Henry VII’s Journey to rome
The year is 1312 and Henry VII is finally embarking on his journey to Rome that will bring about the first imperial coronation in almost a century and hence the formal end to the Interregnum, the time without emperors.
Becoming emperor is hard enough, but being emperor is even harder, as the first Luxemburger to ascend the throne of Charlemagne will find out. Hope for an end to the never ending civil wars in Italy lay buried under the rotting corpses before Brescia. Henry VII is no longer a unifying figure in Italy, just simply the leader of the Ghibelline faction. And as such he has to tackle the Guelphs led by the commune of Florence and king Robert of Naples. Doing that triggered a domino effect that not only left him dead but also reopened the ancient struggle between the pope and the emperor, now with a new “je ne sais quoi” mixed in. Sounds ominous – come along and find out..
The podcast that does what it says on the tin: a narrative history of the German people that starts in the year 919 AD and hopes to get all the way to 1991. Episodes are 25-35 min long and drop on Thursday mornings. As Gregory of Tours (539-594) said: “A great many things keep happening, some good, some bad” .
The show is now entering its 8th season. So far we have covered:
The Ottonian Emperors (Ep. 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (Ep. 1)
– Otto I (Ep. 2-8)
– Otto II (Ep.9-11)
– Otto II (Ep. 11-14)
– Henry II (ep. 15-17)
– Germany in the Year 1000 (ep. 18-21)
The Salian Emperors and the Investiture Controversy (Ep. 22-42)
– Konrad II (Ep. 22- 25)
– Henry III (Ep. 26-29)
– Henry IV & Canossa (Ep. 30-39)
– Henry V and the Concordat of Worms (Ep. 40-42)
Barbarossa and the early Hohenstaufen (Ep. 43-69)
– Lothar III (Ep. 43-46)
– Konrad III (Ep. 47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (Ep. 50-69)
Frederick II and the later Hohenstaufen (Ep. 70-94)
-Henry VI (Ep. 70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (Ep. 73-74)
– Otto IV (Ep. 74-75)
– Frederick II (Ep. 75-90)
– Epilogue (ep. 91-94)
Eastern Expansion (Ep. 95-108)
The Hanseatic League (Ep. 109-127)
The Teutonic Knights (Ep. 128-137)
The Interregnum and the early Habsburgs (Ep. 138 ff
The year is 1312 and Henry VII is finally embarking on his journey to Rome that will bring about the first imperial coronation in almost a century and hence the formal end to the Interregnum, the time without emperors.
Becoming emperor is hard enough, but being emperor is even harder, as the first Luxemburger to ascend the throne of Charlemagne will find out. Hope for an end to the never ending civil wars in Italy lay buried under the rotting corpses before Brescia. Henry VII is no longer a unifying figure in Italy, just simply the leader of the Ghibelline faction. And as such he has to tackle the Guelphs led by the commune of Florence and king Robert of Naples. Doing that triggered a domino effect that not only left him dead but also reopened the ancient struggle between the pope and the emperor, now with a new “je ne sais quoi” mixed in. Sounds ominous – come along and find out..
Here is the link to Dan and Spencer’s excellent podcast I mentioned: Podcast | Not So Quiet On The Western Front! (battleguide.co.uk)
The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.
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To make it easier for you to share the podcast, I have created separate playlists for some of the seasons that are set up as individual podcasts. they have the exact same episodes as in the History of the Germans, but they may be a helpful device for those who want to concentrate on only one season.
So far I have:
Salian Emperors and Investiture Controversy
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 148: Imperial Swansong – the consequences of Henry VII’s campaign in Italy, also Episode 11 of Season 8 The Holy Roman Empire from the Interregnum to the Golden Bull.
The year is 1312 and Henry VII is finally embarking on his journey to Rome that will bring about the first imperial coronation in almost a century and hence the formal end to the Interregnum, the time without emperors.
Becoming emperor is hard enough, but being emperor is even harder, as the first Luxemburger to ascend the throne of Charlemagne will find out. Hope for an end to the never ending civil wars in Italy lay buried under the rotting corpses before Brescia. Henry VII is no longer a unifying figure in Italy, just simply the leader of the Ghibelline faction. And as such he has to tackle the Guelphs led by the commune of Florence and king Robert of Naples. Doing that triggered a domino effect that not only left him dead but also reopened the ancient struggle between the pope and the emperor, now with a new “je ne sais quoi” mixed in. Sounds ominous – come along and find out..
But before we start let me remind you that the history of the Germans podcast is advertising free, a privilege we enjoy thanks to the generosity of our patrons. And you can become a patron too either by signing up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or by making a one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com/support. And let me thank Martin B., Stephen Wild, Bree P., BrittaDK, Brian J. R. and Colleen D. who have already signed up.
But now back to the show
Last week we left Henry VII in Genoa, severely shaken by the death of his wife the Queen Margarete who had been his support and council throughout his career. Having lost her, his younger brother, the knightly Walram and two thirds of his army, his campaign is now in a sorry state.
His enemies, the alliance of Guelph cities in Tuscany and Romagna, led by Florence, and king Robert of Naples have blocked all possible land routes to Rome. And to Rome is where he needed to go, to be crowned emperor as pope Clement V had promised he would be.
Still, Genoa received him with all the honors of an emperor. Not only that, they found themselves so riven with conflict that they submitted themselves entirely to the emperor’s control. He was made podesta of the city for 20 years. Henry VII took his mandate of reconciling the warring families of Genoa, the Spinola and the Doria seriously. But however serious one takes these attempts, they are ultimately futile. The conflicts are so deeply entrenched and overlaid with commercial rivalry, they could and did go on for centuries.
Despite his attempts at reconciliation remaining fruitless, he demanded the now customary payment of 60,000 gold coins for the service. Initially the commune agreed, but they soon noticed that there was not much value for money here. Payments came in slowly.
Meanwhile in Lombardy, as one would have expected, the imperial position contracted sharply. Effectively only the della Scala in Verona and the Visconti of Milan stayed loyal to the imperial cause. Henry VII appointed Wernher von Homberg as his representative for Lombardy, gave him as many soldiers as he could spare and asked him to do the impossible and convince the Lombards by whichever means possible to come back into the fold. You may know Wernher von Homberg from the Codex Manesse where he is depicted in one of the most famous images, or you may know him for his role in Swiss history. But in 1312 he works for Henry VII, trying to rustle up some money from the Italian cities. But as it happens whatever funds he managed to extract, he needed to pay his own forces. So, not much money came down to Genoa.
The departure of the count of Homberg reduce the already much diminished imperial army. Those who stayed were far and few between. His brother, archbishop Balduin of Trier, two counts of Flanders, the third had already perished, the bishops of Liege and Geneva and Amadeus of Savoy were his remaining loyal supporters. Many men were still dying from the disease they had picked up during the siege of Brescia. Of the dozens of Lombard noblemen he had ordered to accompany him, only two were still with him, a minor member of the Visconti plus one more, in total adding just a few knights to his forces.
At the same rate as his supporters slipped out of the camp did the creditors filled his hall demanding payment. But money there was none. Moreover the Genoese also noticed that since the arrival of the emperor and his men, mortality had gone through the roof. Whatever that disease was that had bred before Brescia now infected the Genoese. Not only were they dying, they also lost trade as the the Guephs in Tuscany and southern Italy had declared an embargo.
By Christmas 1311, Henry VII had outstayed his welcome. Time to move on..
The only ally that could help him to get to Rome was Pisa. Pisa had been the staunchest supporter of the Hohenstaufen and had remained unwaveringly Ghibeline all the way through the Interregnum. To Pisa he would now head.
In the early 14th century Pisa found itself in a difficult position. They had always been in close competition with the other maritime republic on Italy’s western shore, Genova. But as the city of Florence went from strength to strength, they now fought a war on two fronts. And it was a war the Pisans were not winning. In 1284 Genoa had inflicted a near fatal defeat on the Pisan fleet. The wars with Florence did not go any better though so far a major defeat had been avoided.
Pisa therefore put all its hopes into the emperor Henry VII who they firmly believed had come to reverse their fortunes and smash their enemies. Hence, they were happy to send galleys to Genova to pick the emperor up and bring him into the city of the already leaning tower.
Henry VII stayed in Pisa until April 1312. His fortunes are brightening up a little bit. His camp is filling up again, this time with the exiles and disaffected of Tuscany who have been thrown out of their cities, either as Ghibellines or as White Guelphs. Even some German nobles, notably Robert duke of Bavaria and Count Palatinate on the Rhine joined. Pisa, sensing that the final struggle was upon them prove willing to bear the taxes and costs of an imperial court in their city much more graciously than the Milanese and the Genovese had been.
This may have been good news for our Luxemburgian hero, news from Rome were however much less promising. Rome, and you must be tired of hearing this by now, but Rome like all the other Italian cities was split between two families, one claiming to be Guelphs and the other to be Ghibellines. The Ghibellines were the Colonna, you remember, Sciarra Colonna, the guy who allegedly slapped pope Boniface VIII. The Guelphs were the Orsini, the bears.
Both families still exist and the Colonna palace in Rome can be visited, something I would advise anyone travelling to the Holy city to do. A complete rabbit warren of room after room filled with art and ancient trinkets. And guess what, not a single reference to Sciarra Colonna or the events we are recounting now. The Colonna did regain their love for the papacy, put one of their own on the seat of St. Peter and forgot about their pope slapping ancestor…honi soit qui mal y pense.
But in 1312 the Colonna were very much in the imperial camp fighting the Orsini whenever an opportunity presented itself.
Initially this rivalry between the Colonna and Orsini would not have been a significant issue for Henry VII’s coronation. After all, Henry VII was travelling with papal blessing and had 3 cardinals in his retinue. So even the Orsini, as Guelphs loyal servants of pope Clement V should be opening the gates of the Holy city to the emperor elect.
But something had happened in the meantime. King Robert of Naples had sent an army under the command of his youngest son into Rome to occupy key strategic positions, including the traditional site of the coronation, St. Peters. Asked what he intended with the move, Robert’s ambassadors said they had only come to show their reverence for the king of the Romans and wanted to make sure everything was shipshape and Bristol Fashion for the great event.
Ha Hmmm….way back when Henry had still been in Genoa, Robert had sent a delegation to negotiate some sort of agreement, if not a marriage alliance with future emperor. But that discussion led nowhere. And as soon as the representatives of Naples had left, a delegation from Frederick, the King of Sicily had shown up in Henry’s camp.
Give us a break, do we not have enough names in this episode? Who is the king of Sicily now? Well, the kingdom of Sicily under the Normans and the Hohenstaufen contained both the island of Sicily and the Southern Italian mainland. But in 1282 Charles of Anjou, the ruthless conqueror of the kingdom and killer of young Konradin of Hohenstaufen lost the island of Sicily in a bloody uprising that came to be known as the Sicilian Vespers (episode 93 if you are interested). Ever since the old Norman kingdom of Sicily was now divided into the kingdom of the island of Sicily, ruled by members of the Spanish dynasty of the House of Aragon and descendants of emperor Frederick II, whilst the mainland became known as the kingdom of Naples even though its rulers also called themselves kings of Sicily. This kingdom of Naples was ruled by Charles’ descendants, the Anjou, cousins of the kings of France. You can imagine that relations between these two kings of Sicily were a touch frosty. So as soon as Frederick of the island of Sicily realized that Henry VII could get friendly with his rival in Naples, he sent him a table made from solid silver and declarations of eternal loyalty to the imperial cause.
A solid silver table is hard to hide and in particular not if Henry VII sold it immediately to pay his creditors. The news of the generous present reached Robert of Naples and his position hardened against Henry VII, hence there are now Neapolitan soldiers in Rome. At which point Henry sent one of his allies to take charge of the senate of Rome and his allies in the city.
Once Herny had reached Pisa and it became clear that the Ghibellines of Tuscany lent him their support, the positions toughened further. The alliance of Naples and the Guelph cities declared in early April that their main objective was now to prevent the coronation of Henry VII in Rome.
To achieve that objective an anti—imperial force began congregating in Rome. Florence sent 200 knights, king Roberts marshal brought a further 300 armored riders plus a 1000 infantry, Lucca sent 300 cavalry and another 1000 foot soldiers, Siena 200 horse and 600 on foot. By May 21st the Guelph army had assembled in the Holy City and occupied the key strongholds, the Capitoline Hill, the Castel Sant Angelo, St. Peter and the Vatican. In turn the Colonna, the supporters of Henry VII fortified their positions around the Lateran Palace, the Colosseum, Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Sabina.
Everything was now building up to a final showdown – the battle for the imperial crown was to be fought inside the city of Rome.
Meanwhile Henry VII had followed the coastline down from Pisa until he reached the territory of Siena. The Sienese had sent much of their forces down to Rome and the remaining soldiers inside the city was too disunited to dare an attack. Henry was able to pass through Tuscany with his modest force of just 400 men unopposed. He reached Viterbo on May 1st, 1312 and shortly afterwards appeared before Rome. He entered the city by fighting his way across the famous Milvian bridge where Constantine fought the famous battle against Maxentius that led to his conversion to Christianity. This initial clash was of a much smaller scale and of much less theological significance.
Henry was now inside Rome and the population of the neighborhoods controlled by the Colonna received him enthusiastically. He took up residence in the Lateran palace and the next day convened a council of war. The imperial position on the left bank of the Tiber was strong and solid, but what he needed was access to Saint Peters on the other side of the River. St. Peter was the coronation church of the emperors and that was the church the cardinals insisted they needed to perform a valid coronation.
The only way to get there was by urban combat to first get to the Tiber bridge and then across the bridge, past Castel Sant Angelo, the former mausoleum of the emperor Hadrian and Rome’s most preeminent defensive structure and then uphill to the Vatican.
Over the next month the skirmishes between the imperial forces and the Guelphs turned the center of Rome into a slaughterhouse. The imperial forces had to break one fortified townhouse after the other. Some, like the Torre delle Milizie the largest medieval tower that stands above Trajan’s forum was taken by hijacking the brother of its defender, others, like the Capitoline Hill had to be broken into by force. Often the soldiers, unfamiliar with the warren of streets in Rome lost contact with the main force and were killed on the spot.
Finally the imperial forces had broken through and stood before the bridge that leads to the Castello di Sant Angelo. The bishop of Liege, Henry’s cousin and a great warrior attacked the bridge defenses and almost got through. What he failed to notice was that the enemy had gathered forces out of the way in the Campo dei Fiori who broke forth attacking his flank. Henry then brought more of his forces to bear to relieve his cousin, as did the Neapolitans and the Orsini. Soon a full on battle involving the entirety of two armies raged inside the densely populated city quarter around the bridge of Sant Angelo. Not a battle in the conventional sense, but a huge fight man against man, as Giorgio Vilani wrote, a combat without a plan or any kind of structure. Everyone hit out at the enemy at whichever spot fate had put him. This melee lasted for hours before Henry VII finally called for a retreat. The bishop of Liege was captured and whilst he was led away unarmed to the Guelph positions, one of the soldiers of the king of Naples who had lost his brother in the fighting plunged his sword into the bishop’s stomach. He was brought into the Castel St. Angelo where he died shortly afterwards.
Henry and his council concluded that despite their success in clearing the Guelphs from their side of the Tiber, taking the Castello di Sant Angelo and the Vatican was simply impossible. The enemy was strong and their defenses even stronger. And the emperor was at a huge strategic disadvantage. For the Guelphs to achieve their objective of preventing an imperial coronation, all they had to do was to block the way to St. Peter and they could do that from their near impregnable castle on the bridge, whilst Henry VII had to attack these fortresses in the open, a process even if it were achievable, incredibly costly in terms of men and material.
The only way to still effect a coronation was therefore to change the venue. If the cardinals were willing to crown the emperor elsewhere, for instance in the Lateran Basilica, a church the emperor Constantine had built for the bishops of Rome around the same as time St. Peters and almost equal in size, that would reduce the enemy’s advantage to nought. Henry’s legal team wrote a learned treatise arguing a coronation in the Lateran church was a viable option under both canon and imperial law. And they presented their proposal to the three cardinals.
The cardinals who had taken residence in the Torre delle Milizie did not concur. They insisted on St. Peter as the only suitable location for a coronation. All they offered was to write to the Orsini and the Neapolitans demanding, in the name of pope Clement V, that they cease hostilities and make St. Peters available for the coronation. Response to that came none. The cardinals then wrote to pope Clement V asking him to tell the Guelphs to please respond to the letter. Even assuming a letter from Clement V would have an effect, that letter would take weeks to get to Avignon and then weeks to come back. When Henry VII demanded what they should do in the meantime, and the answer was, no St. Peters no imperial crown.
Meanwhile the vicious street fighting continued all across Rome, very much to the annoyance of the population. How were they supposed to live a normal life when they risk getting stabbed every time they leave the house.
The people of Rome congregated in the square below the Capitol to ask exactly this question, and one of Henry’s loyal supporter, Niccolo de Buonsignori laid it out for them. The enemy positions are far too strong to be taken by force. The Guelphs, though allegedly loyal to the pope had refused to even answer the demands of the cardinals and therefore the demands of the Holy Father to let the coronation proceed. The cardinals were refusing to crown the emperor anywhere else but St. Peters. This now requires unusual measures, namely that everyone who had so far not declared for the emperor will be called to the eagle standards and those who refuse will experience the wrath of war.
This announcement did not result in either a huge influx of support for Henry or disaffection of the populace with the draconian measure. Instead, the anger of the people was directed against the cardinals. After Henry had made several further attempts at swaying the prelates’ mind, the populace had enough. They gathered under the tower of the Milizii and threatened to kill the cardinals should they continue to refuse the coronation. Afraid for their lives the cardinals relented.
On June 29th, 1312 finally after 18 months of toiling in Italy did Henry the VII, King of the Romans and duly elected emperor clad in white robes and with long flowing hair proceed from the Aventine to St. John Lateran. During the solemn mass the cardinal bishop of Ostia placed first a white miter and then the imperial diadem on the kneeling king’s head. Before receiving both the orb and the scepter, Henry VII rose up, unsheathed his sword and swung it three times over his head before laying it down on the alter together with his shield as a sign of his commitment to defend the church.
Proceedings completed the now emperor Henry VII and his court sat down for a splendid dinner in the Lateran palace whilst the people of Rome were treated to free drink and food followed by lusty dancing.
But halfway through the festivities, the new emperor was reminded of the fragility of his situation. His enemies had taken the opportunity whilst the imperials were at church to capture the Aventine hill and from there shot arrows and stones at the Lateran palace, forcing everyone indoors.
Over the following days the imperial position in Rome became completely untenable. With the coronation achieved, the German vassals’ service had come to an end. And it was the end of June. Already did the heat and the accompanying diseases affected Henry’s forces. The Guelphs and Neapolitans kept receiving reinforcements whilst his army dwindled.
With many of his German followers leaving, Henry became more and more dependent on his Tuscan supporters, the Ghibelline cities and the exiles from the Guelph cities. His followers in Lombardy, the Visconti and the della Scala are engaged in what is increasingly a war of conquest against Padova, Brescia, Cremona etc. They may occasionally seek support from Wernher of Homberg, the imperial governor of Northern Italy, but they are basically doing their own thing.
Any pretense that he would be reconciling the divisions in Italy is now gone. So it is somewhat unclear what his plans are now. He has gained the imperial crown, the original reason for his journey. So he could take his remaining supporters and return home. And going home would make some sense. His son John has acquired the Bohemian crown but only just. A bit of parental/imperial support would therefore not have gone amiss.
But he did not go home. It may have been a combination of demands from his allies, the lure of the riches of Italy, and/or the sense that his rather underwhelming coronation had left him with an urge to take revenge. Who knows.
As he looked around, the enemy that had thwarted his plans and has been responsible for the stiff resistance in Italy were two, the Black Guelphs who ruled Florence and king Robert of Naples. And its they he wanted to go after now. As it happened, these were the same people his Italian allies were keenest to go after as well.
Going after Robert of Naples was politically difficult. Robert of Naples was a cousin of the French King Philip the Handsome who had initially been one of Henry’s supporters but has cooled considerably towards his former protégé. But more importantly, Robert of Naples was a vassal of pope Clement V and the Holy Father would get into a most unholy rage should Henry head down to Naples. So Florence it was.
Henry VII first retreated to Tivoli to maintain the pretense that he had not cowardly fled Rome as the Orsini, Florentines and Neapolitans were encroaching on his position. But he did not stay long. In August he headed into Tuscany, collecting followers in the fiercely Ghibelline city of Arezzo and on September 19th began a siege of Florence.
As we said last week, in the Middle Ages, before canons could be used to break walls, an attack on a city could only be successful if the besieging army surprises the defenders and breaks the gates before defenses can be brought in position. And since Henry VII had moved much faster than anyone expected he could have been successful had he maintained more discipline in his ranks. But his largely unpaid soldiers ransacked the farms and villages along the way. The Florentines, seeing the smoke of the burning farmsteads realized that the enemy was on its way, closed the gates and armed themselves. Though a large part of their Army had been attacked and nearly overwhelmed on their way back from Rome they could still muster enough forces to man the gates. Over the subsequent days the Florentine army returned and the other Guelph cities sent reinforcements. In the end the defenders had an army of 4000 knights and several thousand infantry whilst Henry’s force outside the walls counted just 1,800 armored riders. This discrepancy in numbers and the brand new fortifications of Florence turned the siege into a farce. Henry’s army blocked just one gate of the city, whilst the others remained open and trade in and out of the city continued as if there was no war at all.
Whether it was the stress of the preceding months or the climate, Henry VII fell ill. This time he recovered and – realizing that his attack on Florence was futile – withdrew first to San Casciano, then to Poggibonsi. In Poggibonsi he was surrounded by enemies, in Florence and Siena and then two Neapolitan forces, one in San Gimignano and one in Colle di Val d’Elsa. Another blow was that one of the three counts of Flanders, who had been by the side of the emperor since the beginning and who had lost one of his brothers on the campaign had enough, took his remaining vassals and left for home. As the situation went from bad to dire, he abandoned Poggibonsi and his much diminished army fought their way back to Pisa.
In Pisa, loyal to the last did Henry VII get the chance to regroup and to weigh his options.
The attack on Florence had been a failure, but it was noticeable that though the forces inside Florence had been vastly superior, they never mounted a serious attack on the imperial camp. Nor did they rout him when he was stuck in Poggibonsi. The only conceivable reason for that was the inherent fragility of these city governments. Sure the Guelph leadership could gain a majority for a policy of sending Henry back home, but they would have found it difficult to justify defeating and even killing the emperor. That would have been a step too far for the pro-imperial factions that still existed, even in the staunchly Guelph Florence.
Equally, a policy to wipe out the Guelphs in the cities as he had attempted on occasion in Lombardy had failed for the same reasons. Removing the heads of the Guelphs still left a Guelph faction behind in the city that would rise up as soon as the imperial army had left.
So the way out of the stalemate was to finally go after the true dominant power in Italy, king Robert of Naples.
Up until now Henry had hesitated to go after king Robert because he did not want to jeopardize his relationship with pope Clement V. Clemen V had been crucial in him gaining the election as King of the Romans in defiance of king Philip IV of France and his invitation to be crowned in Rome had been a precondition for his journey. Now Clement V might have liked Henry on a personal level, but that had not been the reason he supported Henry VII. What Clement V wanted was to gain some independence from the French crown. Though he no longer resided on French territory but had moved to Avignon, technically outside France and a papal fief, the French army sat on the opposite shore of the Rhone, ready to seize the successor to St. Peter if the need arose.
His ultimate escape route from French control had been a return to Rome. That may explain why the cardinals kept insisting that Henry should take St. Peter. Not so much for some spiritual reasons, but because they wanted Rome to be safe for a papal return. When Henry VII’s attempt to gain control of Rome failed, Clement V had become a de facto prisoner in Avignon.
Clement had already made huge concessions to Philip IV when he allowed him to suppress the order of the templars and seize their property, which after all was church property. But he had still clung to the hope that Henry could gain him Rome and a return ticket. By December 1312 that ticket had expired.
At the same rate as Clement V fell under French control did Henry VII confidence in the pope diminish. He had asked Clement V to excommunicate king Robert for Naples for opposing the coronation, but Clement had refused, or more precisely had not dared to do that to the cousin of the French king.
Therefore when in December 1312, Henry was weighing his options, he no longer felt that he need to make concessions to the pope. Robert of Naples may a papal vassal and an attack on him would be an attack on the pope, but then the pope had been dragged into the enemy camp anyway. Plus, unless he unseated Robert of Naples, there was no chance to ever gain a sustainable position in Italy, and for whatever reason, that is what he wanted.
As a first step Henry VII in his role as emperor formally convicted king Robert of Naples of high treason and seized his imperial fiefs, the kingdom of Naples and the county of Provence. Henry also entered into an alliance with king Frederick of Sicily, the arch enemy of the Anjou and grandson of emperor Frederick II.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1313 he gathered a huge force. Pisa was pulling out all the stops, hiring mercenaries and providing their own men. Genoa sent a fleet. Even from Germany reinforcements arrived, drummed up by Herny’s brother Balduin, the archbishop of Trier who had also gone home. Meanwhile king Frederick of Sicily was putting together an invasion force that would attack the kingdom of Naples from the south.
Historians have been in two minds about the probability of success. The traditional view was that this was utter folly. The force though sizeable, was much smaller than the armies Robert could raise. Plus Naples had a wide network of allies and supporters across Italy that could tie up the imperial troops on their way south. Others argue that the Anjou were seen as hated foreign, aka French, occupiers and that for instance the city of Naples had invited Henry to come south and rid them of this troublesome king.
Whether or not he had a chance we will never know. Because Henry VII, on his way through Tuscany fell ill in the small town of Buonconvento eight miles from Siena, either another bout of the Brescia disease, a heart attack or simple total exhaustion put an end to all his plans.
Hearing about his demise the army dissolved. The king of Sicily abandoned his invasion of Calabria that had already captured Reggio and the Pisan knights brought the body of the first emperor in 60 years back to their city.
It is in Pisa that he still lies, in a magnificent funerary monument. This monument by the sculptor Tino de Camaino is another remarkable work of this period of transition from medieval to renaissance art. If you want to see it and you happen not to get to Pisa any time soon, you can go to see it at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Not the real thing of course, after all the British did not manage to steal everything. But of the stuff they could not steal, like say Trajan’s column, Michelangelo’s David or the Brunswick Lion, they created casts and those are kept in the Cast Court of the V&A which looks like the world’s attic. And there, in a corner behind Giovanni and Nicolo Pisano’s masterful pulpits can you find our friend Herny VII. Few people stop to look at him and even fewer know who he was and what he did.
And despite his ultimate failure, he did play a hugely important role in the European history. His journey to Italy became the catalyst for a whole host of events.
Following his demise, the Italian political landscape consolidated at breakneck speed. The distinction between Guelphs and Ghibellines disappeared. Instead most cities ceased to be republics but came under the explicit or implicit rule of just one family, with notable exceptions like Venice. And some of these rulers like the Visconti, the Della Scala, Este and Gonzaga consolidated the surrounding cities into territorial principalities that would later become duchies, preventing a unification of Italy until the 19th century.
Whilst this process was almost inevitable given the levels of infighting and fragility in the Italian system, other outcomes were less predictable. One thing I have already mentioned. The papacy becoming a permanent vassal of the French crown.
And that fundamentally changed the relationship between what we call today Germany and France. Up until the late 13th century France and the empire enjoyed mostly friendly neighborly relations and as you may remember France rarely featured in our narrative so far. The main conflict of the medieval emperors had with the papacy and the Italian cities. Once the popes moved to Avignon and had come under French control, that old conflict was inherited by the French kings. Whilst Italy fades from view for the emperors, the Franco-German relationship, often positive and even more often violent became one of the key axes of German history culminating in the two world wars and then the reconciliation after 1945.
Talking about the world wars, I have another podcast recommendation for you. There is a new World War I podcast out there called “Not so quiet on the Western front”. Yes, there are several of these, but even I, as someone with only tangential interest in military history, have been gripped by Dan and Spence’s tales. Trained military historians both, they know their stuff. Where the rubber hits the road is when they dive into the various technologies of war and the speed of innovation the war forced into being. So far, my favorite episode is the one about Zeppelins. They describe how in 1915 they were almost invincible and rained terror on British cities, before rapid improvements in technology turned them into exploding deathtraps for their crews. For those soldiers who travelled strapped onto the roof of the Zeppelin with their machine guns, there was literally zero chance of survival. Gripping stuff. Not so Quiet on the Western Front is available wherever you get the History of the Germans from. I also have put a link in the show notes.
Next week we will look at another one of these often overlooked emperors, Ludwig the Bavarian, sponsor to William of Ockham of razor’s fame and the background though never mentioned of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. I hope you will join us again.