This is the famous Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who, according to the German popular tradition, is still sitting in a cave in the Kipphaüser mountains, waiting for something to happen, while his beard has grown through the stone-table before him. In 1162 he burned and devastated Milan, Brescia, Piacenza, and Cremona. He was drowned in the Salef in Armenia, on his crusade in 1190, endeavoring to ford the river on horseback in his impatience to cross. His character is thus drawn by Milman, History of Latin Christianity , Book VIII Ch. 7, and sufficiently explains why Dante calls him “the good Barbarossa”:⁠—