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EARLY ITALIAN MERCENARIES

MEDIEVAL ITALY

By the year 1000 secular rulers in Italy were hiring mercenaries to fight against Arabs, Greeks and local enemies; so were the many bishops and abbots, who were more numerous there than anywhere else in the Roman Catholic world and who, as clerics, were not permitted to bear arms. Since many territories were too small to raise armies of any significance, mercenaries were the answer to the rulers’ needs; this was true of the pope’s situation, too. But finding dependable leaders for these bands was not easy: the example of the Normans warned against bringing in ambitious foreigners; vassals would be tempted to enrich themselves; and even entrusting one’s army to an uncle, a brother or nephew was not without some risk.

As Italian cities made themselves independent of lords and bishops, they found themselves in the same situation as the prelates. They had to prevent former rulers from regaining power, suppress banditry and piracy, and defend markets from competitors. Cities, growing rich from the expansion of trade in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, became increasingly important in regional politics – they could better afford to pay mercenaries than could counts or bishops.

Records are probably misleading regarding the earliest mercenary army, because the first to be mentioned was only in 1159, raised by Pope Alexander III to fight Friedrich Barbarossa, the Holy Roman emperor (1152–90) who was hoping to incorporate Italy more fully into his domains. Barbarossa had valid reasons for claiming the territories of Charles the Great (Charlemagne), who in 800 had ruled the lands comprising modern Germany, France and Italy; Barbarossa believed that he could assert that claim effectively in Italy, because many nobles and more than a few cities there promised to assist him in his efforts, if he would help them against local enemies. All this and more is found in Umberto Eco’s Baudolino (2002), a creative effort to tie the exotic places of medieval imagination to actual events of twelfth-century Italy.

Barbarossa ultimately failed, defeated on the battlefield. But he miraculously won back most of his losses at the conference table – if not territories, at least recognition of his rights as Holy Roman emperor. His opponents could not keep armies in the field. Civic armies were excellent for defending their own cities, but were unable to fight at a distance from their homes. Thus, the staying power of feudal armies once again proved their worth. Barbarossa might have come to dominate Italy totally if he had not taken the cross for the Third Crusade in 1189 and drowned in a small stream shortly before entering the Holy Land.

Germany immediately erupted into civil war, and Italy returned to its chaotic petty feuds. The imperial territories were held together by Barbarossa’s son, Heinrich VI (1190–97), who married the heiress to the immensely rich kingdom of Sicily. Then he, too, died, leaving a young son who would grow up to be Friedrich II von Hohenstaufen, the greatest employer of mercenary forces of his era. Friedrich II’s most significant innovation was to hire Arabs and Berbers – Muslims! This was easy because Sicily still had a significant number of Arab inhabitants from the days when they had ruled the island. Friedrich’s Norman ancestors had conquered them, but had not dispossessed them or forced them to become Christians. Therefore, they were well disposed to Friedrich from the beginning.

GUELPHS AND GHIBELLINES

For generations Italians and Germans had been divided into two great parties. The party of the emperors was named after the dynasty that ruled for most of the twelfth century, the Hohenstaufens; Italians, whose pronunciation of German left something to be desired, turned Waiblingen (the district most associated with the Staufen dynasty) into Ghibelline. The party of the popes was named after the Hohenstaufens’ principal rivals in Germany, the Welfs; Italians called them Guelphs.

Italian nobles tended to support the Ghibellines, churchmen the Guelphs; the rising commercial centres, uneasy about demands for more taxes, tended to side with the opposite party of their nominal ruler. But it was a more complex system than it appeared. Alliances would dissolve and reappear. Existing party alliances would be reordered to maintain a balance of power. In addition, popes tended to be suspicious of every emperor, even emperors whose family was Guelph by tradition, because all emperors eventually had to take Ghibelline positions or be reduced to ciphers taking papal orders. When this happened, the popes did not hesitate to make Ghibellines their ally. True believers were encouraged to trust to their betters’ judgement. Papal infallibility, broadly defined, became a political argument long before it was declared a matter of faith in a more limited sphere.

Although everyone had assumed that bishops and abbots would be both ambitious and corrupt, there was always a pious but unrealistic hope that popes could rise above earthly temptations. From the late twelfth century on, however, as popes sought to control central Italy and to dictate policies to all secular rulers, their opponents became ever more sceptical about papal intentions.

POLITICAL CRUSADES

The public wanted to believe in the popes. The holy fathers were, after all, one after another, heads of Roman Christendom. They held, everyone believed, authority derived from Peter, the first of the apostles, bestowed directed from the Son of God himself. The authority included the keys to heaven and hell, the power, if need be, to save sinners or condemn saints. While in practice it was unlikely that any pope would excommunicate a saint, an interdict stopped all religious services – baptisms, confessions, blessing marriages, and last rites – thus punishing the innocent along with the guilty.

In addition, the Donation of Constantine gave the popes secular authority over the lands surrounding Rome (the Papal States) and, theoretically, the entire western Roman Empire. This claim had to be defended by papal armies. Although emperors were sceptical about the legitimacy of the document, they could not prove it a forgery. Thus, most Roman Christians believed that it was genuine until a Renaissance scholar demonstrated that it could not have been written in the fourth century.

Technically speaking, while many popes had authorised or ordered the use of armed force, none had declared a crusade against a Christian before the late twelfth century. That was because the concept of granting a plenary indulgence (the full remission of sin) to crusaders had come into existence barely a century before. If a pope could promise crusaders that, should they be so unlucky as to die on crusade, they would enter immediately into the kingdom of heaven, the next logical step was to promise warriors who fought for the pope in Italy the same rewards.

In 1066, three decades before the first crusade, Pope Alexander II (1061–73) had provided William the Conqueror with a consecrated banner to carry on his invasion of England. Still, it was not until 1199 that a pope declared a formal crusade against a Christian ruler. Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) created that precedent to raise an army against Markward von Anweiler, a prominent lord in the Romagna and the March of Ancona. Similarly Innocent recruited volunteers against Conrad von Uerslingen to recover Spoleto, Assisi and Sora. Though well meant – Innocent could argue that a pope needed the means to enforce his edicts – the potential for abuse was enormous. And where potential existed, actuality would soon appear. Abuses followed quickly, followed by increased scepticism concerning papal motives.

Mercenaries had also become common in crusader armies. As initial enthusiasm for holy war faded, practicality took its place.

FRIEDRICH II VON HOHENSTAUFEN

Friedrich Barbarossa’s death on crusade in 1190 caused his German supporters to stream home to protect their possessions from attacks of Welfs and perhaps even the pope. Richard the Lionheart, assuming leadership of the remaining crusaders, soon offended the French and the remaining Germans. As revenge, the French attacked Normandy and the Germans took Richard prisoner when he tried to slip through Austria in disguise.

Friedrich Barbarossa’s son, Heinrich VI, employed Richard’s ransom to hire a huge army of mercenaries for an invasion of southern Italy and Sicily, the inheritance of his Norman wife. The pope could hardly object, but he was frightened by Heinrich’s swift successes; he was now surrounded by imperial territories, virtually a prisoner and certainly in no position to oppose Heinrich’s wishes. God, however, came to his rescue in the form of a mortal illness, sweeping away both Heinrich and his wife, leaving only a three-year-old son, Friedrich, who was committed to papal protection lest he be murdered by one of the many Germans and Italians who feared that he would unify the Holy Roman Empire with Sicily, making the whole into a centralised, Ghibelline state.

Young Friedrich alone among the monarchs of Europe had potential to surround, and then engulf, the papal states. Still, Pope Innocent III was unwilling to murder him. He persuaded himself that it was safe to leave Sicily and Naples under the control of a governor till Friedrich attained his majority, then to use him against any bullying by the Holy Roman emperor. In the meantime, the electors of the Holy Roman Empire, wanting a mature ruler, chose Friedrich’s uncle as German king. Innocent decided to tame this emperor-elect by supporting a Welf challenger. This was unsuccessful, but soon the successful Hohenstaufen was assassinated because of a personal quarrel.

Innocent III, though a strong figure who humbled kings and launched crusades, was unable to persuade the Welf emperor to follow his dictates, either; as a result, he had to replace him. The only viable candidate was the young king of Sicily, Friedrich.

Friedrich, meanwhile, had learned some valuable lessons by observation and experience. He had been tutored in languages, literature, science and statecraft, but his highly original mind took him far beyond conventional lessons. He looked deeper into issues than almost any contemporary. Perhaps this was because he had survived only by understanding what his guardians really meant when they spoke and by adopting appropriately subservient behaviour; if dissembling came naturally to him, so too did believing that others were doing the same. He learned to look for unconventional men to protect him from assassination and to assist in governance; he wanted nobody around who would be likely to betray him or who would report to his enemies or even listen to them.

Friedrich surrounded himself with Muslim bodyguards, who later became the nucleus of his mercenary army. Some of his most loyal followers would follow his example, but not to the extent of learning Arabic as Friedrich did, nor dressing in flowing robes, being attended by African servants or being accompanied by sufficient concubines to make up a harem. His wives he married, impregnated and abandoned in swift succession. All this astounded contemporaries, who quickly dubbed him the Stupor Mundi (the wonder of the world). Young Friedrich, preternaturally aware of the self-serving motives of his various guardians, played whatever role they wished to imagine for him. They never conceived that in a few years they would be seeing in him the Anti-Christ himself.

Friedrich crossed the Alps into Germany in 1215 to be elected German king, the necessary first step to becoming Holy Roman emperor. At the time he seemed only a beautiful and talented young blond hero, skilled in the physical and mental graces, but willing to defer to his elders’ judgements. Poets, girls and patriots were thrilled; and when, having re-established stability to his long disordered northern kingdom, he re-crossed the Alps to be crowned emperor in Rome, he was accompanied by volunteers and mercenaries to repress a rebellion in his Sicilian kingdom.

Honorius III (1216–27) could hardly prevent the emperor making himself master of his own lands, but he was frightened by the speed and thoroughness of Friedrich’s invasion. The papal court was soon flooded by exiles and reports that the emperor was becoming a very dangerous man. The pope was an honourable man, who wanted to find compromises, but his cardinals and Guelph allies pushed him to crush this young upstart while there was still time. Honorius tried bring the emperor to heel, but failed. Everything Honorius did antagonised Friedrich and persuaded many of his supporters that the pope was determined to ruin their every effort to create a stable secular government. Honorius’s successor, Gregory IX (1227–41) was not a man of similar good will; instead, he would use every opportunity to harass Friedrich in Sicily and in Germany. Friedrich’s supporters came to see in Gregory the very personification of evil that the pope claimed to see in the emperor.

The crisis came when Friedrich failed go promptly on crusade. The Fifth Crusade became stuck in the mud of the Egyptian delta in 1219; and when almost the entire crusading force was killed or captured, Friedrich was blamed. The emperor’s vow had been conventionally vague, a statement of good intent that he would fulfil at a convenient moment. Under intense papal pressure, Friedrich gathered a fleet and an army in 1227, and boarded ship for the Holy Land. However, when an epidemic broke out, he turned back and put his men on land to recover. Although military experts understood that sick men could not fight and that crusaders in the Holy Land already would not welcome the arrival of plague ships, Gregory IX was in no mood to tolerate excuses: he excommunicated Friedrich.

Contemporaries were not immediately alarmed. Popes excommunicated emperors all the time. The common assumption was that Friedrich would either hurry to Rome personally to apologise or send emissaries who would offer political concessions until the pope was satisfied. But Friedrich simply loaded his men back on to their vessels and sailed to the Holy Land. Friedrich, after all, had married the heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem and might lose that land if he delayed coming to its defence. Once in the Crusader States he met an unexpectedly hostile reaction from churchmen and local nobles. Apparently they were aware of how strictly Friedrich ruled in Sicily, and the pope had told his legate to recommend a combination of cool politeness and insults.

Friedrich surprised everyone by negotiating directly with the sultan, speaking in Arabic. He suggested a peaceful solution to the situation, a joint Muslim-Christian state ruled by the sultan’s brother and Friedrich’s sister. She turned down the opportunity to end the war, but the Arabs were charmed by the emperor’s worldly practicality; they quoted him as saying that the world had been taken in by three great deceivers: Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. The sultan returned Jerusalem to Christian rule and signed a peace treaty. The Christians were outraged; the new state was indefensible, and in any case Jerusalem should have been won by force of arms.

After two years Friedrich boarded his ship under a shower of rotten fruit and vegetables and sailed for home. When he arrived in Sicily, he discovered that pope-inspired rebels had tried to seize control of the kingdom. He was not in a good mood.

Friedrich recruited mercenaries to restore order, and his plausible threat to invade the Papal States brought him a cease-fire with the pope in 1231 and a removal of the excommunication. Consequently, when he made his impressive state visit to Germany in 1235–7, he had few difficulties in removing a son who had attempted to rule independently and then reforming the constitution along lines that had worked so well in Sicily; he also made his relatively unsophisticated northern subjects aware that they had a more magnificent ruler than they had ever imagined: Arab bodyguards, camels, leopards on golden chains; a patron of poets who could quote in numerous languages, an expert on falcons and women, and the master of the memorable phrase; widely travelled, conversant with kings, churchmen and anchorites; multi-lingual and multi-cultural; a figure who had bent powerful men to his will. It seemed that nothing could stop him.

Pope Gregory determined to make something out of that nothing, and the instrument was fear of Friedrich’s plans to impose the same order on northern Italy that he had in Sicily and less perfectly in Germany. The heart of Gregory’s coalition was Milan, the most populous and wealthy city in Lombardy, but its limbs were composed of the many tiny states to its east and south – Venice, Padua and Florence. Here party loyalties were still important. It remained to be seen whether Friedrich’s imperial vassals and mercenaries could reinforce local Ghibellines sufficiently to overwhelm the Guelph-papacy alliance.

EZZELINO DA ROMANO

Ezzelino was the same age as Friedrich, born in 1194, a fact that the emperor might have appreciated, since he was a student of science, which in those days meant being knowledgeable in astrology. Friedrich would have been even more interested in Ezzelino’s ruthless efficiency and courage; also perhaps his hairy body and black hair, which led the popular imagination to believe that he was the son of Satan; alternatively that he was part dog. The crudeness of these charges suggests the vile nature of political invective in this era; and perhaps the fear and hatred that Ezzelino inspired among his enemies.

Ezzelino’s small ancestral estate was sufficient to provide opportunities for moving up in the world, but it was hardly equal to the rival d’Este family. His grandfather had gone on crusade, his father was a famous womaniser and competent warrior. Ezzelino had a younger brother, Alberico, and sister, Cunizza, who was as beautiful as Ezzelino was ugly, at least according to troubadours, especially the one who later became her lover. The popular explanation for Ezzelino’s appearance was that the devil had raped his mother. Rape, at least, was a socially acceptable explanation. Submitting voluntarily was unimaginable.

Ezzelino had viewed young Friedrich von Hohenstaufen at a distance on his triumphal 1215 journey to Germany, noting that the future seemed to be his. Unfortunately, Friedrich was accompanied by the d’Este. There was no way for a da Romano to obtain as much as an introduction.

The d’Este, bolstered by their new imperial connections, began pressing their neighbours to acknowledge their regional hegemony. With many noble families and wealthy cities seeking to avoid d’Este domination, the da Romano family quickly became prominent among those in the opposing ranks.

Ezzelino’s first military action was in the siege of a d’Este castle which had been used as a base for attacking commercial travellers to and from Padua. Soon after this had been successfully concluded, Ezzelino’s father, though still in the prime of life and in good health, took holy orders. At the same time the elder d’Este died. At the heads of the respective families were Ezzelino, now twenty-six, and Azzo VII d’Este. It was assumed that Azzo would escort Friedrich von Hohenstaufen through northern Italy after he crossed the Alps, but it was Ezzelino who met him. Ezzelino’s newly raised mercenary army outnumbered Friedrich’s forces significantly, a fact that seems to have impressed and worried imperial advisors, but Ezzelino was satisfied with making Friedrich’s acquaintance and taking him south to meet his next escort. Friedrich, who undoubtedly appreciated the seriousness of the situation, marked Ezzelino as a man to watch, perhaps a man to draw to his side.

Not long afterward Ezzelino married the daughter of a prominent local Guelph family, and Cunizza was given to his wife’s brother. Quite likely Cunizza’s looks were the key to this arrangement; certainly his were not. No children came of this or any of Ezzelino’s other liaison with women, a fact noted by popular rumour. The alliance was important in that it involved Ezzelino even more deeply in the feuds against Azzo d’Este that took an unexpected turn when Cunizza’s husband changed sides. Ezzelino’s response was to encourage a good-looking troubadour, Sordello, to entice his sister to run away. Sordello’s poems praising his new love had already circulated widely, enraging her now cuckolded husband, who demanded assistance in this matter from his d’Este allies. To make matters worse, Ezzelino paraded his famous sister at his court, but kept his wife practically a prisoner; presumably she survived on short rations and no sex.

Cunizza, however, unexpectedly married Sordello. Ezzelino, furious that such a valuable asset would be thrown away on the altar of love, arranged for an annulment. While Sordello fled for his life, Cunizza quickly found new lovers.

That winter Ezzelino attacked Verona by surprise. The defenders had assumed that the heavy snow was sufficient protection against any army, but Ezzelino gave his mercenaries shovels and put them to work. Attacking at dawn, they captured that vital city, then moved on Vicenza, the crossroad of all important traffic to and from the mountain passes. Making his brother governor of Vicenza, Ezzelino was now in a position to negotiate with the Ghibelline forces.

FRIEDRICH II’S NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS

Friedrich faced a new coalition of enemies in the north of Italy – the Lombard League, organised by the pope and led by Milan. Victory here was essential, lest he be cut off from the money and men he was raising in Germany. The old lines of family and civic alliances were being redrawn, and Ezzelino was as willing to renegotiate his loyalties as anyone. No surprise then, that when Gregory IX excommunicated the emperor in 1227, he extended the ban to Ezzelino as well. When Friedrich sailed on to the Holy Land, the Ghibelline position in Lombardy practically collapsed. Ezzelino was forced to relinquish his gains until 1235, when Friedrich made his triumphal march to Germany. As the imperial forces retook Verona, the d’Este proclaimed their loyalty to Friedrich, but it was Ezzelino who received credit for making the roads safe for Friedrich to travel across a traditionally hostile region.

Immediately attacked by Azzo d’Este, Ezzelino sent a hurried message to Friedrich which persuaded the emperor to reverse his march – arriving just in time to rout the d’Este. The lines were now firmly drawn: Ezzelino was the emperor’s man in the north. As such, he became a special target of Guelph and papal propaganda.

When Ezzelino advanced on Padua, the citizens were so divided on what to do that they began fighting one another; the d’Este duke, attempting to sally out the gate, was repulsed and followed back into the town. Ezzelino assigned Arab mercenaries to guard the gates, then took numerous hostages to guarantee the loyalty of the citizenry. He subsequently made himself podestá (governor) of Verona, Padua and Vicenza. Friedrich, who returned to Italy in 1237, was very pleased, but he needed the largest possible coalition for his decisive confrontation with the Lombard League – therefore, he invited the d’Este family to join his forces, too.

Friedrich recruited German and Hungarian mercenaries, and even warriors from southern France (where the notorious Albigensian heresy had held sway until recently crushed by the inquisition and crusaders from northern France). The pope denounced these troops, claiming that Italy was his by virtue of the Donation of Constantine and, therefore, he could forbid anyone to enter it. Friedrich mocked him, laughing that the pope was preventing the Holy Roman emperor from travelling through the Holy Roman Empire. In late September he invaded Lombardy.

Ezzelino’s charge broke the Milanese at the battle of Cortenuova in November 1237. As a reward, Friedrich gave the hero one of his illegitimate daughters as a wife. Ezzelino was still married, legally at least, but church ties were not important to the emperor in his present mood; and Ezzelino was not inclined to dispute his judgement. Friedrich then arranged for Alberico’s daughter to marry the son of Azzo d’Este. That, he hoped, would guarantee peace in the north; and to make sure that this da Romano woman did not run away, he sent the newly married pair to southern Italy on a diplomatic mission; that is, as hostages.

The emperor spent 1238 in Padua, entertaining lavishly. He ordered Ezzelino to return the confiscated d’Este cities – the d’Estes were, after all, traditionally Ghibelline and, more important, still powerful. But that was only a formality, since Friedrich II had carefully garrisoned the cities with Saracen troops. Meanwhile, Pope Gregory IX was fuming and fusing; the aged pope, now over ninety, knew that Friedrich was waiting only for him to die so that he could dominate the electoral conclave and assure the selection of a churchman who would bow to imperial wishes. The pope, therefore, struck while he still had the ability to do so; in the spring of 1239 he excommunicated Friedrich and released all his supporters from their vows of fealty.

Not satisfied with the results of placing the emperor under the ban, Gregory IX preached the crusade against him, too, ostensibly for atheism and heresy. Calling him a ‘self-confessed heretic’ and identifying him as the ‘blasphemous beast of the Apocalypse’, Gregory called a general council to meet in Pisa in 1241 to debate measures for dealing with this criminal.

The imperial coalition fell apart. The Lombard League reorganised themselves. Azzo d’Este slipped away to join the papal army, followed by many local nobles – even by Ezzelino’s own brother, Alberico, who could read the stars as well as the superstitious emperor. Friedrich turned to his only remaining loyal follower, Ezzelino, and named him imperial vicar for the northern regions. The time for a policy of moderation and forgiveness having passed, Ezzelino began executing nobles caught in plots – atrocities that were repaid upon Ezzelino’s supporters. The only enemy Ezzelino could not find in his heart to punish was his nephew, Cunizza’s son, who was now a handsome and likeable member of the Guelph party. Ezzelino divorced his wife, but this did not harm his relationship with Friedrich, who picked up and discarded women casually himself.

Then came a respite. Friedrich captured many of the prelates travelling by sea to the council, then the long-awaited death of Gregory IX was followed by a two-year interregnum. Friedrich blocked the convocation of cardinals until mid-1243 in hopes of persuading the desperate churchmen to accept a compromise. But he had overreached himself. He acquired in Innocent IV (1243–54) one of the most relentless men ever to occupy the papal throne, and a member of a Roman family whose lands he had laid waste. Moreover, Catholics throughout Europe were concluding that the emperor was in the wrong and out of control.

Innocent not only resumed the war in Italy, but he stirred up rebellion in Germany; his candidates to replace Friedrich as emperor were not powerful figures, but they encouraged others to seize imperial prerogatives, and soon they had routed the imperial forces. The pope excommunicated Friedrich II, declared him a heretic and enemy of God, and proclaimed a crusade against him and his allies. He mobilised all the forces of the Church – bishops, abbots, friars – to bring down the now shaken emperor.

Friedrich marched back and forth, sure of the loyalty of his mercenaries, but he could not trust vassal, cleric or city. He besieged the strategic city of Parma, only to meet total defeat. After that he fled to Sicily, leaving the struggle for northern Italy to Ezzelino. His vicar could do little to reverse the imperial fortunes, so he spent as much time as possible entertaining his new wife. Balthazar’s feast!

THE COLLAPSE OF FRIEDRICH’S EMPIRE

Friedrich had avoided marching on Tuscany, perhaps from having received a prophecy that he would die in Florence. In late 1250, however, ill from dysentery, he asked where he was. Told that the village was called Florence, he lost heart and died. His illegitimate son Manfred succeeded him in Sicily, his young but legitimate son Conrad claimed Germany. But the pope was not ready to compromise: he was determined to wipe out the Hohenstaufen brood.

Innocent IV offered to forgive Ezzelino’s past crimes, to confirm his present holdings, and to enjoy future benefits if he would switch sides. But Ezzelino, though alone in the north, mistrusted this pope. At the least, he knew, papal favour would go to his enemies, and they would see to his destruction. So Ezzelino refused.

The pope’s subsequent denunciations were furious; every past crime was dredged up and new ones invented, and if it were not for the hyperbole that marked this notorious era, one might believe it. The pope accused Ezzelino of castrating boys, cutting off the breasts of girls, starving entire families. No names. Only more inventive crimes.

This gave Ezzelino an excuse for robbing churches and monasteries to pay his troops.

Conrad IV, the son of Friedrich II, entered Italy in 1252 and revived Ghibelline fortunes temporarily. Negotiations dragged through 1253, ending finally in a papal excommunication and condemnation. Conrad started his offensive with a fine army and a full treasury, but malaria struck him down in May 1254. When papal forces seemed on the verge of full victory, Manfred brought Saracen troops from Sicily into the fray and swept away the Church’s mercenaries.

The passing of Innocent IV changed nothing; Alexander IV (1254–61) was just as determined to wipe out the Hohenstaufen family and their supporters. The new pope won over Alberico da Romano, then organised a new military alliance headed by Azzo d’Este.

In the summer of 1256 Ezzelino marched against Mantua, knowing it to be lightly garrisoned, but unaware that a papal army was only waiting for him to reduce the forces guarding Padua. When Ezzelino heard that his commander in Padua had made a series of errors (first draining the moat, then accidentally setting fire to the main gate, and then fleeing, causing the panicked troops to run for their lives), he hurried back and took revenge on the citizens, executing hundreds, perhaps even 2,000 soldiers he had taken prisoner.

This persuaded Alberico to change sides again.

Ezzelino captured Brescia after defeating the papal army and capturing Alexander’s legate. However, in September of 1259, when he went to the aid of the Ghibelline faction in Milan, he arrived too late – the Guelphs had detected the conspiracy and crushed it. On his retreat, he found a critical bridge in enemy possession, and then was attacked by Azzo d’Este while fording the river. Hit in the Achilles’ tendon by an arrow, he fell much as did the Greek hero. He died eleven days later in captivity, perhaps of his wounds, but more likely from a lack of food and rest – as prisoner he refused the first and was denied the last.

Alberico was next. Besieged in a small castle for six months, he surrendered only when half his men were dead, the supplies were exhausted and no help was in sight. That at least saved his surviving mercenaries. Alberico was forced to watch his wife and daughters burned alive, his six sons executed and dismembered, then he was tied to four horses and ripped to pieces.

Cuzzina was taken in by the generous people of Florence. Dante, an important member of the Ghibelline party there (and thus later exiled for life) gave both Ezzelino and Cuzzina immortality in the Paradiso of his Divine Comedy:

In quella parte de la terra prava	In that part of sinful Italy
italica che siede tra Rēalto	which lies between Rialto and
e le fontane di Brenta e di Piava,	the sources of the Brenta and Piava
si leva un colle, e non surge molt’ alto,	A hill rises, but not very high,
lą onde scese gią una facella	from which a firebrand descended
che fece a la contrada un grande assalto.	to assault the countryside.
D’una radice nacqui e io ed ella:	I was born of that same stock.
Cunizza fui chiamata …	I was called Cunizza …

The firebrand, of course, was Ezzelino.

When the pope moved against the Hohenstaufen supporters in Germany, imperial authority there disappeared so completely that even papal allies were appalled. Friedrich II had brought down with him many who had seen him as national hero, as the best hope for national unity. Those who hated him could rejoice, temporarily, but it was a celebration over the ruins of both Italy and Germany.

SUMMARY

Papal policy achieved its next great victory when a French army under Charles of Anjou defeated Friedrich’s indolent and unready successor in Naples, Manfred, in 1266, killing him and many of his German and Saracen troops in battle, then hunting down his children. In 1267 came the valiant but poorly planned campaign of Conradin von Hohenstaufen, Friedrich’s grandson. Though excommunicated and then opposed even by many Ghibellines, Conradin managed to get his tiny army across the Alps, and make his way to Naples; on the way he befriended many Guelphs, especially in Florence, giving him hope that he could make a permanent reconciliation with family enemies. However, in the summer of 1268 his German–Italian–Arab–Catalan army was defeated by Charles’s French mercenaries at Tagliacozzo, when his troops dispersed to plunder the French camp; he was captured and, after a mock trial, beheaded. His fate was mourned widely as a miscarriage of justice, but there was no remedy for the catastrophe to the Ghibelline party. The pope prevented the electors of the Holy Roman Empire from selecting a German king for an additional five years, until he was assured that the choice would be a weak ruler. There was no evidence that this last legitimate Hohenstaufen would have governed like his ancestors, but the pope was unwilling to run any risk – better to wipe out the entire family. This was hardly a morality superior to that of the mercenaries, and it could not be enforced without mercenaries.

Charles of Anjou (1226–85) was among the most ambitious and dislikeable personalities of the era, but he was the best champion the Church had. He attempted to eliminate the Ghibelline party in Italy, started wars with Aragon and Byzantium, and invaded North Africa; with a strong base in Provence, it seemed likely he would dominate northern Italy. But his dreams were rudely disturbed by the Sicilian Vespers (1282). The uprising was not completely a surprise – Charles provoked rebellions wherever he ruled – but no one expected to see a great-grandson of Friedrich II on the Sicilian throne. King Pedro III of Aragon (1276–85), who had married one of Manfred’s daughters, came close to stripping Charles of all his domains. Dante later placed Pedro and Charles among the Negligent Rulers in Purgatory, singing in heartfelt accord. To judge by the severity of their sins, they are still there.

In contrast, Dante depicted a handsome and smiling Manfred, confident of salvation because neither priest nor pope can frustrate God’s love. They could prevent his burial, but not his eventual entry into heaven. If his daughter will pray for him, the allotted time to wait (535 years, that is, thirty for each year of disobedience to the Church) will be shortened.