to

he had conquered in 1191, as a fief to Veit (Guy) of Lusignan (autumn of 1192), who transferred his title of "King of Jerusalem Henry of Champagne.

Richard on his return suffered a shipwreck at Aquileia, was recognized in Vienna, detained by Leopold, duke of Austria, at the command of the emperor Henry VI., kept a prisoner by the emperor thirteen months in Trifels (near Annweiler in the county Palatine) and in Worms, and released only upon payment of a ransom and rendering homage.1

1202-1204. Fourth Crusade. Latin empire (1204–1261).

At the instance of Pope Innocent III. (preaching by Fulco of Neuilly) a Crusade directed originally against Egypt was undertaken by powerful French barons, assisted by Baldwin, count of Flanders, and Boniface, marquis of Montferrat. The Crusaders undertook the siege of Zara in Dalmatia, which the king of Hungary had seized, for the Venetians (Doge Henry Dandolo), partly in payment for transport. At the urgent request of Alexius, son of the Eastern emperor Isaac Angelus, who had been dethroned by his brother, a request strongly supported by Philip of Swabia, the Crusaders went to Constantinople with the Venetian fleet of 480 sail, captured the city, and replaced Alexius and his father on the throne (1203). The emperor was unable to fulfill his compact with the Crusaders. (Union of the Greek Church with that of Rome; large payments in money.) Contention, during which the city caught fire. Revolt of the Greek populace. (Isaac died.) After the murder of Alexius by the Greeks, second capture of the city, pillage, new conflagration, which consumed many works of ancient literature.

Establishment of the Latin empire (Baldwin, emperor); many coast districts and islands fell to the Venetians; the marquis of Montferrat became king of Thessalonica; French dukes in Athens, Achaia, Villehardouin, historian of the expedition.

etc.

Establishment of a Greek empire at Nicea by Theodore Lascaris, and a second, the empire of Trebizond on the coast of the Pontus Euxinus, by a descendant of the Comnenes. Michael Palæologus, of the Nicæan empire, put an end to the Latin empire in 1261.

1212. The children's Crusade. Thousands of German and French boys started for the Holy Land. Many died on the way, many were sold into slavery.

1217. Crusade of Andrew ÏI., king of Hungary, without result. 1218-1221. Unsuccessful attack upon Egypt under John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem."

66

1228-1229.

short time.

Fifth Crusade.

Jerusalem regained for a

Frederic II., emperor of the West, who was under the papal ban

1 It is probable that the story of the Austrian banner having been trodden in the filth at Acre by Richard's command is not a fable (cf. Toeche, Kaiser Heinrich, VI. pp. 256, 558), but the imprisonment of Richard had doubtless higher political motives, and is sufficiently explained by the alliance of Richard with the Welfic party in Germany, see p. 223.

for not having fulfilled his promise of undertaking a Crusade, went to Acre by sea, and received Jerusalem (where he crowned himself), Nazareth, and a strip of land reaching to the coast, together with Sidon, from Sultan Kameel (El Kámil), on condition of a ten years' armistice. Jerusalem was lost again, and finally, 1244.

1248-1254. Sixth Crusade. Without result.

Louis IX., king of France (St. Louis), went to Cyprus and passed the winter there. In order to destroy the Saracen power in its stronghold of Egypt, he went in the spring of 1249 to Damietta and captured the city. On the expedition which he undertook in November against Cairo, Louis was defeated by the Ayoubite Sultan Toorán-shah (Almoadan), cut off from Damietta, and captured with the entire French army (April, 1250). The execution of the treaty of peace, whereby the king was to be liberated on condition of evacuating Darmietta and paying a heavy ransom, was delayed by the overthrow of the Ayoubites by the Mamelukes. Louis coasted along Palestine, fortified Acre and other cities of the coast, in the course of a residence of almost four years, and returned to France in 1254. 1268. Antiochia lost to the Mohammedans.

1270. Seventh Crusade. Without result.

Louis IX. went to Tunis, where he and the greater part of the army were carried off by sickness.

1291. Acre (Ptolemaïs) stormed by the Mamelukes; the Christians abandoned their last possessions in Palestine (Tyre, Berytus, Sidon).

The Crusades were the greatest events of the Middle Age. In spite of the excesses and cruelties of many of the Crusaders they lend to the time to which they belong an ideal, a religious character.

Results of the Crusades: 1. Increased power and authority of the Church and the Papacy. 2. Increase of the personal power of princes, owing to the reversion of many feudal holdings which became vacant. 3. Rise of independent communities, who bought their freedom from their overlords who needed funds for the pilgrimage. 4. Development of commerce. The Italian republics at the height of their power. 5. Intellectual growth resulting from the new ideas brought back from the East; especial advance in the knowledge of geography and natural history. 6. Perfection of the institution of knighthood (chivalry); the three

Religious Orders of Knighthood.

1. Knights of St. John, or Hospitalers; i. e. knights of the hospital of St. John in Jerusalem, founded by merchants from Amalfi, 1048. The brotherhood was enlarged after the first Crusade (Gerhard), and converted into an order of knighthood after the manner of the Templars (Raimund Dupuis). Black mantle, white cross. The order was transferred to Cyprus (1291), to Rhodes (1310), whence they were called Knights of Rhodes. Rhodes lost, 1522; in 1526 the order received a gift of Malta from the emperor Charles V., thence called Knights of Malta. 2. Knights of the Temple or Templars (from the temple of Solomon,

on whose site stood the house of the order in Jerusalem), originating in a union of nine French knights in 1118 (Hugo de Payens). White mantle, red cross. In 1291 the order was transferred to Cyprus; in 1312 dissolved by Pope Clement V. at the Council of Vienne.

3. The Order of Teutonic Knights, originally brotherhood of the German hospital founded in 1128 (?) in Jerusalem, raised to an order of knighthood by Frederic of Swabia before Acre, during the third Crusade. White mantle, black cross. Seat of the order at Acre. Under the grand master Hermann of Salza a band of knights went to Prussia, then occupied by the heathen Wends, in 1226. Hermann of Balk, first Landmeister in Prussia, which was subjugated by bloody wars (1226-1283). In 1291 the seat of the grand master was tranferred to Venice, 1309 to Marienburg, 1457 to Königsberg. The land of the order was secularized in 1525. Those knights who remained Catholic maintained possession of the German estates. Residence of the grand master at Mergentheim at Franconia. The order was dissolved in 1809. In all three orders, knights, priests, brothers in service.

§ 2. GERMANY AND ITALY.

1125-1137. Lothar of Saxony,

supported by his son-in-law Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria, of the house of Welf, whom he later appointed duke of Saxony as well, and Berthold, duke of Zähringen. Lothar fought (until 1135) against the two powerful Hohenstaufens, Frederic, duke of Swabia, and Conrad, nephew of the last emperor, Henry V. Their father was Frederic of Büren and Staufen, son-in-law of the emperor Henry IV. (p. 200).

1132-1133. On his first Roman expedition Lothar was crowned by Pope Innocent II., and accepted the allodial possessions of Matilda of Tuscany as a fief from the Pope.

1136–1137. On his second Roman expedition Lothar attacked the

Norman Roger II., who had assumed the title of king of the two Sicilies, and drove him for a short time to Sicily. On his return Lothar died at Breitenwang in upper Bavaria (Dec. 3–4, 1137).

Under Lothar's reign German influence made great advances in the North and East. The Danish king Magnus recognized anew the overlordship of the Emperor; Bohemia did feudal homage. The Wends were driven back, and in increasing numbers converted to Christianity. Holstein given to Adolf, count of Schaumburg, the margravate of Meissen to Conrad of Wettin, the Nordmark or Altmark, at the mouth of the Havel and on the left bank of the Elbe, to Albert the Bear, of the house of Ballenstädt or Askania (1134), who had done Lothar important service on the first Roman expedition. Albert crossed the Elbe and conquered almost the entire Mittelmark, which then received the name of Brandenburg, from its chief city.

1138-1254. House of Hohenstaufen (Staufer),1 so called from the castle of Staufen in Swabia.

1138-1152. Conrad III.,

elected by the party opposed to the Saxon house, without participation of the Saxons and Bavarians.

War of the Ghibellines (Italian corruption of Waiblingen, the name of a castle of the Hohenstaufens) and the Welfs, or Guelfs (cf. the genealogical table).

Conrad put Henry the Proud under the ban, and gave Saxony to Albert the Bear, and Bavaria to Leopold IV., margrave of Austria. 1139. During the changing fortunes of the war Henry the Proud died. The claims of his ten-year-old son Henry (afterwards called the Lion) to Saxony were maintained by the latter's mother and grandmother and their connection. Bavaria was claimed by Welf VI., brother of Henry the Proud. Welf advanced to the relief of the city of Weinsberg, which Conrad besieged. In the

1140. Battle of Weinsberg Conrad conquered, and the city was compelled to surrender. ("The Faithful Wives of Weinsberg," poem by Bürger.)

After the death of Leopold of Austria (Oct. 18, 1141), Bavaria fell to his brother, Henry Jasomirgott,3 who married Gertrude, Henry the Proud's widow (1142). Her son, Henry the Lion, received Saxony. Albert the Bear gave up his claim to Saxony; the mark of Brandenburg, which was a fief held directly from the emperor (reichsunmittelbar), and his other possessions, which his enemies had occupied, were restored to him.

Conrad's Crusade (p. 215). Conrad, whose eldest son, Henry, who had already been elected king, died before him, appointed as his successor not his second son, a minor, but his nephew, Frederic of Swabia, who was unanimously elected by the princes. Conrad died Feb. 11, 1152, at Bamberg.

1152-1190. Frederic I., Barbarossa,

one of the most heroic figures of the Middle Age.

Diet at Merseburg. Frederic settled the disputed succession to the Danish crown. Sven became king of Denmark as a vassal of the

empire (1152).

Frederic's main object was to make good the imperial authority, and in particular to restore the imperial rights in northern Italy, which had become narrowed by neglect. Hence war with the powerful republican cities of Lombardy. Six expeditions to Italy. 1154–1155. First expedition. Frederic destroyed some small places

which opposed him, and was crowned king of Italy in Pavia,

1 V. Raumer, Gesch. der Hohenstaufen u. ihrer Zeit; Jaffé, Gesch. des d. R. unter Konrad III.; Prutz, Geschichte Friedrichs I.

2 Recent investigators deny that the cry of Hie Welf! Hie Waiblingen! was heard here for the first time.

3 So called from his favorite oath.