MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK IV

CHAPTER XI. FREDERIC II.   [1241—1242.

Mongol Invasion — Russia subjugated — Poland overrun — Battle of Liegnitz — Devastation of Hungary — Affairs of Italy — Council foiled — Death of Gregory — of Celestin IV — Conclave — Mongols in Austria.

The calamities, that interrupted the victorious career of the Emperor, and arrested Germany’s preparations to support him against the inveterate Pope, are now to be related. They appeared as forerunners, announcing the imminent annihilation of European enlightenment and progressive civilization, by a second deluge of barbarism and ignorance, yet more destructive than the first. The savage Mongols, after the momentary halt occasioned by the death of Genghis Khan, A.D. 1227, had resumed their torrent-like career, sweeping away all that obstructed their onward course. In 1237, Genghis Khan’s son, Oktai, sent his son or grandson, Batu, to complete the subjugation of Russia. Again the several Princes, thinking more of internal broils, than of the common danger from barbarians, whom as such they disdained, suffered the Mongols to advance, almost unopposed, till the eastern provinces were a desert, and the Grand-Prince, George Wsewolodowitz, in an attempt at resistance, was slain. In the following year, 1238, the stand made by a Tartar tribe, called indifferently the Polowzans or Kumans, and dependent upon a Russian principality, caused another momentary stoppage in Mongol progress. During this respite, Jaroslaf Wsewolodowitz succeeded his brother George, as Grand-Prince: but no measures were taken for profiting by the manful struggle of the Polowzans, to unite the forces of the several principalities, and stem the advancing inundation. The western princes of northern Russia, heedless of the advancing Mongols, were engrossed by wars with the Teutonic Knights, and with the Swedes, for possession of Livonia.

The stoppage was, indeed, but temporary; the Polowzans were overwhelmed, and those of the tribe who would not submit to slavery under the Mongols, fled with their Khan to Hungary. Bela IV gladly welcomed them as an accession to the deficient population of his kingdom; and, upon condition of their receiving baptism, gave them lands by the, to them familiar, Tartar name of Kumans.

Bela appears, for the moment at least, to have found this increase of his numbers more noxious than beneficial. The Kumans, unaccustomed to strict laws concerning landed property, often preferred their neighbours’ fields to their own, for pasturing their cattle; and are not seldom accused of offering violence to the wives and daughters of those neighbours; an offence most intolerable to the Magyars, who never, amidst the wildest excitement of victory, and in their most savage state, were charged with anything of the kind.

In 1289, Batu, having mastered the Polowzans, again overran Russia, pouring southwards. Jaroslaf now exerted himself to unite his vassal-princes for defence; but in vain. The Princes of Kiew and of Halitsh, almost alone, strove to aid him. Halitsh was one of the most powerful of the southern principalities, apparently claiming—in opposition to Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Eastern Empire, and the provinces themselves—to include part of Walachia, Moldavia, and Bessarabia. Its Prince, Daniel, sought support from his neighbour and ally, Bela; but Bela either trusted for safety to the Carpathian mountains, the impracticable nature of which might be expected to turn the torrent aside from his dominions, or was loth so to provoke the resentment of the terrible barbarians, as to make them disregard the difficulties of that natural rampart. He left his ally to his fate; and the only measure of precaution adopted by him, that of guarding the passes of the Carpathian range, was taunted as cowardice, both by his subjects and by his German neighbours—alike contemnors of dangers, unappreciated and still remote.

Ultimately, Belas selfish policy availed him not, and either Daniel or the Prince of Kiew, is believed, in order at once to baffle it, relieve Russia, and punish the ally who failed them at their need, to have caused so alluring a picture of Hungary to be placed before Mongol cupidity, as directed the course of the deluge upon that country. Whether so instigated, or merely pursuing his southward way, the mighty swarm proceeded towards Hungary; and Bela applied himself diligently to repairing and improving all fortifications, in his northern provinces. But Poland, as easier of access, again changed the course of the Golden Horde, taking precedence in suffering. For the moment Hungary escaped.

Boleslas V was at this time Duke of Cracow, and suzerain, although he cannot be called Sovereign, of Poland, seeing that the other Dukes, if they did not deny his right to obedience, paid no attention to his commands. Thus, Poland, as disunited as Russia, and far inferior in strength, was a yet more inviting prey. Everything east of the Vistula was overrun and devastated; Boleslas fled to Hungary, as several princes of southern Russia had done; and the more manly Waiwodes of Cracow and Sandomir, who, with a hastily collected army, endeavoured to oppose the progress of the Mongols, were defeated with great loss. No further resistance was there attempted. But the north-western provinces of Poland did not attract the conquerors, nor did these, as yet, assail the mountain barrier of Hungary. Moving onward, to the south-west, they poured into Silesia. And, now, first taking alarm, Germany called upon the Emperor for the help, she had been upon the point of affording him.

Whether the Silesian duchies were then Polish or German principalities, might be hard to say. The Dukes merely followed the example of the decidedly Polish Dukes, in paying little of either allegiance or homage to their kinsman, the Duke of Cracow; but they married German princesses; became daily more German in manners, feelings, and interests; and invited German and Flemish colonists to settle in their dominions, the latter, as manufacturers and agriculturists, the former as miners; Slavonian skill being then inadequate to extracting the mineral riches of the Silesian mountains. Both classes of colonists were every way favoured and encouraged; the bulk of the population, however, still consisting of the descendants of the original Poles, was Polish at heart.

Henry the Pious, the son of Henry the Bearded, and of the since canonized Hedwig, daughter of the Duke of Meran, and aunt of St. Elizabeth, was then Duke of Lower Silesia. He saw that upon his small duchy the storm must next burst, and prepared, as he best could, to meet it. He summoned subjects, kinsmen, and allies, to assemble round him at Liegnitz. His Poles and his German miners crowded to his standard. His cousin, Micislas Duke of Upper Silesia, and his nephew, Boleslas Margrave of Moravia, hurried to join him, with the forces they could gather upon the emergency, as did, under their Heermeixter, Poppo, a small troop of Teutonic Knights— all that could be spared from the separate conflicts of the Order—and some few German nobles with their vassals; whilst the King of Bohemia, arming hastily, though with less precipitation, promised to bring reinforcements, without delay, to Liegnitz. To the more distant Princes of the Empire, now at length roused, from their unaccountable apathy, to a sense of fast approaching danger, the Mongols left no time for affording assistance.

In the very beginning of April, 1241, the whole Horde of these Asiatic Barbarians, crossed the Oder and advanced upon Breslau. Part of the inhabitants fled; the rest took refuge in the castle; and the Mongols burnt the undefended town. Whether they did or did not attempt to besiege the castle seems doubtful; not so, that they could have neither the means nor the knowledge requisite for conducting a siege; and that, leaving it untaken, they speedily proceeded towards Liegnitz. Here, Duke Henry, at the head of 30,000 men, all that he had as yet been able to draw together, awaited the savage host, variously estimated at from 200,000 to 450,000 men

Earnestly was the Duke advised to remain within the walls of Liegnitz, thus avoiding an engagement, until reinforced, at least by Wenceslas and his Bohemians. But Henry the Pious, a tender father of his people, was no experienced warrior; their sufferings, from the ravages of the Mongols, wrung his heart; and, forgetting that his defeat must increase those sufferings tenfold, he persisted in going forth, to do battle for their protection. As his army marched out of the town, a tile from the roof of a church fell at his feet. Those about him, seeing an inauspicious omen in the accident, again urged him to pause, and await the Bohemian succours, ere he engaged. But Henry, dauntless as pious, perhaps needed no omen to tell him that he led the forlorn hope of Western Europe; he had resolved upon his course, and he persevered.

His choice of a field of battle, like his haste to encounter the invaders, betrayed utter ignorance of the first rudiments of the military art. Upon an extensive plain, that gave the Mongols the full benefit of their tremendous numerical superiority, he met them; but his arrangements for the shock of war discovered more judgment. The Mongols did not, as might be imagined, trust wholly to their numbers; habitually employing stratagem to insure their victory. The stratagem being, however, always the same, was by this time sufficiently known to be guarded against. It consisted in sending forward a division of their host, which, after a short combat, pretended flight, luring the self-supposed victors, disordered by the ardour of pursuit, into the midst of their swarms, where they were at once surrounded and crushed without a possibility of resistance. Duke Henry, aware of this Mongol strategy, had earnestly warned all his leaders against being so deceived; whilst, as a further preventive, he divided his own army into several bodies, forbidden to attack simultaneously; so that, if one corps fell into the snare, still all would not be lost.

Upon the 9th of April, 1241, the armies met upon the ill-selected plain. Batu being absent, the command of the Mongols devolved upon Peta or Baydar, as the name is diversly given. He, whether in imitation of the Christian array, or that such was the Mongol practice, divided his host, likewise, into several bodies, each of which was superior in number to the whole force opposed to him; and one of these bodies he, as usual, sent forward to attack. Boleslas, at the head of his Moravians, began the battle by gallantly encountering and defeating this body; but when his opponents fled, he, in the exultation of success, forgot all warnings, all predetermined caution: impetuously pursuing, he found himself, with his now disordered troops, in the very midst of the Mongol myriads, ready to exterminate assailants. All who were not fully protected by defensive armour, and many who were, including the Margrave himself, fell under the tempest of their blows and missile weapons. But, by the Duke’s arrangement, the destruction of one division was not defeat; the whole army was, by this time, engaged, and fighting valiantly. Micislas, of Upper Silesia, hastened forward to receive and rally the fugitive Moravians, and still the fortune of the day was uncertain. The Mongols, unaccustomed to such resolute antagonists, were shaken; and Duke Henry’s rashness seemed about to be crowned with victory, when Peta again had recourse to artifice. A Mongol, who had acquired some words of Slavonian, crept amongst the Christian ranks, and, in that language, shouted, “Fly! fly!’’ The influence of such a cry, the fatally contagious nature of panic, are but too well known, and the utmost effect that could be hoped appears to have been produced. All who heard the words, fled. Duke Micislas, who saw the movement, without suspecting the cause, concluded that a retreat was ordered, and fell back, only Duke Henry, with his especial division, still fighting. But so determinately did they fight, that the Mongols, immeasurably superior in numbers, as they were, again had recourse to art. They were acquainted with some secret for producing sudden flames—possibly the Greek fire, which the Mongols might have brought with them, even from China. The Silesians are said to have been bewildered and terrified by the sudden appearance of a dragon, vomiting fire, over the heads of their enemies. This would, in their eyes, be sorcery,—as such, probably irresistible; at least, a proof that they were struggling against the allies of the Powers of Evil. Even this division, therefore, now losing all self-possession, fled. The Duke was deserted by all, save the very few whom personal affection attached to his side. Preferring death to the shame of retreat before barbarians, with these few he stood at bay, fighting on desperately, till each man lay a corpse on the ground.

Again the Mongols were victorious; but a victory so obstinately disputed, and by a force comparatively so small, was even more unsatisfactory than new to them. They tried, nevertheless, to turn it to account. Cutting off the Duke’s head, they fixed it upon a pole, and, displaying their bloody trophy before the walls of Liegnitz, summoned the citizens, upon this demonstration of their prince’s death, to open their gates. But the newly-widowed Duchess, Anne, who, with her children, was there sheltered, and to whom the summons was reported, was congenial in spirit to her lost consort. She felt that death was far preferable to slavery amongst Barbarians. The answer she sent was: “If the Duke be slain, four princely heirs survive, whom the brave garrison and citizens of Liegnitz will defend to the last drop of their blood.”

This was the very crisis of Germany’s fate, perhaps of Europe’s; unconscious as the wrangling, more western sovereigns seem still to have been, of the tremendous evils, hanging over them. Amazement, at the resolute tone of the heroic widow, deepened the impression made upon the Mongols, by the unwontedly high price, at which they had purchased their victory, over the despair of the heroic husband. And when, the next day, the King of Bohemia appeared with a new army, prepared to defend Liegnitz and oppose their advance westward, which would have brought them upon his kingdom, they abandoned their long steady movement in that direction, and turning to the South, ravaged Upper Silesia and Moravia in their passage. In Moravia, indeed, they again encountered more resistance than was agreeable to them; Margrave Jaroslaf, who had there succeeded to Boleslas, repulsed them from the vicinity of Olmutz, and, surprising their camp by night, slew some of their leaders. They hastened to resume their southward course, and now, despite the Carpathian barrier, poured into Hungary.

In eastern Europe the horrors of a Mongol invasion, and its imminence, were by this time pretty generally appreciated; and preparations were there actively making for defence. They were equally appreciated by the Pope and the Emperor. Frederic, by letter, admonished all Christian kings and princes, of the urgency of their common danger, exhorting them to cooperate in averting it. Gregory ordered his Legates to preach a Crusade against these Heathen Barbarians; visiting, for that purpose, the more central and-western regions, where the impending catastrophe seemed unthought of. The imperial letters and the Legates’ preaching seem to have made little impression upon those, from whom the storm was still distant: and Lewis IX is said to have satisfied himself with the remark, that, if the Tartars came to France, either they would be sent back to their native Tartarus, or they would send the French, as martyrs, to Heaven. Success was confined to those provinces where, from proximity to Silesia, the peril was felt imminent. In some Saxon states the whole population, men, women, and children, took the Cross. Conrad and his Counsellors convoked a Diet, to decide upon the most effective means of averting the impending evils; and at this Diet, he, and almost all the princes present, similarly took the Cross, protesting that they did so, not in obedience to a hostile Pope, but actuated solely by patriotic and religious motives. This anxiety to guard against any suspicion of yielding to papal commands was presently justified by the conduct of this little-Christian Head of Christendom. As though repenting of the one measure suited to that character, i.e. the publishing a Crusade against Heathen invaders who menaced the religion, as well as the lives and property of the people, he again concentrated his enmity upon the Emperor. Even at this moment, when only the union of all Christian realms seemed to offer a chance of preserving Christianity itself, and with it, all that had been acquired or recovered of knowledge and civilization, from extinction, the Pope accused the Emperor of exaggerating the danger, in order to raise an army, with which to attack the Holy See! Frederic actually dared not leave Italy at the mercy of such a successor of the Apostle, even to superintend the defence of his transalpine dominions, against the dreaded Mongols. He was fain to trust that defence to the temporary union, which danger, and anger at the Papal pretensions, had produced among the German Princes, and to the instructions he had sent Conrad, for his conduct. The chief of these were to avoid pitched battles with the invaders (had Honorious III or Innocent III still occupied St. Peter’s Chair, the Emperor’s presence might have controlled Duke Henry, and the defeat of Liegnitz have been escaped) and to guard, as far as might be, by prohibiting all unnecessary consumption of corn, as in brewing and the like, against the famine that must be expected, as the consequence of such general devastation as marked the track of the Mongols,—who apparently desired to annihilate agriculture as well as towns, leaving open plains, like the steppes of Asia, for their herds of cattle.

The calamity of Hungary, however, afforded Germany a respite; and of this, although apparently but momentary, Albert Btfham availed himself to urge the Princes of the Empire to support the Vicar of Heaven against the excommunicated Emperor, before turning their arms against the Asiatic savages, with whom the Hungarians were very able to deal. Whether this might or might not have been the case, had Bela, thus cruelly deserted, been suffered to follow out the course he had prescribed for himself, is a problem now insoluble; but he was not permitted so to act, and fearfully was Beham’s assertion confuted.

Bela, in accordance with Frederic’s plan of defence, avoided risking his whole force in a pitched battle; but in the eyes of the arrogant Magyars this was rank cowardice, as had been his endeavour to guard the Carpathian passes. So was it in the Duke of Austria’s, when, conscious that he must be next attacked, he disregarded the Archdeacon’s exhortations, and hastened to the assistance of his neighbour. Many detached bodies were encountered and defeated by Frederic the Combative, who here displayed his accustomed headlong valour; and in one of these partial engagements with the enemy, he took, amongst other prisoners, two leaders. One of these proving to be a Kuman, he inferred that the abhorred Kumans had entered Hungary only to betray it to the Mongols—although half the nation remaining in Russia, subjects of the Mongols, the captive probably belonged tb that half: Duke Frederic and the Magyars with him, hereupon murdered the Khan of the Hungarian Kumans with his whole family, before Bela could interfere for their protection; and, most unaccountably, as though this supposed detection and punishment of Kuman perfidy, had averted all danger of Mongol conquest, and Hungary was rescued for a bulwark of Germany, the Austrians went home.

The Hungarians seemingly adopting this view, forgot the Mongols, to employ themselves in massacring Kumans; who therefore, instead of reinforcing Bela, against their own old enemies, were either fighting with his subjects, or seeking an asylum in Bulgaria. Bela, thus weakened, was compelled by his army to give battle, the result of which naturally was defeat and ruin. His family fled for shelter to Vienna; town after town fell, the country was laid waste, and the Mongols seemed to intend exterminating the inhabitants, in accordance rather with the original instructions of Genghis Khan—who pronounced compassion the characteristic of a weak mind—than with their late, less sanguinary, proceedings in Russia. The horrors perpetrated are sickening to record or to read of; but what was impending over Europe, what Gregory risked, rather than forego or postpone his vengeance upon the Emperor, ought to be known. The common practice was to divide the captured inhabitants into lots, according to their age and sex, when the men capable of bearing arms were cut down without a moment’s delay. The greybeards were used as targets for practice; being ordered to hold up the left arm, whilst arrows were aimed at their hearts. The women and children were committed to the tender mercies of the Mongol women, who accompanied their husbands and fathers upon this awful migration. These female demons put all the young and good looking of their own sex, in whom they could apprehend rivals, to death, keeping the old and ugly as slaves, after first mangling them, as if for amusement. The children they obliged to sit down, armed their own progeny with clubs adapted to their strength, and, as a practical lesson, bade them beat out the brains of the infant prisoners. And happy might young and old, thus promptly butchered, esteem themselves! For many were lingeringly tortured to death, that their agonies might divert the conquerors.

Numbers of Hungarians, abandoning alt idea of resistance to these calamities, fled from them into Austria. The Duke is accused of having plundered these refugees, the royal family included, and constrained the men to take service under him. However detestable, if true, the first act laid to his charge, the second is excusable if not absolutely justifiable; since in his dominions, probably, was the next stand against the savage horde to be made. Bela himself now fled; and, after a short visit to Vienna sought shelter in the Dalmatian islands. The Dalmatians still boast their exemption from Mongol conquest; the invaders, occupied, and, for the moment, content with ravaging Hungary, either not pursuing the fugitive King, or making an inroad so slight, as to be easily repelled. From this asylum, Bela applied to Pope and Emperor for aid, which he offered to repay by holding Hungary in vassalage of the imperial crown. An offer little calculated to obtain the solicited Crusade-bull against the Mongols.

Bela’s petition found Italy convulsed by the civil war, which left the Pope and the Emperor no more leisure now, to oppose the devastation of Hungary by the Mongols, than previously, to strive against their ravages in provinces more interesting to Frederic; to wit, Silesia and Moravia. He had no means of succouring Bela, beyond the exertions which he had directed the German government to make for the occasion; and could only inforce, by repeating, those directions. In addition to the military calls upon his time and thoughts, the Emperor was much occupied and troubled by the convocation of the Council. The Pope’s epistles and the exertions of his Legates, had, throughout Europe, been, for the most part, more influential with the clergy, than the imperial admonitions. In the very opening of the year 1241, Cardinal Otho, a son of the Marquess of Montferrat, but, despite his relationship to the Emperor and the renewed Ghibelinism of his family, a Guelph, left England, bringing Gregory both a considerable sum of money, again extorted from the English Clergy, and as many English prelates, as he could persuade to accompany him, for the express purpose of dethroning their Sovereign’s brother-in-law. The Cardinal-Bishop of Palestrina, who, if he had failed at the French Court, had succeeded in obtaining, from the French clergy, both pecuniary contributions and members for the Council, set out at the head of a large company, taking his way by Nice. Cardinal Montelonga, upon hearing of their progress, quitted the scene of his easier labours, Lombardy, and hastened to Genoa, there to announce that the Pope had explicitly forbidden the prelates to traverse Italy, lest they should fall into Frederic’s hands;—he more dreaded their having an amicable interview with him;—and therefore, by arguments, promises, and if necessary, menaces, to procure from the Republic the loan of a fleet, for the conveyance of the Fathers of the Church to the mouth of the Tiber.

The Emperor, learning the route of the Cardinals with their detachments of prelates, now adopted a more dignified and manly, if less argumentative line of conduct. He sent messengers to the intended members of the Council, to exhort or entreat them (Matthew Paris says, “modestly and humbly”) not to embark at Genoa, but to prosecute their journey by land, and visit him on their way; thus to afford him an opportunity of explaining the falsehood of the accusations brought against him, as well as the various other injuries, done him by the Pope. They were to add, that, in case of the Prelates’ compliance, the Emperor would not only guarantee, in whatever way they pleased, the safety of their whole journey, but pledge himself unhesitatingly to obey whatever decision they, having heard both sides, should pronounce. But that, if refusing this fair offer, they endeavoured to reach Rome by sea, without hearing his statements, as he must hold them enemies, his fleets would seek to intercept them; and should they chance to escape capture, he would never submit to a verdict pronounced upon hearing one side only. The prelates, under the influence of the Cardinals, refused to trust the promises of an excommunicated man, and adhered to their original intention.

But not yet did the Emperor remit his endeavours to prevent this hostile course. Pisa, by his desire, sent an embassy to Genoa, to remonstrate with her great rival upon lending her fleet to convey prelates, so determinately prejudiced against their sovereign, in order to constitute an unfair Council; and, further, to intimate, that if she should, Pisa would be under the painful necessity of endeavouring to prevent the vessels from reaching their destination. The Genoese repulsed the warning as an insult, and Gregory, whose chief fear seems to have been an interview between the Emperor and the future Fathers of the Council, triumphed. But now Frederic ordered his Apulian and Sicilian fleets, under the command of his son Enzio and of the Grand-Admiral of Sicily, Ansaldo di Mare, to unite with the Pisan, under Ugolino Buzacherini, and, if possible, intercept the inimical prelates. The certain imminence of the threatened danger was speedily reported at Genoa, where the prelates still awaited more of their brethren, and occasioned no little commotion there. Many of the reverend fathers were alarmed and turned* back, even from this advanced stage of their journey. And, when it was generally known in Genoa, that the Podesta had actually signed a convention with Cardinal Montelonga for the conveyance of those who persevered, an insurrection, provoked by fear of the Imperial arms, broke out. But in a city so innately Guelph, this was speedily quelled.

Civil and maritime authorities joined with the ecclesiastical, in persuading themselves that the Emperor could have no naval force equal to confronting the Genoese; and that even if he had, upon the wide sea there could be no difficulty in avoiding his cruisers. Trusting to these opinions, the prelates, upon the 25th of April, scarcely more than a fortnight after the fatal defeat of the Christians at Liegnitz, in the magnificent bay of Genoa, amidst the acclamations of half the city, stepped on board a fleet of thirty sail. Prior to making Porto Venere they were met by the unlooked-for news, that the combined fleets of the Sicilies and of Pisa, consisting, the former of twenty-seven, the latter of forty vessels, lay in wait for them near Meloria, a small rocky island not far from Porto Pisano. Doubts and fears, before unthought of, and consequent dissensions now arose. The prelates looked to speed as offering the best chance of escaping the Imperialists. Many of the Genoese Captains were for taking shelter in Porto Venere, until joined by the reinforcements then in process of equipment at Genoa. Others proposed to elude the Imperialists by steering away to the west; thus, circuitously, to reach Ostia or Civita Vecchia, whilst the Imperialists were scouring the Mediterranean in search of them. But all these, more or less judicious, plans were overruled by the Admiral, Guglielmo Ubriacchi, who, as if to prove the figurative, if not the literal fitness of his name (anglice, drunkard) to his character, disregarding alike the disparity of numbers, the terrors of his reverend and unwarlike passengers, and the importance to the Guelph cause of their safe arrival, insisted upon giving battle. He was quickly gratified; the first rumour of his vicinity bringing forth his antagonists to meet him.

Upon the 3rd of May, the hostile fleets engaged off Meloria, and, as was to be expected from the immense disparity of numbers, thirty against sixty-seven, the Genoese suffered a total defeat. Three of their ships foundered with their ecclesiastical freight, twenty-two were taken with theirs, and only five, escaping by flight, carried theirs off safe. Three Cardinals—Otho of Montferrat, Gregorio de Montelonga, and the Bishop of Palestrina, though whether all three were already cardinals is questioned—the Archbishops of Rouen. Bordeaux, and Besançon—the last, as a Burgundian prelate, a vassal of the Empire—the Bishops of Agde, Carcassonne, Nîmes, Tortona, and Pavia, were amongst the prisoners, with many abbots, and deputies from Lombard cities. No names of English prelates occur in this list; nor does Henry III appear to have made, like Lewis IX, any demand for the release of English captives; whence may be inferred that, their original reluctance being increased by the unwonted difficulties of the journey, how much soever they had prepared for them, they either formed part of the band that turned back from Genoa, or at least lingered in that neighbourhood, to await the result of their brethren’s embarcation.

The prisoners, both ecclesiastics and laymen, were carried by the victorious fleet to Naples, and there closely confined; but so roughly are they said to have been handled by the sailors—who, as their Emperor’s bitter enemies, hated them—that they felt their terra firma prison a happy asylum. Here, their treatment appears to have been regulated by the greater or less degree of animosity they discovered towards the Emperor: some of the most fiercely inimical are said to have been murdered, either by violence or by starvation. That Frederic was, by this time, thoroughly exasperated against Gregory and his creatures, there can be no doubt; as little, that, in those days, the servants of absolute monarchs would, far more than now, serve the passions of their masters, beyond even those masters’ wishes; and that human life was not then much respected. Still, as no names of the slain are given, and the Cardinals who had been most virulently active against him will be found uninjured, this accusation seems to class itself amongst the ever-recurring exaggerations of faction. Other prelates, on their way to Rome, turned back upon hearing of their brethren’s disaster; the Council was thus indefinitely postponed, and the Pope’s enmity towards the Emperor envenomed.

Lewis of France immediately demanded the release of his prelates, who could not, he urged, be considered as enemies to the Emperor; since, even if the Pope had acted unbecomingly, the charges, advanced by his Legates against the Emperor, had been constantly repelled by the French Court. Frederic replied, that he was justified in considering and treating as enemies those who, when invited to judge him, refused to hear his defence ; and, for the present, he detained the French prelates with his other captives.

The victory at sea was quickly followed by one on land, which the army of Pavia gained over the Milanese, 350 of whom they made prisoners, with their banners and implements of war. In the Estates of the Church the Imperial forces were equally successful, taking one town after another, till at length Rome was well-nigh blockaded by them.

The Emperor himself was then in Sicily, where, about this time, he was visited by an English brother-in-law, Richard Earl of Cornwall, who, upon his return from a crusading expedition to Palestine, landed at Palermo, to see his sister, the Empress Isabella. The Earl was cordially received and magnificently entertained; being himself a troubadour of some reputation, he was a congenial as well as welcome guest, at the literary, if luxuriously gay, Imperial court. Quickly conceiving both a high esteem and a warm affection for his able and friendly brother-in-law, he eagerly undertook to effect his reconciliation with Gregory. As the brother of Henry III—a monarch so implicitly obedient to the Pope—and as a Crusader, he felt himself entitled to influence, at Rome; not to be destroyed even by his having performed his vow in the Holy Land, when the Pope, still trusting Jerusalem to the Mongols, required all Crusaders to turn their arms against his personal enemy. Thus, in full confidence of success, since Frederic desired only what was equitable, the Earl visited the Holy Father. But the Romans, being at the moment upon good terms with their pontifical sovereign, received him with insult and mockery; and Gregory, more incensed than ever by the defeat of his intended subservient Council, denounced the capture of the prelates as a flagrant crime, and declared, that he could now listen to no proposal from the Emperor, short of an actual surrender at discretion. The Earl of Cornwall returned in great wrath to the Court of Frederic, who merely observed, that he was glad his brother-in-law was now satisfied of the Pope’s inveterate hatred for himself.

This was about the last occasion upon which that hatred could be displayed. The vicinity of the victorious Imperial troops prevented Gregory from leaving Rome during the sultry months; and the malaria there prevalent in summer, combining with vexation at Frederic’s triumph, and, perhaps, with consciousness of his own unbecoming supineness even in sight of the all-destroying Mongols, proved too much for a frame burthened with nearly a hundred years, and suffering under one of the most painful diseases to which humanity is liable; if indeed at that age it be necessary to seek extraneous causes of death. Upon the 21st of August, 1241, Gregory IX—indomitable as ever in spirit, after causing an encyclical epistle to be addressed to the faithful children of the Church, exhorting them not to be depressed by seeming misfortune—expired.

The Emperor, when the tidings of this event reached him, declared that, his dissensions having been with the Pope, not with the Holy See, and entirely the result of Gregory’s idiosyncrasy, his wrongs would, he was convinced, be immediately redressed by an upright pontiff; and suspended hostilities. He now despatched Enzio, with 4000 horsemen, to assist Conrad against the Mongols, and withdrew the remainder of his forces into his own dominions. It may, at the first blush, seem extraordinary that he did not immediately hasten to Germany, to direct in person the defensive war against those terrible barbarians. But he felt that he had given Conrad an efficient coadjutor and guide in his gallant son Enzio; a youthful veteran, in whose abilities he had perfect confidence; and who, as he could have no separate interest, must gain more influence over his brother than the ablest, merely vassal-prince. And when the evils he himself individually, as well as his realms, had suffered from the enmity of the deceased Pope are considered, it is evident that whilst a matter so momentous, as the selection of the spiritual Head of Christendom was in suspense, he must needs be unwilling to cross the Alps.

The Cardinals, who had been present with Gregory at his death, were, by the Roman Senator and people concurrently, immediately shut up in Conclave. But, being few in number, they entreated the Emperor to release their captive brethren, that the award of a larger body might give more validity to the impending election. Those captive Cardinals had shown themselves the especial enemies of the Emperor, and their imprisonment was not likely to have softened their hostility. Yet he immediately complied with a request—of which he probably felt the justice—simply requiring each Cardinal individually to pledge himself to return to his prison when the election should be over, unless chosen Pope.

Of the ten Cardinals now forming the Conclave, five voted for Cardinal Goffredo Castiglione, a Milanese, nephew to Urban III, and three for Cardinal Romano. The agreement of two thirds of the Cardinals, in Conclave assembled, being indispensable to a valid election, neither of these was such, and both were, accordingly, disclaimed by the Romans. But however invalid the elections, Cardinal Otho thought himself bound by his word to return to his prison upon their announcement; and so pleased was the Emperor with this scrupulously honourable conduct, that forgetting all past hostility, he treated him thenceforward with confidence and respect. In regard to the double election itself, he decidedly objected to Cardinal Romano, upon several grounds; such as, that he had instigated and fomented the dissensions between the late Pope and himself, that he had persecuted the University of Paris, and that he had insulted the Queen of France with solicitations, peculiarly indecent in an ecclesiastic, &c. The Cardinals remaining in Conclave, meanwhile, pressed by the discomfort of their position, and by fear of the impatient Romans, on the 16th of October, concentrated the requisite number of suffrages upon Castiglione. He was proclaimed and acknowledged Pope, by the name of Celestin IV. If the other Cardinals were out upon parole, they, like Otho, now returned to prison.

Celestin IV, though in comparison with his predecessor hardly to be called old, was far advanced in life, and whether he would have realized Frederic’s professed expectations from an upright Pope, time was not allowed him to show. Scarcely had he consecrated a few bishops, and performed some other urgently needed papal functions, ere he sank under the addition of excitement and business to the burden of years. Upon the 2nd of November, after a pontificate of seventeen days, he expired. The Cardinals, dreading a repetition of their recent annoyances, fled from Rome before the event was generally known; and again, upon the former conditions, Frederic permitted his captives to attend the Conclave. But without those annoyances which the Princes of the Church had avoided, the requisite degree of unanimity seemed to be unattainable : neither during the remainder of the current year, nor in the whole course of the next, could two thirds of the votes be united upon one individual.

That this long papal interregnum (to use an analogical if inaccurate word,) should prove as favourable to the recovery of lay supremacy, as the contest for the empire had been to the establishment of ecclesiastical domination, might well be expected. But, either from a genuine religious reluctance to be the aggressor in such a quarrel, or from conviction that if he were so, he must incur the reprobation and enmity of Christendom, the Emperor did not thus profit by the opportunity. Professing friendship for the Holy See, and a fixed determination to act as its official guardian, whilst helpless, because vacant, he quietly awaited the issue of the Conclave’s deliberations. That he equally neglected the opportunity relatively to the Lombards, making no attempt to crush their insurrection whilst destitute of papal support, leaving the war with them wholly to Ezzelino, seems more extraordinary in so sagacious a statesman: and the historian looks round for a probable cause. The only one offering is, that in those days of small armies, whose chief strength lay in their cavalry, the absence of Enzio with his 4000 horsemen, may have so reduced Frederic’s force, as imperatively to require his limiting his military operations to the prosecution of the war with Genoa: a war best carried on by sea, the situation of the city and its territories—guarded and well-nigh encircled by the Apennines—rendering an attack by land very difficult. The indefatigable activity of his Grand-Admiral, Ansaldo di Mare, incessantly harassed, not only the Genoese navy but the Genoese coast; which, the moment he had driven or lured away the protecting ships, he visited and ravaged. He thus penetrated into the very harbour of Genoa, destroyed the merchant vessels there lying, and escaped before the returning Genoese fleet could surprise him in that hazardous position. The fruit of these brilliant exploits was the securing to the Emperor, jointly with Pisa, the command of that part of the Mediterranean, and the suzerainty over Enzio’s kingdom of Sardinia.

Neither was the opportunity altogether neglected with respect to Lombardy. Whilst throughout Italy Frederic gained ground, Ezzelino was extending his own dominions, at the expense of the House of Este, and strengthening his power by a severity, which, if measured by the standard of the nineteenth century, becomes unscrupulous cruelty. For instance, he put the young Conte di Panego to death, without trial, upon an accusation of having sold Verona to the Lombard League; and an architect, whose offer to build him dungeons and torture chambers, more horrible than had yet been devised, he had accepted, he—as a classic tyrant of antiquity had done before him—made the first sufferer from his own hateful ingenuity. In Tuscany, the Imperialists were decidedly the masters. At Bologna, a Ghibeline faction was beginning to create disturbances, though inefficacious. Imola and Fano, openly deserting the republican confederation, declared for the Emperor, who rewarded their conversion with divers rights and privileges. Milan, his most inveterate enemy, distracted and enfeebled by the internal contentions of all classes with each other, was at this time unable to oppose him. The nobles, appearing lukewarm republicans to the industrial portion of the community, were fiercely attacked by all the non-noble; who again were disunited among themselves, the ultra-democratic small shopkeepers being dissatisfied with all above them. Combining together, therefore, they constituted themselves the Association of St. Augustine, thus to resist and control all who had any share in the government. The superior portion of traders thereupon formed an opposition Society, entitled La Mota, equally hostile to the nobility. And now was Milan often rather distracted than governed with two Podestas—each party electing its own, each with his own set of officers— until in 1240, Pagano della Torre being elected Capitano del Popolo, democracy gained the ascendancy. A contest for the vacant archiepiscopal see, increasing after the tumults, ended somewhat whimsically. Wearied with contention, all parties agreed, as a compromise, to intrust the choice of their prelate to a Minorite Friar, influential through his sanctity, his eloquence, and yet more through his ultra-Guelphism, Fra Leone da Perugia: when, to the general amazement, the Friar nominated himself: choosing well. These disorders, if they weakened Milan’s powers of insurgency against the Emperor, interfered not with the wars she waged against her neighbours; individual petty passions being, in these cases, more keenly excited. If the haughty city, yielding to necessity, had made peace with Pavia, she was actively engaged in. hostilities with Como.

Any exultation in which Frederic might have indulged upon his deliverance from his inveterate enemy, Gregory IX, and the advancement of his interests in Italy, was damped by domestic afflictions. In the closing week of the year 1241, he lost the Empress Isabella—apparently much the best beloved of his royal wives—who expired in giving birth to a daughter; and little more than a month afterwards, on the 12th of the following February, died his guilty eldest son, King Henry. Respecting the manner of this death, writers differ. Boccaccio, who, if not a contemporary, lived so near these times as to be something of an authority,—he was born A.D. 1313—says that Frederic, judging his first-born sufficiently punished, now summoned him to his presence, intending to pardon and liberate him; but that Henry, uninformed of the paternal design, in the terror of his father’s continued wrath, looked to death as an escape. Therefore, watching his opportunity, he flung himself from a bridge that he was crossing with his escort, and was drowned. Giannone, on the other hand, writing four or five centuries later, but from documents unknown to Boccaccio, says, that he died in prison; and this account, which most historians follow, best agrees with probability; the election of Conrad seeming to preclude the intention of setting so formidable a rival, as a legally elected and acknowledged elder brother, at liberty. Yet the heart of the parent, softened by his recent bereavement, might deeply feel and wish to alleviate the doom incurred by his criminal offspring; whose death, whether natural or suicidal, he appears to have deeply regretted. As evidence of such regret, he issued a singular proclamation, in which he first apologizes at some length for being overpowered with sorrow at the death of an undeserving son, pleads parental affection in excuse, and ends thus: “Therefore do I command, that, throughout my empire, masses for his soul be said, and all the hallowed rites of mourning be observed; and as my faithful subjects cordially rejoice with me in all my joys, so may they now prove their hearty sympathy with me in my grief.”

About this time the Emperor was solicited by the Palestine Barons, to appoint Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had insinuated himself into their good graces during a Crusade, Regent of the kingdom of Jerusalem, until Conrad should be of age to assume the government. But Frederic had no inclination to intrust so important an office to any alien, least of all to a son of the despoiler of the Earls of Toulouse.

In Germany the succours brought by Enzio had been much wanted and proved very effective. No sooner was the pressure of instant-danger removed, by the diversion of the Mongols to the destruction, rather than subjugation, of Hungary, than the zeal of the German princes relaxed. And only, when from devastated Hungary the fierce Horde fell upon Austria, had a crusading army assembled to withstand the impending ruin. This army Enzio joined, with his cavalry; and, under his guidance, Conrad led the united forces to encounter the Mongols, as they pursued their desolating course up the Danube. Being now in sufficient strength, he gave them battle and gained a victory that determined them to fall back upon Hungary. Austria was once more free; and though the Barbarians remained masters of the adjoining kingdom, showing themselves savage as ever, the general impression seems to have been, that the victory was, and must be, decisive; that the Mongols were finally repulsed, and Germany was safe. The Princes of the Empire at once returned home, the Crusaders, dispersing, did the same, and those most exposed were left to ward off the evil as they might.

Even whilst the Mongols were overrunning Austria, and threatening the rest of Germany, Albert Beham was authoritatively inculcating upon all who would listen to him, that insurrection against the Emperor, the first of duties, was far more imperative than resistance to the savage invaders. He thus completely and irrecoverably alienated most Germans, from himself and his office. Vague suspicions of some ulterior, nefarious design being now conceived, his letters to the Papal Court were intercepted, produced at a Ratisbon Diet, and when publicly read, were found to contain calumnies of his principal protector, Duke Otho. The ducal protection being now—if it had not previously, when the legatine-Archdeacon’s preaching excited disorders in Bavaria, been—withdrawn, the firebrand and his partisans were laid under the ban of the Empire. Protection, however, he still found, and that in the Bavarian Castle of Wasserburg; but in it he was besieged and taken. After such public proceedings, it seems strange to add, that his end is involved in obscurity; but such is the fact. Some accounts make the vindictive Duke of Bavaria put him at once to a cruel death; some let him effect his escape, after an imprisonment, respecting the length of which historians differ; some describe his subsequent seizure by the citizens of Passau, whilst imprudently traversing a town where he was so well known, and being there flayed alive; and finally others place him, years afterwards, under the wing of a pontiff, far more unscrupulous than Gregory IX, to wit, Innocent IV. But, whatever were the fate of Beham, his last offence effectually recalled the Duke of Bavaria from his newly embraced Guelphism to the grateful loyalty of his race.(

With respect to the Mongols, in 1242 they again invaded Austria, and threatened Vienna. But the emergency roused all neighbouring Crusaders, who hastened to swell the ranks of the army, which Conrad and Enzio, again accompanied by the princes of eastern Germany, led to support the Duke. He himself, alarmed by the continuous occupation of Hungary, had remained in a defensive attitude; and, under the walls of Vienna, the combined forces met the invaders. The Horde was there defeated, yet more thoroughly than the preceding year; and the reiterated lesson proved efficacious. Driven back into Hungary, they did not again venture to attack any German province; but Hungary groaned through very many more months, under their ravages, and the natural consequence, famine.

CHAPTER XII.

FREDERIC II.       [ 1242—1245.