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Rh annulled. A further attack on the Lombard cities at the diet of Ravenna in 1231 was answered by a renewal of their league, and was soon connected with unrest in Germany. About 1231 a breach took place between Frederick and his elder son Henry, who appears to have opposed the Privilege of Worms and to have favoured the towns against the princes. After refusing to travel to Italy, Henry changed his mind and submitted to his father at Aquileia in 1232; and a temporary peace was made with the Lombard cities in June 1233. But on his return to Germany Henry again raised the standard of revolt, and made a league with the Lombards in December 1234. Frederick, meanwhile, having helped Pope Gregory against the rebellious Romans and having secured the friendship of France and England, appeared in Germany early in 1235 and put down this rising without difficulty. Henry was imprisoned, but his associates were treated leniently. In August 1235 a splendid diet was held at Mainz, during which the marriage of the emperor with Isabella (1214–1241), daughter of John, king of England, was celebrated. A general peace (Landfrieden), which became the basis of all such peaces in the future, was sworn to; a new office, that of imperial justiciar, was created, and a permanent judicial record was first instituted. Otto of Brunswick, grandson of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, was made duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg; and war was declared against the Lombards.

Frederick was now at the height of his power. His second son, Conrad, was invested with the duchy of Swabia, and the claim of Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia, to some lands which had belonged to the German king Philip was bought off. The attitude of Frederick II. (the Quarrelsome), duke of Austria, had been considered by the emperor so suspicious that during a visit paid by Frederick to Italy a war against him was begun. Compelled to return by the ill-fortune which attended this campaign, the emperor took command of his troops, seized Austria, Styria and Carinthia, and declared these territories to be immediately dependent on the Empire. In January 1237 he secured the election of his son Conrad as German king at Vienna; and in September went to Italy to prosecute the war which had broken out with the Lombards in the preceding year. Pope Gregory attempted to mediate, but the cities refused to accept the insulting terms offered by Frederick. The emperor gained a great victory over their forces at Cortenuova in November 1237; but though he met with some further successes, his failure to take Brescia in October 1238, together with the changed attitude of Gregory, turned the fortune of war. The pope had become alarmed when the emperor brought about a marriage between the heiress of Sardinia, Adelasia, and his natural son Enzio, who afterwards assumed the title of king of Sardinia. But as his warnings had been disregarded, he issued a document after the emperor’s retreat from Brescia, teeming with complaints against Frederick, and followed it up by an open alliance with the Lombards, and by the excommunication of the emperor on the 20th of March 1239. A violent war of words ensued. Frederick, accused of heresy, blasphemy and other crimes, called upon all kings and princes to unite against the pope, who on his side made vigorous efforts to arouse opposition in Germany, where his emissaries, a crowd of wandering friars, were actively preaching rebellion. It was, however, impossible to find an anti-king. In Italy, Spoleto and Ancona were declared part of the imperial dominions, and Rome itself, faithful on this occasion to the pope, was threatened. A number of ecclesiastics proceeding to a council called by Gregory were captured by Enzio at the sea-fight of Meloria, and the emperor was about to undertake the siege of Rome, when the pope died (August 1241). Germany was at this time menaced by the Mongols; but Frederick contented himself with issuing directions for a campaign against them, until in 1242 he was able to pay a short visit to Germany, where he gained some support from the towns by grants of extensive privileges.

The successor of Gregory was Pope Celestine IX. But this pontiff died soon after his election; and after a delay of eighteen months, during which Frederick marched against Rome on two occasions and devastated the lands of his opponents, one of his partisans, Sinibaldo Fiesco, was chosen pope, and took the name of Innocent IV. Negotiations for peace were begun, but the relations of the Lombard cities to the Empire could not be adjusted, and when the emperor began again to ravage the papal territories Innocent fled to Lyons. Hither he summoned a general council, which met in June 1245; but although Frederick sent his justiciar, Thaddeus of Suessa, to represent him, and expressed his willingness to treat, sentence of excommunication and deposition was pronounced against him. Once more an interchange of recriminations began, charged with all the violent hyperbole characteristic of the controversial style of the age. Accused of violating treaties, breaking oaths, persecuting the church and abetting heresy, Frederick replied by an open letter rebutting these charges, and in equally unmeasured terms denounced the arrogance and want of faith of the clergy from the pope downwards. The source of all the evil was, he declared, the excessive wealth of the church, which, in retaliation for the sentence of excommunication, he threatened to confiscate. In vain the mediation of the saintly king of France, Louis IX., was invoked. Innocent surpassed his predecessors in the ferocity and unscrupulousness of his attacks on the emperor (see ). War soon became general in Germany and Italy. Henry Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, was chosen German king in opposition to Frederick in May 1246, but neither he nor his successor, William II., count of Holland, was successful in driving the Hohenstaufen from Germany. In Italy, during the emperor’s absence, his cause had been upheld by Enzio and by the ferocious Eccelino da Romano. In 1246 a formidable conspiracy of the discontented Apulian barons against the emperor’s power and life, fomented by papal emissaries, was discovered and crushed with ruthless cruelty. The emperor’s power seemed more firmly established than ever, when suddenly the news reached him that Parma, a stronghold of the imperial authority in the north, had been surprised, while the garrison was off its guard, by the Guelphs. To recover the city was a matter of prime importance, and in 1247 Frederick concentrated his forces round it, building over against it a wooden town which, in anticipation of the success that astrologers had predicted, he named Vittoria. The siege, however, was protracted, and finally, in February 1248, during the absence of the emperor on a hunting expedition, was brought to an end by a sudden sortie of the men of Parma, who stormed the imperial camp. The disaster was complete. The emperor’s forces were destroyed or scattered; the treasury, with the imperial insignia, together with Frederick’s harem and some of the most trusted of his ministers, fell into the hands of the victors. Thaddeus of Suessa was hacked to pieces by the mob; the imperial crown was placed in mockery on the head of a hunch-backed beggar, who was carried back in triumph into the city.

Frederick struggled hard to retrieve his fortunes, and for a while with success. But his old confidence had left him; he had grown moody and suspicious, and his temper gave a ready handle to his enemies. Pier della Vigna, accused of treasonable designs, was disgraced; and the once all-powerful favourite and minister, blinded now and in rags, was dragged in the emperor’s train, as a warning to traitors, till in despair he dashed out his brains. Then, in May 1248, came the tidings of Enzio’s capture by the Bolognese, and of his hopeless imprisonment, the captors refusing all offers of ransom. This disaster to his favourite son broke the emperor’s spirit. He retired to southern Italy, and after a short illness died at Fiorentino on the 13th of December 1250, after having been loosed from the ban by the archbishop of Palermo. He was buried in the cathedral of that city, where his splendid tomb may still be seen. By his will he appointed his son Conrad to succeed him in Germany and Sicily, and Henry, his son by Isabella of England, to be king of Jerusalem or Arles, neither of which kingdoms, however, he obtained. Frederick left several illegitimate children: Enzio has already been referred to; Frederick, who was made the imperial vicar in Tuscany; and Manfred, his son by the beloved Bianca Lancia or Lanzia, who was legitimatized just before his father’s death, and was appointed by his will prince of Tarento and regent of Sicily.