Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/536

 456 Outlines of European History The Hohen- staufens extend their claims to southern Italy Frederick II and Innocent III a modern city they were very disorderly, for sometimes the poor revolted against the rich, and often the nobles, who had moved in from, the country and built fortified palaces in the towns, fought among themselves. And then the various towns were always fighting one another. But in spite of all the warfare and disorder, the Italian cities became wealthy and, as we shall see later, were centers of learning and art similar to the ancient cities of Greece, such as Athens and Corinth. They were able to combine in a union known as the Lombard League to oppose Frederick, for they hated the idea of paying taxes to a German king from across the Alps. Frederick made several expeditions to Italy, but he only succeeded, after a vast amount of trouble, in getting them to recognize him as a sort of overlord. He was forced to leave them to manage their own affairs and go their own way. They could, of course, always rely upon the Pope when it came to fighting the Emperor, for he was quite as anxious as the towns to keep Frederick out of Italy. So Frederick failed in his great plans for restoring the Roman Empire; he only succeeded in adding a new difficulty for his descendants. In spite of his lack of success in conquering the Lombard cities, Frederick tried to secure southern Italy for his descendants. He arranged that his son should marry Constance, the heiress of Naples and Sicily. This made fresh trouble for the Hohenstaufen rulers, because the Pope, as feudal lord of Naples and Sicily, was horrified at the idea of the Emperor's controlling the territory to the south of the papal possessions as well as that to the north. After some forty years of fighting in Germany and Italy Frederick Barbarossa decided to undertake a crusade to the Holy Land, and lost his life on the way thither. His son was carried off by Italian fever while trying to put down a rebellion in southern Italy, leaving the fate of the Hohenstaufen family in the hands of his infant son and heir, the famous Frederick II. It would take much too long to try to tell of all the attempts of