"For a long time have we wept by the rivers of confusion, and have incessantly prayed for the protection of a just king, who should ... put us back in our just rights. When you, successor of Cæsar and Augustus, crossing the ridges of the Apennines, brought back the venerable insignia of Rome ... like the sun suddenly uprising, new hope of better time for Italy shone out. But now men think you delay, or surmise that you are going back ... and we are constrained by doubt to stand uncertain and to cry, like John the Baptist, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?... Do you not know, most excellent of Princes, do you not see from the watch-tower of your exalted height, where the stinking little fox lurks, safe from the hunters? In truth, the evil beast does not drink of the headlong Po, nor of your Tiber, but its wickedness pollutes the rushing waters of the Arno, and the name of this dire, pernicious creature (do you not know?) is Florence. She is the viper turned against the breast of its mother; she is the sick sheep that contaminates the whole herd of her master. Indeed with the fierceness of a viper she strives to tear her mother; she sharpens the horns of rebellion against Rome, who made her in her own image and likeness....
"Up, then, break this delay, take confidence from the eyes of the Lord God of Hosts, in whose sight you act, and lay low this Goliath with the sling of your wisdom and the stone of your strength; for with his death the dark night of fear shall cover the camp of the Philistines, and they shall flee, and Israel shall be set free. And just as now, exiles in Babylon, we mourn remembering holy Jerusalem, so, then, citizens and at home, we shall breathe in peace and turn the miseries of confusion into joy.
"Written in Tuscany ... fourteen days before the kalends of May, 1311, in the first year of the coming into Italy of the divine and most happy Henry."
Henry did go south, but there were greater obstacles in his way than Dante imagined. The spirit of the age was against him. It was vain to try to bring back the past. Florence shut her gates, manned her walls, sent more money to his enemies, and headed a league of the Guelf cities in Tuscany and Umbria. Even Rome was half against him. The Ghibelline nobles received him and took him to their part of the town; but the Guelfs held St. Peter's, and though there was fierce fighting in the streets, the Guelfs stood their ground, and Henry was forced to receive the Imperial crown from the papal legate (the Pope was too prudent to leave Avignon) in the basilica of St. John Lateran. Here the luckless Emperor stayed for a time in the midst of ruin, material, political, and moral. Then he attempted to crush Florence, the ringleader of disobedience, but her walls were too strong; the impotent Emperor could do no more than harry the country-side. He fell back upon Ghibelline Pisa, and set patiently to work to gather together a new army. The Ghibellines gallantly responded to his call, and Henry actually set forth on his way to Naples, to punish the House of Anjou and avenge the Hohenstaufens, but death cut short his lofty plans. He died in a little town near Siena (1313), and the hopes of Dante and the Ghibellines were ruined forever. The last flicker of the Empire had gone out.
Other Emperors, it is true, crossed the Alps, but not as masters. The connection of Italy with the Holy Roman Empire ends with the death of the gallant Henry. The mediæval Papacy and the mediæval Empire had passed away, for the Middle Ages themselves had come to an end.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] Storia di Firenze, lib. ix, cap. cxxxv.