Then at last the voice from the throne spoke, commanding that beside every gate of the city the fosse should be filled up and the walls destroyed, so that he might march in in triumph. Milan—who for centuries had proudly claimed the right of keeping all sovereigns excluded from the enclosure of her walls—was now herself to lay low her defences to admit a victorious monarch. A few days later Frederick made his entrance with his army over the ruined walls, and the dreadful fiat went forth, dooming the great city to complete destruction. The inhabitants were ordered to quit their homes, taking with them what they could carry. No entreaty, no tears, even of his own followers, could move Frederick’s resolve. The piteous spectacle of the outcast people, huddled in masses outside the walls in the bitter cold of March, homeless, not knowing where to go, and uttering loud lamentations, could not change his inexorable purpose. With an extremity of cruelty he committed the work of ruin to Milan’s neighbours and bitterest foes—the men of Lodi, Pavia, Novara, Como, Cremona—all burning to retaliate a thousand wrongs. They threw themselves with fury upon the doomed buildings, each community satiating its vengeance on the quarter facing towards its own city. In a very few days an incredible amount of destruction was wrought. But it was the work of months to raze to the ground the towers, the fine palaces and public buildings, many of them surviving from the days of the Roman Empire, and the crowded habitations of a vast population. The churches and religious houses alone were spared, and for a while the campanile of the Cathedral, a tower of admirable beauty and height, which had not its like, they say, in all Italy, still rose untouched above the ruins, a beacon of consolation to the despairing people. But at last, the implacable decree of the conqueror pronounced its sentence, and that, too, fell. Finally not more than a fifth part of the fair city, which men called the flower of Italy—the May City—was left standing. From the spectacle of burning Milan, which he watched with his own eyes, the magnanimous Avenger passed on with his Empress to celebrate the Feast of Olives at Pavia! Frederick was now the dread of all Italy. The trembling cities of Lombardy crept to his feet and kissed them. The crown of Italy, hitherto withheld from him and now conceded by fear, was set upon his head. As for the Milanese, crowded in the poor villages and suburbs around their ruined city, and barely able to exist, they were fain to accept any conditions which he imposed.