journey to Italy to assert.

But the results of Frederick's first expedition to Italy were of a
very doubtful kind. It is true that he was crowned at Rome, that he
asserted his imperial rights both positively in a great assembly on
the plains of Roncaglia and, as it were, negatively by the destruction
of three refractory towns, and that he got rid of Arnold of Brescia.
But, on the other hand, his assertion of power provoked hatred instead
of fear; and although, despite some sharp differences, he parted
amicably from the Pope, his return to Germany left Hadrian in an
impossible position. The republican party in Rome remained untouched:
William of Sicily was unsubdued.

[Sidenote: Papal defiance.]

Shortly after his accession Frederick had made an agreement with the
then Pope that neither should make peace with the Romans or the
Sicilian King without consent of the other. But now Hadrian, deserted,
accepted the Commune as the civil authority in Rome, and even came to
a treaty with William of Sicily, who engaged to hold all his lands as
a vassal of the Pope. Frederick was naturally angry at the repudiation
of the mutual obligation with regard to peace and of the imperial
suzerainty of William's duchy of Apulia. But he was too much occupied
in Germany to do more than protest. And before he was able to assert
his power in Italy again Pope Hadrian had, as it were, thrown down a
challenge to him. At the Diet of Besancon in Burgundy in 1157 two
papal envoys appeared with a complaint of Frederick's conduct in some
particular. The letter which they bore spoke of the late coronation of
the Emperor by the Pope and used the equivocal word _beneficia_
to describe the papal act. When the assembled nobles resented the