Fredrick I (1122/25-1190) also known as ("Frederick Redbeard") was elected king of Germany on March 4, 1152 in succession to his uncle Conrad III, and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1155. As the son of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, duke of Swabia, and Judith of Bavaria, of the rival Guelph dynasty, Frederick was descended from Germany's two principal families, making him an acceptable choice for the Empire's princely electors as heir to the Imperial crown. He undertook six expeditions into Italy, in the first of which he was crowned emperor in Rome by Pope Adrian IV in the aftermath of the overthrow by Imperial forces of the republican city commune headed by Arnold of Brescia. The reign of Friedrich Barbarossa was a glorious one for them, if not for actual accomplishments, at least for magnificent efforts and noble dreams. Although the red-bearded Emperor had failed in most of his undertakings, especially in Italy, and had erred in many decisions, so striking were his occasional successes and so strongly did he build on them that even today he is widely viewed as the greatest German ruler between Charlemagne and Bismarck. Friedrich Barbarossa saw that peace and order in any state were dependent upon strong government, and that strong government was dependent upon sound finances and firm leadership. He was limited in what he could achieve in a federal system--perhaps the best way to look at feudal relationships in Germany--but of all the forces in the country, whether the great prelates or the assemblages of nobles, he had the primary right and duty to enforce the peace. That gave him immense, but limited powers. By defining peace in his own way, Friedrich Barbarossa could direct both local and international politics; and as Holy Roman Emperor, he was universally acknowledged as the leader of Christendom. In his view, the many problems of the Christian world that he was responsible for resolving could not be sorted out into Italian problems, Arab problems, German problems and so forth because each related to the others in such a complex way that resolving one required attempting a resolution of the others. Although the heart of his empire was the kingdom of Germany, he was the ruler of a multinational empire, and he thought and acted on an international scale. There was only one simplifying factor--as he looked at the tangle of problems that faced him, he saw that the end of the skein seemed to lie in Italy. There, in Italy, the heart of the old Roman Empire, were the rich cities which could provide through taxes the money he needed to raise armies with which he could bring peace and order to the Holy Roman Empire. Moreover, Italy, even more than Germany, was in disorder and, therefore, in need of effective government; the established families were contending for power, the centers of commercial activity which had recently made themselves independent were now fighting among themselves for dominance of the regional markets, and churchmen saw their own interests--won at such cost from Friedrich's predecessors--being lost. Everywhere the losing factions were calling upon the Emperor to come to their aid. Nor was peace and order the full extent of what the Emperor could offer. Peace and order were, then as now, the first step toward the resolution of other problems, not the end of life's race. Dante was to express this well a century hence. But first steps first. The great tripwire was the party of the papacy, which was united only in its fear of imperial domination. Some were idealists who believed that the leadership of Europe properly belonged to the popes; others were ambitious men who resented any efforts to limit their activities; others simply preferred a collective approach to political decision-making and wanted to deliver as few taxes and services as possible. This party existed in Germany, too, but its center was Italy. That was largely because Italy was far away from the Emperor's main source of armies and Italy was home to the papacy, which time and again had prevented emperors from exercising leadership even in Germany, much less south of the Alps. Because Friedrich Barbarossa saw that his duty lay in bringing Italy fully into the Holy Roman Empire, he spent most of his reign there. The combination of Lombard cities, the papacy, and the Norman kingdom of Sicily, however, proved too strong for him. Friedrich's Italian policy seemed to be a total failure following his military defeat at Legnano in 1176. Thereafter, relations between Emperor and Pope descended into bitter conflict culminating in Frederick's defeat at the Battle of Legnano near Milan (1176) by the pro-Papal Lombard League of northern Italian cities. This apparent defeat was not absolute. Friedrich was not driven out of Italy, and toward the end of his long and war-filled stay in the country, most of his enemies came to realize that Friedrich was less of a threat and more a potential friend than they had thought. The Lombard cities agreed to pay taxes, accept imperial magistrates, and allow him to regulate their foreign policy. Also, the kingdom of Sicily came to Friedrich's son, Heinrich, as dowry for Constance, the king's only child. The Pope, too, was friendly--a pleasant surprise considering the recent bitter hostility--and supported Friedrich in hopes of ending the wars and in diverting that military energy into a new crusade to recover Jerusalem. His first step was to strip his principal rival, Heinrich the Lion, of Bavaria. Then in 1180 he used Heinrich's failure to attend a Reichstag as an excuse to foment a rebellion of his vassals that destroyed the empire Heinrich had built in the north. Some of Heinrich's lands went to vassals, others to long-time enemies such as the Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, and some to Denmark. After making his peace with Pope Alexander III, Frederick embarked on the Third Crusade (1189) with Philip Augustus of France and Richard I of England. Friedrich was also titular head of all Christendom, and as such was asked to lead the great crusade of 1189, the greatest international crusade ever organized. As Holy Roman Emperor he led his Germans, Italians, and Slavs--and the kings of France and England, too--to the Holy Land to attempt the recovery of Jerusalem. Friedrich did not live to see the Holy Land. He died on the frontier of Palestine, drowning while crossing the Saleph river in Cilicia in south-eastern Anatolia and with him died the hopes of the Third Crusade. No one else could impose discipline on the other leaders--many of whom hurried home in anticipation of civil war, to protect their properties and families--and the rag-tag army that remained in the East was too weak to do more than join the English and French at the siege of Acre. Heinrich VI (Henry VI), his son, had been left in Italy ready to deal with any problem that might arise; and this proved to have been a wise decision, because revolts broke out soon after the news of the Emperor's death arrived in Europe. The old man had left a great burden to his son, but fortunately the crusade was not an important part of his immediate duties. Time was not his to command. If Friedrich had lived longer, so that the passage of time would permit everyone to grow accustomed to the new arrangement, his empire might have survived. One must forget today's nationalism and understand that there was no real Germany or Italy as we are accustomed to think about them. Italy was the kingdom of the Lombards, the kingdom of the Normans, the Papal States, and other smaller units In the mountains of the Tyrol the population was German, and in the south, the rulers were Norman-French with ties to England. In Germany, too, there were important minorities. There were Bohemians and other Slavic groups, there were Frisians, Danes, Flemings, and there were what we could call French in Burgundy and Lorraine. Moreover, there were important differences among the larger groups of Germans themselves. A native of the south could not always understand a person in the north, and pride in being a Saxon, a Bavarian, or a Swabian took precedence over pride in being German. Tradition and custom were of more importance in keeping these disparate groups together than were any feelings of nationalism; and tradition and custom grow slowly. Friedrich needed time, but he was an old, old man. However, Frederick is the subject of a sleeping hero legend. He is said not to be dead, but asleep with his knights in a cave in Kyffhäuser mountain in Thuringia, Germany, and that when ravens should cease to fly around the mountain he would awake and restore Germany to its ancient greatness. According to the story his red beard has grown through the table beside which he sits. His eyes are half closed in sleep, but now and then he raises his hand and sends a boy out to see if the ravens have stopped flying. Frederick was succeeded as king and emperor by his son Henry VI.