With the aid and benediction of Pope Clement IV., Charles of Anjou brought an army composed not only of his own subjects, but of many Italians, among whom the exiled Florentine Guelphs were some of the most distinguished for bravery.[283] He advanced to the Neapolitan frontier, and near Benevento, on February 26, 1266, gave battle to the foe. King Manfred fought valiantly, and when forsaken and betrayed by his soldiery, died the death of a hero on the field. For three days, vain search was made for his corpse among the slain, then it was found, and carried off on the back of an ass. The French monarch refused Manfred burial in consecrated ground, because the Pope had declared him excommunicate. Accordingly he was laid in a ditch by the bridge of Benevento, where the French soldiers, casting each a stone on the corpse, raised a pile that proved a fitting monument to the courage and ill fortune of a warrior slain sword in hand. But Pope Clement grudged him even this humble grave, and at his command the Archbishop of Cosenza persuaded the Angevin monarch to have the corpse exhumed, and thrown beyond the frontier of the Neapolitan kingdom, on the banks of the river Verde.[284] All these events completed the overthrow of the Ghibelline party in Italy. The Imperial throne stood vacant, the Suabians were crushed, and another foreign dynasty succeeded them in Naples, summoned thither by the Pope. If Frederic's decease had caused the decline of the Ghibellines in Florence, it is easy to imagine what was to befal them now that their evil sway had accumulated such increased detestation of their rule, and that the death of Manfred not only deprived them of a friendly sovereign, but extinguished in Italy the domination of an Imperial and royal line that had been their strongest support.