section_path: High Middle Ages/Rise of state power
section_name: Rise of state power
paragraph_text: Rise of state power
  
  The High Middle Ages saw the development of institutions that would dominate political life in Europe beyond the late 18th century. The kings' right to rule without a foreign power's intercession became widely accepted, introducing the idea of state sovereignty. The concept of hereditary monarchy was strengthening, and the first queens regnant assumed power as female succession was recognised in most countries. The chancery emerged as the central office of royal government and a court of appeals. Taxation quickly developed, because revenues from the royal domains could no more cover state expenditures. Extraordinary taxes were initially levied for military purposes, but by the end of the period taxes were collected more regularly. Effective taxation depended on consent which reinforced the role of representative assemblies, allowing them to exert influence on state administration.
  
  The papacy, long attached to an ideology of independence from secular influence, first asserted its claim to temporal authority over the Christian world. The Papal Monarchy reached its zenith under the pontificate of Innocent III (pope 1198–1216). As rulers of much of central Italy and feudal overlords of some of the Catholic rulers, the popes became deeply involved in secular politics. Sicily and southern Italy had been seized by Norman war bands from the local Lombard, Byzantine and Muslim rulers between 1016 and 1091, and Roger II (r. 1105–54) united the Norman principalities into the Kingdom of Sicily.
  
  In the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottonians were replaced by the Salians in 1024. They protected the lesser nobility to reduce ducal power, and seized Burgundy before clashing with the papacy under Henry IV. After an interval from 1125 and 1137, the Hohenstaufens succeeded the Salians. Their recurring conflicts with the papacy allowed the northern Italian cities and the German princes to extort considerable concessions from them. In 1183, Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 1155–90) sanctioned the right of the Lombard cities to elect their leaders; the princes' autonomy was recognised during the reign of his grandson, Frederick II (r. 1220–50). Frederick II's efforts to dominate Italy eventually led to the fall of his dynasty. In Germany, a period of interregnum civil war began during which Sicily—Frederick's maternal inheritance—was seized by the ambitious French prince Charles I of Anjou (r. 1266–85). During the civil war, the right of seven prince-electors to elect the king was reaffirmed. Rudolf of Habsburg (r. 1273–91), the first German king to be elected after the interregnum, realised that he could not control the whole empire. He granted Austria to his sons, establishing the basis for the Habsburgs ' future dominance in central Europe. After his death, three Alpine peasant communities formed the Swiss Confederacy to defend their judicial autonomy against his kinsmen.
  
  The French monarchy slowly began to expand its authority over the nobility. The kings faced a powerful rival in the Dukes of Normandy, who conquered England in 1066 under William the Conqueror (r. 1035–87). The cross-channel empire further expanded when Henry II (r. 1154–89) of the Angevin dynasty ascended the throne, since he had seized large areas of France through inheritance and marriage. The first Anglo-Norman lordships in Ireland were established during his reign. The Angevin Empire remained intact under his son Richard I (r. 1189–99), but Richard's brother John (r. 1199–1216) lost the northern French possessions to the French king Philip II Augustus (r. 1180–1223). John's financial exactions to pay for his unsuccessful attempts to regain Normandy led to the 1215 Magna Carta, a charter that confirmed the rights and privileges of free men in England. In France, Philip Augustus's son Louis VIII (r. 1223–26) distributed large portions of his father's conquests among his younger sons as appanages —virtually independent provinces—to facilitate their administration. His son Louis IX (r. 1226–70) improved local administration by appointing inspectors, known as enquêteurs, to oversee the royal officials' conduct. The royal court at Paris began hearing litigants in regular sessions almost year-round.
  
  The Iberian Christian states began to push back against the Islamic powers in the south, a period known as the Reconquista. After a number of divisions and reunifications of the Christian states, the Christian north had coalesced into the four kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal by 1230. Aragon emerged as a naval power, conquering Sicily from the Italian Angevins and Sardinia from the Genoese. Southern Iberia remained under the control of Islamic states, initially under the Caliphate of Córdoba (which broke up in 1031 into a shifting number of petty states known as taifas). Although the Almoravids and the Almohads (two dynasties from the Maghreb) established centralised rule of southern Iberia in the 1110s and 1170s respectively, their empires quickly disintegrated and allowed further expansion of the Christian kingdoms. The Catholic Scandinavian states also expanded; the Norwegian kings assumed control of the Norse colonies in Iceland and Greenland, Denmark seized parts of Estonia, and the Swedes conquered Finland.
  
  In the east, Kievan Rus' fell apart into independent principalities. Among them, the northern Vladimir-Suzdal emerged as the dominant power after Suzdalian troops sacked Kyiv in 1169. Poland also disintegrated into autonomous duchies, enabling the Czech kings to expand in the prosperous Duchy of Silesia. The kings of Hungary seized Croatia, but respected the liberties of the native aristocracy. They claimed (but only periodically achieved) suzerainty over other lands and peoples such as Dalmatia, Bosnia, and the nomadic Cumans. The Cumans supported the Bulgarians and Vlachs during their anti-Byzantine revolt that led to the restoration of Bulgaria in the late 12th century. West of Bulgaria, Serbia gained independence.
  
  With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the Eurasian Steppe under Genghis Khan (r. 1206–27), a new expansionist power reached Europe. The Mongols conquered Volga Bulgaria, shattered the Rus' principalities, and laid waste to large regions in Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria between 1236 and 1242. Their commander-in-chief, Batu Khan (r. 1241–56)—a grandson of Genghis Khan—set up his capital in Sarai on the Volga, establishing the Golden Horde: a virtually-autonomous Mongol state. The Mongols extracted heavy tribute from the Rus' principalities, and the Rus' princes had to ingratiate themselves with the Mongol khans for economic and political concessions. Under Mongol pressure, the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate disintegrated into small (but often aggressive) Turkic lordships such as the one ruled by the Ottoman clan on the Byzantine border. The Mongol conquest was followed by a peaceful period in eastern Europe, facilitating the development of direct trade contacts between Europe and China through new Genoese colonies in the Black Sea region. The new land and sea routes to the Far East were described by the trader Marco Polo (d. 1324).