the Emperor's cause. They supported its weight and guided it. In time of peace they were foremost and unrestrained in defiance of law and in scorn of the people--in war, the people's fiercest and most active enemies. Heavy sufferers, in their property, and by the sword and axe, yet untamed and incorrigible, they led the van in that battle, so long remembered to their cost by the Guelfs, the battle of Monteaperti (1260)-- Lo strazio, e 'l gran scempio Che fece l'Arbia colorata in rossa.--_Inf._ 10. [Footnote 6: G. Villani, vi. 33, iv. 10; _Inf._ 19; _Parad._ 25.] [Footnote 7: G. Villani, vi. 39, 65.] That the head of their house, Farinata, saved Florence from the vengeance of his meaner associates, was not enough to atone for the unpardonable wrongs which they had done to the Guelfs and the democracy. When the red lily of the Guelfs finally supplanted the white one as the arms of Florence, and the badge of Guelph triumph, they were proscribed for ever, like the Peisistratidæ and the Tarquins. In every amnesty their names were excepted. The site on which their houses had stood was never again to be built upon, and remains the Great Square of Florence; the architect of the Palace of the People was obliged to sacrifice its symmetry, and to place it awry, that its walls might not encroach on the accursed ground.[8] "They had been," says a writer, contemporary with Dante, speaking of the time when he also became an exile; "they had been for more than forty years outlaws from their country, nor ever found mercy nor pity, remaining always abroad in great state, nor ever abased their honour, seeing that they ever abode with kings and lords, and to great things applied themselves."[9] They were loved as they were hated. When under the protection of a cardinal one of them visited the city, and the chequered blue and gold blazon of their house was, after an interval of half a century, again seen in the streets of Florence; "many ancient Ghibelline men and women pressed to kiss the arms,"[10] and even the common people did him honour. [Footnote 8: G. Villani, vi. 33, viii. 26; Vasari, _Arnolfo di Lapo_, i. 255 (Fir. 1846).] [Footnote 9: _Dino Compagni_, p. 88.] [Footnote 10: _Dino Compagni_, p. 107.]