So Dante shrank not from his task when called to public office, but laid his strong hand upon the helm of Florence. During a part of this year 1300, he filled the supreme magistracy, and at that very time the old disputes of Guelf and Ghibelline broke out in the city afresh under a thin disguise. We have seen that Dante's sympathies were now almost completely Ghibelline, but as the first Prior of Florence his duty was firmly to suppress all factious attempts to disturb the city's peace and introduce intestine discord. It was not by party broils that Italy would be restored to peace and harmony. He behaved with a more than Roman fortitude, for it is easier for a father to chastise a rebellious son than for a true friend to override the claims of friendship. Dante's dearest friend, Guido Cavalcanti, bound to him by every tie of sympathy and fellowship which could unite two men in common purposes and common hopes, was one of the leaders of the party with which Dante himself sympathised; and yet, for the good of his country and in obedience to his magisterial duty, he tore this friend from his side though not from his heart, and pronounced on him the sentence of banishment, the weight of which he must even then have known so well. It speaks to the eternal honour of Guido, as well as Dante, that this deed appears not to have thrown so much as a shadow upon the friendship of the two men.[12] Had Dante's successors in office dealt with firmness and integrity equal to his own, all might have been well; but a vacillating and equivocal policy soon opened the door to suspicions and recriminations, Florence ceased to steer her own course and permitted foreign interference with her affairs, while the Pope, with intentions that may have been good but with a policy which proved utterly disastrous, furthered the intervention of the French Prince Charles of Valois. It was a critical moment. An embassy to the Papal Court was essential, and a firm hand must meanwhile hold the reins at Florence. 'If I go, who shall stay? If I stay, who shall go?' Dante is reported to have said; and though the saying is probably apocryphal, yet it points out happily enough the true position of affairs. Dante was now no longer the chief magistrate of his city, but he was in fact, though not in name, the one man of Florence, the one man of Italy.