The dukes of Bavaria had been a great power in Germany, ever since that first stormy Welf, who tried to put down the new-fangled system of land-tenure which we know as feudalism! These Welfs were evidently not progressive; they seem in fact to have been the Tories of ancient Germany. And when Conrad, grandson of Frederick, the first Hohenstaufen, was elected King of Germany, there was a very stormy time. The people divided into two factions: the adherents of the new dynasty and the Emperor in the one, and the malcontents who were led by Welf, Duke of Bavaria, in the other. As hostility to the Emperor meant friendship with the Pope, this party of the Welfs was also that of the papal faction. The tongue of the Italian could not master the two words Welf and Waiblingen; which, as they became fastened upon the two political factions in Italy, were changed to Guelph and Ghibelline. The Waiblingen family long ago disappeared. But the ancient name of Welf is represented to-day by the gracious Queen of England. The party of the Guelphs in Germany was that of disaffected dukes and nobles, who from personal or other reasons desired to embarrass the Emperor, even to the extent of an alliance with his enemy the Pope. The Ghibellines expressed the anti-papal sentiment of the people, among whom there was a growing dread and hatred of Romish power, and the time was approaching when Teutonic patriotism would mean resistance to Italian priestcraft. While this antagonism was developing, the most stupendous event in all history was taking place in Europe. The Christian conscience--more sensitive than it is to-day--had been roused to a frenzy of indignation by Mahomedan outrages in the Holy Land. That first "European Concert" had been formed to drive the Mahomedan out of the land, where a concert of Europe is striving to keep him undisturbed to-day! This time of a great religious war was not favorable for an anti-papal policy in Germany. Conrad allowed himself to be swept into the current. He headed a great Crusade in the year 1147. Not one tithe of his vast host ever reached the Holy Land. They melted like the dew before disease, starvation, and the sword of the Moslems in Asia Minor. When the despondent Conrad returned to Germany he brought back one lasting memorial of his ill-fated Crusade. He had seen at Constantinople, on the Imperial standard of the Byzantine Emperor, a double-headed eagle. This representation of a double empire he determined to adopt for the emblem of his own, and hence it is that it exists to-day on the Austrian standard, and upon the coins of Germany and Austria. It was well for Germany that, while she was thus torn and distracted by contending political factions, and while her life blood was being drained into Italy, Frederick I., or Barbarossa (1152), came to hold the reins of government as they had not been held since Charlemagne.