A Little History of the World (26 page)

Meanwhile Frederick had grown up in Sicily. And I mean grown up. Both in body and in mind. His guardian, Pope Innocent III, was one of the most important men there has ever been. What Gregory VII – the German king Henry IV’s great adversary – had fought so hard for, and had failed to achieve, Innocent III had accomplished. He really was lord of all Christendom. A man of exceptional intelligence and culture, he ruled them all – not just the spiritual leaders of the Church, but all the princes of Europe. His power even reached as far as England. When, one day, King John refused to carry out his orders, he excommunicated him and forbade any priest to celebrate Mass in England. The English nobility became so angry with their king that they took away almost all his power. In 1215 he had to solemnly swear that he would never again oppose their will. This was the famous Magna Carta, the Great Charter to which King John put his seal, in which he granted his barons a whole host of rights which English citizens hold to this day. But England still had to pay taxes and tribute to Pope Innocent III, so great was his power.

Frederick II of Hohenstaufen wasn’t only highly intelligent: he was an attractive and likeable young man as well. In order to claim his crown as king of the Germans, he set out from Sicily, virtually on his own, on an adventurous ride which took him through Italy and over the Swiss mountains to Constance. However, when he arrived he found that his rival Otto was marching towards him at the head of an army. There seemed little hope for Frederick. But the burghers of Constance, like all those who met him and came to know him, were so charmed by him that they rallied round and hastily closed the city gates. When Otto arrived exactly one hour later, all he could do was turn round and go away.

Having similarly won over all the German princes, Frederick suddenly found he had become a mighty ruler, lord of all the vassals of Germany and Italy. So again the two powers were in conflict, just as in the days of Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV. But Frederick was no Henry. He did not go to Canossa, and he didn’t intend to beg the pope for mercy. Like Pope Innocent III, he was convinced that he had been called to rule the world. Frederick knew everything that Innocent had known – after all, Innocent had been his guardian. He knew everything the Germans knew, for they were his family. And finally, he knew everything the Arabs knew, for he had grown up in Sicily. He was to spend much of his life there and in Sicily there was more for him to learn than anywhere else in the world.

Sicily had been ruled by everyone: the Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Italians and Germans. Soon it would be the turn of the French. It must have been just like the Tower of Babel, except that there people had ended up understanding almost nothing, whereas Frederick ended up by understanding nearly everything there was to know. Not just every language, but many whole branches of knowledge. He wrote poetry, and he was a superb huntsman. He even wrote a book on falconry, for people hunted with hawks in those days.

Above all, he knew about religions. But there was one thing he could never understand: why people were always fighting. He liked to have discussions with learned Muslims, even though he was a devout Christian. When the pope got wind of this he was angrier than ever. And in particular a pope whose name was Gregory. He was just as powerful, but perhaps not as wise as his predecessor, Pope Innocent III. He wanted Frederick to undertake a crusade at all costs, and threatened to excommunicate him if he didn’t. So in the end he did. But what all other crusades had achieved only through great sacrifices and loss of life, Frederick did without any fighting at all: Christian pilgrims were allowed to visit the Holy Sepulchre without fear of being attacked and all the land around Jerusalem was held to belong to them. And how did he do that? He just sat down with the sultan who ruled there and they came to an agreement.

Both sides were happy that things had gone so well, and that war had been averted, but the bishop of Jerusalem was not content, for no one had consulted him. So he complained to the pope that the emperor was too friendly with the Arabs, and the pope became convinced that Frederick had become a Muslim. But Emperor Frederick II didn’t care. He just rejoiced that he had achieved more for Christians than anyone else had ever done and crowned himself king of Jerusalem, for no priest could be found who was willing to crown him against the pope’s wishes.

Then he set sail for home, taking with him presents given to him by the sultan: hunting leopards and camels, rare stones and many other curiosities. And he made a collection of these in Sicily and engaged great artists to work for him, and took pleasure in beautiful things whenever he was tired of ruling. But he certainly did rule. He disliked the custom of granting land as fiefs. Instead, he appointed officials and, rather than give them land, he paid them a monthly salary. For this being Italy, they already used money. And he ruled justly but also with great severity.

Frederick was so different from everyone else around him that nobody understood what he was trying to achieve. Least of all Pope Gregory, who called him the Antichrist, while others called him
stupor mundi
, which means the wonder of the world. In far-off Germany few people paid any attention to their strange emperor with his odd ideas. And because people didn’t understand him, he had a hard life. Even his own son turned against him and stirred up trouble among the Germans, and his best-loved adviser went over to the pope, leaving Frederick entirely alone. Of all the ingenious and practical schemes he had hoped to show the world, very few saw the light of day. Unable to carry them out, he became increasingly bitter and ill-tempered. And so he died, in the year 1250.

His son Manfred died in the struggle for power when he was still a young man, and his grandson Conradin was taken prisoner by his enemies and beheaded in Naples at the age of twenty-four. Such was the sad end of that great ruling family of knights, the Hohenstaufens.

But while Frederick was still reigning in Sicily and quarrelling with the pope, a dreadful misfortune overtook the world which neither could prevent. New hordes of mounted warriors arrived from Asia. This time it was the Mongols, the most fearsome of them all. Even Shih Huang-ti’s great wall could not restrain them. Under their leader, Ghengis Khan, they first conquered China, looting and sacking with appalling savagery. Then came Persia’s turn, after which they took the path of the Huns, the Avars and the Magyars towards Europe. Sowing terror and destruction, they raged first through Hungary and on through Poland. Finally, in 1241, they reached the German frontier town of Breslau, which they seized and burned to the ground. Everywhere they went there was slaughter. No one was spared. Their empire was already the greatest the world had ever known. Just imagine: from Peking to Breslau! Moreover, in the course of their invasions their troops had changed from savage hordes to well-trained warriors with very cunning leaders. Christendom could do nothing to stop them. A great army of knights fell before them. And then, when the danger was at its height, their emperor died somewhere in Siberia, and the Mongols turned back, leaving nothing but wasteland behind.

In Germany the death of the last Hohenstaufen led to greater confusion than ever. No one could agree on a new king so none was chosen. And because there was neither a king nor an emperor, nor anyone else in control, everything went to the dogs. The strong simply robbed the weak of everything they had. People called it the right of might, or ‘fist-law’. Of course, might is never
a
right, nor is it right. It’s simply wrong.

People knew this well enough and despaired, and wished they could return to the old days. Now you can wish, and you can dream. But if you keep on wishing and dreaming you sometimes end up believing that what you want has come true. And so people began to persuade themselves that the Emperor Frederick wasn’t really dead, but under a spell in an enchanted mountain, where he was sitting and waiting. And this in its turn had a remarkable effect. I don’t know whether you have ever found yourself dreaming of someone who appears first as one person and then as someone else, and then, somehow, as both at the same time? Because this is what happened. People dreamed that a great, wise and just ruler (this was Frederick II of Sicily) was sitting deep down under the Kyffhäuser mountains and would one day return and make his purpose known. And yet, at the same time, they also dreamed that he had a great beard (this was now Frederick’s grandfather, Frederick I Barbarossa), and that he was all-powerful and would vanquish all his enemies and create a kingdom as wonderful and magnificent as it had been at the time of the great Feast of Mainz.

The worse things got, the more people expected a miracle. They pictured the king asleep inside the mountain, where he had slept so long that his fiery red beard had grown right through the stone table on which he leant. Once in every hundred years, he would wake and ask his page if the ravens were still circling the mountain. Not until his page replied ‘No, Sir, I can’t see them’ would he rise and split the table with his sword and shatter the mountain in which the spell had imprisoned him and ride out in shining armour with all his men. You can imagine what people would make of that today!

But in the end no miraculous apparition came to set the world to rights, just an energetic, able and far-sighted knight, whose castle, the Habsburg – or Hawk’s Castle – was in Switzerland. His name was Rudolf. The princes had elected him king of the Germans in 1273, hoping that a knight so poor and obscure as he would be biddable and weak. But they hadn’t reckoned on his intelligence and shrewdness. He may have started out with little land – and therefore little power – but he knew of a very simple way to obtain more, and with it more power.

He went to war against the rebellious King Otakar of Bohemia, defeated him and confiscated part of his kingdom. As king he was entitled to do this. Then, in 1282, he bestowed the same lands – which happened to be Austria – on his own sons. This formed the basis of his family’s power. The Habsburgs were able to increase this power with a succession of new fiefs, and by marriage and inheritance, until they had become one of the most esteemed and influential noble families of Europe. It must be said that they ruled more over their vast family fief (by which I mean Austria) than they did over the German empire, despite their title of German king and emperor. Those lands were ruled by other lords – dukes and bishops and counts – all of whom lived like princes, enjoying almost unlimited power over their domains. Nevertheless, with the last of the Hohenstaufens the real Age of Chivalry had ended.