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470 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE by Conrad his brother. In 1237 Frederick administered a crushing defeat to the League, and, although Milan and several other cities remained untaken, he promptly intro- duced his administrative system wherever he could in the north. But he appointed Italians as his officials instead of Germans as Barbarossa and Henry VI had done. The pope was alarmed by this turn of affairs and still more by Frederick's occupation of Tuscany and the mar- , r riaere of Enzio, one of Frederick's illegitimate Renewal of * J . / . & strife with sons, to a Sardinian heiress, and his assumption the Papacy of the ■ title of king of that is l and which the Papacy claimed as its fief. Accordingly, while he gave many other reasons for his action, such as that Frederick was a heretic and had oppressed the Church in Sicily, Gregory IX in 1239 again excommunicated him, freed his subjects from their allegiance, vainly endeavored to set up a rival candi- date to the throne in Germany, and allied with the Lombard League and Venice and Genoa against Frederick in Italy. But from 1241 to 1243 there was a vacancy in the Papacy and when Innocent IV finally was elected, he soon fled from Italy to Lyons. There a council was held in 1245 and Frederick was excommunicated and deposed once more. With this began a struggle to the death between the Papacy and the House of Hohenstaufen. Anti-kings made End of the trouble in Germany, Heinrich Raspe from 1246 Hohen- to 1 247 and William of Holland from 1247 to 1256; then followed until 1273 a period of inter- regnum during which there was no imperial authority in Germany. In Italy young Enzio was captured in 1249 and kept in honorable captivity at Bologna for the remaining twenty- two years of his life. Frederick himself died in 1250 and his son Conrad four years later, leaving an infant son Conradin. Manfred, however, another son of Frederick and half-brother of Conrad, continued the struggle in Italy as King of Sicily. Henry III of England was induced by the pope in 1254 to accept the throne of Sicily for his second son Edmund and to supply the pope with money in return, but Edmund never gained Sicily. Then Urban IV (1261-1264),