After vain attempts to rouse the people against him, Nino and his friends resorted to legal measures, hoping in this way to curb his tyrannous excesses. He had been nominated Captain-general of the people, but had illegally usurped the office of Podestà in addition, and fixed his residence in the palace of the Signory, where he had no right to dwell. His nephew and the others sued him for this before the _Anziani_, and obliged him to leave the palace in conformity with the law. He obeyed for a short time, but soon resumed his former supremacy by force. Meanwhile, party hatred grew stronger, the count fomenting discord with Genoa, while his enemies, as another means to his overthrow, were doing their utmost to conclude peace and deliver the prisoners. At last the count discerned his peril, and tried to find some way of escape. Seeing that certain Guelphs were no less hostile than the Ghibellines and had joined with them against him, he decided on conciliating the latter, in order to detach them from the Guelphs who had forsaken his cause. Thus he might at once defeat these deserters, and, having isolated the Ghibellines, find it easy to destroy them later on. But, in spite of these ingenious devices, both parties finally combined against him, under the command of Archbishop Ruggiero, one of the most powerful of the Ghibellines. Civil war raged in the city; the public palace was alternately seized by the archbishop, and re-captured by the count; while the latter, blinded by his fury for revenge, rejected the warnings and advice of even his closest adherents. One day, when the popular discontent had come to a climax, in consequence of the high price of provisions, and no one ventured to inform him of it, one of his nephews demanded audience, explained the state of things, and advised him to suspend the levying of customs, so as to lower the price of food. But this enraged the count to such a point that, drawing his dagger, he stabbed the speaker in the arm. A nephew of the archbishop chanced to be present, and being a friend of the wounded man, rushed forward to shield him from further attack. Thereupon the count, maddened with fury, caught up an axe that lay near, and with one blow stretched the intruder dead at his feet.