Barbarossa returned to Germany to vent his rage on Henry the Lion, to whose refusal to accompany him to Italy he considered his defeat largely due. Strong in the support of the Church, to which he was now reconciled, he summoned his cousin to appear before an imperial Diet and make answer to the charge of having confiscated ecclesiastical lands and revenues for his own use. Henry merely replied to this mandate by setting fire to Church property in Saxony, and in his absence the ban of outlawry was passed against him by the Diet. Here again was the old ‘Waiblingen’ and ‘Welf’ feud bursting into flame, like a fire that has been but half-suppressed, and cousinship went to the wall. Henry the Welf was a son-in-law of Henry II of England and had made allies of Philip Augustus and the King of Denmark: his Duchy of Bavaria in the south and of Saxony in the north covered a third of German territory: he had been winning military laurels in a struggle against the Slavs, while Frederick had been losing Lombardy. Thus he pitted himself against the Emperor, unmindful that even in Germany the hands of the political clock were moving forward and feudalism slowly giving up its dominion. To the dawning sense of German nationality Barbarossa was something more than first among his barons, he was a king supported by the Church, and Bavarians and Saxons came reluctantly to the rebel banner; while, as the campaign developed, the other princes saw their fellow vassal beaten and despoiled of his lands and driven into exile without raising a finger to help him. Frederick allowed Henry the Lion to keep his Brunswick estates, but Saxony and Bavaria he divided up amongst minor vassals, in order to avoid the risk of another powerful rival. Master of Germany not merely in name but in power, he and his successors could have built up a strong monarchy, as Philip II and the House of Capet were to do in France, had not the siren voice of Italy called them to wreck on her shifting policies. Hitherto we have spoken chiefly of North Italy; but Frederick I bound Germany to her southern neighbours by fresh ties when he married his eldest son Henry in 1187 to Constance, heiress of the Norman kingdom of Naples and Sicily. By this alliance he hoped to establish a permanent Hohenstaufen counterpoise in the south to the alliance of the Pope and the Guelf towns in the north. Triumphant over the wrathful but helpless Roman See, he felt himself an emperor indeed, and having crowned his son Henry as ‘Caesar’, in imitation of classic times, he rode away to the Third Crusade, still lusting after adventure and glory.