In vain did a paternal letter invite this son to repentance:¹⁷³ it was replied, that an excommunicated person was not acknowledged as father, or as king.
¹⁷³ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 2, p. 480.
Loosed from his oaths, and from his duties, by the sovereign pontiff, the youthful Henry took up arms, and had himself elected emperor in a diet held at Mayence. Henry the elder, retired to the castle of Ingelheim: there the archbishops, sent by the Diet, came to summon him to surrender to them the crown and other insignia of his power:
“Thou “hast rent the church of God, said they to him, “thou hast sold the bishopricks, the abbeys, every “ecclesiastical dignity; thou hast in no case res− “pected the sacred canons: for all these causes, it “has pleased the pope and the German princes to “expel thee from the throne as from the church.”
“I adjure you,” replied the monarch, “you archbi− “shop of Cologne, and you of Mayence, who “hold of me your rich prelacies, to declare, what “was the price at which you purchased them of “me. Oh! if I only exacted from you the oath of fide− “lity to me, wherefore do you become the accom− “plices, the chiefs of my enemies? Could you “not wait the termination of a life which so many “misfortunes might abridge, and at least, permit “my own hands to place the crown on the head of “my beloved son.”
But Henry was not speaking to fathers; he addressed himself to inflexible prelates:
“Is it not to us, cried one of them, the privilege “belongs to create kings, and to dethrone them “when we have made a bad choice?”
At these words, the three archbishops fell on their sovereign; they tore the imperial crown from his head; and while he assured them, that if he suffered at this moment for the sins of his youth, they would not escape the punishment due to their sacrilegious disloyalty, they smiled at his menace, and to secure impunity for their crime by consummating it speedily, they hastened to Mayence, to consecrate and bless in the name of God the parricide Henry V.¹⁷⁴
Heniy IV. shut up in Louvain, saw an army of faithful subjects assemble around him. At their head he obtained a victory over the rebels; but, vanquished without resource, in a second combat, he fell into the hands of his enemies, who loaded him with insults. “The hatred of the popes,” writes this unhappy sovereign to Henry the I. King of France,¹⁷⁵