Take it for all in all, the case of this claimant is certainly the most wonderful one on record. For thirty-eight years Frederick the Second had nominally ruled Germany, but his foreign wars and Italian States had occupied so much of his time that only seven years of his long reign were really spent in his imperial dominions. He died at Férentino, in 1250, in the fifty-fifth year of his age; and in a little while the enormously extended empire which he had obtained for his family had passed from their hands, and his many sons, and even his grandsons, were despoiled of their crowns, and lost their lives by violence. Warfare and contention in the various states succeeded Frederick's decease. In Germany a long interregnum of misery ensued, and it was not until 1273, when Rudolph of Hapsburgh was elected to the imperial crown, that the nation could obtain either the administration of justice or respite from hostilities, foreign and intestine. Rudolph's long reign proved very beneficial to the distracted empire, and for several years Germany enjoyed an unwonted amount of prosperity, when, in 1284, the people were startled by the report that Frederick the Second, whom for thirty-four years everybody had believed dead and buried, was still alive, and, although nearly ninety years old, seeking to recover the imperial crown. And true it was that an aged man, claiming to be the supposed defunct monarch, had appeared, giving so plausible an account of his lengthy seclusion, and displaying so remarkable a knowledge of Frederick's most private transactions, that multitudes, including the Landgrave of Thuringia and other important personages, believed his story and afforded him support.