fixed rank of Princes, among other
advantages it was gaining. Nor did this acquisition come gratis at
all, but as the fruit of good service adroitly done; service of endless
importance as it proved. Friedrich's life had fallen in times of huge
anarchy; the Hohenstauffen line gone miserably out,--Boy Conradin, its
last representative, perishing on the scaffold even (by a desperate
Pope and a desperate Duke of Anjou); [At Naples, 25th October, 1268.]
Germans, Sicilian Normans, Pope and Reich, all at daggers-drawn with one
another; no Kaiser, nay as many as Three at once! Which lasted from
1254 onwards; and is called "the Interregnum," or Anarchy "of Nineteen
Years," in German History.

Let us at least name the Three Kaisers, or Triple-elixir of No-Kaiser;
though, except as chronological landmarks, we have not much to do with
them. First Kaiser is William Count of Holland, a rough fellow, Pope's
protege, Pope even raising cash for him; till William perished in the
Dutch peat-bogs (horse and man, furiously pursuing, in some fight there,
and getting swallowed up in that manner); which happily reduces our
false Kaisers to two: Second and Third, who are both foreign to Germany.

Second Kaiser is Alphonso King of Castille, Alphonso the Wise, whose
saying about Ptolemy's Astronomy, "That it seemed a crank machine; that
it was pity the Creator had not taken advice!" is still remembered by
mankind;--this and no other of his many sayings and doings. He was
wise enough to stay at home; and except wearing the title, which
cost nothing, to concern himself very little about the Holy Roman
Empire,--some clerk or two dating "TOLETI (at Toledo)," did languidly a
bit of official writing now and then, and that was all. Confused crank
machine this of the German Empire too, your Majesty? Better stay at
home, and date "TOLETI."

The Third false Kaiser--futile call him rather, wanting clear
majority--was the English Richard of Cornwall; younger Son of John
Lackland; and little wiser than his Father, to judge by those symptoms.
He had plenty of money, and was liberal with it;--no other call to
Germany, you would say, except to get rid of his money;--in which
he succeeded. He lived actually in Germany, twice over for a year
or two:--Alphonse and he were alike shy of the Pope, as Umpire; and
Richard, so far as his money went, found some gleams of authority and
comfortable flattery in the Rhenish provinces: at length, in 1263, money
and patienc