for their destruction: and succeeded in preventing his son Conrad from being elected Emperor, and in order to deprive him of his southern dominions he proclaimed, as he had in the time of Frederick, liberty to the people: he stirred up the barons, exhorted the bishops and clergy, preached remission of sins to all who would rise in rebellion against their sovereign, and in his briefs, and by his legates, endeavoured to arouse a spirit of disaffection, promising to all orders and conditions of men, peace, prosperity, and every other result of mild and just government under the protection of the Church. There were not wanting causes of complaint against the reigning house: the Suabian dynasty is indeed charged with rigour and avarice: we are, however, inclined to think that such rigour may have been necessary for the maintenance of order, and the protection of person and property, in an age and country where insubordination was general, and lawlessness universal: and no doubt can exist but that, even supposing the imperial avarice not to have been produced by the necessity of obtaining funds for carrying on the contest against Rome, it was vastly increased by that cause. Subjects of discontent there always will be, but we doubt extremely whether the Sicilians and Neapolitans were justified in their feelings of disaffection, much less in their practices of treason. The result would seem to condemn them.

For the present, the intrigues of the Pope and the insubordination of the people were overpowered by the zeal of the Ghibellines, and the talents of Manfred, an illegitimate son of the late Emperor. After a reign, however, of little more than two years, Conrad died, leaving an only child, an infant, named Conrad, but known in history by the childish diminutive of Conradin. His father confided him, as an infant and an orphan, to the paternal care of the Pontiff, who, in the ruthless and unchristian spirit which has so often characterized the See of Rome, a spirit naturally breathing itself into the constant energy of life from the errors of her church and the claims of her Bishop, renewed his assaults more furiously than ever, both by force and fraud, upon the heritage of the helpless and fatherless child.

At this juncture the conduct of the Sicilians is utterly inexcusable. They had a noble opportunity of saving their country, their honour, and their king. Had they rallied round the defenceless innocent whom the Providence of God had appointed for their future ruler, they might have secured all their existing franchises, and obtained all those that were wanting; they might have consolidated the Sicilian constitution, obtained the entire freedom of their country from foreign domination, ensured the love and gratitude of their prince, and established a mutual

good-will and devotion alike beneficial to the ruler and the ruled.

Instead of doing this they quarrelled miserably among themselves, and at length established what has been aptly termed the Republic of Vanity. This bubble polity was, after a brief existence, destroyed by Manfred, whom we have already mentioned as the illegitimate son of Frederick the Second, and who was thus uncle to the infant Conradin. For a time, the Papal arms had been universally victorious on the continent. Manfred, however, and some few partisans of the Suabian dynasty still held out. That able prince fought his ground most bravely, and, watching his opportunity, succeeded in reconquering the kingdom of Naples.

"Thus," says our author, "Manfred subdued all the inhabitants of the mainland and of Sicily, and governed, for a time, in the name of Conradin; but, unwilling to resign to a mere child the sceptre he had reconquered by his own valour, he promulgated the report of the death of his nephew in Germany; and whether his word were believed or no, he assumed the crown in Palermo, as sole heir of Frederick, on the 11th of August, 1258.

"Manfred held the reins of government with a strong hand, and, finding conciliation impossible, combated the court of Rome with desperate energy. He placed himself at the head of the Ghibeline party, which he revived in Lombardy, and fomented in Tuscany. He found partisans even in Rome, which was not yet subdued by the Popes; and, being governed by a senator, had recently elected to that office one Brancaleone, a man of lofty spirit, who, from community of hatred, had allied himself to the Ghibelline king. The court of Rome, finding itself, under these circumstances, unequal to maintain the conflict, now hastened to put into execution a long-conceived design. So early as on the decease of Frederick II., Pope Innocent, conscious of the want of vigour in the pontifical arm to wield the sceptre of Sicily and Apulia, had turned his eyes to the west in search of some potentate who would conquer them with his own forces, and hold them with the title of king in fief from the Church, upon condition of paying her tribute both in money and in military service; by which means he would raise in Italy a powerful champion of the Church and head of the Guelph party. Thus, while proclaiming liberty to the people of southern Italy and Sicily, he bargained for them as for a flock of sheep: first, with Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III. of England; then with Charles, Count of Anjou and Provence, brother of Louis IX. of France; and, finally, with the youthful Edmund, son of the aforesaid Henry. The still existing epistles of the monarchs, and bulls of Innocent and of his successors, reveal and confirm all these practices, carried on for sixteen years by the court of Rome with the utmost caution, unless when driven to precipitancy by fear or indignation. With unwearied zeal

the Pope dispatched briefs and legates to urge on the sovereignsused every effort to win over their courtiers, and lavished the tithes of all Christendom to aid the conquest of Sicily and Apulia. To this end he published a crusade, and commuted for it the vows of princes and nations to take part in the holy war in Palestine. Often, during these negotiations, the court of Rome, either from want of means, from the necessity of self-defence, or from impatience to occupy some of the provinces of Apulia, borrowed money upon the security of the property of the Transalpine churches, and compelled their prelates to satisfy the claims of the creditors, threatening those who showed reluctance with the weight of its censures. Sometimes the Pope granted bulls of investiture in exchange for vast sums of money; sometimes his eagerness for the destruction of Manfred made him suspend these lucrative practices; and mean while the enterprise was postponed, as beyond the powers of those who meditated it, and rendered almost desperate by the strength and talents of Manfred."—Vol. i. pp. 40—43.

That excellent monarch, St. Louis, whose sublime and eminent virtues, virtues which would have shone bright even in a constellation of good and great men, but which appearing as they do in one of his family, stand forth like gems in the darkness, and render him the Abdiel of his race, held out for a long time against the pleadings of papal craft. He was ready to protect the Church, to fight for the Church, to die for the Church; but his simple piety could not perceive the righteousness of the unjust and outrageous aggression proposed by the supreme pontiff. At length, however, he was won over by the wiles and prayers of the Pope, who represented Manfred as a monster of cruelty and licentiousness, half Saracen and half heretic, ruling with avaricious and lawless tyranny over a suffering and Christian people.

So St. Louis gave his sanction to the enterprize of his brother, Charles of Anjou; and in the Angevin prince the Pope found a suitable instrument wherewith to effect his purposes.

"And now all haste was made to prepare arms and forces for the war against Manfred. . . . . Having thus gathered from all quarters the means of defraying the cost of the preparations, the warriors, whose object was gain, and the crusade their pretext, assembled under the adventurous banner of Anjou, some as mercenaries, some leading bands of followers at their own expense, like a stake in a speculation or a lottery, with the hope of a return in territorial possessions in the conquered kingdom. They amounted to thirty thousand, between horse and foot; and yet they are designated in history as an army, not, as they were in truth, a band of freebooters, congregated beyond the Alps, to pour down upon Italy, to slay for the sake of plunder, and to assume the semblance of authority, and stigmatize resistance as rebellion.

"After a perilous sea-voyage, to avoid the formidable army of Manfred, Charles landed in Italy with a handful of followers; and, in June,

1265, he assumed for a time the office of senator of Rome, by the consent of the Pope. In the autumn his forces crossed the Alps, meeting with no opposition from the Italian Ghibellines, some of whom were intimidated, and others bought over. Thus fortune, which overthrows all human counsels at a breath, at this juncture forsook Manfred. The divisions of Italy were injurious to him, as the prospect of innovation produced a revival of the Guelph party. The power of the Church was likewise against him; but it was the fickleness of his barons which wrought his ruin, together with the disaffection of the people, caused by the frequency and weight of the imposts, the oftenrepeated excommunications, and all the evils engendered by the struggle with Rome."-Vol. i. pp. 52, 53.

Deserted by the headstrong baronage and discontented people, more capable of discerning the faults than of appreciating the merits of their ruler-Manfred was left with but few followers to oppose the vast and warlike force of the foreign invader. Gathering, however, an army of Germans and Italians, of as many Apulians as were faithful to his cause, and of the Saracens of Sicily, who had been removed to the mainland, and who, hated by all besides, clung to him alone, he did all that indomitable energy could do to strengthen his forces, and endeavoured, with the utmost skill, to gain time from the enemy. His efforts were, however, unavailing. The winter had set in with great severity. Charles of Anjou had been crowned at the Vatican on the 6th of January, 1266: and the failure of means left him but two alternatives, to advance at once upon Manfred, or to disband his forces immediately. He adopted the former. His advance was rapid, and accompanied with rapid success.

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"Only at Benevento was there fighting; for Manfred was there, and Charles would listen to no conditions of peace. There the Germans and the Sicilian Saracens fought bravely; the rest fled; and after a fearful carnage the impetuosity of the French carried the day. Manfred thereupon rushed upon the ranks of the enemy to seek for death, nor did he seek it in vain. His corpse was found amongst the thousands of the slain, and over it the hostile soldiers raised a pile of stones; but even this humble sepulture was denied him by the hatred of the pontifical legate; and, for his last obsequies, the remains of the Suabian hero were flung to the dogs on the banks of the Verde.

"Naples applauded the conqueror; rebellion, the defeat of the army, and the death of the king, caused the submission of the remainder of Apulia and Calabria, as well as of Sicily; the gallant Saracens alone held out in Lucera. The treasures of the vanquished were hastily divided between Charles, Beatrice, and their knights; the soldiers of fortune obtained lands and dignities; and the people, who in changing their rulers rarely change their destinies for the better, hoped, as usual, to reap benefit, deeming that peace would bring with it a diminution of

the taxes imposed for the maintenance of the obstinate conflict with the Court of Rome."-Vol. i. pp. 55, 56.

How far this expectation was realized, we learn from the sequel, which gives an account of oppression so grinding, cruel, unrelenting, and destructive, that the particulars are hard to be believed. We do, however, fully believe them, not only from Mr. Amari's high character for fidelity, honesty, and accuracy, but from the full and unmistakeable evidence of entire and unswerving truthfulness, which these volumes display. No one can read them without believing every statement of fact which they contain.

And here we must pause to observe, that had the Sicilians done their duty by Conradin in the first place, they would neither have fallen under the sway of Manfred, nor that of the house of Anjou; and that had they, after acknowledging Manfred as their king, stood by him, they would not have undergone the miseries to which they were afterwards subjected. Manfred may have been arbitrary, and even in some degree rapacious-as great princes, and all great men, were tempted to be in those good old times, which our medievalists hold up to us as the ages of faith, and days of universal blessedness,-a sort of foreshadowing, it would seem, of the Millennium: but he was, take him all in all, an able and a good ruler; and whatever his faults may have been, he was as an angel of light compared with the miscreant who succeeded him.

Charles had not long enjoyed his easy conquest, when an unexpected adversary rose up against him in the almost forgotten Conradin, rightful heir to the throne. The exiled Italians from all quarters, expelled by the dominance of their enemies, and those who remained at home, oppressed by the hostile faction, by the Pope or by the foreigners, turned their eyes to him; whilst foreign princes gave him their assistance. He had now just emerged from extreme youth into early manhood; and in less than a year after the conquest of Apulia and Sicily, Charles found himself in danger of losing his so easily acquired dominions. And so successfully did Conrad and his partisans carry on their plans, that in the same year, 1267, the young prince descended upon Verona at the head of a German army of four thousand horse and several thousand foot. Don Henry of Castile, one of his firmest allies, was tumultuously elected in Rome to the office of senator; every where the Ghibellines arose in arms; and Sicily broke out into open insurrection against King Charles.

Had the Sicilians even now fought boldly, and unitedly, and loyally, for their lawful sovereign Conrad, there can be no doubt but that he would have achieved their deliverance, and established