Wittelsbachs chief among them. It was a dangerous step for it revived the territorial animosities and rivalries which had for so long set the magnates against each other. For the time being the partial restitution to Henry and his sons of some of the Saxon estates helped to maintain the peace when Barbarossa left Germany to die on crusade, but it was unlikely that Henry's sons, now coming into their prime, would accept the loss even if their ageing father were disposed to do so.
Some rapprochement with their interests was reached by Barbarossa's son and successor, Henry VI ( 1190-7). His energies were largely devoted to the conquest of the kingdom of Sicily, then to grander projects still, though these proved abortive. To achieve these he had to do all he could to smooth affairs in Germany. Lübeck was restored to Henry the Lion, but ominously this did not prevent Henry's eldest son from deserting the emperor's army, obtaining from Pope Celestine III a bull which made the family liable only to his own sentence of excommunication and not that of bishops, and rebelling. The revolt was suppressed and Henry was able to go on to conquer Sicily, but even with this great success behind him he was unable, at the Diet of Würzburg in 1196, to persuade all of the German princes to agree to the hereditability of his kingdoms. On his death in 1197 the claims of his infant son Frederick were discounted and groups of princes proceeded to the elections of Henry VI's brother, Duke Philip of Swabia, and of a son of Henry the Lion, Otto of Brunswick. Civil war descended upon Germany again. Only time would tell whether it would prove any more damaging to the monarchy than those which had preceded it.
It was Germany's tragedy that its monarchy asserted itself most vigorously and thereby awoke the deepest resentments at a time when the purposes, prerogatives, and duties of kingship were largely undefined and at a time when the development of lordship was still following its cumulative ramification in that country. It thus happened that the crown simultaneously suffered a challenge to its traditional, theocratic basis, while its secular opponents lacked the inclination, perhaps even the notion, of attempting to define the areas within which
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