From this time onward Assisi remained in the possession of the Church, and many of the Popes, touched by the miserable condition of the town, supplied money to rebuild its ruined walls and palaces, and thus induce the citizens to return and inhabit the desolate city. But hardly had the Assisans succeeded in getting back some kind of order and prosperity than new wars appeared to ruffle the onward flow of things. This time the danger came from within, and in Assisi, as in so many of the cities of Italy, it was the feud between the nobles themselves that drenched the streets with blood and crushed the struggles of a people whose cries for liberty were now only faintly heard. All sank beneath the heavy hand of the despot. The Perugian citizens were being tyrannised over by the powerful family of the Baglioni, whose name brings up a picture of crime and bloodshed that has hardly been equalled in any town in Italy.[12] In Assisi the balance of power lay between the two families of Fiumi and Nepis, who, in the irregular fashion of the time, alternately ruled the city in opposition to the legal sovereignty of the Papacy. The city was sharply divided into the Upper town, where the Nepis had their palaces near the castle and San Rufino, and the Lower town, inhabited entirely by the Fiumi and their adherents, which clustered round the church of Santa Chiara and down to San Francesco. These two families sought perpetually to outshine each other, and such was the reputation they gained among the people in the country round that even the Perugian chroniclers speak of them as "most cultured and splendid citizens," praising their horsemanship and the magnificence of their dress. So great was the rivalry between the members of the two families Fiumi and Nepis that, when they met in the piazza of Assisi where the nobles often walked in the evening, they would provoke each other with scornful looks and words, and often this was a signal for a skirmish. The _bravi_ would gather round them, and in an instant the whole town be roused to arms. After a sharp fight one party was driven to retire to its strongholds in the open country, while the victorious nobles seized the reins of government, and the weary citizens sank beneath the rule of the despots. Assisi presented a most melancholy spectacle at the end of one of these encounters. Most of the dwellings of the exiled nobles lay in ruins, the churches were shut in consequence of the perpetual bloodshed, and the palaces, barred and chained, with the gratings drawn up before the entrance, seemed to be inhabited by no living being. Franciscan friars stole along the streets on their errands of mercy among the distressed citizens, who, besides the horrors of the city feuds, suffered from the pestilence and famine which decimated nearly all the towns of Italy at this period. But this death-like silence within the town was never of long duration. The exiled party, ever on the alert to regain possession of their homes,