Episode 64 – The Heirs of Troy
1186-1189 Barbarossa seeks a new ource of legitimacy of his power. He finds two of them! And gets ready to go on crusade.
Episode 63 – Recovery
1182-85 Following the Peace of Venice and the Fall of Henry the Lion, our great emperor has reached the end of the road. Being a man of infinite resource and sagacity he climbs out of the hole, resets his political allegiances and recovers some of his previous standing.
Episode 62 – The Fall of Henry the Lion
1181 the most powerful vassal of Frederick Barbarossa, his cousin Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria falls. Who pushed him and why?
Episode 61 – The Peace of Venice
Frederick Barbarossa’s Italian ambitions hit the wall and he has to submit to Pope Alexander III and make peace with the Lombard League
Episode 60 – Legnano
1176 – The battle between Barbarossa and the Lombard League that (may have) sealed the fate of Northern Italy and still reverberates today
Episode 59 – The City of Straw
After the last disastrous campaign, Barbarossa stays six years in Germany before he claims revenge before Alessandria, the “City of Straw”
Episode 58 – The Lombard League
Barbarossa’s tyrannical rule in Italy achieves the impossible, a Lombard League of the communes who had been at war since they were created.
Episode 57 – The Siege of Rome 1167
Barbarossa brings down the largest army the empire had ever fielded to take Rome, capture Alexander III and subdue the Italian Communes
Episode 56 – The Siege of Crema
The Laws of Roncaglia did not go down well with the communes. It is the tiny city of Crema that rose up first, and fell. And then it was Milan’s turn
Episode 55 – The Laws of Roncaglia
Milan defeated and the other Italian communes brought into submission, Barbarossa begins a process aimed at establishing Roman Law and the Authority of the (Roman) emperors