Saracens and built ships and grew to be the chief maritime powers of the Mediterranean, rulers of island empires.  They fought wars against one another, and Pisa was overwhelmed and ruined in a tremendous conflict with Genoa.  Genoa’s fleets carried supplies for the first crusaders.  In later crusades, when the deadly nature of the long journey by land was more clearly known, the wealthy maritime republics were hired to carry the crusaders themselves to the East—­and profited vastly by the business.

Gradually the inland cities took courage from their sea-board neighbors.  Florence became the centre of reviving art, her citizens the chief bankers for all Europe.  Milan became chief of the Lombard cities, leading them against Barbarossa.  And when he captured and destroyed the metropolis in 1161, the burghers of the surrounding lesser towns rallied to her help.  No sooner was the Emperor out of reach than walls and houses rose again with the speed of magic, till Milan stood reincarnate, fairer and stronger than before.

A similar though slower growth can be traced among the cities of the North.  As early as 1067 we find the town of Mans near Normandy rebelling against its lord.  Still earlier had Henry the City-builder thought it wise to strengthen and fortify his peasantry, despite the counsel of his barons.  Indeed, through all the Middle Ages we find kings and commons drawn often into union by their mutual antagonism to the feudal nobility.  Barbarossa, even while he quarrelled with the Italian cities, encouraged those of Germany.

At the same time that Frederick was thus reasserting the imperial power, England had a strong king in Henry II.  By wedding the most important feudal heiress in France, Henry added so many provinces to his ancestral French domain of Normandy that more than half France lay in his possession, and the French kings found that in this overgrown duke, who was also an independent monarch, they possessed a vassal far wealthier and more powerful than themselves.  Henry took more than one step toward the humiliation, or even subjugation, of France, but seems to have been hampered by a real feudal respect for his overlord.  Moreover, he got into the same difficulty as the Emperor.  He quarrelled with the Church, and found it too strong for him.  Much of his time and most of his energy were devoted to his celebrated struggle against his great bishop, Thomas Becket.[2]

Thus the French King was given time and opportunity to strengthen his sovereignty.  Then came the great Third Crusade, altering and once more upsetting the growing forces of the times, and among its many unforeseen results was the rescue of France from the grip of her too mighty vassal.  The long threatening recapture of Jerusalem became a fact in 1187.[3] The Christian kingdom established by the First Crusade was overthrown; and Emperor Barbarossa, in his splendid and revered old age, vowed to attempt its reestablishment.