Thus was Milan’s account with the House of Suabia closed for ever. With the failure of Frederick’s fortunes and his death in 1250 was extinguished the last appearance of that great mediæval idea—the Holy Roman Empire—as a dangerous element in Italian politics. The imperial tradition might linger on and cause a temporary disturbance from time to time in the peninsula, influencing the vicissitudes of its internal quarrels, but it had no longer power to revolutionise or molest the settled constitution of the free Lombard Communes. The mediæval triumph of Italy over the foreigner was accomplished. In the course of the last two centuries, Milan, in whose development is mirrored that of all Lombardy, had completely asserted and defined her nationality. In her Church, in her constitution, law and sentiment, she was now one at last with the rest of Italy. It remained for her, leader in the long struggle now happily determined, to produce in the epoch of Strong Men which was about to succeed the epoch of the People, the man strong enough to overthrow all rivals and to weld the many independent cities and States of the peninsula into a united Italy under an Italian king. How she tried to do this and failed will be seen later. CHAPTER IV _The Reign of Faction_ “Factions alone are the cause of our great ills.”—PRATO. So wrote a Milanese chronicler in the sixteenth century. Had the people but one mind, he adds, assuredly no city would be more pleasant and fortunate than theirs. His complaint holds equally good for the thirteenth century. The presence of a foreign invader did indeed produce a temporary union of heart and hand, and so far the earlier generations show a noble contrast to their descendants of three hundred years later. But even while Frederick II. was still in the land, and in response to opportunities of selfish advantage offered by alliance with him, there were constant defections from the League, and we find the whole of North Italy seething with the warfare of city against city. After his death, when the mutual rage and hate was no longer checked by any fear of a general oppressor, the strife was continued with worse fury under _the diabolical names of Guelf and Ghibelline_, to use the expression of a contemporary writer, the divisions between city and city being repeated within each community itself. The Lombard scene dissolves into a whirling confusion of fratricidal war, in which beneath the cross-currents and blind purposes of individual passion and greed, we may distinguish the two steady principles of the Church and democracy on the one side, and the aristocratic and feudal element, deriving its right from the Empire, on the other. In Milan the issue, which had long before defined itself as a struggle between nobles and people, remains fairly clear. The plebeians had forced their way more and more into the government.