The Emperor Frederick the Second at length discovered, how powerless he was to remodel the affairs of the East. The knights and merchants had ordered matters according to their own pleasure. The barons with their feudal retainers occupied their castles in perfect independence; the king was only their leader, and the feudal parliament the court in which they decided everything according to their pleasure. With these uncontrolled nobles we must rank three orders of knights, forming as many well-established and wealthy brotherhoods, in which the military and monkish characteristics were united. These ecclesiastical warriors were armed in complete steel, and claimed princely prerogatives. In the towns were guilds and corporations, combinations of merchants and men of business, who watched over their own interests, and resisted the innovations of the arrogant nobility. Among all these petty powers, who were incessantly quarrelling among themselves, Frederick found it a difficult task to introduce harmony, and harder still to bring them to acquiesce in his authority. Frederick had already proclaimed in Ferentino, that the conquest of the Holy Land should no longer be carried on in the name of the knights, but of the king only, thus intimating, that the whole of it should belong to himself. In Cyprus, matters were arranged upon a very different basis; here the supreme authority was shared among the barons, and the power of the king jealously circumscribed. So long as the authority of the emperor was maintained in Cyprus, he held the key of all the opposite coasts of Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and consequently, to possess the sovereign power in this island, was from first to last the great object of Oriental policy. In 1218 the last King of Cyprus died, having on his death-bed appointed his wife, Alice, regent. The knights, unwilling to submit to the authority of a woman, compelled her to share her rule in the island with Philip of Ibelin as co-regent. Meanwhile feuds sprang up on all sides, and every occurrence seemed to increase the discord. The Franks in the East had been vitiated by Byzantine manners, and fought each other with the bitterest hatred, quite unmindful of their original mission, which was to deliver the Holy Land from the heathen. Quarrels soon arose between the Latin and Greek Churches, and Cyprus became the arena where bloody combats took place. Frederick now entered the capital of Cyprus, and there all the princes and barons interceded for Ibelin, who declared that he and all his followers were ready to submit to the emperor, and atone for their delinquencies. The emperor did not seek revenge, but simple justice; and was extremely desirous of securing the support of Cyprus, and the wealth obtainable from that source, and thus the affair was soon arranged; the barons, under the emperor’s command, acquiesced, and a general amnesty was proclaimed upon the following terms: