ng. He appeared the inflexible chastiser of
simony and ecclesiastical corruption. The very day of his coronation he
had obtained the dismissal of a simoniacal deacon. Everywhere he
compelled the nominees of Henry to fly, and filled their places with
zealous champions of the canonical discipline. At Constance and Zurich
he drove the irregularly appointed bishops from their sees: he placed
Lutold, a zealous champion of the Pope, over the monastery of St. Gall,
which had been devoted to his rival. Many, frightened by these
severities, deserted his standards, and others recoiled from the
presence of so rigorous an enforcer of spiritual purity.

Thus, while the cause of Henry was flourishing under his criminal
artifices, Rodolph was weakened by his honest severity. Yet there was
this difference between the parties. The minions of Henry were goaded on
by individual interests--the partisans of Rodolph by a common resolution
to die in defence of a sublime principle; the first were incited by the
hope of plunder, the lust of empire, ambition, avarice, or a lawless
appetite for war--the last were animated by a love of liberty, and
fought for future security from oppression; the one prepared to preserve
unrighteous license and ill-gotten gains--the other were inspired by
the hope of regaining the freedom of which they had been unjustly
deprived, and by the resolve to regain their ancestral rights and to
protect the outraged Church of God.

Albert of Hers with all his energy and address had not succeeded in
extracting from Suabia more than two thousand men. With this small force
he joined Rodolph, who was then encamped at the little village of
Sommeringen, with scarce three thousand Suabians. Here they learned that
Henry, at the head of twelve thousand effective troops, was advancing
upon Suabia through Ratisbon. Rodolph soon heard of the atrocities of
his rival, who abandoned the country to fire, sword, and rapine. Old men
and women, pale with fear, came crowding into camp with thrilling tales
of the brutality of the Bohemians and their associates. The war had
begun; and Henry was devastating the region bordering on the Danube and
the Rhine, from Esslingen to Ulm.

Though his force did not amount to half that of his opponent, Rodolph,
enraged by the crimes he could not prevent, would have gone to meet his
competitor, but for the unanimous opposition of his nobles. While the
Suabian party were deliberating upon the best course to