[Sidenote: King Manfred.] Meanwhile Manfred had regained all the dominions of the Sicilian crown in the name of Conradin, but in 1258 he quietly set aside his nephew and accepted the throne for himself. However necessary such a step might be, it divided Sicily from Germany. This was what the papal party desired: but Manfred, the son of an Italian mother, aimed, like his father, at an Italian monarchy. Consequently Alexander declared against him. In Italy, however, the cessation of supplies from England left Alexander almost powerless, and Manfred was accepted as the head of the Ghibellines in the peninsula. [Sidenote: The rival Kings of the Romans.] But before his death in May, 1261, Alexander had gained a distinct success in Germany. The young King, William of Holland, the destined Emperor, had been killed in 1256. The Pope forbade the choice of Conradin, and the votes of the German princes were divided between the Englishman, Richard Earl of Cornwall, and Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile and grandson of Philip of Suabia. Richard, wealthy and attracted by the imperial title, was crowned Emperor at Aachen in 1257 and bought himself a measure of support so long as he remained in Germany. Alfonso, on the other hand, did nothing to secure his new dominions. Alexander and his successors, by professing a judicial attitude, gradually established the impression in Germany that the decision in these matters rested with the Papacy. CHAPTER XVI THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND OF THE PAPACY [Sidenote: Urban IV (1261-4).] The date of Alexander's death marks the beginning of a new episode in the history of the mediæval Papacy. His successor, Urban IV, was a Frenchman. With more vigour than his predecessor he pursued the policy of the destruction of the Hohenstaufen. Since the English prince had proved a useless tool and no more money could be wrung from the English people, he obtained the renunciation of the claims of Edmund to the Sicilian crown and turned to his native country for a candidate. Louis IX refused the offer for a son, but it was accepted by his brother, Charles of Anjou, whose wife, the daughter and heiress of Raymond Berengar of Provence, desired to be the equal of her three elder sisters, the Queens, respectively, of France, England, and Germany. For the next twenty years the papal policy centres round the doings of Charles as much as it had centred for thirty years round the aims of Frederick II. The Guelf party in Rome had already elected Charles as senator, or head of the civic commune, in opposition to the Ghibelline Manfred. Thus the Pope and the Italian Guelfs once more combined to betray Italy to the foreign conqueror. Urban was able to obtain a promise that Charles would not accept the senatorship for life, although the need for Charles' presence in Italy as a check upon the victorious Manfred enabled the new King to obtain better terms in regard to Sicily than the Pope had offered at first.