With Frederick's death the mediæval empire may be said to have come to an end. It is true that after a period of "fist law," as the Germans call it, a new king, Rudolf of Hapsburg, was elected in Germany in 1273. The German kings continued to call themselves emperors. Few of them, however, took the trouble to go to Rome to be crowned by the pope. No serious effort was ever made to reconquer the Italian territory for which Otto the Great, Frederick Barbarossa, and his son and grandson had made such serious sacrifices. Germany was hopelessly divided and its king was no real king. He had no capital, no well-organized government. [Sidenote: Division of Germany and Italy into small independent states.] By the middle of the thirteenth century it became apparent that neither Germany nor Italy was to be converted into a strong single kingdom like England and France. The map of Germany shows a confused group of duchies, counties, archbishoprics, bishoprics, abbacies, and free towns, each one of which asserted its practical independence of the weak king and emperor. In northern Italy each town, including a certain district about its walls, had become an independent state, dealing with its neighbors as with independent powers. The Italian towns were destined to become the birthplace of our modern culture during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Venice and Florence, in spite of their small size, came to be reckoned among the most important states of Europe. In the central part of the peninsula the pope maintained more or less control over his possessions, but he often failed to subdue the towns within his realms. To the south Naples remained for some time under the French dynasty, which the pope had called in, but the island of Sicily drifted into Spanish hands. CHAPTER XV THE CRUSADES 73. Of all the events of the Middle Ages, the most romantic and fascinating are the Crusades, the adventurous expeditions to Syria, undertaken by kings and doughty knights with the hope of permanently reclaiming the Holy Land from the infidel Turks. All through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries each generation beheld at least one great army of crusaders gathering from all parts of the West and starting toward the Orient. Each year witnessed the departure of small bands of pilgrims or of solitary soldiers of the cross. For two hundred years there was a continuous stream of Europeans of every rank and station making their way into western Asia. If they escaped the countless hazards of the journey, they either settled in this distant land and devoted themselves to war or commerce, or returned home, bringing with them tales of great cities and new peoples, of skill and luxury unknown in the West. [Sidenote: Natural temptation to overrate the importance of the Crusades.]