possession of the Sicilian kingdom a source rather of weakness than of strength, for it distracted Frederick's forces and put him in the false position of a liegeman resisting his lawful suzerain. Truly, as the Greek proverb says, the gifts of foes are no gifts, and bring no profit with them. The Norman kings were more terrible in their death than in their life: they had sometimes baffled the Teutonic Emperor; their heritage destroyed him. [Sidenote: Conrad IV, 1250-1254.] With Frederick fell the Empire. From the ruin that overwhelmed the greatest of its houses it emerged, living indeed, and destined to a long life, but so shattered, crippled, and degraded, that it could never more be to Europe and to Germany what it once had been. In the last act of the tragedy were joined the enemy who had now blighted its strength and the rival who was destined to insult its weakness and at last blot out its name. The murder of Frederick's grandson Conradin--a hero whose youth and whose chivalry might have moved the pity of any other foe--was approved, if not suggested, by Pope Clement; it was done by the minions of Charles of France. [Sidenote: Italy lost to the Empire.] The Lombard league had successfully resisted Frederick's armies and the more dangerous Ghibeline nobles: their strong walls and swarming population made defeats in the open field hardly felt; and now that South Italy too had passed away from a German line--first to an Angevin, afterwards to an Aragonese dynasty--it was plain that the peninsula was irretrievably lost to the Emperors. Why, however, should they not still be strong beyond the Alps? was their position worse than that of England when Normandy and Aquitaine no longer obeyed a Plantagenet? The force that had enabled them to rule so widely would be all the greater in a narrower sphere. [Sidenote: Decline of imperial power in Germany.] [Sidenote: The Great Interregnum] [Sidenote: Double election, of Richard of England and Alfonso of Castile.] [Sidenote: State of Germany during the Interregnum.] [Sidenote: Rudolf of Hapsburg, 1272-1292.]