The wrath of the people was concentrated against one man, and he the
highest in the land; to blame, of course, in a secondary degree, but not
the one primarily at fault for this deplorable state of things. The
Emperor, always indolent from the time he came to the throne, had grown
old and crabbed and fat, caring for nothing but his flagon of wine that
stood continually at his elbow. Laxity of rule in the beginning allowed
his nobles to get the upper hand, and now it would require a civil war
to bring them into subjection again. They, sitting snug in their
strongholds, with plenty of wine in their cellars and corn in their
bins, cared nothing for the troubles of the city. Indeed, those who
inhabited either bank of the Rhine, watching from their elevated castles
the main avenue of traffic between Frankfort and Cologne, her chief
market, had throughout that long reign severely taxed the merchants
conveying goods downstream. During the last five years, their exactions
became so piratical that finally they killed the goose that laid the
golden eggs, so now the Rhine was without a boat, and Frankfort without
a buyer.

For too long Frankfort had looked to the Emperor, whose business it was
to keep order in his domain, and when at last the merchants, combining
to help themselves, made an effort towards freedom, it was too late. The
result of their combination was a flotilla of nearly a hundred boats,
which, gathering at Frankfort and Mayence, proceeded together down the
river, convoyed by a fleet containing armed men, and thus they thought
to win through to Cologne, and so dispose of their goods. But the robber
Barons combined also, hung chains across the river at the Lorely rocks,
its narrowest part, and realizing that this fleet could defeat any
single one of them, they for once acted in concert, falling upon the
boats when their running against the chains threw them into confusion.