After the peace with the Church, Bishop Ulrich of Halberstadt, who had been expelled as a partisan of Alexander, came back to his see. Henry, who, during his absence, had administered the possessions of the bishopric, refused to surrender them to him. Philip of Heinsberg, Archbishop of Cologne, formed a close alliance with Bishop Ulrich. The allies excommunicated the duke, and devastated his lands in Westphalia. Meanwhile Frederick left Italy in the summer of 1178, and after receiving the crown of the Middle Kingdom at Arles, reached Speyer in October, where Henry the Lion visited him and complained bitterly of the treatment he had received from the confederated bishops. [Sidenote: Fall of Henry the Lion, 1180.] A Diet was summoned to meet at Worms in January 1179, to consider the feud, but Henry did not appear, and the elaborate complaints of his vassals remained unanswered. In the summer the Emperor visited Saxony, but Henry again refused an interview at Magdeburg, where new complaints were laid before the Emperor. A little later, a private interview between king and duke led to no result. Henry neglected the third and last opportunity of formally appearing before Frederick, and despairing of the Emperor’s justice, devastated the Saxon bishoprics with fire and sword, and called in his old enemies the Slavs to invade German territory. In January 1180 a Diet was held at Würzburg. For the fourth time Henry refused to appear, and the sentence of banishment and the loss of his fiefs was given against him. Henry declared that as a Swabian he had a right to be tried by the magnates of Swabia alone, and strove to fight for his inheritance, but had little success. He hoped great things from his foreign friends, but no help came either from his father-in-law, Henry of England, his old ally, Valdemar of Denmark, or his more recent associate, the young Philip II. of France. In the summer of 1181 the Emperor easily conquered Saxony. In November the once mighty duke was forced to crave pardon at Erfurt. Frederick treated him kindly, and restored to him Brunswick, Lüneburg, and most of his allodial possessions. But at the prayer of the assembled magnates he reaffirmed his sentence of banishment, and of the deprivation of his duchies. The exiled duke retired to Normandy and England, where his father-in-law, Henry II., treated him with marked consideration. By a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, he sought to do penance for his violence to the churches. His political career seemed at an end. [Illustration: The possessions of the GUELFS in the days of HENRY THE LION] [Sidenote: Division of the Saxon duchy.]