These party feelings deeply moved men who gloried in the sacrifices which they or their ancestors had made to either party; while they regarded as entirely secondary the support of the laws, the impartiality of the tribunals, or the equal participation of the citizens in the sovereignty. Every town of Lombardy forgot itself, to make its faction triumph; and it looked for success in giving more unity and force to power. The cities of Mantua and Ferrara, where the Guelfs were far the more numerous, trusted for their defence, the one to the count di San Bonifazio, the other to the marquis d’Este, with so much constancy, that these nobles, under the name of captains of the people, had become almost sovereigns. In the republic of Verona, the Ghibellines, on the contrary, predominated; and as they feared their faction might sink at the death of Ezzelino, they called to the command of their militia, and the presidency of their tribunals, Mastino della Scala; lord of the castle of that name in the Veronese territory; whose power became hereditary in his family. The marquis Pelavicino, the most renowned Ghibelline in the whole valley of the Po, whose strongest castle was San Donnino, between Parma and Piacenza, and who had formed and disciplined a superb body of cavalry, was named, alternately with his friend, Buoso da Doara, lord of the city of Cremona. Pavia and Piacenza also chose him almost always their captain; and this honour was at the same time conferred on him by Milan, Brescia, Tortona, and Alexandria. The Ghibelline party had, since the offence given by Innocent IV to the Guelfs of Milan, obtained the ascendency in Lombardy. The house of Della Torre seemed even to lean towards it; and it was all powerful in Tuscany. The city of Lucca had been the last to accede to that party in 1263; and the Tuscan Guelfs, obliged to leave their country, had formed a body of soldiers, which placed itself in the pay of the few cities of Lombardy still faithful to the Guelf party.