It was about the end of the year 1267 that the young Conradin, aged only sixteen years, arrived at Verona, with ten thousand cavalry, to claim the inheritance of which the popes had despoiled his family. All the Ghibellines and brave captains, who had distinguished themselves in the service of his grandfather and uncle, hastened to join him, and to aid him with their swords and counsel. The republics of Pisa and Siena, always devoted to his family, but whose zeal was now redoubled by their jealousy of the Florentines, made immense sacrifices for him. The Romans, offended at the pope’s having abandoned their city for Viterbo, as well as jealous of his pretensions in the republic, from the government of which he had excluded the nobles, opened their gates to Conradin, and promised him aid. But all these efforts, all this zeal, did not suffice to defend the heir of the house of Hohenstaufen against the valour of the French. Conradin entered the kingdom of his fathers by the Abruzzi and met Charles of Anjou in the plain of Tagliacozzo, on the 23rd of August, 1268. A desperate battle ensued; victory long remained doubtful. Two divisions of the army of Charles were already destroyed; and the Germans, who considered themselves the victors, were dispersed in pursuit of the enemy; when the French prince, who, till then, had not appeared on the field, fell on them with his body of reserve, and completely routed them. Conradin, forced to fly, was arrested, forty-five miles from Tagliacozzo, as he was about to embark for Sicily. He was brought to Charles, who, without pity for his youth, esteem for his courage, or respect for his just right, exacted from the iniquitous judges before whom he subjected him to the mockery of a trial, a sentence of death. Conradin was beheaded in the market-place at Naples, on the 26th of October, 1268. With him perished several of his most illustrious companions in arms—German princes, Ghibelline nobles, and citizens of Pisa; and, after the sacrifice of these first victims, an uninterrupted succession of executions long continued to fill the Two Sicilies with dismay.
The defeat and death of Conradin established the preponderance of the Guelf party throughout the peninsula. Charles placed himself at the head of it; the pope named him imperial vicar in Italy during the interregnum of the empire, and sought to annex to that title all the rights formerly exercised by the emperors in the free cities. Clement IV died on the 29th of November, 1268—one month after the execution of Conradin. The cardinals remained thirty-three months without being able to agree on the choice of a successor. During this interregnum—the longest the pontifical chair had ever experienced—Charles remained sole chief of the Guelf party, ruling over the whole of Italy, which had neither pope nor emperor. He convoked, in 1269, a diet of the Lombard cities at Cremona, in which the towns of Piacenza, Cremona, Parma, Modena, Ferrara, and Reggio, consented to confer on him the signoria; Milan, Como, Vercelli, Novara, Alessandria, Tortona, Turin, Pavia, Bergamo, and Bologna, declared they should feel honoured by his alliance and friendship, but could not take him for master. Italy already felt the weight of the French yoke, which would have pressed still heavier if the crusade against Tunis to which Charles of Anjou was summoned by his brother, St. Louis, had not diverted his projects of ambition.
The conclave assembled at Viterbo at length raised to the vacant chair Teobaldo Visconti, of Piacenza, who was at that time in the Holy Land. On his return to Italy, in the year 1272, he took the name of Gregory X. This wise and moderate man soon discovered that the court of Rome had overreached itself; in crushing the house of Hohenstaufen, it had given itself a new master not less dangerous than the preceding. Gregory, instead of seeking to annihilate the Ghibellines, like his predecessors, occupied himself only in endeavouring to restore an equilibrium and peace between them and the Guelfs. He persuaded the Florentines and Sienese to recall the exiled Ghibellines, for the purpose, as he announced, of uniting all Christendom in the defence of the Holy Land; and testified the strongest resentment against Charles, who threw obstacles in the way of this reconciliation. He relieved Pisa from the interdict that had been laid on it by the holy see. He showed favour to Venice and Genoa; both of which, offended by the arrogance and injustice of Charles, had made common cause with his enemies. He engaged the electors of Germany to take advantage of the death of Richard of Cornwall, which took place in 1271, and put an end to the interregnum by proceeding to a new election. The electors conferred the crown, in 1273, on Rudolf of Habsburg, founder of the house of Austria. The death of Gregory X, in the beginning of January, 1276, deprived him of the opportunity to develop the projects which these first steps seem to indicate; but Nicholas III, who succeeded him in 1277, after three ephemeral popes, undertook more openly to humble Charles, and to support the Ghibelline party. He forced the king of Sicily to renounce the title of imperial vicar, to which Charles had no title except during the interregnum of the empire; he still further engaged him to resign the title of senator of Rome, and the dignity of the signoria, which had been conferred on him by the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany, by representing to him that his power over these provinces was contrary to the bull of investiture, which had put him in possession of the kingdom of Naples.
Rudolf of Habsburg, who had never visited Italy, and was ignorant of the geography of that country, was, in his turn, persuaded by the pope to confirm the charters of Louis le Débonnaire, of Otto I, and of Henry VI, of which copies were sent to him. In these charters, whether true or false, taken from the chancery at Rome, the sovereignty of the whole of Emilia or Romagna, the Pentapolis, the march of Ancona, the patrimony of St. Peter, and the Campagna of Rome, from Radicofani to Ceperano, were assigned to the church. The imperial chancery confirmed, without examination, a concession which had never been really made. The two Fredericks, as well as their predecessors, had always considered this whole extent of country as belonging to the empire, and always exercised there the imperial rights. A chancellor of Rudolf arrived in these provinces to demand homage and the oath of allegiance, which were yielded without difficulty; but Nicholas appealed against this homage, and called it a sacrilegious usurpation. Rudolf was obliged to acknowledge that it was in contradiction to his own diplomas, and resigned his pretensions. From that period, 1278, the republics held of the holy see and not of the emperor.
[1277-1280 A.D.]
A revolution, not long previous, in the principal cities of Lombardy, had secured the preponderance to the nobles and the Ghibelline party. These, having been for a considerable period exiled from Milan, experienced a continuation of disasters, and, instead of fear, excited compassion. While Napoleon della Torre, chief of the republic of Milan, was exasperating the plebeians and Guelfs with his arrogance and contempt of their freedom, he was informed that Otto Visconti, whom he had exiled, although archbishop of Milan, had assembled around him at Como many nobles and Ghibellines, with whom he intended making an attack on the Milanese territory. Napoleon marched to meet him; but, despising enemies whom he had so often vanquished, he carelessly suffered himself to be surprised by the Ghibellines at Desio, in the night of the 21st of January, 1277. Having been made prisoner, with five of his relatives, he and they were placed in three iron cages, in which the archbishop kept them confined. This prelate was himself received with enthusiasm at Milan, at Cremona, and Lodi. He formed anew the councils of these republics, admitting only Ghibellines and nobles, who, ruined by a long exile, and often supported by the liberality of the archbishop, were become humble and obsequious; their deference degenerated into submission, and the republic of Milan, henceforth governed by the Visconti, became soon no more than a principality.
GHIBELLINE SUCCESSES; THE SICILIAN VESPERS
Nicholas III, of the noble Roman family of the Orsini, felt a hereditary affection for the Ghibellines, and everywhere favoured them. A rivalry between two illustrious families of Bologna, the Gieremei and the Lambertazzi, terminated, in 1274, in the exile of the latter (who were Ghibellines) with all their adherents. The quarrel between the two families became, from that period, a bloody war throughout Romagna. Guido de Montefeltro, lord of the mountains in the neighbourhood of Urbino, who had never joined any republic, received the Ghibellines into his country; and in commanding them gained the reputation of a great captain. Nicholas III sent a legate to Romagna, to compel Bologna and all the Guelf republics to recall the Ghibellines, and establish peace throughout the province. He succeeded in 1279. Another legate on a similar mission, and with equal success, was sent to Florence and Siena. The balance seemed at last on the point of being established in Italy, when Nicholas died, on the 19th of August, 1280.
[1280-1282 A.D.]
Charles, who had submitted without opposition, and without even manifesting any displeasure, to the depression of a party on which were founded all his hopes, and to a reconciliation which destroyed his influence in the Guelf republics, hastened to Viterbo as soon as he learned the death of the pope, fully resolved not to suffer another of his enemies to ascend the chair of St. Peter. He caused three cardinals, relatives of Nicholas, whom he regarded as being adverse to him, to be removed by force from the conclave; and, striking terror into the rest, he obtained, on the 22nd of January, 1281, the election of a pope entirely devoted to him. This was a canon of Tours, who took the name of Martin IV. He seemed to have no higher mission than that of seconding the ambition of the king of the Two Sicilies, and serving him in his enmities. Far from thinking of forming any balance to his power, he laboured to give him the sovereignty of all Italy. He conferred on him the title of senator of Rome; he gave the government of all the provinces of the church to his French officers; he caused the Ghibellines to be exiled from all the cities; and he encouraged, with all his power, the new design of Charles to take possession of the Eastern Empire.