e fearlessly claims for himself right of
decision between contending popes, and camps against the rightful one on
the ashes of the Church of the Virgin.

Foiled in his first assault on Alessandria, detained before it through
the inundations of the winter, and threatened by the army of the League
in the spring, he announced a truce to the besieged, that they might
keep Good Friday. Then violating alike the day's sanctity and his own
oath, he attacked the trusting city through a secretly completed mine.
And, for a second time, the verdict of God went forth against him. Every
man who had obtained entrance within the city was slain or cast from its
ramparts;--the Alessandrines threw all their gates open--fell, with the
broken fugitives, on the investing troops, scattered them in disorder,
and burned their towers of attack. The Emperor gathered their remains
into Pavia on Easter Sunday,--spared in his defeat by the army of the
League.

89. And yet, once more, he brought his cause to combat-trial.
Temporizing at Lodi with the Pope's legates, he assembled, under the
Archbishops of Magdebourg and Cologne, and the chief prelates and
princes of Germany, a seventh army; brought it down to Como across the
Spluegen, put himself there at its head, and in the early spring of 1176,
the fifteenth year since he had decreed the effacing of the name of
Milan, was met at Legnano by the specter of Milan.

Risen from her grave, she led the Lombard League in this final battle.
Three hundred of her nobles guarded her _caroccio_; nine hundred of her
knights bound themselves--under the name of the Cohort of Death--to win
for her, or to die.

The field of battle is in the midst of the plain, now covered with maize
and mulberry trees, from which the traveler, entering Italy by the Lago
Maggiore, sees first the unbroken snows of the Rosa behind him and the
white pinnacles of Milan Cathedral in the south. The Emperor, as was his
wont, himself led his charging chivalry. The Milanese knelt as it
came;--prayed aloud to God, St. Peter, and St. Ambrose--then advanced
round their _caroccio_ on foot. The Emperor's charge broke through their
ranks nearly up to their standard--then the Cohort of Death rode against
him.

90. And all his battle changed before them into flight. For the first
time in stricken field, the imperial standard fell, and was taken. The
Milanese followed the broken host until their swords were weary; and the
Emperor, struck fightin