bound the parties to it for four years to maintain the peace towards all communities in the land. This was intended as a preliminary to Henry's participation in an expedition to the east. [Sidenote: Death of Henry IV.] But this was the very last thing desired by Henry's enemies, and there began a most unscrupulous attack which ended only with his death. Pope Urban's successor, Pascal II, strengthened by the death of the anti-Pope Clement and the failure of his party to maintain a successor, renewed the excommunication against Henry, and did everything deliberately to stir up strife in Germany. The nobles were angry at the cessation of private war and at the favour shown by Henry to the towns. But again they lacked a leader, and with diabolical craft the papal party worked upon the young King Henry by threatening to set up against him an anti-King who should rob him of the eventual succession. The result was that the young King broke his solemn promise, set up the standard of revolt, and was joined by nobles, ecclesiastical as well as lay, and by the restless Saxon rebels. By a trick he got his father into his power and forced him formally to abdicate, while he himself was crowned King by the papal legate. But the Emperor escaped, and with marvellous energy gathered adherents; but a renewal of the struggle was staved off by his own death after a few days' illness on August 6th, 1106. [Sidenote: His justification.] Henry never shook himself free from the difficulties of his own early misdeeds; but the rights upon which he took his stand were those exercised by his predecessors. The uncompromising attitude of his opponents and their humiliation of him made it a life-long struggle between them. Henry was no saint; but his opponents' tactics were indefensible. Under less adverse circumstances he might have proved a successful ruler. But he was the victim of a party which deliberately subordinated means to ends in pursuit of an ideal which Henry could scarcely be expected to understand or appreciate. [Sidenote: Henry V.] The papal party in its malice had overreached itself in selecting Henry V as its champion. True, he had destroyed the most stubborn enemy of the Papacy; but his own interests caused him to adopt his father's policy. His one object was to recover the prestige which the German King had lost in the struggles of the last twenty years. He was undisputed King in Germany; he showed an unscrupulous and overbearing demeanour which aroused opposition on all sides. He was not likely to be content with less power than his father had demanded over the German clergy, and at the first vacancies he invested the new bishops. [Sidenote: Growth of a party of compromise on investiture.]