From the close of 1260, the year of the battle of Montaperti, down to 1266, when the rule of Count Guido and King Manfred came to an end, the history of Florence records no remarkable event. The city's freedom is crushed, its wars reduced to petty and inglorious party strife, and its new institutions, if worthy to be so called, have no effect on the historical development of the Florentine constitution. In trying to discover the logical connection between the various forms assumed by it in the history of the Republic, no attention need be given to the checks suffered by freedom nor to the intervals wherein tyranny breaks the regular course of events and institutions, seeing that these resume their normal march as soon as liberty is restored to life. The Podestà ruling in Manfred's name retained the two councils, _i.e._, the general council of three hundred, and the special of ninety members, in both of which the nobles and the Ghibellines naturally prevailed. But we hear nothing more of the Captain of the people and his councils, nor of the elders and their assembly. But we find in their place a body of twenty-four citizens, four to each _sestiere_, privileged to sit in council with the Podestà.[281] Of the ancient Constitution a few fragments alone remain, and even these are ancient only in name. As a matter of fact the Ghibellines had succeeded, with Manfred's assistance, in establishing an aristocratic despotism, as strangely different from the constitution preceding it as from that destined to replace it, these being in perfect harmony and connection one with the other. Meanwhile the war against the Guelphs was carried on, not only by razing their houses and confiscating their goods, but by the imposition of repeated fines weighing heavily on the lower classes who were now deprived of all share in the government. But in 1264 Farinata degli Uberti died, in 1265 Dante Alighieri was born, and Italy began to be stirred by novel events soon to be echoed even in Florence.