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264 French prince, the great noble families of north Italy, the Otbertines, the Aleramids, the Marquesses of Tuscany and of Turin, were mainly responsible. On the other hand the bishops under Aribert, the powerful Archbishop of Milan, stood by Conrad; indeed Aribert with several other bishops, presenting himself before the new king at Constance (June 1025), assured him of his loyalty, of his willingness to crown him king of Italy, and of the warm reception that awaited him when he should set foot across the Alps; other Italian lords appeared a little later at Zurich to perform their homage. Encouraged by these manifestations of loyalty and by the collapse of the attempt of the lay aristocracy to raise a French prince to the throne, Conrad made his plans for an Italian expedition in the ensuing spring. By the route through the Brenner and Verona, in March he reached Milan, where, since Pavia, the old Lombard capital and place of coronation, was still in revolt, he was crowned by Aribert in the cathedral of St Ambrose. The Pavese, fearful of the result of their boldness, had sought pardon from Conrad at Constance, but their refusal to rebuild the palace they had destroyed prevented a reconciliation. Conrad punished them by a wholesale devastation of the surrounding country, and leaving part of his army to complete the subjection of the rebellious city, he passed eastward through Piacenza and Cremona to Ravenna: here his stay was marked by a scene of the wildest uproar. The citizens rose against the German soldiers with the hope that by force of numbers they might succeed in driving them from the town. Their hope was vain; the imperial troops soon gained the upper hand, and Conrad descended from his bedchamber to stop the slaughter of the defeated and defenceless burghers. The incident, related by Wipo, of the German knight who lost his leg in the riot is characteristic of the king's generosity; he ordered the leather gaiters of the wounded warrior to be filled with coin by way of compensation for the loss of his limb.

The heat of the Italian summer drove Conrad northward, to pass some two months in the cooler and more healthy atmosphere of the Alpine valleys. The autumn and winter were spent in reducing to submission the powerful houses of the north-west and of Tuscany. This accomplished, Conrad could proceed unhindered to Rome. The coronation of Conrad and his wife Gisela at the hands of Pope John XIX took place on Easter Day (26 March 1027) at St Peter's in the presence of two kings, Knut and Rodolph, and a vast gathering of German and Italian princes and bishops. Seldom during the early middle ages was an imperial or papal election altogether free from riot and bloodshed. Conrad's was no exception. A trivial dispute over an oxhide converted a brilliant and festive scene into a tumultuous street-fight between the Romans and the foreigners. A synod was held shortly after at the Lateran, in which two disputes were brought up for decision: the one, a question of precedence between the archbishops of Milan and Ravenna, was settled