No real effort was made to obtain for the little Frederick the crowns of both Germany and Sicily. Constance, freed from her husband’s control, sensibly changed her policy. Her keen sympathies with her father’s inheritance had made her an unwilling spectator of the harshness and cruelty of his German soldiers and ministers. While Philip of Swabia, her brother-in-law, hurried to Germany to maintain, if he could, the unity of the Hohenstaufen Empire, Constance was quite content to secure her son’s succession in Naples and Sicily by renewing the homage due to the Pope, by renouncing the ecclesiastical privileges which Urban II. had once granted to Count Roger [see page 139], and promising a yearly tribute. Having thus obtained the indispensable papal confirmation, Constance ruled in Naples as a national queen in the name of the little Frederick. She drove away the German bandits who had made the name of her husband a terror to her subjects. Markwald of Anweiler left his Apulian fiefs for Romagna. But the Pope joined with Constance in his hostility to the Germans. Without Innocent III.’s strong and constant support she could hardly have carried out her policy. Recognising in the renewal of the old papal protection the best hopes for the independence of Sicily, Constance, on her death in 1198, called on Innocent III. to act as the guardian of her son. [Sidenote: Death of Constance, 1198.] Innocent loyally took up her work, and struggled with all his might to preserve the kingdom of Frederick against his many enemies. But the contest was a long and a fierce one. No sooner was Constance dead than the Germans came back to their prey. The fierce Markwald, driven from Romagna by the papal triumph, claimed the regency and the custody of the king. [Sidenote: Innocent’s guardianship and the expulsion of the Germans.] The Saracens and Greeks of Sicily, still numerous and active, joined the Germans. Walter, Bishop of Troja, chancellor of Sicily, weaved deep plots against his master and his overlord. But the general support of the Church gave Innocent a strong weapon. Roffrid, Abbot of Monte Casino, a tried friend of Henry VI., declared for Innocent against Markwald, who in revenge besieged the great monastery, until a summer storm drove him baffled from its walls. But the purchased support of Pisa gave Markwald the command of the sea, and Innocent had too many schemes on foot and too little military power at his command to be able to make easy headway against him. [Sidenote: Markwald and Walter of Brienne.] At last Innocent had reluctant recourse to Count Walter of Brienne, the French husband of Tancred’s daughter Albina, and now a claimant for the hereditary fiefs of Tancred, Lecce and Taranto, from which, despite Henry VI.’s promise, he had long been driven. For almost the first time in Italian history, Frenchmen were thus called in to drive out Germans. But it was then as afterwards a dangerous experiment.