The Fall Of The Ghibellines


The death of Frederick II., in 1250, was followed by a series of

misfortunes to his descendants, so tragical as to form a story full of

pathetic interest. His son Enzio, a man of remarkable beauty and valor,

celebrated as a Minnesinger, and of unusual intellectual qualities, had

been taken prisoner, as we have already told, by the Bolognese, and

condemned by them to perpetual imprisonment, despite the prayers of his

fa
her and the rich ransom offered. For twenty-two years he continued a

tenant of a dungeon, and in this gloomy scene of death in life survived

all the sons and grandsons of his father, every one of whom perished by

poison, the sword, or the axe of the executioner. It is this dread story

of the fate of the Hohenstauffen imperial house which we have now to

tell.



No sooner had Frederick expired than the enemies of his house arose on

every side. Conrad IV., his eldest son and successor, found Germany so

filled with his foes that he was forced to take refuge in Italy, where

his half-brother, Manfred, Prince of Taranto, ceded to him the

sovereignty of the Italian realm, and lent him his aid to secure it. The

royal brothers captured Capua and Naples, where Conrad signalized his

success by placing a bridle in the mouth of an antique colossal horse's

head, the emblem of the city. This insult made the inhabitants his

implacable foes. His success was but temporary. He died suddenly, as

also did his younger brother Henry, poisoned by his half-brother

Manfred, who succeeded to the kingship of the South. But with the

Guelphs in power in Germany, and the pope his bitter foe in Italy, he

was utterly unable to establish his claim, and was forced to cede all

lower Italy, except Taranto, to the pontiff. But a new and less

implacable pope being elected, the fortunes of Manfred suddenly changed,

and he was unanimously proclaimed king at Palermo in 1258.



But the misfortunes of his house were to pursue him to the end. In

northern Italy, the Guelphs were everywhere triumphant. Ezzelino, one of

Frederick's ablest generals, was defeated, wounded, and taken prisoner.

He soon after died. His brother Alberich was cruelly murdered, being

dragged to death at a horse's tail. The other Ghibelline chiefs were

similarly butchered, the horrible scenes of bloodshed so working on the

feelings of the susceptible Italians that many of them did penance at

the grave of Alberich, arrayed in sackcloth. From this circumstance

arose the sect of the Flagellants, who ran through the streets,

lamenting, praying, and wounding themselves with thongs, as an atonement

for the sins of the world.



In southern Italy, Manfred for a while was successful. In 1259 he

married Helena, the daughter of Michael of Cyprus and AEtolia, a maiden

of seventeen years, and famed far and wide for her loveliness. So

beautiful were the bridal pair, and such were the attractions of their

court, which, as in Frederick's time, was the favorite resort of

distinguished poets and lovely women, that a bard of the times declared,

"Paradise has once more appeared upon earth."



Manfred, like his father and his brother Enzio, was a poet, being

classed among the Minnesingers. His marriage gave him the alliance of

Greece, and the marriage of Constance, his daughter by a former wife, to

Peter of Aragon, gained him the friendship of Spain. Strengthened by

these alliances, he was able to send aid to the Ghibellines in Lombardy,

who again became victorious.



The Guelphs, alarmed at Manfred's growing power, now raised a Frenchman

to the papal throne, who induced Charles of Anjou, the brother of the

French monarch, to strike for the crown of southern Italy. Charles, a

gloomy, cold-blooded and cruel prince, gladly accepted the pope's

suggestions, and followed by a powerful body of French knights and

soldiers of fortune, set sail for Naples in 1266. Manfred had unluckily

lost the whole of his fleet in a storm, and was not able to oppose this

threatening invasion, which landed in Italy in his despite.



Nor was he more fortunate with his land army. The clergy, in the

interest of the Guelph faction, tampered with his soldiers and sowed

treason in his camp. No sooner had Charles landed, than a mountain pass

intrusted to the defence of Riccardo di Caseta was treacherously

abandoned, and the French army allowed to advance unmolested as far as

Benevento, where the two armies met.



In the battle that followed, Manfred defended himself gallantly, but,

despite all his efforts, was worsted, and threw himself desperately into

the thick of the fight, where he fell, covered with wounds. The bigoted

victor refused him honorable burial, on the score of heresy, but the

French soldiers, nobler-hearted than their leader, and touched by the

beauty and valor of their unfortunate opponent, cast each of them a

stone upon his body, which was thus buried under a mound which the

natives still know as the "rock of roses."



The wife and children of Manfred met with a pitiable fate. On learning

of the sad death of her husband Helena sought safety in flight, with her

daughter Beatrice and her three infant sons, Henry, Frederick, and

Anselino; but she was betrayed to Charles, who threw her into a dungeon,

in which she soon languished and died. Of her children, her daughter

Beatrice was afterwards rescued by Peter of Aragon, who exchanged for

her a son of Charles of Anjou, whom he held prisoner; but the three boys

were given over to the cruellest fate. Immured in a narrow dungeon, and

loaded with chains, they remained thus half-naked, ill-fed, and untaught

for the period of thirty-one years. Not until 1297 were they released

from their chains and allowed to be visited by a priest and a physician.

Charles of Anjou, meanwhile, filled with the spirit of cruelty and

ambition, sought to destroy every vestige of the Hohenstauffen rule in

southern Italy, the scene of Frederick's long and lustrous reign.



The death of Manfred had not extinguished all the princes of Frederick's

house. There remained another, Conradin, son of Conrad IV., Duke of

Swabia, a youthful prince to whom had descended some of the intellectual

powers of his noted grand-sire. He had an inseparable friend, Frederick,

son of the Margrave of Baden, of his own age, and like him enthusiastic

and imaginative, their ardent fancies finding vent in song. One of

Conradin's ballads is still extant.



As the young prince grew older, the seclusion to which he was subjected

by his guardian, Meinhard, Count von Goertz, became so irksome to him

that he gladly accepted a proposal from the Italian Ghibellines to put

himself at their head. In 1267 he set out, in company with Frederick,

and with a following of some ten thousand men, and crossed the Alps to

Lombardy, where he met with a warm welcome at Verona by the Ghibelline

chiefs.



Treachery accompanied him, however, in the presence of his guardian

Meinhard and Louis of Bavaria, who persuaded him to part with his German

possessions for a low price, and then deserted him, followed by the

greater part of the Germans. Conradin was left with but three thousand

men.



The Italians proved more faithful. Verona raised him an army; Pisa

supplied him a large fleet; the Moors of Luceria took up arms in his

cause; even Rome rose in his favor, and drove out the pope, who

retreated to Viterbo. For the time being the Ghibelline cause was in the

ascendant. Conradin marched unopposed to Rome, at whose gates he was met

by a procession of beautiful girls, bearing flowers and instruments of

music, who conducted him to the capitol. His success on land was matched

by a success at sea, his fleet gaining a signal victory over that of the

French, and burning a great number of their ships.



So far all had gone well with the youthful heir of the Hohenstauffens.

Henceforth all was to go ill. Conradin marched from Rome to lower Italy,

where he encountered the French army, under Charles, at Scurcola, drove

them back, and broke into their camp. Assured of victory, the Germans

grew careless, dispersing through the camp in search of booty, while

some of them even refreshed themselves by bathing.



While thus engaged, the French reserve, who had watched their movements,

suddenly fell upon them and completely put them to rout. Conradin and

Frederick, after fighting bravely, owed their escape to the fleetness of

their steeds. They reached the sea at Astura, boarded a vessel, and were

about setting sail for Pisa, when they were betrayed into the hands of

their pursuers, taken prisoners, and carried back to Charles of Anjou.



They had fallen into fatal hands; Charles was not the man to consider

justice or honor in dealing with a Hohenstauffen. He treated Conradin

as a rebel against himself, under the claim that he was the only

legitimate king, and sentenced both the princes, then but sixteen years

of age, to be publicly beheaded in the market-place at Naples.



Conradin was playing at chess in prison when the news of this unjust

sentence was brought to him. He calmly listened to it, with the courage

native to his race. On October 22, 1268, he, with Frederick and his

other companions, was conducted to the scaffold erected in the

market-place, passing through a throng of which even the French

contingent looked on the spectacle with indignation. So greatly were

they wrought up, indeed, by the outrage, that Robert, Earl of Flanders,

Charles's son-in-law, drew his sword, and cut down the officer

commissioned to read in public the sentence of death.



"Wretch!" he cried, as he dealt the blow, "how darest thou condemn such

a great and excellent knight?"



Conradin met his fate with unyielding courage, saying, in his address to

the people,--



"I cite my judge before the highest tribunal. My blood, shed on this

spot, shall cry to heaven for vengeance. Nor do I esteem my Swabians and

Bavarians, my Germans, so low as not to trust that this stain on the

honor of the German nation will be washed out by them in French blood."



Then, throwing his glove to the ground, he charged him who should raise

it to bear it to Peter, King of Aragon, to whom, as his nearest

relative, he bequeathed all his claims. The glove was raised by Henry,

Truchsess von Waldberg, who found in it the seal ring of the unfortunate

wearer. Thence-forth he bore in his arms the three black lions of the

Stauffen.



In a minute more the fatal axe of the executioner descended, and the

head of the last heir of the Hohenstauffens rolled upon the scaffold.

His friend, Frederick, followed him to death, nor was the bloodthirsty

Charles satisfied until almost every Ghibelline in his hands had fallen

by the hand of the executioner.



Enzio, the unfortunate son of Frederick who was held prisoner by the

Bolognese, was involved in the fate of his unhappy nephew. On learning

of the arrival of Conradin in Italy he made an effort to escape from

prison, which would have been successful but for an unlucky accident. He

had arranged to conceal himself in a cask, which was to be borne out of

the prison by his friends, but by an unfortunate chance one of his long,

golden locks fell out of the air-hole which had been made in the side of

the cask, and revealed the stratagem to his keepers.



During his earlier imprisonment Enzio had been allowed some alleviation,

his friends being permitted to visit him and solace him in his

seclusion; but after this effort to escape he was closely confined, some

say, in an iron cage, until his death in 1272.



Thus ended the royal race of the Hohenstauffen, a race marked by

unusual personal beauty, rich poetical genius, and brilliant warlike

achievements, and during whose period of power the mediaeval age and its

institutions attained their highest development.



As for the ruthless Charles of Anjou, he retained Apulia, but lost his

possessions in Sicily through an event which has become famous as the

"Sicilian Vespers." The insolence and outrages of the French had so

exasperated the Sicilians that, on the night of March 30, 1282, a

general insurrection broke out in this island, the French being

everywhere assassinated. Constance, the grand-daughter of their old

ruler, and Peter of Aragon, her husband, were proclaimed their

sovereigns by the Sicilians, and Charles, the son of Charles of Anjou,

fell into their hands.



Constance was generous to the captive prince, and on hearing him remark

that he was happy to die on a Friday, the day on which Christ suffered,

she replied,--



"For love of him who suffered on this day I will grant thee thy life."



He was afterwards exchanged for Beatrice, the daughter of the unhappy

Helena, whose sons, the last princes of the Hohenstauffen race, died in

the prison in which they had lived since infancy.



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