98. Such being the general state of matters in Florence, in this year
1248, Frederick writes to the Uberti, who headed the Ghibellines, to
engage them in serious effort to bring the city distinctly to the
Imperial side. He was besieging Parma; and sent his natural son,
Frederick, king of Antioch, with sixteen hundred German knights, to
give the Ghibellines assured preponderance in the next quarrel.

The Uberti took arms before their arrival; rallied all their Ghibelline
friends into a united body, and so attacked and carried the Guelph
barricades, one by one, till their antagonists, driven together by
local defeat, stood in consistency as complete as their own, by the
gate of St. Peter, 'Scheraggio.' Young Frederick, with his German
riders, arrived at this crisis; the Ghibellines opening the gates to
him; the Guelphs, nevertheless, fought at their outmost barricade for
four days more; but at last, tired, withdrew from the city, in a body,
on the night of Candlemas, 2nd February, 1248; leaving the Ghibellines
and their German friends to work their pleasure,--who immediately set
themselves to throw down the Guelph palaces, and destroyed six-and-
thirty of them, towers and all, with the good help of Niccola Pisano,--
for this is the occasion of that beautiful piece of new engineering of
his.

99. It is the first interference of the Germans in Florentine affairs
which belongs to the real cycle of modern history. Six hundred years
later, a troop of German riders entered Florence again, to restore its
Grand Duke; and our warmhearted and loving English poetess, looking on
from Casa Guidi windows, gives the said Germans many hard words, and
thinks her darling Florentines entirely innocent in the matter. But if
she had had clear eyes, (yeux de lin [1] the Romance of the Rose calls
them,) she would have seen that white-coated cavalry with its heavy