During Henry’s absence in Germany, the imperial cause in Italy had declined. Nevertheless Henry had kept up constant communications with his Italian partisans, and had observed a very careful policy with regard to the Lombards. He has often been accused of striving to restore his father’s schemes of supremacy in Italy by violating the Treaty of Constance and seeking again the abasement of the Lombards. But the charge is no more just than the one of extravagant hostility against the Guelfs. As a matter of fact, Henry strove to postpone all other troubles in order to get his hands free to secure his wife’s inheritance. He saw that Lombardy, after Constance, had fallen back into her ancient feuds, and that two leagues, one headed by Milan, the other by Cremona, had arisen, both equally indifferent to the Empire, and both equally willing to invoke its aid to crush the local enemy. Henry strove to make treaties with both confederacies, while he cheerfully replenished his coffers from the treasuries of both Milan and Cremona, and did his best to end the war. He established his brother Philip in Tuscany. Genoa and Pisa again provided him with ships. The Norman kingdom, isolated from its wonted allies, had to meet him single-handed, save for the timid support of Celestine III. Tancred prepared manfully for the struggle. He obtained in 1192 the formal investiture of Apulia and Sicily from Celestine III. He procured the coronation of his young son Roger as joint-king, and negotiated a marriage for him with Irene, daughter of the Greek Emperor Isaac Angelus. [Sidenote: Conquest of Apulia and Sicily, 1194.] He strenuously and successfully held his own against the Emperor’s lieutenants. But all his hopes were destroyed by the young King Roger’s death, and soon after Tancred himself died. The national party set up his eldest surviving son as King William III., but in May 1194 Henry again reached Italy, and invaded the defenceless south. There was a mere show of resistance. By November Palermo was in the hands of the Emperor, and on Christmas Day he received the Sicilian crown in the cathedral. The young King William was sent, blinded and mutilated, to die obscurely in a German convent. The last upholders of the national power, including the Admiral Margarito, soon perished in gloomy dungeons. The very family of Tancred now secured its patrimonial possessions by a timely recognition of the rival. At Easter 1195 Henry was able to return to Germany, leaving Constance as regent, with the tried court official, Conrad of Urslingen, now Duke of Spoleto, as her chief adviser. The officials from the lower German nobility, who had served Henry so well in Germany, were intrusted with the administration of his new inheritance, and soon abased the great Norman houses. [Sidenote: Henry’s triumph and further projects, 1194–1197.]