Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/203

 THE WEST IN THE CRUSADING ERA 191 instead of the Pope as God's vicegerent. Italian patriots with an ideal of unity even for Italy itself could see no hope of obtaining it save through the empire, through an emperor who in virtue of his office was not German nor Italian, but the divinely appointed head of Christendom. The victory of the Lombard League brought Italy no step nearer to Italian unity; and that fact explains why it was possible for the most patriotic Italians to desire the Imperial victory, however con- fident we may feel that Frederick's triumph would not have meant the attainment of the desired ideal. Frederick's defeat did, on the other hand, mean not only the liberation of the Italian cities from a German The Papal master, but the triumph of the papacy which Triumph, was won by Alexander III., and was wielded with tremendous effect by his mighty successor Innocent ill. Frederick failed in Italy, but in Germany his rule was extremely successful. He multiplied the free cities ; the cities, that is, which recognised the Imperial authority, but governed themselves without being subject to the Frederick in control of great feudal lords. He mastered the Germany, nobles, including Henry the Lion of Saxony, who behaved virtually as an independent monarch, and he strengthened the secondary orders of the nobility and the freemen. He died, as we have seen, when marching on the third crusade, and became one of the heroes of the German people ; so that legend declared that he was not dead, but lay only in an enchanted sleep, from which he should one day arise to rescue Germany in the hour of her utmost need. Frederick's successor was his son Henry vi., who acquired for himself the Norman kingdom of Sicily in right of his wife. Henry died leaving an infant son, afterwards 3. After Frederick 11., whose claims were at first set aside, Barbarossa. and the boy was brought up not in the least as a German but as a Sicilian. The great Pope Innocent in. ruled during the years between the death of the Emperor Henry and the recovery of the Imperial Crown by Frederick 11. So powerful was he that he could assert his authority to depose kings, and require them to