Philip IV was only seventeen when he became king. From his nickname ‘le Bel’ it is obvious that he was handsome, but no kindly Joinville has left a record of his personal life and character. We can only draw our conclusions from his acts, and these show him ruthless in his ambitions, mean, and vindictive. In his dealings with the Papacy Philip’s conduct stands contrasted with the usual affectionate reverence of his predecessors; but this contrast is partly accounted for by the fact that, at the end of the quarrel between Empire and Papacy, Rome found herself regarding France from a very changed standpoint to the early days of that encounter. Ever since the time of Gregory VII the Hohenstaufen emperors had loomed like a thunder-cloud on the papal horizon, but with the execution of Conradin, the last of the royal line,[25] this threatening atmosphere had cleared. The Empire fell a prey to civil war during the Great Interregnum, that is, during the seventeen years when English, Spanish, and German princes contended without any decisive results for the imperial crown. Count Rudolf of Habsburg, who at last emerged triumphant, had learned at least one diplomatic lesson, that if he wished to have a free hand in Germany he could do so best as the friend of the Pope, not as his enemy. One of his earliest acts was to ratify a concordat with Rome in which he resigned all those imperial claims to the lands belonging to the Holy See that Frederick II had put forward. He also agreed to acknowledge Count Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis and the Pope’s chief ally, as Count of Provence and King of Naples and Sicily. Italy was thus freed from German intervention, but her cities remained torn by the factions of Guelfs and Ghibellines; and the iron hand of the French lay as heavily on ‘The Kingdom’ as ever the Hohenstaufen’s despotic sceptre. The Sicilians, restless under the yoke, began to mourn Frederick, who, whatever his sins, had been born and bred in the south, the son of a southern princess; while these French were cruel with the indifferent ferocity of strangers who despised those whom they oppressed. [Sidenote: The Sicilian Vespers]