The most remarkable general feature of European society about the time of the Crusades was the papal influence. Between the pontiffs and the German emperors there was kept up a perpetual struggle for power; but for a long time the advantage was almost always with the popes. The treatment which some of the emperors received from them was extremely humiliating. Frederick Barbarossa was compelled to kiss the feet of his holiness, Alexander III, and to appease him by a large cession of territory, after having indignantly denied his supremacy, and refused the customary homage. Henry VI, while doing homage on his knees, had his imperial crown kicked off by Pope Celestinus, who, however, made some amends for this indignity by the gift of Naples and Sicily. Henry had expelled the Normans from these territories, which now became appendages of the German empire (1194). In the beginning of the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III was imagined to have permanently established the powers of the Holy See, and its right to confer the imperial crown; but this proved far from being the case. In the time of Frederick II, who succeeded Otho IV (1212), the old contentions rose to more than the usual height, and two factions sprung up in Italy, known by the names of Guelphs and Ghibellines, the former maintaining the supremacy of the popes, and the latter that of the emperors. Frederick maintained the contest which now arose between himself and the popes with much spirit; but on his death (1250) the splendor of the empire was for a considerable time obscured. At length Rodolph of Hapsbourg, a Swiss baron, was elected emperor (1274). Rodolph became the founder of the House of Austria, and ruled with both vigor and moderation. His son Albert I was the means of causing the inhabitants of Switzerland to assert and obtain their liberty, by his attempting to bind them in subjection to one of his children, and then using force to compel them. In the pass of Morgarten, a small army of four or five hundred of these brave mountaineers defeated an immense host of Austrians (1315). Sixty pitched battles, it is said, were fought between the contending parties; but the spirit of William Tell, who appeared at this time, and of his patriot countrymen, rose above all attempts to enslave them; and the Swiss cantons secured a freedom which their descendants enjoy to this day. The further history of Germany, for nearly a century, is not politically important. Disputes between the emperors and the papacy still continued, though the balance of advantage was now oftener against the church.