But a change quickly took place in the fortunes of the indomitable old pope.  Robert Guiscard, Duke of Normandy, who had won for himself a principality in lower Italy, now marched to the relief of his friend Gregory, stormed and took the city at the head of his Norman freebooters, and at once began the work of pillage, in disregard of Gregory’s remonstrances.  The result was an unusual one.  The citizens of Rome, made desperate by their losses, gathered in multitudes and drove the plunderers from their city, and Gregory with them.  The Normans, thus expelled, took the pope to Salerno, where he died the following year, 1085, his last words being, “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore do I die in exile.”

As for his imperial enemy, the remainder of his life was one of incessant war.  Years of battle were needed to put down his enemies in the state, and his triumph was quickly followed by the revolt of his own son, Henry, who reduced his father so greatly that the old emperor was thrown into prison and forced to sign an abdication of the throne.  It is said that he became subsequently so reduced that he was forced to sell his boots to obtain means of subsistence, but this story may reasonably be doubted.  Henry died in 1106, again under excommunication, so that he was not formally buried in consecrated ground until 1111, the interdict being continued for five years after his death.

ANECDOTES OF MEDIAEVAL GERMANY.

THE WIVES OF WEINSBERG.

In the year of grace 1140 a German army, under Conrad III., emperor, laid siege to the small town of Weinsberg, the garrison of which resisted with a most truculent and disloyal obstinacy.  Germany, which for centuries before and after was broken into warring factions, to such extent that its emperors could truly say, “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” was then divided between the two strong parties of the Welfs and the Waiblingers,—­or the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, as pronounced by the Italians and better known to us.  The Welfs were a noble family whose ancestry could be traced back to the days of Charlemagne.  The Waiblingers derived their name from the town of Waiblingen, which belonged to the Hohenstaufen family, of which the Emperor Conrad was a representative.

And now, as often before and after, the Guelphs, and Ghibellines were at war, Duke Welf holding Weinsberg vigorously against his foes of the imperial party, while his relative, Count Welf of Altorf, marched to his relief.  A battle ensued between emperor and count, which ended in the triumph of the emperor and the flight of the count.  And this battle is worthy of mention, as distinguished from the hundreds of battles which are unworthy of mention, from the fact that in it was first heard a war-cry which continued famous for centuries afterwards.  The German war-cry preceding this period had been “Kyrie Eleison” ("Lord, have mercy upon us!” a pious invocation