was sung by priests and people with accordant earnest

ness.

The tragedy was hastening towards its close. In every quarter the Emperor found lukewarmness, treachery, and desertion. Prelates who had basked in his favour were suddenly convinced of their sin in communicating with an interdicted man, and withdrew from the court. The hostile armies were in presence not far from Ratisbon; the leaders were seized with an unwonted respect for human life, and with dread of the horrors of civil war. The army of the son retired, but remained unbroken, that of the father melted away and dispersed. He was obliged to take refuge in Mentz. Once before young Henry had moved towards Mentz to reinstate the expelled Archbishop Notker, the man accused of the plunder and even of the massacre of the Jews. Thence he had retired, being unable to cross the Rhine; now, however, he effected his passage with little difficulty, having bribed the officer commanding in Spires. Before Mentz the son coldly rejected all propositions from his father to divide the Empire, and to leave the decision of all disputes between them to the Diet. He still returned the same stern demand of an impossible preliminary to negotiation-his father's reconciliation with the Church: but as if with some lingering respect, he advised the Emperor to abandon Mentz, lest he should fall into the hands of his enemies. Henry fled to the strong castle of Hammerstein, from thence to Cologne. The Archbishop of Cologne had already taken the stronger side; the citizens were true to the Emperor. A Diet was summoned at Metz, at which the legate of the Pope was to be present. The Emperor hastily collected all the troops he could command on the Lower Rhine, and advanced to break up this dangerous council. The army of the younger Henry having obtained some advantage stood opposed to that of the father on the banks of the Rhine not far from Coblentz. But the son, so long as he could compass his ends by treachery, would not risk his cause on the doubtful issue of a battle. An interview took place on the banks of the Moselle. At the sight of his son the passionate fondness of the father overpowered all sense of dignity or

CHAP. I.

resentment.

HENRY IV. A PRISONER.

273

He threw himself at the feet of young Henry; he adjured him by the welfare of his soul. "I know that my sins deserve the chastisement of God, but do not thou sully thy honour and thy name. No law of God obliges a son to be the instrument of divine vengeance against his father." The son seemed deeply moved; he bowed to the earth beside his father, entreated his forgiveness with many tears, promised obedience as a son, allegiance as a vassal, if his father would give satisfaction to the Church. He proposed that both should dismiss their armies, each with only three hundred knights repair to Mentz to pass together the holy season of Christmas. There he solemnly swore that he would labour for lasting reconcilement. The Emperor gave orders to disband his army. In vain his more cautious and faithful followers remonstrated against this imprudence. He only summoned his son again, who lulled his suspicions by a second solemn oath for his safety. At Bingen they passed the night together; the son showed the most profound respect, the father yielded himself up to his long-suppressed feelings of love. The night was spent in free and tender conversation with his son, not unmingled with caresses. Little thought he, writes the historian, that this was the last night in which he would enjoy the luxury of parental fondness. The following day pretexts were found for conveying the Emperor, not to Mentz, but to the strong castle of Bechelheim near Kreuznach. Henry could but remind his son of the perils and difficulties which he had undergone to secure him the succession to the Empire. A third time young Henry pledged his own head for the security of his father. no sooner was he, with a few attendants, within the castle than the gates were closed-the Emperor Henry IV. was a prisoner! His gaoler was a churchman, his Henry IV. a enemy the Bishop Gebhard of Spires, whom he had prisoner. formerly expelled from his see. Either from neglect or cruelty he was scantily provided with food; he was denied a barber to shave his beard and the use of the bath. The inexorable bigot would not permit the excommunicated the ministrations of a priest, still less the holy Eucharist on the Lord's Nativity. He was compelled by menaces

VOL. III.

T

Yet

against his life to command the surrender of all the regalia which had been left in the castle of Hammerstein.

The Diet, attended by almost all the magnates of the Empire, assembled at Mentz; but it was not safe to bring the fallen Henry before that meeting, for there, as elsewhere, the honest popular sympathy was strong on the side of the father and of the Emperor. He was carried to the castle of Ingelheim in the Palatinate; there, stripped of every ensign of royalty, broken by indignities of all kinds, by the insolent triumph of his foes, the perfidy of his friends, the Emperor stood before a Diet composed entirely of his enemies, the worst of those enemies his son, and the papal Legate at their head. He was urged, on peril of his life, to abdicate. "On that condition," he inquired, "will ye guarantee my life?" The Legate of the Pope replied, and demanded this further condition, he should publicly acknowledge that he had unjustly persecuted the holy Gregory, wickedly set up the Anti-pope Guibert, and oppressed the Church. In vain he strove for less humiliating terms, and even for delay and for a more regular judgment. His inexorable enemies offered him but this alternative or perpetual imprisonment. He then implored that, at least, if he conceded all, he might be at once released from excommunication. The Cardinal replied, that was beyond his powers; the Emperor must go to Rome to be absolved. All were touched with some compassion except the son. The Emperor surrendered everything, his castles, his treasures, his patrimony, his empire: he declared himself unworthy to reign any longer.

The Diet returned to Mentz, elected and invested Henry V. in the Empire, with the solemn warning that if he did not rule with justice and protect the Church, he must expect the fate of his father. A deputation of the most distinguished prelates from every part of Germany was sent to Rome to settle the terms of reconciliation between the Empire and the Pope.

People in

favour of

But in the German people the natural feelings of justice and of duty, the generous sympathies with Henry IV. age and greatness and cruel wrong, were not extinguished as in the hearts of the princes by hatred and ambition, in the ecclesiastics by hatred and bigotry. In

CHAP. I.

THE EMPEROR AT LIEGE.

275

A.D. 1106.

a popular insurrection at Colmar, caused partly by the misconduct of his own troops, the new Emperor was discomfited and obliged to fly with the loss of the regalia of the Empire. The old Henry received warning from some friendly hand that nothing now awaited him but perpetual imprisonment or death. He made his escape to Cologne; the citizens heard the account of his sufferings with indignant compassion, and at once embarked in his cause. He retired to Liege, where he was received with the utmost honours by the Bishop Olbert and the inhabitants of the city.

The abdicated Emperor was again at the head of a powerful party. Henry of Lorraine and other princes of the Empire, incensed at his treatment, promised to meet him in arms at Liege, and there to celebrate the feast of Easter. The young Henry, intoxicated by his success, and miscalculating the strength of feeling aroused in his father's cause, himself proclaimed a Diet at Liege to expel his father from that city, and to punish those who had presumed to receive him. He rejected with scorn his father's submissive, suppliant expostulations. So mistrustful had the old man become that he was with difficulty prevailed upon to remain and keep his Easter at Liege. His friends urged the unseemliness of his holding that great festival in some wild wood or cavern. But the enemy approached; Cologne offered no resistance: there the young Emperor observed Palm Sunday in great state. He advanced to Aix-la-Chapelle, but in an attempt to cross the Maes his troops suffered a shameful defeat. He fled back to Cologne; that city now ventured to close its gates and drove the king and the archbishop from their walls. Henry V. retired to Bonn, and there kept his Easter, but without imperial pomp.

At Worms he passed Whitsuntide, and laid Henry of Lorraine and all his father's partisans under the ban of the Empire: he summoned all the feudatories of Germany to meet at Wurzburg in July. Once more at the head of a formidable army he marched to crush the rebellion, as it was called, of his father, and to avenge the shame of his recent defeat. But Cologne had strengthened her walls and manned them with a large garrison. The city

resisted with obstinate valour. Henry V. was forced to undertake a regular siege, to blockade the town, and endeavour to reduce it by famine. His army advanced towards Aix-la-Chapelle; all negotiations failed from the mutual mistrust and animosity; a battle seemed inevitable which should decide the fate of the father and the son.

Death of

But Henry IV. was now beyond either the melancholy triumph over a rebellious son or the shame of deHenry. feat, and of those consequences which might have been anticipated if he had fallen again into those ruthless hands. On the 7th of August Erlembold, the faithful chamberlain of the Emperor, arrived in the camp of Henry with the diadem and sword of his father, the last ensigns of his imperial dignity. Worn out with fatigue and sorrow, Henry IV. had closed in peace his long and agitated life, his eventful reign of near fifty years. His dying prayers to his son were for forgiveness on account of these last acts of hostility, to which he had been driven by hard extremity, and the request that his earthly remains might repose with those of his ancestors in the cathedral of Spires.

A.D. 10561106.

No one can know whether any gentler emotions of pity, remorse, or filial love, in the tumult of rejoicing at this unexpected success, touched the heart of the son with tender remorse. The last request was inexorably refused; the Church continued its implacable warfare with the dead. The faithful Bishop of Liege, Olbert, conveyed the body of his sovereign in decent pomp to the church of St. Lambert. His nobler partisans had dispersed on all sides; but more true mourners, widows, orphans, the whole people crowded around as though they had lost a father; they wept, they kissed his bountiful hands, they embraced his cold body; they would scarcely permit it to be let down into the grave. Nor was this mere transient sorrow; they kept watch round the sepulchre, and wept and prayed for the soul of their deceased benefactor.*

Nevertheless, haughtily regardless of this better testimony to the Christian virtues of the Emperor than all

Even Dodechin writes: "Enimvero ut de eo omnia loquar, erat valde misericors." Having given an instance

of his mercy, that he was "valde compatiens et misericors in eleemosynis pauperum."-Apud Struvium, p. 677.