Unfortunately Frederick, who has been aptly described as an ‘imperialist Hildebrand’, regarded the peace of Germany merely as a stepping-stone to wider ambitions. Justinian, who had ruled Europe from Constantinople, was his model, and with the help of lawyers from the University of Bologna, whom he handsomely rewarded for their services, he revived all the old imperial claims over North Italy that men had forgotten or allowed to slip into disuse. The ‘communes’ found that rights and privileges for which their ancestors had fought and died were trampled under foot by an imperial official, the _podestà_, sent as supreme governor to each of the more important towns: taxes were imposed and exacted to the uttermost coin by his iron hand: complaint or rebellion were punished by torture and death. ‘Death for freedom is the next best thing to freedom,’ cried the men of Crema, flaming into wild revolt, while Milan shut her gates against her _podestà_ in an obstinate three years’ siege. Deliverance was not yet, and Frederick and his vast army of Germans desolated the plains: Crema was burned, her starving population turned adrift: the glory of Milan was reduced to a stone quarry: Pope Alexander III who, feeling his own independence threatened by imperial demands, had supported the movement for liberty, was driven from Rome and forced to seek refuge in France. Everywhere the Ghibellines triumphed, and it was in these black days in Italy that the Guelfs ceased for a time to be a faction and became patriots, while the Pope stood before the world the would-be saviour of his land from a foreign yoke. Amid the smouldering ruins of Milan the Lombard League sprang into life: town after town, weary of German oppression and insolence, offered their allegiance: even Venice, usually selfish in the safe isolation of her lagoons, proffered ships and money. Milan was rebuilt, and a new city, called after the patriot Pope ‘Alessandria’, was founded on a strategic site. _Alessandria degla paglia_, ‘Alessandria of the straw’, Barbarossa nicknamed it contemptuously, threatening to burn it like a heap of weeds; but the new walls withstood his best engines, and plague and the damp cold of winter devastated his armies encamped around them. The political horizon was not, indeed, so fair for the Emperor as in the early days of his reign. Germany seethed with plots in her master’s absence, and Frederick had good reason to suspect that Henry the Lion was their chief author, the more that he had sulkily refused to share in this last Italian campaign. Worst of all was the news that Alexander III, having negotiated alliances with the Kings of France and England, had returned to Italy and was busy stirring up any possible seeds of revolt against Frederick, whom he had excommunicated. [Sidenote: Battle of Legnano]