With the new French invasion (1302) under Charles of Valois, called in by Boniface VIII to aid him against Sicily, a partially new stage begins. Charles was received at Florence as the typical Guelph; but, being counselled by the pope to pacify Tuscany to his own advantage, allied himself with the ultra-Guelphs, the _Neri_, gave up to plunder, the proceeds of which he pocketed, the houses of the other or pro-Ghibelline faction, the _Bianchi_, and enforced the execution or exile of its leading men, including Dante. Then came the election of a strictly French pope and his establishment at Avignon. A new lease being now given to faction, the cities rapidly lapsed into the over-lord system as the only means of preserving order; and when in 1316 a new emperor, Henry VII, presented himself for homage and claimed to place an imperial vicar in each city, most were well disposed to agree. When however Henry, like Charles, showed himself mainly bent on plunder, demanding 100,000 florins from Milan and 60,000 from Genoa, he destroyed his prestige. He had insisted on the recall of all exiles of either party; but all united against his demands, save the Pisans, who had sent him 60,000 florins in advance. His sudden death, on his way to fight the forces of Naples, left everything in a new suspense, save that Pisa, already shorn of maritime power, was soon eclipsed, after setting up a military tyranny as a last resort. The _régime_ of the local tyrant now rapidly developed. On the fall of the Pisan tyrant rose that of Lucca, Castruccio Castracani, the great type, after Ezzelino, of the Italian despot-adventurer of the Renaissance. Such a leader was too dangerous an antagonist to such a corporation as that of Florence--once more (1323) reconstructed on an upper-class basis, with a scrutinised franchise, election by ballot, and a more complicated system of offices than ever.[615] To command them against Castruccio, they called in the Catalonian general Cardona, who utterly failed them. He took the course of so handling and placing his troops as to force those citizens in the army who could afford it to buy leave of absence, and was finally defeated with his wilfully weakened army. Florence was driven to call in the King of Naples, at the price of conferring the _signoria_ on his son. Meanwhile the new emperor Ludwig, called in by Castruccio, plundered the Milanese and imprisoned their lords, the Visconti, who had been of his own party; extorted 150,000 florins from the Pisans; tortured, to extort treasure, a Ghibelline who had given up to him a fortress in the papal State; and generally showed the Italians, before he withdrew, that a German tyrant could beat even a native at once in treachery, cruelty, and avarice. Castruccio and the son of the King of Naples, who had proved a bad bargain, died about the same time as did the reigning Visconti at Milan, the reigning tyrant at Mantua, and Can' Grande of Verona, the successor of Ezzelino, who had