CHAPTER II. IMPERIAL AGGRESSIONS OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA IN ITALY

The long war of the investitures, between the Franconian emperors and the popes, had given the first impulse to the ambition of the Lombard cities for alliance; as general interests were involved, as it was a question of distant operations and common danger, the cities felt the necessity of alliances and of an active correspondence, which soon extended from one extremity of Italy to the other. The smaller towns soon found that this general policy was beyond their means, and that the great cities, in which commerce and wealth had accumulated knowledge, and which alone received the communications of the pope or of the emperor, naturally placed themselves at the head of the league formed in their provinces, either for the empire or for the church. These two leagues were not yet known in Italy by the names of Guelf and Ghibelline, which in Germany had been the war-cry of the two parties at the battle of Winsberg, fought on the 21st of December, 1140, and which had previously distinguished, the former the dukes of Saxony and Bavaria, devoted to the pope, the latter, the emperors of the house of Franconia. But although these two names, which seem since to have become exclusively Italian, had not yet been adopted in Italy, the hereditary affection respectively for the two parties already divided the minds of the people for more than a century, and faction became to each a second country, often served by them with not less heroism and devotion than their native city.[b]

[Sidenote: [1152-1155 A.D.]]

Such was the state of Italy, when the Germanic diet, assembled at Frankfort in 1152, conferred the crown on Frederick Barbarossa, duke of Swabia, and of the house of Hohenstaufen. This prince was nephew to Conrad III, whom he succeeded; he was allied to the two houses of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, which had contended with each other for the empire, and was regarded, with good reason, by the Germans as their most distinguished chief. Frederick Barbarossa was not only brave, but understood the art of war, at least so far as it could be understood in an age so barbarous. He made himself beloved by the soldiers, at the same time that he subjected them to a discipline which others had not yet thought of establishing. He held his word sacred; he abhorred gratuitous cruelty, although the shedding of human blood had in general nothing revolting in it to a prince of the Middle Ages; but the prerogatives of his crown appeared to him sacred rights, which from pride, and even from conscience, he was disposed to preserve and extend. The Italians he considered in a state of revolt against the imperial throne and the German nation, and he believed it to be his first duty to reduce them to subjection.

[Illustration: A VENETIAN SOLDIER, TWELFTH CENTURY

(Based on Vicellio)]

Frederick Barbarossa, accordingly, in the month of October, 1154, entered Italy with a powerful German army, by the valley of Trent. He proposed to himself not only receiving there the crowns of Italy and the empire and reducing to obedience subjects who appeared to him to forget their duty to their sovereign, but also to punish in particular the Milanese for their arrogance, to redress the complaints which the citizens of Pavia and Cremona had brought against them, and to oblige Milan to render to the towns of Lodi and Como, which it had dismantled, all the privileges which Milan itself enjoyed. On arriving at Roncaglia, where the diets of the kingdom of Italy were held, he was assailed by complaints from the bishop and nobles against the towns, as well as by complaints against the Milanese from the consuls of Pavia, of Cremona, of Como, and of Lodi; while those of Crema, of Brescia, of Piacenza, of Asti and Tortona vindicated them. Before giving judgment on the differences submitted to his decision, Frederick announced his intention of judging for himself the state of the country, by visiting in person Piedmont and Montferrat. Having to pass through the Milanese territory on his way to Novara, he commanded the consuls of Milan to supply him with provisions on the road. The towns acknowledged that they owed the emperors upon their journeys the dues designated by the feudal words “_foderum, parata, mansionaticum_” (forage, food, and lodging); but the Germans, retarded in their march by heavy and continued rain, took two days to reach a stage which the Milanese supposed they would reach in one; provisions of course failed; and the Germans avenged themselves on the unhappy inhabitants by pillaging and burning the villages wherever sufficient rations were not found.

Frederick treated with kindness the towns of Novara and Turin, but those of Chieri and Asti had been denounced to him as entertaining the same sentiments as Milan; the inhabitants fled at his approach, and he plundered and burned their deserted houses. Arrived next before Tortona, he ordered the inhabitants to renounce their alliance with the Milanese; but they, trusting to the strength of the upper town, into which they had retreated, while Frederick occupied the lower part, had the courage to refuse. The Germans began the siege of Tortona on the 13th of February, 1155. They could not prevent the entrance of two hundred Milanese, to assist in its defence. For sixty-two days did this brave people resist the attacks of the formidable army of Frederick, the numbers of which had been increased by the armed force of Pavia, and the other Ghibelline towns. The want of water compelled them at last to surrender; and the emperor allowed them to retire to Milan, taking only the few effects which each individual could carry away. Everything else was given up to the pillage of the soldiers, and the houses became a prey to the flames. The Milanese received with respect these martyrs of liberty, and every opulent house gave shelter and hospitality to some of the unhappy inhabitants of Tortona. Frederick meanwhile placed on his head, in the temple of Pavia, the iron crown of the kings of Lombardy, and began his march on Rome, to receive there the golden crown of the empire.

[Illustration: AN ITALIAN SOLDIER OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY]

But the Germans who accompanied the emperor, notwithstanding the ardour with which they had undertaken this distant expedition, began to grow tired of so long an absence from their home. The license extended to their pillage and debauchery no longer appeared to them a sufficient compensation for tedious marches and the dangers of war. They pressed the emperor to advance towards Rome, and to avoid all quarrel with the great towns by which they passed, although almost all refused to admit them within their walls--providing subsistence and lodging for them in the suburbs only. The impossibility of maintaining discipline in a rapacious army, which beheld for the first time the unknown riches of commerce and the arts; the difficulty of avoiding quarrels between two nations, neither of which understood the language of the other, perhaps justified this precaution. Frederick thus passed by Piacenza, Parma, Bologna, and Florence. He was not received even into Rome; his troops occupied what was styled the Leonine city, or the suburb built round the Vatican; he was there crowned by the pope, Adrian IV, while his army was obliged to repel the Romans, who advanced by the bridge of St. Angelo and the Borgo[6] of Trastevere to disturb the ceremony. Frederick withdrew from Rome the following day; conducting his army into the mountains to avoid the great heat of summer. The citizens of Spoleto, not having supplied with sufficient haste the provisions he demanded, he attacked, took, and burned their city; sickness, however, began to thin the ranks of his soldiers; many also deserted, to embark at Ancona. Frederick, with a weakened army, directed his march on Germany by the valleys of the Tyrol. The citizens of Verona, who would not admit the Germans within their walls, constructed for him a bridge of boats on the Adige, which he hastily passed over, but had hardly gained the opposite bank, when enormous pieces of wood, carried down by the impetuosity of the current, struck and destroyed the bridge. Frederick had no doubt that the Lombards had laid this snare for him, and flattered themselves with the breaking of the bridge whilst he should be in the act of passing over; but he was no longer sufficiently strong to avenge himself.

[Sidenote: [1155-1158 A.D.]]

The emperor at length returned into Germany with his barbarian soldiers. He everywhere on his passage spread havoc and desolation; the line by which he marched through the Milanese territory was marked by fire; the villages of Rosate, Trecale, and Galiata, the towns of Chieri, Asti, Tortona, and Spoleto were burned. But whilst he thus proved his barbarism, he also proved his weakness. He did not dare to attack the stronger and more populous cities, which congratulated themselves on having shut their gates, and refused submission to him. Thus a year’s campaign sufficed to destroy one of the most formidable armies that Germany had ever poured into Italy; and the example of ancient times encouraged the belief that it would be long before the emperor could again put the Germans in motion. The Milanese felicitated themselves on having preserved their liberty by their courage and patriotism. Their treasury was indeed empty; but the zeal of their opulent citizens, who knew no other luxury than that of serving their country, soon replenished it. These men, who poured their wealth into the treasury of the republic, contented themselves with black bread, and cloaks of coarse stuff. At the command of their consuls, they left Milan to join their fellow-citizens in rebuilding, with their own hands, the walls and houses of Tortona, Rosate, Trecale, Galiata, and other towns, which had suffered in the contest for the common cause. They next attacked the cities of Pavia, Cremona, and Novara, which had embraced the party of the emperor, and subjected them to humiliating conditions; while they drew closer their bonds of alliance with the towns of Brescia and Piacenza, which had declared for liberty.

But Frederick had more power over Germany than any of his predecessors; he was regarded there as the restorer of the rights of the empire and of the German nation. He obtained credit for reducing Italy from what was called a state of anarchy and revolt, to order and obedience. His vassals accordingly flocked with eagerness to his standard, when he summoned them at the feast of Pentecost, 1158, to compel the submission of Italy. The battalions of Germany entered Lombardy at the same time by all the passes of the Alps. Their approach to Brescia inspired the inhabitants with so much terror, that they immediately renounced their alliance with Milan, and paid down a large sum of money for their ransom. The Milanese, on the contrary, prepared themselves for resistance. They had either destroyed or fortified all the bridges of the Adda, flattering themselves that this river would suffice to stop the progress of the emperor; but a body of German cavalry dashed boldly into the stream, and, swimming across the river, gained in safety the opposite bank. They then made themselves masters of the bridge of Cassano, and the whole army entered into the Milanese territory. Frederick, following the course of the Adda, made choice of a situation about four miles from the ruins of the former Lodi.[7] Here he ordered the people of Lodi to rebuild their town, which would in future secure to him the passage of the Adda. He summoned thither also the militias of Pavia and Cremona, with those of the other towns of Lombardy, which their jealousy of Milan had attached to the Ghibelline party; and it was not till after they had joined him that he encamped, on the 8th of August, 1158, before Milan.

His engines of war, however, were insufficient to beat down the walls of so strong and large a town; and he resolved to reduce the Milanese by famine. He seized their granaries, burned their stacks of corn, mowed down the autumnal harvests, and announced his resolution not to raise the siege till the Milanese had returned to their duty. The few nobles, however, who had preserved their independence in Lombardy, proceeded to the camp of the emperor. One of them, the count of Blandrate, who had before given proofs of his attachment to the town of Milan, offered himself as a mediator, was accepted, and obtained terms not unfavourable to the Milanese. They engaged to pay a tribute to Frederick of nine thousand marks of silver, to restore to him his regal rights, and to the towns of Lodi and Como their independence. On their side, they were dispensed from opening their gates to the emperor. They preserved the right of electing their consuls, and included in their pacification their allies of Tortona and Crema. This treaty was signed the 7th of September, 1158.

[Illustration: AN ITALIAN NOBLEMAN, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

Frederick, in granting an honourable capitulation to revolted subjects, whom he had brought back to their obedience, had no intention of renouncing the rights of his empire. He considered that he had preserved, untouched, the legislative authority of the diet of his kingdom of Italy. The Milanese, on the contrary, regarded their treaty as definitive; and were both astonished and indignant when Frederick, having assembled, towards the 11th of November following, the _placita_ or diets of the kingdom at Roncaglia, promulgated by this diet a constitution which overthrew their most precious rights. It took the administration of justice from the hands of the consuls of towns, to place it in those of a single judge, and a foreigner, chosen by the emperor, bearing the name of _podesta_; it fixed the limits of the regal rights, giving them much more importance than had been contemplated by the Milanese when they agreed to acknowledge them; it deprived cities, as well as the other members of the empire, of the right of making private war; it changed the boundaries of territories appertaining to towns, and in particular took from Milan the little town of Monza, and the counties of Seprio and of Martesana, which the inhabitants had always regarded as their own property.

[Sidenote: [1158-1161 A.D.]]

Just motives had made the emperor and the diet consider these innovations necessary for the public peace and prosperity; but the Milanese regarded them only as perfidious violations of the treaty. When the podesta of the emperor arrived at Milan to take possession of the tribunal, he was sent contemptuously away. The Milanese flew to arms; and making every effort to repossess the different passes of the Adda, prepared to defend themselves behind this barrier. Frederick, on his side, assembled a new diet of the kingdom of Italy at Bologna, in the spring of 1159, and placed Milan under the ban of the empire.

The emperor did not yet attempt to reduce the Milanese by a regular siege. His army was neither sufficiently numerous to invest so large a town, nor his engines of war of sufficient force to make a breach in such strong walls; but he proclaimed his determination to employ all his power, as monarch of Germany and Italy, to ruin that rebellious town. The Milanese, accordingly, soon saw their corn mowed down, their autumn harvests destroyed, their vine stocks cut, the trees which covered their country either cut down or barked, their canals of irrigation broken; but the generous citizens of this new republic did not allow themselves to be discouraged by the superior force of such an enemy, or by the inevitable issue of such a contest. They saw clearly that they must perish; but it would be for the honour and the liberty of Italy; they were resolved to leave a great example to their countrymen, and to future generations.

_The Siege of Crema_

The people of Crema had remained faithful to the Milanese in their good and evil fortune; but the siege of that town presented fewer difficulties to the emperor than the siege of Milan. Crema was of small extent, and could be invested on every side; it was also more accessible to the engines of war, though surrounded by a double wall and a ditch filled with water. The Cremonese began the siege on the 4th of July, 1159; and on the 10th, Frederick arrived to direct it in person.[c]

The emperor regarded the inhabitants of the town as revolted subjects and he probably expected to have little difficulty in accomplishing their overthrow. Contrary to his expectations, however, the Cremascans proved not only brave but stubborn, and despite his best efforts they held out against him for about six months. The siege gave rise to many picturesque incidents and furnished typical illustrations of the methods of warfare of the time. Even before the first attack Frederick sought to frighten the Cremascans into submission by the barbarous execution of several of their citizens who had previously been sent to him as hostages. Nothing daunted, the inhabitants of the besieged city retaliated in kind; moreover, they gave proof of their intrepidity by sallying forth and attempting to defeat a portion of the besieging army in open combat. Their small numbers rendered this an act of hardihood, but it evidenced the spirit in which they were prepared to repel the assault.

Frederick, on his part, began the construction of the usual machines employed against walled cities. The chief of these consisted of great towers called cats, which were tower-like structures provided with battering-rams and with grappling-irons for tearing down walls. When these were ready, a road-bed was made for them by filling in the outer ditch with some two hundred casks and two hundred car-loads of gravel. Over this improvised causeway the largest cat was slowly rolled preparatory to the assault.

The Cremascans marshalled themselves on the walls opposite this point of attack and assailed the cat with great stones hurled by catapults, and with showers of blazing arrows which had been dipped in a composition of oil, pitch, lard, and sulphur. These burning arrows were cut from the walls of the cat with scythes, but it was with difficulty that the flames could be extinguished, while the enemy’s projectiles threatened the complete destruction of the invading engine before it could be brought within close range of the walls.

Further enraged at the heroic resistance, Frederick resorted to one of those measures of barbarity which seem almost incredible when rehearsed to modern ears. He brought forth the Cremascan prisoners whom he had previously spared, bound them in chains and suspended them by ropes beneath their arms from the front of the cat. The Cremascans beheld with horror their friends and relatives thus used to shield the foe; but at length the needs of the many were held by the consul, Giovanni de Medici, to outweigh the interests of the unfortunate few, and the missiles of defence were again brought to bear upon the cat. Nine of the unfortunate Cremascans dangling from the cat were killed, and others were frightfully injured; but the occupants of the structure also suffered to such an extent that they were glad presently to retire and for the moment to acknowledge themselves beaten.

[Illustration: A GERMAN OFFICER, TWELFTH CENTURY]

Where the invaders had failed by open attack, they in the end succeeded through the treachery of a Cremascan, one Marchisio, a mechanic of great ingenuity, whose skill had largely aided the besieged garrison in repulsing the enemy’s attack. Frederick found a way to approach this man and through bribery to gain him over. The importance laid upon this incident by the chroniclers of the siege illustrates the value that attached to individual effort in the warfare of those times. The reader of Roman history will recall how Archimedes long saved Syracuse from destruction by the ingenuity with which he contrived means to repel the assaults of the Romans. Warfare had but little changed in the interval of about fourteen hundred years--had, indeed, but little changed since the early days of the Egyptians and Babylonians--and the presence of one inventive mind might seemingly suffice to turn the tide for or against the besieged city. So now Marchisio, as the story goes, was able to point out at once to Frederick the inadequacy of his method of attack. He caused the emperor to abandon his cats, and to build in their place gigantic towers, the largest being, it is said, about one hundred cubits in height, and having attached to one of its upper stories a bridge no less than forty-six cubits long, which would enable its occupants to reach the wall of a city while their machine was yet at a considerable distance. The tower itself was further guarded from missiles by brass and iron plates.

In due course of time, these new machines being in readiness, a fresh attack was begun. The largest tower approached within grappling distance of the walls; the invaders poured over the bridge, despite the shower of missiles that assailed them, and accomplished heroic deeds on the walls where they grappled with the Cremascans. Tradition usually preserves the names of one or two among the hardy warriors who figure in such a scene as this. In the present case the chroniclers have loved to record the deeds of one Berthold von Arach, represented as a giant in strength, who was said to have sprung down from the wall with a small band of followers and recklessly to have invaded the city itself. After performing the usual deeds of prowess, he at last succumbed to superior numbers, and the conqueror proudly affixed his scalp with its waving hair as a trophy to his own helmet.

Another warrior who was said to have distinguished himself on that day was Otto, count palatine of Bavaria. He it was whose efforts were held to have turned the tide of battle against the Cremascans on the wall and to have decided the fate of the day; though Conrad, his brother, who with him led the assault, performed equal deeds of daring and barely escaped with his life.

At last the Cremascans were driven to abandon their outer wall. On the morrow, despairing of further defence, they offered to capitulate, throwing themselves on the mercy of Frederick. “Sad is ever the lot of the vanquished,” cried the despairing consul as he approached the emperor. “Oh, sire, the hand of the Almighty is heavy upon us. We surrender and throw ourselves upon your mercy. But if our prayers can touch your heart let us not be delivered into the hands of the Cremonese, whose many false accusations have wrought our ruin.” The emperor accepted the capitulation, and extended more merciful terms than his attack in the earlier part of the siege might have led one to expect. He permitted the Cremascans with their wives and children to depart, as also the militias of Brescia and Milan; the Cremascans taking with them so much as they could carry, their allies going empty handed.[a]

“The surrender of Crema,” says Testa,[d] “took place on January 27th, 1160. When that unhappy multitude, which amounted to more than twenty thousand persons, came forth, some with a few household goods, some with little children in their arms, some carrying or supporting the women, the infirm, and the wounded, it is said that, to avoid the quarters of the Cremonese, they went close by the pavilion of the emperor; and that he, at the sight of so much sorrow and distress, became thoughtful and sad; until at last, seeing in the crowd an old and infirm Cremascan who, having come to a difficult place, could hardly get any further, moved by irresistible compassion, he went up to him, offered him his hand, and helped him to go forward with the rest. So strongly can the most opposite affections prevail in turn over the same heart!”

[Sidenote: [1161-1163 A.D.]]

The siege of Crema exhausted the patience of the German army. At this period, soldiers were unaccustomed to such protracted expeditions. When they had accomplished their feudal service, they considered they had a right to return home. The greater number, accordingly, departed; but Frederick, with immovable constancy, declared he would remain, with the Italians only of the Ghibelline towns, to make war against the Milanese; and placing himself at the head of the militias of Pavia, Cremona, and Novara, carried on the war a whole year, during which his sole object was to destroy the harvests, and prevent the entrance of any kind of provision into Milan. In the month of June, 1161, a new army arrived from Germany to his aid. His subjects began to feel ashamed of having abandoned their monarch in a foreign country, amongst a people whom they accused of perfidy and rebellion. They returned with redoubled animosity, which was soon manifested by ferocious deeds; they tortured and put to death every peasant whom they surprised carrying provisions of any kind into Milan.

The rich citizens of the republic had aided the government in making large magazines, which were already in part exhausted; an accidental fire having consumed the remainder, hunger triumphed over courage and the love of liberty. For three entire years had the Milanese, since they had been placed under the ban of the empire, supported this unequal contest; when, in the beginning of March, 1162, they were reduced to surrender at discretion. In deep despair they yielded up their arms and colours, and awaited the orders of the emperor. Frederick, harsh and haughty, was not ferocious; never had he put to death by the executioner rebels or enemies whom he had vanquished. He suffered nearly a month to elapse before he pronounced his final determination; perhaps to augment the anxiety of the subdued, perhaps, also, to pacify his own wrath, which he at last vented on walls and inanimate objects, while he pardoned man. He ordered the town to be completely evacuated, so that there should not be left in it a single living being. On the 25th of March, he summoned the militias of the rival and Ghibelline cities, and gave them orders to raze to the earth the houses as well as the walls of the town, so as not to leave one stone upon another.

Those of the inhabitants of Milan whom their poverty, labour, and industry attached to the soil, were divided into four open villages, built at a distance of at least two miles from the walls of their former city. Others sought hospitality in the neighbouring towns of Italy; even in those which had shown most attachment to the emperor. Their sufferings, the extent of their sacrifices, the recollection of their valour, and the example of their noble sentiments, made proselytes to the cause of liberty in every city into which they were received. The delegates of the emperor also (for he himself had returned to his German dominions), the podestas whom he had established in every town, soon made those Lombards who had fought with him feel only shame and regret at having lent their aid to rivet his yoke on their own necks. All the privileges of the nation were violated; justice was sacrificed to party interest. Taxes continually augmenting had increased sixfold; and hardly a third part of the produce of the land remained to the cultivator. The Italians were universally in a state of suffering and humiliation; tyranny at length reached even their consciences.

RIVAL POPES

On the death of Pope Adrian IV, in September, 1159, the electing cardinals had been equally divided between two candidates; the one a Sienese, the other a Roman. Both were declared duly elected by their separate parties; the first, under the name of Alexander III; the second, under that of Victor III. Frederick declared for the latter, who had shown himself ready to sacrifice to him the liberties and independence of the church. The former had been obliged to take refuge in France, though almost the whole of Christendom did not long hesitate to declare for him. While one council assembled by Frederick at Pavia rejected him, another assembled at Beauvais not only rejected but anathematised Victor. Excommunication at length reached even the emperor; and Alexander, to strengthen himself against Frederick, endeavoured to gain the affections of the people, by ranging himself among the protectors of the liberties of Italy.

[Sidenote: [1163-1167 A.D.]]

Frederick re-entered Italy in the year 1163, accompanied not by an army, but by a brilliant retinue of German nobles. He did not imagine that in a country which he now considered subdued, he needed a more imposing force; besides, he believed that he could at all times command the militias of the Ghibelline towns; and, in fact, he made them this year raze to the ground the walls of Tortona. He afterwards directed his steps towards Rome, to support by his presence his schismatic pontiff; but, in the meantime, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso, the most powerful towns of the Veronese marches, assembled their consuls in congress, to consider the means of putting an end to a tyranny which overwhelmed them. The consuls of these four towns pledged themselves by oath in the name of their cities to give mutual support to each other in the assertion of their former rights, and in the resolution to reduce the imperial prerogatives to the point at which they were fixed under the reign of Henry IV. Frederick, informed of this association, returned hastily into northern Italy, to put it down. He assembled the militias of Pavia, Cremona, Novara, Lodi, and Como, with the intention of leading them against the Veronese marches; but he soon perceived that the spirit of liberty had made progress in the Ghibelline cities as well as in those of the Guelfs; that the militias under his command complained as much of the vexations inflicted by his podestas as those against whom he led them; and that they were ill-disposed to face death only to rivet the chains of their country. Obliged to bend before a people which he considered only as revolted subjects, he soon renounced a contest so humiliating, and returned to Germany, to levy an army more submissive to him.

Other and more pressing interests diverted his attention from this object till the autumn of 1166. During this interval his anti-pope, Victor III, died; and the successor whom he caused to be named was still more strongly rejected by the church. On the other side, Alexander III had returned from France to Rome; contracted an alliance with William, the Norman king of the Two Sicilies; and armed the whole of southern Italy against the emperor.

IMPERIAL CAMPAIGNS AND REVERSES

When Frederick, in the month of October, 1166, descended the mountains of the Grisons to enter Italy by the territory of Brescia, he marched his army directly to Lodi, without permitting any act of hostility on the way. At Lodi, he assembled towards the end of November, a diet of the kingdom of Italy, at which he promised the Lombards to redress the grievances occasioned by the abuses of power by his podestas, and to respect their just liberties; he was desirous of separating their cause from that of the pope, and the king of Sicily; and to give greater weight to his negotiation, he marched his army into central Italy. The towns of Romagna and Tuscany had hitherto made few complaints, and manifested little zeal in defence of their privileges. Frederick hoped that, by establishing himself amongst them, he should revive their loyalty, and induce them to augment the army which he was leading against Rome. But he soon perceived that the spirit of liberty which animated the other countries of Italy worked also in these; he contented himself, accordingly, with taking thirty hostages from Bologna, and having vainly laid siege to Ancona, he, in the month of July, 1167, marched his army towards Rome.

The towns of the Veronese marches, seeing the emperor and his army pass without daring to attack them, became bolder: they assembled a new diet, in the beginning of April, at the convent of Pontida, between Milan and Bergamo. The consuls of Cremona, of Bergamo, of Brescia, of Mantua and Ferrara, met there, and joined those of the marches. The union of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, for the common liberty, was hailed with universal joy. The deputies of the Cremonese, who had lent their aid to the destruction of Milan, seconded those of the Milanese villages in imploring aid of the confederated towns to rebuild the city of Milan. This confederation was called the League of Lombardy. The consuls took the oath, and their constituents afterwards repeated it, that every Lombard should unite for the recovery of the common liberty; that the league for this purpose should last twenty years; and, finally, that they should aid each other in repairing in common any damage experienced in this sacred cause, by any one member of the confederation; extending even to the past this contract for reciprocal security, the league resolved to rebuild Milan.

[Illustration: AN ITALIAN OFFICER, TWELFTH CENTURY]

The militias of Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Mantua, Verona, and Treviso arrived the 27th of April, 1167, on the ground covered by the ruins of this great city. They apportioned among themselves the labour of restoring the enclosing walls; all the Milanese of the four villages, as well as those who had taken refuge in the more distant towns, came in crowds to take part in this pious work; and in a few weeks the new-grown city was in a state to repel the insults of its enemies. Lodi was soon afterwards compelled, by force of arms, to take the oath to the league; while the towns of Venice, Piacenza, Parma, Modena, and Bologna voluntarily and gladly joined the association.

Frederick, meanwhile, arrived within sight of Rome. The Romans dared to await him in the open field; he defeated them with great slaughter, and made himself master of the Leonine city. The inhabitants still defending themselves in the Vatican, he dislodged them by setting fire to Santa Maria, the adjoining church; Alexander, in his fright, escaped by the Tiber. After his retreat the Romans took the oath of fidelity to the emperor, without, however, receiving his army within their walls; but fever, and the suffocating heat of the Campagna, soon began, by its ravages, to avenge the Italians; from the first days of August an alarming mortality broke out in the camp of the emperor.

[Sidenote: [1167-1174 A.D.]]

The princes to whom he was most attached, the captains in whom he had most confidence, two thousand knights, with a proportional number of common soldiers, were carried off in a few weeks. He endeavoured to flee from the destructive scourge; he traversed in his retreat Tuscany and the Lunigiana; but his route was marked with graves, in which every day, every hour, he deposited the bodies of his soldiers. He was no longer strong enough to vanquish even the opposition of the little town of Pontremoli, which refused him a passage; and it was by roads almost impracticable that he at length crossed the Apennines. He arrived at Pavia about the middle of September, and attempted to assemble a diet; but the deputies of Pavia, Novara, Vercelli, and Como alone obeyed his summons. He harangued the assembly with great vehemence; and, throwing down his glove, challenged the rebellious cities to a pitched battle. He passed the winter in combating, with his small remaining army, the league of Lombardy; but in the month of March, 1168, he escaped from the Italians, and repassed Mont Cenis, to return and arm the Germans anew against Italy.

After his departure, Novara, Vercelli, Como, Asti, and Tortona also entered into the confederation, which resolved to found, as a monument of its power, and as a barrier against the Ghibellines of Pavia and Montferrat, a new city, on the confluence of the rivers Tanaro and Bormida. The Lombards named it Alexandria (Alessandria), in honour of the chief of the church, and of their league. They collected in it all the inhabitants of the different villages of that rich plain, which extends from the Po to the Ligurian Alps, and secured to them all the liberty and privileges for which they themselves had fought.

Frederick had sacrificed more time, treasure, and blood, to strengthen his dominion over Italy, than any of his predecessors; he had succeeded for a long period in associating the German nation in his ambition. He persuaded the Germans that their interest and their honour were concerned in the submission of the Italians. They began, however, to feel tired of a long contest, from which they derived no advantage; other interests, affairs more pressing, demanded the presence of the emperor at home; and Frederick was obliged to suspend for five years his efforts to subdue Italy. During this period the towns of Lombardy, in the plenitude of their power and liberty, corrected their laws, recruited their finances, strengthened their fortifications, and finally placed their militias on a better war establishment. Their consuls met also in frequent diets, where they bound themselves by new oaths to the common defence, and admitted fresh members into the confederation, which at length reached to the extremity of Romagna.

Frederick, however, did not entirely abandon Italy. He sent thither Christian, the elected archbishop of Mainz, and arch-chancellor of the empire, as his representative. This warlike prelate soon felt that there was nothing to be done in Lombardy; and he proceeded to Tuscany, where the Ghibelline party still predominated. His first pretension was to establish peace between the two maritime republics of Genoa and Pisa, which disputed with arms in their hands the commerce of the East. As he found a greater spirit of pride and independence in the Pisans, he caused to be thrown into a dungeon their consuls, who had presented themselves at the diet of the Tuscan towns convoked by him at San Ginasio, in the month of July, 1173; he arrested, at the same time, the consuls of the Florentines, their allies, while he studiously flattered those of Lucca, of Siena, of Pistoia, and the nobles of Tuscany, Romagna, and Umbria; promising to avenge them on their enemies: but, said he, “to do so more effectually, you must first co-operate with me in crushing the enemies of the emperor.” He thus succeeded in persuading them to second him in the attack which he meditated for the following spring on Ancona.

This city, the most southern of all those attached to the league of Lombardy, contained about twelve thousand inhabitants, enriched by maritime commerce, and confident in the strength of their almost unassailable position. Their town, beautifully situated on the extremity of a promontory, which surrounded a magnificent port, presented on the side open to the continent only precipitous rocks, with the exception of a single causeway. The citizens had accordingly repulsed successively for ages all the attacks of the barbarians, and all the pretensions of the emperors. The archbishop Christian arrived before Ancona in the beginning of April, 1174, and invested the city with an army levied among the Ghibellines of Tuscany and Umbria. The people of Ancona repulsed their attack with their accustomed bravery. But hunger, more formidable than the sword, soon menaced them. The preceding harvests had failed; their granaries were empty; and an enemy’s fleet closed their port. They saw the harvest ripen, without the possibility of a single sack of corn reaching them. All human subsistence was soon exhausted; undismayed, however, they tried to support existence with the herbs and shell-fish which they gathered from their rocks, or with the leather which commerce had accumulated in their magazines. Such was the food on which had long subsisted a young and beautiful woman. Observing one day a soldier summoned to battle, but unable from hunger to proceed, she refused her breast to the child whom she suckled; offered it to the warrior; and sent him, thus refreshed, to shed his blood for his country.

But to whatever distress the people of Ancona were reduced, they rejected every proposal to capitulate. At length the succour invoked from the Guelfs of Ferrara and Romagna approached; Christian saw the fires which they lighted on the mountain of Falcognara, about four miles from Ancona; and, unable to give them battle with an army exhausted by the fatigues of a long siege, he hastily retreated.

FREDERICK ONCE MORE AGGRESSIVE

[Sidenote: [1174-1175 A.D.]]

In the beginning of October, 1174, Frederick, at the head of a formidable army, again re-entered Italy. He passed from the county of Burgundy into Savoy, and descended by Mont Cenis. Suza, the first town to which he came on his passage, was taken and burned; Asti, in alarm, opened its gates, and purchased its security from pillage by a heavy contribution; but Alexandria stopped the progress of the emperor. This city, recently founded by the league of Lombardy, did not hesitate to enter into a contest with the imperial power for the sake of its confederates; although its mud walls were an object of derision to the Germans, who first gave this town the surname of Alessandria _della paglia_, or of straw. Nevertheless these walls of mud and straw, but defended by generous and devoted citizens, resisted all the efforts of the most valiant army and the most warlike monarch of Germany. Frederick consumed in vain four months in a siege, which was prolonged through the winter. The inundation of rivers more than once threatened him with destruction, even in his camp; sickness also decimated his soldiers. Finally, the combined army of the Lombard League advanced from Piacenza to Tortona; and on Easter Sunday of the year 1175, Frederick found himself obliged to raise the siege, and to march for Pavia, to repose his army.

This last check at length compelled the emperor to acknowledge the power of a people which he had been accustomed to despise. The chiefs of the Lombard army showed themselves well prepared for battle; but still respecting the rights of their monarch, declined attacking him. He entered into negotiations with them; all professed their ardent desire to reconcile the prerogatives of the emperor and the rights of the Roman church with those of liberty. Six commissioners were appointed to settle the basis of a treaty which should reconcile the several claims. They began by demanding that the armies on each side should be disbanded. Frederick did not hesitate to comply; he dismissed his Germans, and remained at Pavia, trusting solely to the fidelity of his Italian Ghibellines. Legates from the pope arrived also to join the commissioners; and the negotiations were opened. But the demands of Frederick were so high as to render agreement almost impossible. He declared that he desired only his just rights; “but they must be those,” said he, “which have been exercised by my predecessors, Charlemagne, Otto, and the emperors Henry III and Henry IV.” The deputies of the towns opposed to this the concessions of Henry V and Lothair; but even these could no longer satisfy them. For the Italians, liberty had advanced with civilisation; and they could not now submit to the ancient prerogatives of their masters, without returning to their own ancient barbarism.

THE BATTLE OF LEGNANO; THE PEACE OF CONSTANCE

[Sidenote: [1175-1177 A.D.]]

The negotiations were broken off, and Frederick sent to Germany for another army, which, in the spring of 1176, entered the territory of Como by the Grisons. The emperor joined it about the end of May, after traversing, without being recognised, the territory of Milan. It was against this great town that he entertained the most profound resentment, and meditated a new attack. He flattered himself that he should find the citizens still trembling under the chastisement which he had before inflicted on their city. On the 29th of May, he met the Milanese army between Legnano and Barano, about fifteen miles from Milan. Only a few auxiliaries from Piacenza, Verona, Brescia, Novara, and Vercelli had yet joined them. An impetuous charge of the German cavalry made that of the Lombards give way. The enemy pressed forward so near the _carroccio_, as to give great alarm lest this sacred car should fall into their hands. But in the army of the Milanese there was a company of nine hundred young men, who had devoted themselves to its defence, and were distinguished by the name of “the company of death.” These brave youths, seeing the Germans gain ground, knelt down; and invoking God and St. Ambrose, renewed their vow to perish for their country; then rising, they advanced with such impetuosity that the Germans were disconcerted, divided, and driven back. The whole army, reanimated by this example, hastily pressed forward. The Germans were put to flight; their camp was pillaged; Frederick was separated from his companions in arms, and obliged to conceal himself, and it was not till he had passed several days, and encountered various dangers, that he succeeded in reaching Pavia, where the empress was already mourning his death.

[Sidenote: [1177-1183 A.D.]]

The defeat of Legnano at length determined Frederick to think seriously of peace, and to abandon pretensions which the Lombards resisted with so much energy. New negotiations were opened with the pope; and Venice was chosen, in concert with him, as the place for holding a congress. This town had withdrawn its signature from the league of Lombardy; it was acknowledged foreign to the Western Empire, and might be considered neutral and indifferent in the quarrel between the emperor and the free towns. The pope, Alexander III, arrived at Venice on the 24th of March, 1177. The emperor, whose presence the Venetians feared, first fixed his residence at one of his palaces, near Ravenna; approached afterwards as far as Chioggia, and finally came even to Venice. The negotiation bore upon three different points--to reconcile the emperor to the church, by putting an end to the schism; to restore peace between the empire of the West and that of the East, and the king of the Two Sicilies; and finally to define the constitutional rights of the emperor and of the cities of Lombardy.[c] Frederick was obliged to bend before the angry countenance of a proud priest, and offer his head as a footstool to the Roman bishop!

“I will tread upon the aspic and basilisk,” said the pontiff as he placed his foot upon the emperor’s neck, “and the lion and the dragon will I trample beneath my feet.” “_Non tibi sed Petro_,” replied the prince. “_Et mihi et Petro_,”[8] haughtily returned the priest while he pressed more firmly on the humbled monarch.[b] So at least the story goes. But unfortunately it is a narrative that cannot be accepted without many grains of allowance. Contemporary accounts do not give these picturesque details, and we are forced to conclude that the story of Frederick’s humiliation was embellished in after times with incidents quite foreign to the reality. But, divested of all apocryphal incidents, Frederick’s concessions to the pope constituted a distinct abasement of the imperial authority. If Alexander did not literally tread upon the neck of the emperor, he was certainly entitled to feel that he was figuratively grinding the secular “aspic and basilisk,” the royal “lion and dragon,” beneath his spiritual heel.[a]

Frederick had few subjects of dispute with the Grecian emperor, or the Norman king of the Sicilies; these parts of the treaty were not difficult to terminate. But that part which related to the league of Lombardy must be founded on a new order of ideas; it was the first pact that Europe had seen made between a monarch and his subjects; the first boundary line traced between authority and liberty. After long and vain attempts, the negotiators separated, contenting themselves only with obliging the emperor and the Lombards to conclude a truce of six years, bearing date from the 1st of August, 1177. During its existence, the rights on each side were to remain suspended; and the freedom of commerce was re-established between the cities which remained faithful to the emperor, and those which drew still closer their bonds of union by a renewal of the league of Lombardy.

The six years of repose, however, which this truce guaranteed, accustomed the emperor to submit to limitations of his authority. Thirty years had passed since the contest had begun between him and the Italian nation; age had now tempered his activity and calmed his pride. New incidents had arisen in Germany to fix his attention. His son, Henry VI, demanded to be associated in the sovereignty of his two kingdoms of Germany and Italy. A definitive peace only could restore to Frederick his rights and revenues in Lombardy, which his subjects there did not dispute, but which the truce held suspended. The adverse claims were honestly weighed at the Diet of Constance; reciprocal concessions were made both by the monarch and his subjects, and the Peace of Constance, the basis of new public rights for Italy, was at length signed on the 25th of June, 1183. By this peace the emperor renounced all regal privileges which he had hitherto claimed in the interior of towns. He acknowledged the right of the confederate cities to levy armies, to enclose themselves within fortifications, and to exercise by their commissioners within their own walls both civil and criminal jurisdiction. The consuls of towns acquired by the simple nomination of the people all the prerogatives of imperial vicars. The cities of Lombardy were further authorised to strengthen their confederation for the defence of their just rights, recognised by the Peace of Constance. But, on the other side, they engaged to maintain the just rights of the emperor, which were defined at the same time; and in order to avoid all disputes, it was agreed that these rights might always be bought off by the annual sum of two thousand marks of silver. Thus terminated, in the establishment of a legal liberty, the first and most noble struggle which the nations of modern Europe have ever maintained against despotism.

[Illustration: AN ITALIAN OFFICER, TWELFTH CENTURY]

The generous resistance of the Lombards, during a war of thirty years, had conquered from the emperors political liberty for all the towns of the kingdom of Italy. The right of obeying only their own laws, of being governed by their own magistrates, of contracting alliances, of making peace or war, and, in fine, of administering their own finances, with the exception only of a certain revenue payable into the imperial treasury, was more particularly secured by the Peace of Constance to the confederate cities of the league of Lombardy.

But the Germans easily comprehended the impossibility of refusing to their allies the privileges which their enemies had gained by conquest; the liberties, therefore, stipulated by the Peace of Constance, were rendered common to all the towns of Italy; and those which had been most distinguished by their attachment to the Ghibelline party were often found the most zealous for the establishment and preservation of all the rights of the people. The cities, however, did not consider themselves independent. They were proud of the title of members of the empire; they knew they must concur in its defence, as well as in the maintenance of internal peace; reserving only that it must be in pursuance of their free choice and deliberation. They were in a manner confederates of an emperor, who acted on them rather by persuasion than orders, rather as a party chief than as a monarch; and as he was habituated to this compromise with public opinion in his relations with the princes of the empire, he yielded with the less repugnance to his Italian subjects. It is a circumstance highly honourable to the princes of the house of Hohenstaufen, which continued to reign sixty-seven years after the Peace of Constance, that during this long period they made no attempt to infringe the conditions of the compact. They admitted, with good faith, all the consequences of the concessions made; they pardoned liberty, which the vulgar order of kings always regarded as a usurpation by the subjects of the rights of the crown.

DEATH OF FREDERICK; HIS SUCCESSOR

[Sidenote: [1183-1198 A.D.]]

It was not long, however, before the struggle was renewed between the emperor and most of the towns. It was supported with not less devotion and not fewer sacrifices; it caused not less calamity whilst it endured; and it was crowned, at its close, with results not less happy. But the cities did not, as in the preceding struggle, engage in it for their own immediate interest; they rather seconded the policy of the holy see, which sought the independence of the church and of Italy, and did not cease to fight for the attainment of this object till the extinction of the house of Hohenstaufen.

Frederick I survived the Peace of Constance seven years. During this period he visited Italy with his son Henry VI; he remained some time at Milan, where he was received with respect, and gained the affection of all the inhabitants, towards whom he testified the utmost trust, confidence, and kindness. Instead of endeavouring to intimidate Lombardy, and recover by intrigues his former power, he was occupied only with the marriage of his son Henry, whom he had previously crowned king of Germany, with Constanza, sole heiress of the Norman kings who had conquered the Two Sicilies. The union of this crown with that of Germany and of Lombardy would have reduced the pope to be no more than the first bishop of his states; it would have disarmed the two auxiliary powers which had supported the league of Lombardy against the emperor; and it alarmed the church, in proportion as it flattered his ambition. The endeavours to prevent or dissolve this union gave rise to a series of wars extending over a long period. Frederick Barbarossa did not see the commencement of them. When the news of the taking of Jerusalem by Saladin, on the 2nd of October, 1187, had thrown all Europe into consternation, Frederick, listening only to his religious and chivalric enthusiasm, placed himself at the head of the Third Crusade, which he led into the East by land, and died the 10th of June, 1190, of a stroke of apoplexy, caused by the coldness of the waters of the little river Calycadnus [Salef] in Asia Minor.

Henry VI had worn for five years the German and Italian crowns, when he received in Germany, where he then was with his wife, news of the death of William II, king of the Two Sicilies, to whom Constanza was successor; and a few months after, that of his father Frederick I. He immediately began his journey towards southern Italy. Tancred, a bastard of the race of the Norman kings, put in opposition to him by the Sicilians, defended, for some time with success, the independence of those provinces, but died in 1194; and Henry, who had entered the kingdom as conqueror, and had made himself detested for his cruelty, also died there suddenly, on the 28th of September, 1197. He left by his marriage with Constanza only one son, Frederick II, hardly four years old, who lost his mother in the following year; and was, under the protection of the pope, acknowledged, child as he was, king of the Two Sicilies; but the imperial and Lombard crowns were withheld from him for several years.

GROWING POWER OF THE NOBILITY

From the Peace of Constance to the death of Henry VI the free cities of Italy had, for the space of fifteen years, no contest to maintain against the emperors; but their repose and liberty were during this period constantly endangered by the pretensions of the nobility. The growing grandeur of the cities, and the decay of the imperial power, had left the nobles of Italy in a very ambiguous position.

They in some measure no longer had a country; their only security was in their own strength; for the emperor in resigning his power over the towns had not thought of giving an organisation to the nobles dispersed in castles. All the families of Italian dukes, and almost all those of marquises and counts, had become extinct; those who remained had lost all jurisdiction over their inferiors; no feudal tenure was respected; no vassal appeared at the baronial court, to form the tribunal of his lord. The frontiers of the kingdom of Lombardy were called _marches_, after a German word adopted into almost all the European languages, and the commander of these frontiers was called marquis; but the families of the powerful Tuscan marquises were extinct, as well as those of the marquises of Ancona, of Fermo, of Camerino, of Ivrea, and of those of the Veronese and Trevisan marches. There remained, however, on these frontiers some families which bore the same title, and had preserved some wrecks of these ancient and powerful marquisates.

The nobles were not united by the hierarchical connection of the feudal system, but by the affections or antipathies of the Guelfs or Ghibellines. In general, the most powerful families among the nobles, those who had castles sufficiently strong, lands sufficiently extensive, and vassals sufficiently numerous to defend themselves, listening only to the ambition of courts, were attached to the Ghibelline party. Those families, on the contrary, who possessed castles capable of but little resistance, situated on accessible eminences, or in plains; those whose castles were near great towns, and too weak to support a contest with them, had demanded to be made citizens of the towns; they had served them in the wars of the league of Lombardy; they had since taken a principal share in the government, and they thus found themselves attached by common interests to the party of the Guelfs. Independent nobles were no more to be found in all the plains of Lombardy; there was not one who had not become citizen of some republic; but every chain of mountain was thick-set with castles where a nobility, choosing obedience to an emperor rather than to citizens, maintained themselves independent; these too, attracted sometimes by the wealth and pleasures of towns, and sometimes desirous of obtaining influence in the counsels of powerful republics, in order to restore them to the emperor, demanded to be made citizens, when they thought it would open the way to a share in the government; and as war was their sole occupation, they were often gladly received by the republics, which stood in need of good captains.

It was thus the Ghibelline family of Visconti, whose fiefs extended from the Alps to the Lago Maggiore, became associated with the republic of Milan. The house of Este, allied to the Guelfs of Saxony and Bavaria, and devoted to the pope, possessors of several castles built on the fertile chain of the Euganean hills, joined the republic of Ferrara; the parallel chain, which serves as a base to the Tyrolese Alps, was crowned with the castles of Ezzel, Ezzelino, or Eccelino, of Romano, a family enriched by the emperors, entirely devoted to the Ghibelline party, and in process of time attached to the republics of Verona and Vicenza. In like manner were situated on the northern side of the Apennines the fortresses of the Ghibelline nobles, who excited revolutions in the republics of Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, and Modena: on the southern side were the castles of other Ghibellines, in turns citizens and enemies of the republics of Arezzo, Florence, Pistoia, and Lucca; lower in the valleys of the Po, or in the upper vale of Arno, were the castles of the Guelfs, who had become decidedly citizens of the same republics.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[6] Borgo is the communication between Trastevere and the Vatican.

[7] [In 1111, the Milanese totally destroyed the city of Lodi, and forbade its rebuilding. Nevertheless a prosperous commune again came into existence, and in 1158 the Milanese came again, repeating their work of destruction in a more thorough manner.]

[8] [“Not to you but to St. Peter (I kneel),” said the prince. “Both to me and to Peter,” returned the priest.]

[Illustration]