Part 2 After the long setup, the point is this:
In 1266, Charles marched on Naples with a large Romano-Provencal army. Manfred met him in the Terra del Lavoro, or countryside outside Naples, but when local barons arrived on the battlefield they decided that Charles' army looked the better, and promptly defected. Manfred valiantly tried to confront Charles outside Benevento, but not only did he lose, he died in battle. After giving Manfred a hero's burial on the field of battle, Charles moved to consolidate his new kingdom.
Charles proved time and time again he was sociopathically intelligent. Seeing how easily the local barons had abandoned Manfred, he centralized rule among a small clique of Provencals. Financed by Florentene and Geonese bankers, he kept a large retinue of knights on call to impose his will on the land with an iron fist. The old families (especially in Naples) were none to happy. Chief among the dissenters were the Houses of Lancia and Capece, who were able to guile the fifteen-year-old Emperor Conrad the III to press the wholly legitimate claim to the Kingdom of Sicily he had inherited from his father. In 1267, Conrad III arrived in Verona.
Now, the Italian cities were never friendly towards the emperor, and by the 13th century, the vast majority were outright hostile. The only cities who welcomed him were Verona, where the Della Scala family pulled the strings and were hoping to levy imperial support to satisfy their dynastic ambition, and Pavia, eternally sandwiched between Savoy and the Lombard cities, and Pisa, who stood alone against Florence in Tuscany.
The Lombard cities assemble an army to oppose Conrad, and Napoleone Della Torre was nominated Captain-General mostly thanks to his brother Raimondo who was Bishop of Como. However, Napoleone seemd reluctant to use his army. Why we don't precisely know, but he might have been hoping at the very least that southern Italy (Rome in particular) would stay as unstable as possible, as the Pope was backing Ottone Visconti as Bishop of Milan, whom the Torriani force out of the city along with those Patricians who opposed their absolute rule in the council (similarly to what the Della Scala had done in Verona). What know for sure is that Conrad was able to reinforce his army in Verona and travel unobstructed across Lombardy to Pavia, where he resided for several months. Marching south in the summer, all the while supplied by Pisan ships, he was confronted by Charles on August 28th in the Central Italian highlands near Aquila, far from the dangerous swamps of Lazio (Conrad's only good decision).
Now, having a fifteen-year-old without experience command an army is a bad idea. A fifteen year old advised by two wily Neapolitans is worse. Add that the opponent is Charles of Anjou, a battle-hardened commander with a proven sociopathic track record, and you have the necessary conditions for disaster. The fact that he was outnumbered 2:3 meant nothing: Charles won a resounding victory. Conrad's army disintegrated, and the sixteen year old fled to the coast, hoping to be rescued by the Pisans. He sojourned the castle of Torre Asturia, held by the Frangipani, one of the old Roman Senatorial families.
Having at first welcomed the teenage Conrad (what are you going to do when an armed retinue shows up at your doorstep?) as soon as Giovanni Frangipani heard the King of Sicily was hot on his tails, he hatched a plot to kidnap him and hand him over to Charles. Giovanni Frangipani knew Charles from his time as Senator of Rome: he did not want to piss him off.
So needless to say Conrad III was handed over to Charles of Anjou. Two months later, Conrad was beheaded in the Market Square in Naples.
Charles then undertook a swift and merciless reprisal against those in his kingdom who had supported Conrad's claim to the throne, while in northern Italy, he did his best to undermine those who had not opposed Conrad. Although he tad taken the crown on the promise he would not interfere in Northern Italian affairs, he took advantage of a Papal conclave in 1270 to act while the promise couldn't be enforced. He first disembarked on the Tuscan coast, where he ravaged the cities loyal to Pisa. Although Pisa itself never fell, they were forced to sue for peace. Marching on Lombardy, he managed to occupy Brescia, and although he wasn't able to capture Como, he did capture the Bishop Raimondo Torriani, hanging him in a cage in a town in Valtellina. Occupying the Piemontese fortress of Alessandria, it was the last straw for the Milanese nobility, who were sick of warfare. Napo had expressly refused to fulfill their wishes and act against Conrad and instead used his military mandate to expunge Milan of those who opposed him, such that the will of the city was his will alone. The Torriani had to rely on near-constant banishment and armed reprisals to keep their chockehold on the Milanese council, such that they couldn't so much leave the city walls lest they be faced with armed confrontation. With the economic consequences of Civil War and the vengeful King of Sicily rampaging through Lombardy, countless Milanese patricians had flocked to the side of the exiled Ottone Visconti.
While he was away, the Sicilian barons would again rise up against Charles, in the rebellion that would become the Sicilian Vespers. Coupled with slow progress in Lombardy (the Marquis of Monferrat along with the councils of Genoa and Milan all fought against him) Charles returned home in 1270. However, he had already set in motion sevenyears of extremely violent armed conflict in Lombardy which would eventually see Nepoleone imprisoned, and Ottone enter the city triumphantly to be invested as bishop. The Milanese Communal republic had ended. The Duchy of Milan had just begin.
But why did Ottone triumphantly enter the city of he dismantled the commune anyway? Was Napoleone Torriani just trying to defend the communal institutions from those who would dismantle them? Was his inaction against Conrad III a bid to keep the city from being drawn into a conflict it had nothing to do with?
These would all make great questions, but I've written enough long-winded trivia!