embittered, and brought again
and again to trial by battle, that of pope with emperor. In 1035 their
warrior archbishop, heading their revolt against Conrad of Franconia,
organized the first disciplined resistance of foot-soldiers to cavalry
by his invention and decoration of the Carroccio; and the contest was
only closed, after the rebuilding of the walls of ruined Milan, by the
wandering of Barbarossa, his army scattered, through the maize fields,
which the traveler now listlessly crosses at speed in the train between
Milan and Arona, little noting the name of the small station, "Legnano,"
where the fortune of the Lombard republic finally prevailed. But it was
only by the death of Frederick II. that the supremacy of the Church was
secured; and when Innocent IV., who had written, on hearing of that
death, to his Sicilian clergy, in words of blasphemous exultation,
entered Milan, on his journey from Lyons to Perugia, the road, for ten
miles before he reached the gates, was lined by the entire population of
the city, drawn forth in enthusiastic welcome; as they had invented a
sacred car for the advance of their standard in battle, they invented
some similar honor for the head of their Church as the harbinger of
peace: under a canopy of silk, borne by the first gentlemen of Milan,
the Pope received the hosannas of a people who had driven into shameful
flight their Caesar-king; and it is not uninteresting for the English
traveler to remember, as he walks through the vast arcades of shops, in
the form of a cross, by which the Milanese of to-day express their
triumph in liberation from Teutonic rule, that the "Baldacchino" of all
mediaeval religious ceremony owed its origin to the taste of the
milliners of Milan, as the safety of the best knights in European battle
rested on the faithful craftsmanship of her armorers.

229. But at the date when the Cavalli entered the service of the great
Milanese family, the state of parties within the walls had singularly
changed. Three years previously (1271) Charles of Anjou had drawn
together the remnants of the army of his dead brother, had confiscated
to his own use the goods of the crusading knights whose vessels had been
wrecked on the coast of Sicily, and called the pontifical court to
Viterbo, to elect a pope who might confirm his dominion over the
kingdoms of Sicily and Jerusalem.

On the deliberations of the Cardinals at Viterbo depended the fates of
Italy and the Northern Empi