As Frederick was on the point of attacking the Guelfs of Lombardy on the south with the Saracens, while Ezzelino advanced on the east, he learned that his son Henry, whom he had in the year 1220 crowned king of Germany, in spite of his extreme youth, seduced by the Guelfs and the agents of the pope, had revolted against him. The Milanese, in 1234, sent deputies to offer him the iron crown, which they had refused to his father. The latter hastened into Germany, and ordered his son to meet him at Worms, where he threw himself at the feet of his father, and entreated forgiveness. Frederick deprived him of the crown, and sent him to Apulia, where he died a few years afterwards. The emperor was obliged to employ two years in restoring order in Germany; he after that returned into Italy by the valley of Trento, and arrived, on the 16th of August, 1236, at Verona with three thousand German cavalry. A senate of eighty members, nobles and Ghibellines, then governed that republic; Frederick, by his address in managing men, engaged them to name Ezzelino captain of the people; this committed to him at the same time the command of the militia and the judicial power; and, in the state of excitement in which parties were much more occupied with the triumph of their faction than with the security of their liberty, gave him almost sovereign power. Frederick, obliged to return to Germany, left under the command of Ezzelino a body of German soldiers, and another of Saracens, with which this able captain made himself, the same year, master of Vicenza, which he barbarously pillaged, and the following year of Padua. This last was the most powerful city of the province, that in which the form of government was the most democratic, and in which the Guelfs had always exercised the most influence. Ezzelino judged it necessary to secure obedience by taking hostages from the richest and most powerful families; he employed his spies to discover the malcontents, whom he punished with torture, and redoubled his cruelty in proportion to the hatred which he excited. THE BATTLE OF CORTENUOVA [Sidenote: [1236-1237 A.D.]]