subjected him to the mockery of a trial, a sentence of death. Conradin was beheaded in the market-place at Naples, on the 26th of October, 1268. With him perished several of his most illustrious companions in arms--German princes, Ghibelline nobles, and citizens of Pisa; and, after the sacrifice of these first victims, an uninterrupted succession of executions long continued to fill the Two Sicilies with dismay. The defeat and death of Conradin established the preponderance of the Guelf party throughout the peninsula. Charles placed himself at the head of it; the pope named him imperial vicar in Italy during the interregnum of the empire, and sought to annex to that title all the rights formerly exercised by the emperors in the free cities. Clement IV died on the 29th of November, 1268--one month after the execution of Conradin. The cardinals remained thirty-three months without being able to agree on the choice of a successor. During this interregnum--the longest the pontifical chair had ever experienced--Charles remained sole chief of the Guelf party, ruling over the whole of Italy, which had neither pope nor emperor. He convoked, in 1269, a diet of the Lombard cities at Cremona, in which the towns of Piacenza, Cremona, Parma, Modena, Ferrara, and Reggio, consented to confer on him the signoria; Milan, Como, Vercelli, Novara, Alessandria, Tortona, Turin, Pavia, Bergamo, and Bologna, declared they should feel honoured by his alliance and friendship, but could not take him for master. Italy already felt the weight of the French yoke, which would have pressed still heavier if the crusade against Tunis to which Charles of Anjou was summoned by his brother, St. Louis, had not diverted his projects of ambition.