emperor made preparations for returning home, leaving everything else to the pope. The relations between the two became more and more strained from day to day. The Lombards, too, once again rebelled. Frederick therefore in A.D. 1158 made his second expedition to Rome. On the Roncalian plains he held a great assembly which laid down to the Lombards as well as to the pope the imperial prerogatives. Hadrian would have given utterance to his wrath by thundering an anathema, but he was restrained by the hand of death. § 96.15. The cardinals of the hierarchical party elected =Alexander III.=, A.D. 1159-1181, those of the imperial party, Victor IV. A synod convened by the emperor at Pavia in A.D. 1160 decided in favour of Victor, who was now formally recognised. Meanwhile Milan threw off the yoke that had been laid upon her. After an almost two years’ siege the emperor took the city in A.D. 1162 and razed it to the ground. From France whither he had fled, Alexander, in A.D. 1163, launched his anathema against the emperor and his pope. The latter died in A.D. 1164, and Frederick had Paschalis III. († A.D. 1168) chosen his successor; but in A.D. 1165, Alexander returning from France, pressed on in advance of him and was acknowledged by the Roman senate. Now for the third time in A.D. 1166, Frederick crossed the Alps. A small detachment of troops that had been sent in advance to accompany the imperial pope to Rome under the leadership of the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz, in a bloody battle at Monte Porzio in A.D. 1167 utterly destroyed a Roman army of twenty times its size. Frederick then himself hasted forward. After an eight days’ furious assault the fortress of Leo surrendered, and Paschalis was able to perform the _Te Deum_ in St. Peter’s. The Transtiberines, too, after Alexander had sought safety in flight, soon took the oath of fealty to the emperor upon a guarantee of imperial protection of their republic. But at the very climax of his success “the fate of Sennacherib” befell him. The Roman malaria during the hot August became a deadly fever plague, thinned the lines of his army and forced him to withdraw. So weakened was he that he could not even assert his authority in Lombardy, but had to return to Germany in A.D. 1168. The emperor’s disaster told also unfavourably upon the fortunes of his pope, whose successor Calixtus III. was quite disregarded. In A.D. 1174 Frederick again went down into Italy and engaged upon a decisive battle with the confederate cities of Lombardy, but in A.D. 1176 at Legnano he suffered a complete defeat, in consequence of which he agreed at the Congress of Venice, in A.D. 1177, to acknowledge the freedom of the Lombard cities, abandoned the imperial claims upon Rome, and recognised Alexander III., who was also present there, as the rightful pope, kissing his feet and holding his stirrup according to custom.