The papalists were much encouraged by Henry’s defeat. Soon after they persuaded his son Conrad, a weak and headstrong youth, to rise in revolt against his father. Half Lombardy fell away from father to son. Before the year was out, Conrad received the Iron Crown at Milan, and Urban ventured back to Rome. Worse was to follow. Henry’s second wife, Praxedis of Russia (Bertha had died in 1087), escaped from the prison to which her husband had consigned her, and taking refuge with the Countess Matilda, gave to the world a story of wrongs and outrages that destroyed the last shreds of the Emperor’s reputation. In high glee at the progress of his cause, Urban set out on a lengthened progress that reminds us of the memorable tours of Leo IX. [Sidenote: Urban’s Councils at Piacenza and Clermont, 1095.] After a long stay in Tuscany, he crossed the Apennines early in 1095, and held a great synod at Piacenza, at which the laws against simony and married clerks were renewed, while the Empress publicly declared her charges against Henry, and ambassadors from the Eastern Emperor pleaded for help, against the growing power of the Seljukian Turks. In the summer Urban crossed the Alps, and remained for more than a year in France and Burgundy, being everywhere received with extraordinary reverence. In November 1095 he held a largely attended synod at Clermont in Auvergne. Not content with his quarrel with the Emperor, he here fulminated excommunication against Philip I. of France, on account of his adultery with Bertrada, Countess of Anjou. But the famous work of the Council of Clermont was the proclamation of the First Crusade. [Sidenote: The proclamation of the First Crusade, 1095.] Nothing shows more clearly the strength and nature of the papal power than that this greatest result of the universal monarchy of the Church should have been brought about at a time when all the chief kings of Europe were open enemies of the Papacy. Henry IV. was an old foe, Philip of France had been deliberately attacked, and William Rufus of England was indifferent or hostile. But in the eleventh century the power of even the strongest kings counted for very little. What made the success of Urban’s endeavour was the appeal to the swarm of small feudal chieftains, who really governed Europe, and to the fierce and undisciplined enthusiasm of the common people, with whom the ultimate strength of the Church really lay. [Sidenote: Urban’s return to Italy, 1096.]