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become the executioner of the House of Swabia. With his intervention in the matters of Italy,
the Golems achieved to compromise France in their theocratic policy and to restore the Power
of the papacy according to the conception of Gregory VII and Innocent III: then shall come,
they suppose, the World Government and the Synarchy of the Chosen People.
According to the feudal organization of the Provencal, the Lords only gave troops for forty
days, and with the condition to not transport them very far. Without being able to obtain
nothing for that part, the Cistercian Order financed to Charles of Anjou a mercenary army of
thirty thousand men. Such troop of adventurous without law enters in Italy in 1264 and
defeats completely to Manfred in the battle of Benevento: then they would begin peerless
massacres and pillages, only comparable to the barbarian invasions. In the aforementioned
battle, apart of Manfred, many Knights of the Ghibelline side lost their lives, amongst them the
father of Roger of Lauria, a child who grown in the chamber of the King of Aragon, Peter III,
because his mother was Lady-in-waiting of the Queen Constance; Roger of Lauria was, of
course, the brilliant Admiral of the Catalan Navy, the most powerful of the Age, with which
Peter III conquered the kingdom of Sicily years later.
When Manfred died, and once the Ghibelline party was broken-down, only remains the
child Conradin in Swabia as the last male offspring of the rebel Hohenstaufen. Charles of Anjou
agreed with Urban IV the usurpation of his rights: he proclaimed himself King of Naples and he
seizes of Sicily. Immediately he establishes a regimen of Terror, oriented principally against the
Ghibelline side; the expropriations of goods and titles, executions and deportations, occur
continuously; in a little time the French are as hated as Saracens of the Holy Land. One of the
most illustrious victims is John of Procida, the Sage of the Courts of Frederick II and Manfred:
member of a noble Ghibelline family, Lord of Salerno, of the isle of Procida, and many
Counties, he would not be only despoiled from his goods and titles, but Charles of Anjou would
commit a coward rape with his wife and daughter; he would only save his life thanks to the
admirable prudence that he knew to deal with the Golem Pope Urban IV.
A huge outcry rises in the next years against the French domination. In 1268 Conradin,
who in that time counted with sixteen years old, he goes to Italy at the head of an army of ten
thousand men, trusting that in the peninsula would join him more troops. Charles annihilates
him in Tagliacozzo, making pass a terrible torment to the Knights that he takes prisoner.
Conradin, the last Hohenstaufen, tries to embark and flee from Italy but he is betrayed
and guided to the power of Charles of Anjou. Is promoted a unanimous request to ask for the
forgiveness of the grandchild of Frederick II, but Clement IV is inflexible: «the death of
Conradin is the life of Charles of Anjou»; but the Golems are not disposed to suspend the
extermination of the Lineage that caused much evil to the plans of the White Fraternity.
After a parody of Judgment, Conradin is condemned to death in Naples. Before giving
his head to the executioner, the child demonstrates his gallantry through a gesture that will
mean, in short-term, the virtual defeat of Charles of Anjou: he threw one of his gloves to the
crowd that had come to see the execution, while he screamed: I challenge that a real Knight of
Christ takes revenge of my death in hands of the Antichrist! an instant later is beheaded in
front of the presence of Charles of Anjou, the papal legacy, many Cardinals and Bishops, and
tens of Golems can't hide their joy for the extinction of the lineage of the Hohenstaufen: in
that moment only remained alive the King of Sardinia Enzo, son of Frederick II, but lifetime
prisoner in a Castle of Bologna since 1249, who would be soon poisoned for major security.
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