that all the crew would be hung unless the town surrendered. The Ventimiglians, in great alarm for their kinsmen, submitted, and the Genoese entered and took possession of the town.
In the year 1238 ensued a general rising in places of importance along the coast occasioned by the intolerable exactions of Genoa, and its interference with the liberties of the towns. The governor of Ventimiglia took refuge in the castle and sent a messenger to Genoa for help.
Fourteen Genoese galleys were despatched to his aid, and hovered about the mouth of the Roya. After a severe conflict, the Genoese succeeded in landing and taking the city. At this time a number of the citizens migrated and founded a colony at Bordighera, but of this the Genoese disapproved, and they sent a fleet in 1239 and destroyed the little settlement. The contests of Guelfs and Ghibellines broke out, to aggravate the disorder and misery of the country.
Some clear-headed men saw that Italy was, like ancient Greece, a congeries of conflicting atoms with no bond, no consistence, and no chance of becoming a nation, a power, that no chance existed of domestic strife being stayed unless there were some strong central government to hold all the jarring elements in compulsory quietude. They looked back to the grand days of Rome, and hoped, under an emperor, to make of Italy once again what she had been, a dominant power in the world, and one in which, within her Italian borders, peace would be maintained. This was the Ghibelline dream and policy. But the opposed faction was for the maintenance of the present disintegration, the continuance of the independence of every little town, or rather of its own party
