A year and a half passed after Cortenuova before Frederick actually invaded the Milanese territory. The Republic, heartened by the magnificent example of Brescia, whose successful resistance to a nine months’ siege had delayed the Emperor’s designs against the chief city and greatly dimmed his military glory, went boldly forth to meet him. A noble of gigantic stature, named Ottobello da Mandello, towering in his mail of proof over friends and foes alike, led the citizen knights undauntedly against Frederick’s Saracen troops from Sicily, whose dark faces and infidel garb, joined to ferocious courage, made them a name of terror throughout Italy. With the Milanese fought Gregorio da Montelungo, papal legate, and the Franciscan Fra Leone da Perego, afterwards Archbishop of Milan, besides a great number of friars, Minor, Preaching and Umiliati, _who not only, girding themselves with swords and putting on helmets, displayed the false image of soldiers_, but also excited the citizens to the conflict by promising absolution to all who offended the person of the Emperor or of any of his followers, as Frederick himself complained in a letter to the King of England. No regular pitched battle, however, took place. The Republicans fought with the stratagem of those attacked in their own country, and by cunningly entangling the enemy amid their streams and canals, opening dams and loosing the waters upon him, plunging him into hidden pitfalls, and surprising him with sudden attacks in his most embarrassed moments, drove him by the aid of sword and flood out of their territory. Six years later (1245) the Emperor again invaded the Milanese country, which in the meanwhile had been laid bare by a desolating war of several years with his ally, Pavia. But fortune was still against him. His son Enzo, newly created King of Sardinia, encountering a citizen force one day, ventured himself too boldly in single combat with a Republican knight, and was overthrown and made prisoner. Frederick, having obtained his release, withdrew his army, and made no further attempt to subdue the great Lombard city.