Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/302

288 The cruel and unworthy conduct of her husband, who, among his other mean acts, was the sordid jailor of Richard Cœur de Lion, seems not to have accorded with the spirit of Constantia. The widow of Tancred surrendered Salerno, and her right to the crown, on condition that her son William should possess the principality of Tarentum. But Henry joining the most atrocious cruelty to the basest of perfidy, no sooner was master of the place, than he ordered the infant king to have his eyes put out, and threw him into a dungeon; the royal treasure was transported to Germany, and the queen and princesses shut up in a convent.

In the mean time the empress was brought to bed of a son named Frederick, who, in his cradle, was declared king of the Romans. Henry returned into Germany, and, being solicited by the people to engage in a new crusade, consented, but took care to turn it to his own advantage. With the greatest hypocrisy he harangued a general diet, and with such solemnity, that multitudes from all the provinces of the empire enlisted, and he divided them into three large armies, one of which he conducted in person into Italy, in order to take vengeance upon the Romans of Naples and Sicily, who had risen against his government.

The rebels were humbled, and their chiefs condemned to perish by the most excruciating tortures. One Jornandi, of the house of the Roman princes, was tied naked to a chair of red-hot iron, and crowned with a circle of the same burning metal, which was nailed to his head. The empress shocked at such cruelty renounced her faith to her husband, and encouraged her countrymen to recover their liberties. Resolution sprang from despair. The inhabitants betook themselves to arms; the empress Constantia, at the age of fifty, headed