For a year after Gregory’s death, the Papacy remained vacant. At last, in May 1086, the cardinals, profiting by the Antipope’s return to Ravenna, met at Rome and forced the Papacy on the unwilling Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Casino. The new Pope (who assumed the name of Victor III.), was a close friend of Gregory’s and strongly attached to his ideals. [Sidenote: Victor III., 1086–1087.] But he was too old and too weak to take up Hildebrand’s task, and three days after his election he strove to avoid the troublesome dignity by flight to Monte Casino. Next year he was with difficulty prevailed upon to return to Rome to receive the tiara. But the partisans of the Emperor and of the Countess Matilda fought fiercely for the possession of Rome, and Victor again retreated to his monastery, where death ended his troubles three days after his return (16th September 1087). Next time the cardinals fixed upon a Pope of sterner stuff. Driven from Rome by the Antipope, they made their election at Terracina on 12th March 1088. Their choice fell upon the son of a baron of Champagne named Odo, who had lived long at Cluny as monk and sub-prior, and then served the Roman Court as cardinal-bishop of Ostia. [Sidenote: Urban II., 1088–1099.] Urban II. (this was the title he took) was a man of ability and force of character, as ardent as Hildebrand for the Cluniac ideals, but more careful of his means of enforcing them than the uncompromising Gregory. He made closer his alliance with the Normans, and, thanks to the help of Duke Roger, Robert Guiscard’s son and successor, was able to return to Rome and remain there for some months. But the troops of the Antipope still held the castle of St. Angelo, and Urban soon found it prudent to retire. He mainly spent the first years of his pontificate in southern Italy under Roger’s protection. Meanwhile, papalists and imperialists fought hard in northern Italy. Germany was now tolerably quiet, and Henry could now devote his chief energies to Italy, which he revisited in 1090. [Sidenote: Henry revisits Italy, 1090.] But Urban united the German with the Italian opposition to the Emperor by bringing about a politic marriage between the Countess Matilda and the young son of Welf or Guelf, Duke of Bavaria, the Emperor’s most powerful adversary in Germany. Despite this combination, Henry’s Italian campaigns between 1090 and 1092 were extraordinarily successful. Matilda’s dominions in the plain country were overrun, and her towns and castles captured. But she held her own in her strongholds in the Apennines, rejected all compromise, and prepared to fight to the last. Henry met his first check when he was driven back in disgrace from an attempted siege of Canossa. [Sidenote: Conrad of Franconia, Anti-Cæsar, 1093.]