Richard, king of England, and Philip Augustus, king of France—who warmly espoused the cause of Philip—spared no amount of flatteries and professions to win over the pope to the party of their respective candidates. But he delayed, having too many objects in view to be straightforward. In the meantime war broke out along the Rhine. Philip, at the first, gained great advantages; he advanced almost to the gates of Cologne; but a powerful army of Rhenish prelates and Flemish nobles caused him to retreat. The largest and most powerful part of the empire acknowledged and supported the cause of Philip; the clergy and the Count of Flanders stood almost alone on the side of Otho.
It was a civil war of the most ferocious and barbarous lawlessness. At the end of the first year, fortune favored the cause of Philip. The death of Richard, in 1199, had deprived Otho of his most powerful ally. John, who succeeded him, was not disposed to part with his money for such a distant and uncertain game. The war might now have terminated with a fair show of honor, even to Otho; but papal vengeance against the hated house of Hohenstaufen was not yet full. The pope openly avowed the cause of the usurper, Otho; and for nine long dreary years, with but short intervals of truce, Germany was abandoned by the tender shepherd of the Tiber to all the horrors of a civil war. But the deceitful underhand policy of Innocent became apparent to all. His suffering flock accused and reproached him as the guilty cause of all their misery, as having provoked, inflamed, and kept up the disastrous strife, for the gratification of his own malicious purpose of ruining the royal house of Henry the Severe. It required all his wits, with the help of Satan, to acquit himself of the charge.
But the war had done its work—its dragon work. "It was a war, not of decisive battles, but of marauding, desolation, havoc, plunder, wasting of harvests, ravaging open and defenseless countries—war, waged by prelate against prelate, by prince against prince; wild Bohemians, and bandit soldiers of every race, were roving through every province. Throughout the land there was no law; the roads were impassable on account of robbers; nothing was spared, nothing sacred, church or cloister." Such, and worse, was the civil war in Germany Yet the unrelenting mind of the wretched man continued to thunder his anathemas against Philip; declared all oaths which had been taken to him null and void, and showered privileges and immunities of all sorts on the bishops and the monastic societies who espoused the party of Otho. But the thunders of the Vatican became unavailing, and the strength of Philip increased year by year.
The course of events could not fail to tell even on the inflexible mind of Innocent. He was threatened with the humiliation of a total defeat. At the close of ten years the cause of Otho was hopeless. But how can the pope forget his vows of implacable enmity against the house of Swabia, or struggle out of his vows of perpetual alliance with the house of Saxony? He must find some holy and pious reasons for abandoning the cause of Otho, and espousing the cause of Philip. He found great difficulty in covering the shame of this debasing position. But Philip made such ample professions and promises to the pope by his ambassadors, that he saw it to be his duty to receive back his penitent son, and absolve him from the censures of the church. The papal legate proceeded to Metz, and there proclaimed him the victorious Emperor.