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Updated: June 9, 2025
Innocent loyally took up her work, and struggled with all his might to preserve the kingdom of Frederick against his many enemies. But the contest was a long and a fierce one. No sooner was Constance dead than the Germans came back to their prey. The fierce Markwald, driven from Romagna by the papal triumph, claimed the regency and the custody of the King.
But it was then as afterward a dangerous experiment. Walter of Brienne and his small French following invaded Apulia, and fought hard against Diepold of Acerra, another of King Henry's Germans. Meanwhile Markwald, now in open alliance with the Bishop of Troja, made himself master of Sicily and regent of the young King.
Roffrid, Abbot of Monte Casino, a tried friend of Henry VI, declared for Innocent against Markwald, who in revenge besieged the great monastery, until a summer storm drove him baffled from its walls.
Having thus obtained the indispensable papal confirmation, Constance ruled in Naples as a national queen in the name of the little Frederick. She drove away the German bandits, who had made the name of her husband a terror to her subjects. Markwald of Anweiler left his Apulian fiefs for Romagna. But the Pope joined with Constance in hostility to the Germans.
He chased Markwald from Romagna and the March of Ancona to Apulia, and exercised sovereign rights even in the most remote regions that acknowledged him as lord. If it was no very real sway that Innocent wielded, it at least allowed the town leagues and the rustic nobility to go on in their own way, and made it possible for Italy to work out its own destinies.
But the purchased support of Pisa gave Markwald the command of the sea, and Innocent had too many schemes on foot and too little military power at his command to be able to make easy headway against him.
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