The defeat of young Conradin, grandson of Frederick II., at Tagliacozzo in 1268, followed by his judicial murder (_Purg._ xx. 68), confirmed the triumph of the Guelfs and the power of Charles in Italy. In Florence the future conflict lay between the new Guelf aristocracy and the burghers and people, between the _Grandi_ and the _Popolani_; the magnates in their palaces and towers, associated into societies and groups of families, surrounding themselves with retainers and swordsmen, but always divided among themselves; and the people, soon to become “very fierce and hot in lordship,” as Villani says, artisans and traders ready to rush out from stalls and workshops to follow the standards of their Arts or Guilds in defence of liberty. In the year after the House of Suabia ended with Conradin upon the scaffold, the Florentines took partial vengeance for Montaperti at the battle of Colle di Valdelsa (_Purg._ xiii. 115-120), where the Sienese were routed and Provenzano Salvani (_Purg._ xi. 109-114) killed. It is said to have been Provenzano Salvani who, in the great Ghibelline council at Empoli, had proposed that Florence should be destroyed. DANTE’S BOYHOOD.--It is not clear how Dante came to be born in Florence, since he gives us to understand (_Inf._ x. 46-50) that his family were fiercely adverse to the Ghibellines and would naturally have been in exile until the close of 1266. Probably his father, of whom scarcely anything is known, took no prominent part in politics and had been allowed to remain in the city. Besides the houses in the Piazza San Martino, he possessed two farms and some land in the country. Dante’s mother, Bella (perhaps an abbreviation of Gabriella), is believed to have been Alighiero’s first wife, and to have died soon after the poet’s birth. Her family is not known, though it has been suggested that she may have been the daughter of Durante di Scolaio degli Abati, a Guelf noble. Alighiero married again, Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi, the daughter of a prominent Guelf popolano; by this second marriage he had a son, Francesco, and a daughter, Tana (Gaetana), who married Lapo Riccomanni. Another daughter, whose name is not known, married Leone Poggi; it is not quite certain whether her mother was Bella or Lapa. Dante never mentions his mother nor his father, whom he also lost in boyhood, in any of his works (excepting such indirect references as _Inf._ viii. 45, and _Conv._ i. 13); but, in the _Vita Nuova_, a “young and gentle lady, who was united to me by very near kindred,” appears watching by the poet in his illness. In the loveliest of his early lyrics she is described as Adorna assai di gentilezze umane, which Rossetti renders: Exceeding rich in human sympathies.