]

And yet Frederic did not hesitate to seize an opportunity which now
offered of breaking his oaths, and of repaying the pope's good offices
by invading his rights. For, on the citizens of Tivoli offering him,
at his secret instigation, the sovereignty of their city, which
belonged to the Holy See, he accepted it; and only on Adrian's
determined opposition to such an usurpation, affected to restore it
with reservation of his imperial prerogatives over the
place;--prerogatives which he could not define, and which meant in fact
nothing more than the renewal of his aggression at the next more
favourable opportunity. For now the complaints of his army, worn out
by fatigue, exposed, moreover, to every vexation, through the ever
increasing animosity of the Italians, and hence doubly impatient to
return into Germany, from which it had been absent much longer than
the terms of feudal service required, obliged Frederic to think of
finishing his campaign, and marching home directly, if he did not mean
to be left alone in the heart of a hostile country; a predicament into
which the desertion of his men was already beginning to betray him. He
accordingly took the road back into Germany soon after he had made
restitution to the pope as above described; and after running many
perils in his progress through regions so justly hostile to him,
regained his own states beyond the Alps, not so much gratified by the
acquisition of the imperial crown, as embittered by what he had gone
through in pursuit of it, and resolved not to delay longer than he
could help a second invasion of Italy, which should compensate the
mishaps and mortifications of the first.

[1] Muratori, Storia d' Italia, vol. 7. p. 135. Leipsic, 1748.

[2] Muratori, Dissertazione sopra le Antichita Italiane, dissert. 4.

[3] Otto Frisingensis, lib. 1. cap. 23.

[4] Otto Frisingensis, ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Otto Frisingensis, ibid.

V.

While Frederic was yet fighting his way home through Italy, Adrian had
to face about and confront another foe in William, the Norman king of
Sicily.

William had lately succeeded his father Roger, a wise and able
monarch, to whom however his son, as so commonly happens, bore no sort
of resemblance; but by his incapacity and total subjection under the
influence of a profligate favourite of low birth, named Wrajo, soon
threw the state, which Roger had left in so prosperous a condition,
into the worst disorder.

The breach bet