Henry VII when he entered Italy, was impartial between the Guelfs and Ghibellines. He owed his election to the influence of the popes, and he was accompanied by cardinal legates, who were to crown him at Rome. He had no distrust either of Robert, then king of Naples, the son of Charles II, or of the Guelf cities. He had no hereditary affection for the Ghibellines, the zealous partisans of a family long extinct. He endeavoured, accordingly, to hold the balance fairly between the two parties, and to reconcile them wherever he was allowed; but experience had already taught him that the very name of elected emperor had a magic influence on the Italians, either to excite the devoted affection of the Ghibellines, or the terror and hatred of the Guelfs. It was with the latter that resistance to him had begun in the preceding year in Lombardy; and that revolt had burst forth on all sides since his departure. Robert, king of Naples, who assumed the part of champion of the Guelf party, already testified an open distrust of him; and Florence, which by its prudence, ability, wealth, and courage was the real director of that party, took arms to resist him, refused audience to his ambassadors, raised all the Guelfs of Italy against him, and finally constrained him to place that city under the ban of the empire. The republic of Pisa, on the other hand, whose affection for the Ghibelline party was connected with its hopes as well as its recollections, served him with a devotion, zeal, and prodigality which he had not met elsewhere. The Pisans had sent him, when at Lausanne, a present of sixty thousand florins, to aid him on his passage to Italy. They paid his debts at Genoa, and they gave him another present when he entered their city; finally, they placed at his disposal thirty galleys and six hundred crossbowmen, who accompanied him to Rome, where he received the golden crown of the empire from the hands of the pope’s legate, in the church of St. John Lateran, on the 29th of June, 1312. The Romans, who had taken arms against him, and had received within their walls a Neapolitan garrison, kept their gates shut during the ceremony, and would not suffer one of his soldiers to enter the city.