia married Gertrude and made an attempt to seize her fair province; the King of Hungary, called into the field by Innocent, was guilty of the most hideous massacres in his raids; the Duke of Bavaria once more came forward; but the successful candidate was Ottocar of Bohemia, who had wedded Margaret. He gave himself out as the champion of Rome against heretics, and maintained his sway in Austria for many years, until he had to make way for the rising House of Habsburg.* Thuringia was for a time as much harassed by *See the Austrian Chronicles in Pertz, 9. civil wars as the Duchy of Austria. King Henry, the Landgrave, died early in 1247; he was the last heir male of his house, and four claimants by female succession stood forth to contest his dominions. The real struggle lay between the Margrave of Meissen, to whom Frederick sent the feudal banner of investiture, and Sophia the Duke of Brabant's wife, whom Innocent abetted. The strife was protracted until after the Kaiser's death; the knights of Thuringia rejoiced at the wars in which their province was involved, since they became thereby more and more independent. The disputing Princes made an agreement, by which the settlement of the question was delayed, until a King of Germany should be elected, recognized by both parties.* Austria was left masterless in 1246, Thuringia in 1247; another vast heritage lapsed in 1248. The Dukes of Meran, formerly petty Lords in the Tyrol, had taken rank among the most powerful Princes in Germany by the beginning of this century. The head of the House married a granddaughter of Barbarossa and thus acquired Franche Comté, taking the title of Count Palatine of Burgundy. One of the Meran brothers became Patriarch of Aquileia, another Bishop of Bamberg. One sister became Queen of Hungary, another would have sat on the throne of France, but for the stern opposition of Pope Innocent III. The old possessor of Franche Comté had now been in his grave for many years. His son, Otho III., who had been present at the Diet of Verona, went over to the side of the Church in 1248, and forsook the cause of his cousin the Kaiser. * Chron. Erphord, and Chron. Sampetr. See Von Raumer. CHAP. 1245-1250. |