iers of fortune, set sail for Naples in 1266. Manfred had unluckily
lost the whole of his fleet in a storm, and was not able to oppose this
threatening invasion, which landed in Italy in his despite.

Nor was he more fortunate with his land army. The clergy, in the
interest of the Guelph faction, tampered with his soldiers and sowed
treason in his camp. No sooner had Charles landed, than a mountain pass
intrusted to the defence of Riccardo di Caseta was treacherously
abandoned, and the French army allowed to advance unmolested as far as
Benevento, where the two armies met.

In the battle that followed, Manfred defended himself gallantly, but,
despite all his efforts, was worsted, and threw himself desperately into
the thick of the fight, where he fell, covered with wounds. The bigoted
victor refused him honorable burial, on the score of heresy, but the
French soldiers, nobler-hearted than their leader, and touched by the
beauty and valor of their unfortunate opponent, cast each of them a
stone upon his body, which was thus buried under a mound which the
natives still know as the "rock of roses."

The wife and children of Manfred met with a pitiable fate. On learning
of the sad death of her husband Helena sought safety in flight, with her
daughter Beatrice and her three infant sons, Henry, Frederick, and
Anselino; but she was betrayed to Charles, who threw her into a dungeon,
in which she soon languished and died. Of her children, her daughter
Beatrice was afterwards rescued by Peter of Aragon, who exchanged for
her a son of Charles of Anjou, whom he held prisoner; but the three boys
were given over to the cruellest fate. Immured in a narrow dungeon, and
loaded with chains, they remained thus half-naked, ill-fed, and untaught
for the period of thirty-one years. Not until 1297 were they released
from their chains and allowed to be visited by a priest and a physician.
Charles of Anjou, meanwhile, filled with the spirit of cruelty and
ambition, sought to destroy every vestige of the Hohenstauffen rule in
southern Italy, the scene of Frederick's long and lustrous reign.

The death of Manfred had not extinguished all the princes of Frederick's
house. There remained another, Conradin, son of Conrad IV., Duke of
Swabia, a youthful prince to whom had descended some of the intellectual
powers of his noted grand-sire. He had an inseparable friend, Frederick,
son of the Margrave of Baden, of his own age, and like him enthusiastic