wielded, it at least allowed the town leagues and the rustic nobility to go on in their own way, and made it possible for Italy to work out its own destinies. More powerful and more feared in Italy than any of his predecessors, Innocent could contentedly watch the anti-imperial reaction extending over the Alps, and desolating Germany by civil war. [Sidenote: Innocent III. and Germany.] Despite the precautions taken by Henry VI. , it was soon clear that the German princes would not accept the hereditary rule of a child of three. Philip of Swabia abandoned his Italian domains and hurried to Germany, anxious to do his best for his nephew. But he soon perceived that Frederick’s chances were hopeless, and that it was all that he could do to prevent the undisputed election of a Guelf. He was favoured by the absence of the two elder sons of Henry the Lion. Henry of Brunswick, the eldest, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, was away on a Crusade, and was loyal to the Hohenstaufen, since his happy marriage with Agnes. The next son Otto, born at Argenton during his father’s first exile, had never seen much of Germany. Brought up at his uncle Richard of Anjou’s court, Otto had received many marks of Richard’s favour, and looked up to the chivalrous, adventurous king as the ideal of a warrior prince. Richard had made him Earl of Yorkshire, and had invested him in 1196 with the county of Poitou, that he might learn war and statecraft in the same rude school in which Richard had first acquainted himself with arms and politics. Even now Otto was not more than seventeen years of age. [Sidenote: Election of Philip of Swabia, March 1198.] Richard himself, as the new vassal of the Empire for Arles and England, was duly summoned to the electoral Diet, but his representatives impolitically urged the claims of Count Henry, who was ruled ineligible on account of his absence. Thus it was that when the German magnates at last met for the election, on 8th March 1198, at Mühlhausen, their choice fell on Philip of Swabia, who, mindful of the third century Emperor, Philip the Arabian, took the title of Philip II. [Sidenote: Counter-election of Otto of Brunswick, June 1198.] Many of the magnates had absented themselves from the Diet at Mühlhausen, and an irreconcilable band of partisans refused to be bound by its decisions. Richard of England now worked actively for Otto, his favourite nephew, and found support both in the old allies of the Angevins in the lower Rhineland and the ancient supporters of the house of Guelf. Germany was thus divided into two parties, who completely ignored each other’s acts. Three months after the Diet of Mühlhausen, another Diet met at Cologne and chose Otto of Brunswick as King of the Romans. Three days afterwards the young prince was crowned at Aachen.