Frederick I Barbarossa
Frederick Barbarossa was Holy Roman Emperor for thirty-eight years, spent much of it fighting Italian cities, and drowned in a river on crusade. Born around 1122, he was elected in 1152 as a compromise: his father was a Hohenstaufen and his mother a Welf, and the princes chose him precisely because he might end the feud that had divided Germany for a generation. He settled Germany by concession — restoring Bavaria to Henry the Lion, elevating Austria to a duchy with extraordinary privileges in 1156, and treating the great princes as partners. Italy he treated differently. The Lombard cities had grown rich and effectively self-governing while emperors were absent, and Frederick's lawyers at Bologna established from Roman law that the regalian rights — tolls, courts, mints, appointments — belonged to him. He came south six times. He destroyed Milan in 1162, deporting its population and sowing the site with salt. The cities formed the Lombard League with papal support and beat him at Legnano in 1176, where his own cavalry broke on massed infantry and he was unhorsed and thought dead. He made peace at Venice and then at Constance in 1183, conceding self-government in exchange for recognition of his suzerainty. He destroyed Henry the Lion in 1180 for refusing to bring troops to Italy, and broke up both duchies, which fragmented Germany permanently. He took the cross in 1189 at nearly seventy, and drowned in the Saleph river in Anatolia in June 1190. His army disintegrated. German legend later had him asleep in a mountain, to wake when the country needed him, and the Nazis named the invasion of Russia after him.
- Lived: 1122 CE – 1190 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader, crusader
