forasmuch as none knew of his coming; and he thanked God, and made himself known to the king and to the people, and began to give the benediction. And afterwards in France the said Pope called a general council in the city of Tours in Touraine, in the which he excommunicated the said Frederick, and deposed him from the Empire, and absolved all his barons from their oaths, and deposed them of the house of Colonna in Rome, that neither they nor their successors should ever be allowed to hold any office in Holy Church, seeing that they all held to the aid and favour of the said Frederick against the Church. And in that council all the kings and lords of the West promised and leagued themselves with Louis, king of France, in aid of the said Pope Alexander and of Holy Church, against the said Frederick, and likewise many cities of Lombardy rebelled against the said Frederick, to wit, Milan, and Cremona, and Piacenza, and held with the Pope and with the Church; for the which thing, when the said Frederick was passing through Lombardy to go into France against King Louis, who was supporting Pope Alexander, and found that the city of Milan had rebelled against him, he laid siege thereto, and, after long siege, he took it, in the year of Christ 1157, in the month of March, and destroyed the walls thereof and burnt all the city, and caused the ground to be ploughed and sown with salt; and the bodies of the Three Kings or Magi which came to adore Christ by the guiding of the star, which were in the city of Milan, in three tombs hewn out of porphyry, he caused to be taken from Milan and sent to Cologne, whence all the Lombards were very wrathful. And afterwards, crossing the mountains to destroy the realm of France, with the aid of the king of Bohemia and the king of Dacia--that is, Denmark--he entered into Burgundy; but King Louis of France, with the aid of Henry, king of England, his son-in-law, and with many lords and barons, was ready to oppose him, so that by the grace of God he had no power, nor gained any land there, but through lack of victuals those kings returned to their own countries and Frederick to Italy. And he made war against the Romans, forasmuch as they had come over to the side of the Church and of Pope Alexander; and when the said Romans with their host were in the region of Tusculum, they were defeated by the chancellor of the said Frederick and his German troops in the place called Monte del Porco, and many Romans were taken and slain in such great numbers that cartloads of dead bodies were taken to Rome to be buried, and this defeat is said to have been by reason of the treachery of the Colonnas, which were always with the Emperor and against the Church; wherefore they were by the Pope deprived of all temporal and spiritual benefit; and because of the said defeat the Romans drove the Colonnas away from Rome, and destroyed an ancient and very beautiful fortress pertaining to them, which was called La Gosta, which is said to have