Alberto was ambitious for his family, and determined to unite them by marriage with some of the princely families of Italy. His daughter Constance became the bride of Obizzo d’Este, the powerful leader of the Guelphs in Northern Italy; but the union brought more position than peace with it. Alberto allied himself soon after with Padua and Vicenza, rivals of the House of Este; and war was the consequence. The war was successful for the allies, and its conclusion was celebrated by a “curia” of a truly princely nature. A “curia” was the word in those days to signify an entertainment given to commemorate any event of moment brought to a satisfactory issue. The “curia” on this occasion was held on St Martin’s day (Nov. 11), when Alberto della Scala began by conferring the honour of knighthood on some of the Nogarola, and Castelbarco family, as well as on his own sons. Bartolomeo, the eldest, was raised to this rank, as was also the youngest Francesco, afterwards so famous as Cangrande, who can then have been only about three years old. The gifts presented by the lord of Verona were not only costly but numerous, and as the condition of the donor was judged by the abundance and value of his presents, any parsimony on that head had to be avoided as certain to prove fatal to his renown. Alberto at this festival gave no less than 1500 pairs of garments, lined with fox or lamb skin, of divers colours such as scarlet, purple, deep red, green, yellow. Soon after this Alberto’s eldest son, Bartolomeo, married Constance, the daughter of Conrad IV., and grand-daughter of Frederick II. Another “curia” was held in 1298, when Alberto’s second son, Alboino, was made a knight at the same time that his marriage was celebrated with Constance, the daughter of Matteo Visconti, lord of Milan. The encomiums pronounced on Alberto della Scala, who died September 3, 1301, by a contemporary Veronese historian are unbounded, and declare him to have been: “Sublime in soul, perfect in his ways, foreseeing in council, pious, merciful, sagacious”;[18] and that he ardently desired all that made for the welfare of his people and of his city. In fact, according to this chronicler every virtue abounded in Alberto, who apart from his merits ranks also as the first absolute ruler of the house of the Scaligers.