Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and his allies, many of them vassals and former supporters of his paternal cousin Duke Henry III, "the Lion", had defeated the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. In 1180 "Frederick I Barbarossa" stripped "Henry the Lion" of his duchies. In 1182 he and his wife Matilda Plantagenêt, the daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine and sister of Richard Lionheart left from Stade to go into exile from the Holy Roman Empire in order to stay with "Henry II of England".