Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria, aspired to succeed his father-in-law, having, besides large hereditary possessions, the duchies of Bavaria and Saxony, while his enjoyment of the heritage of Matilda gave him an equally important position in northern Italy and Tuscany. He boasted that his authority stretched from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. But the arrogance which gave him his nickname deprived him of personal popularity, and his extraordinary resources made his accession disliked by all who feared a strong monarchy, while the Church party, that had procured the election of Lothair, was now alienated from him. The result of all this was that the same circumstances that had led to Lothair’s being made king in 1125, resulted, in 1138, in the rejection of his son-in-law. Adalbero, Archbishop of Trier, a creature of Innocent II., played, in the vacancy of both Mainz and Cologne, the part which Adalbert of Mainz had so cleverly filled on the previous occasion. He summoned the electoral diet to meet in his own town of Coblenz. Though Saxony and Bavaria sent no representatives, the magnates of Swabia and Franconia gathered together at the appointed spot. Frederick, Duke of Swabia, was no longer a candidate, but, on 7th March, his younger brother, Conrad, the old enemy of Lothair, was chosen king. [Sidenote: Contest of Conrad with the Guelfs.] The struggle of Welf and Weiblingen soon broke out anew. Henry delivered up the imperial insignia, and offered to acknowledge Conrad, if confirmed in his possessions; but the new king would not accept these terms, and before long deprived Henry of both his duchies. The margrave, Albert the Bear, who, like Henry the Proud, claimed descent from the Billung stock, was made Duke of Saxony, and Leopold of Austria, Conrad’s half-brother, received Bavaria. Civil war inevitably followed. All Saxony rallied round the Guelfs, and Albert was driven from his new duchy. But in October 1139, Henry the Proud was carried off by a sudden attack of fever, and a child ten years old succeeded. With the help of his brother Frederick and the faithful Rhineland, Conrad invaded Saxony in 1140, and won a victory at Weinsberg that secured him his throne, but did not ensure the reduction of the Saxons. Next year the death of the Austrian Duke of Bavaria made compromise more easy. In February 1142 a treaty was signed at Frankfurt, by which the Saxons recognised Conrad as king, and Conrad admitted the young Henry the Guelf to the duchy of Saxony. Before long Gertrude, his mother, married Henry, the Count Palatine, brother of Leopold of Austria, and another half-brother of Conrad, who next year received his brother’s duchy of Bavaria. Thus the great struggle ended in a compromise, in which, if Conrad retained the throne, Saxony and Bavaria still remained under the influence of the house of Guelf. [Sidenote: The Second Crusade, 1147.]