Gregory, in spite of the advice of his friends (except Mathilda, who spurred him on), at once set out for the north. His impetuous journey was, however, arrested in the north of Italy by the news that the German nobles had failed to send an escort for him, and that Henry himself was crossing the Alps with a large army. Mathilda persuaded him to retire to her impregnable fortress of Canossa, and there, about the end of January, Henry enacted his historic part of penitent. Here the chroniclers are hopelessly discordant, and the full picturesque narrative of Lambert of Hersfeld, on which some historians still implicitly rely, has been riddled by modern critics.[229] It is clear that Henry wished to keep the Pope out of Germany, and he there-fore hastily crossed the Alps in the depth of winter. It is clear that a "vast army" (in the words of Lambert himself) gathered about him in rebellious Lombardy, but he pushed on with a few followers (incidentally admitted by Lambert) to Canossa. It is clear that Gregory, on the other hand, was desperately bent on presiding over a council in Germany, and shocked his friends by his obstinacy in refusing to be reconciled[230]; he had condemned Henry without trial, but he would not absolve him without trial. And, obviously inaccurate as the narrative of Lambert is,[231] it seems to me certain that Henry went through the form of penance on the icy platform before the gate of Canossa. In the letter written immediately afterwards to the nobles and prelates of Germany,[232] Gregory describes Henry as doing penance for three days, in bare feet and woollen robe, before the gates. However impolitic and irritating it was for Gregory to write such a letter, Dr. Dammann seems to me to fail to impeach its genuineness. Indeed in his great speech to the Roman synod of 1080, when he excommunicated Henry a second time, Gregory says that in 1076 Henry came to him "in confusion and humiliation" at Canossa to ask absolution. Thus the scene which has ever since impressed the imagination of Europe is in substance authentic; though we are by no means compelled to think that Henry literally stood in the snow for three whole days. But the common interpretation of the scene is quite false. It was not a spiritual triumph, but a political pseudo-triumph. In reality, it was Henry who triumphed; and one can imagine him jesting merrily afterwards about his bare feet and coarse robe of penitence. He promised to amend his ways, and then proceeded to make a tour of Italy in light-hearted confidence and with all his old wilfulness. He refused to interfere when a Papal Legate was thrown into prison at Piacenza; and he refused to provide Gregory with an escort when the Germans invited the Pope to come and preside at their new Diet.[233] Gregory soon realized that the war had merely passed into a new and more difficult phase, and we must follow it swiftly to its tragic end in the utter defeat of the Pope.