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INNOCENT III AND THE STATES OF EUROPE 469 arrived with only about ten thousand troops, he soon gained by negotiation more than the Christians had possessed since the recapture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1 187 ; namely, the possession of Jerusalem and Bethlehem and other holy places and a right of way to these from the coast. When Frederick returned to Europe, he found that dur- ing his absence papal troops had been overrunning his king- dom, but he rapidly drove them out and in 1230 Frederick secured the removal of his excommunication. Nation 111 He then built up in Sicily and southern Italy the of Sicily most absolute monarchy and strongly centralized state of his time. He had great capacity for administrative detail and ruled the feudal nobility with a strong hand. They were deprived of their castles and forbidden to wage wars with one another, and the king kept criminal justice under his own control. Such methods of judicial procedure as the ordeal and wager of battle were abandoned and court pro- cedure was fully controlled by the judges and was not in the hands of the litigants. Frederick took from his subjects not w> only feudal dues, but taxes in the modern sense on land, persons, and trade. Salt, metals, and dye-works were state monopolies, as indeed they had been in the period of Arabian rule. But we learn of these matters from a book of laws compiled for his kingdom by Frederick in 1231. He also promoted the economic welfare of his kingdom with the result that he soon received a handsome income from it. Frederick, however, was about to become embroiled in wars with the Lombard cities and the Papacy which would require the last penny that he had in his treasury. War . h The pope had again undertaken to arbitrate the Lom- between the emperor and the Lombard League, ar eague but had failed to secure from the cities the least submission to the imperial authority and had aroused in Frederick a strong suspicion that he was secretly encouraging the com- munes in their attempt to maintain a complete independ- ence. In 1234 young Henry rebelled against his father in Germany and formed an alliance with the Lombard League, but he was captured and replaced as King of Germany