the continuous exodus of emigrants nor the systematic reclaiming of
marsh-lands offered a permanent solution. At an early date her
middle-classes discovered the grand principle of modern industry: that
by manufacturing for foreign markets the production of wealth can be
accelerated to an indefinite degree, and the most prolific communities
maintained in affluence upon a sterile or restricted territory. The
superfluous labour of the Flemish countryside flocked into towns, at the
bidding of Flemish capital, and found remunerative employment in the
weaving trade. From 1127 onwards these towns were bargaining with the
Counts of Flanders for emancipation. Bruges, Ypres, Lille and Ghent were
only the most successful among forty thriving communities which, at the
close of the twelfth century, enjoyed a large measure of self-government
but found their liberties threatened by the King of France. To meet the
danger the Flemish communes embarked on the stormy sea of politics. At
first they fought the King, in the name of the Count, and made their
first appearance as a military power on the disastrous field of Bouvines
(1214), which cost Count Ferrand his liberty and the communes the flower
of their militia. The successors of Ferrand sank deeper and deeper into
dependence on the Capets, until the communes were forced in self-defence
to assume the leading role. At Courtrai (in 1302) they turned the tables
on the Crown, and took an ample vengeance for Bouvines, by a terrible
slaughter of French knights and men-at-arms, demonstrating to a startled
Europe that feudal tactics were obsolete, and that pikemen on foot were
a match for the best mailed cavalry. Cheated by a treacherous Count of
the due fruits of their victory, the Flemish communes nursed their
resentment and waited for new opportunities, while consoling themselves
with savage persecution of the nobles, the clergy, and all others whom
they suspected of French sympathies. The ambition of Edward III came at
length to their assistance; under the leadership of Jacques van
Artevelde, a merchant-prince and demagogue of Ghent, they signed a
treaty with the English King for the invasion and conquest of France
(1339). It was a brief and ill-starred alliance, ruinous to Flemish
trade and abruptly ended by the fall of Artevelde, whom his
fellow-citizens tore limb from limb under the impression that he was
aiming at a tyranny (1345). But events soon justified the bold proposals
of the fallen statesman. In 1369 the heiress of the county was given to
a French prince of the blood; the French party in Flanders reared their
heads; Bruges, to the alarm and fury of all patriots, joined the foreign
cause from jealousy of Ghent. War broke out between the two great
rivals; and the men of Ghent, commanded by Philip, the son of Jacques
van Artevelde, gained the upper hand. Victorious in a pitched battle,
they pursued the beaten army into Bruges, massacred the partisans of
France, and put the city to the sack. No other commune dared to imitate
the policy of Bruges, or to dispute the supremacy of Ghent in Flanders.
The younger Artevelde, like his father before him, stood out for a brief
moment as the dictator of a league of free republics. But the generals
of France had profited by their hard experience in the wars with
England; at Roosebeke (1382) the men of Ghent, charging the French
cavalry "like wild boars," found themselves outflanked, and were crushed
by the weight of superior science and numbers. They fought with the fury
of despair, neither expecting nor receiving quarter. More than twenty
thousand of the citizens fell in the battle, and were left, by the
King's order, unburied on the field. The corpse of Artevelde, who had
been suffocated in the press, was hanged on a gibbet for a warning to
all demagogues. With him died the day-dream of an independent Flanders.
Though her cities remained prosperous, they were destined to be
successively the subjects of the Burgundian, the Spaniard, and the
Austrian. It was only in 1831 that Flanders at length became a province
in a kingdom based on the Walloon nationality.
The Italian communes present, in their sharp vicissitudes of fortune, a
spectacle not less dramatic and infinitely more momentous for the
general history of Europe. In Italy, as in Flanders, the fair ideal of
civic freedom was blurred and defaced by party feuds and personal
ambitions, by the fickleness and passion of the mob, by the lust of
conquest and the fratricidal jealousies of neighbouring republics. Yet
to the influence of this ideal we must attribute both the solidarity of
the Italian city-state and the wealth of individual genius which it
fostered. The Italian Renaissance was little more than the harvest-time
of medieval Italy, the glorious evening of a day which had dawned with
the Fourth Crusade and had reached high noon in the lifetimes of Dante
and Giotto. In the fifteenth century the aptitudes which had ripened in
the intense and crowded life of turbulent republics were concentrated
upon art and letters. The leisure and the security which the specialist
demands were bought by renouncing the Utopian visions of the past. But
the growth of technical dexterity was a poor compensation for the
narrowing of interests; the individual was sacrificed to make the
artist; and art, too, suffered by the divorce from practical affairs. If
we are moved to impatience by the waste of life and energy involved in
the turmoils of medieval Italy, we must remember that in no atmosphere
less electric would the national energies have matured so early, or
piled achievement on achievement with such feverish speed.
[Illustration: (map) The Alps and North Italy]
The city, from time immemorial the meeting-ground for the best elements
in Italian society, had become in the early Middle Ages the one bulwark
between the Italian middle-classes and a particularly lawless form of
feudalism; and it had served this purpose well. The number of these
cities, their population and resources, the luxury of the citizens, the
splendour of the palaces and public buildings, were the admiration of
all Europe at a time when the Flemish burghers still lived in wooden
houses and the Flemish cities were still rudely protected by palisades
and earthen ramparts. Nature had done much for Italy. Thanks to the
central situation of the peninsula, the trade between Northern Europe
and the Mediterranean converged upon her seaports and the Alpine passes
which stand above the valley of the Po. The untiring industry of Italian
capital and labour made Lombardy and Tuscany the homes of textile
manufactures, of scientific cultivation, of banking and finance. In
every port of the Levant, the Aegean and the Black Sea, the shipmen and
merchants of Venice, Benoa, and Pisa hunted for trade like
sleuth-hounds, and fought like wolves to secure a preference or a
monopoly. By land and sea the rule of life was competition for territory
and trade. War was a normal and often a welcome incident in the quest
for wealth; few Italians were free from the belief that conquests are a
short cut to prosperity, that trade follows the flag, and that the gain
of one community must be another's loss. Within the city walls, class
strove with class and family with family. Riot, massacre, and
proscription were the normal instruments of party warfare; minorities
conspired from fear of proscription, and majorities proscribed in order
to forestall conspiracy. Boundless, indeed, was the vitality of
republics which, under such conditions, not only throve, but also held
at bay the ablest sovereigns and the most formidable troops of Europe.
The best and the worst features of the communal regime are illustrated
in the resistance of the Lombard cities to Frederic Barbarossa, the
first Emperor who formulated and applied to Italy a scheme of absolutist
government. Between 1154 and 1176 the Lombards turned the course of
history. They prepared the way for Innocent III to plant his foot upon
the necks of kings, and for Innocent IV to destroy the House of
Hohenstauffen. That this would be the result of their stand for liberty,
neither they nor the other parties to the struggle could foretell. But
on both sides it was felt that the greatest issues were at stake. The
question was whether Italy should, once for all, accept a German yoke;
whether the Papacy should become a German patriarchate; whether free
institutions, both in Church and State, should give place to a
bureaucracy.
The question did not take this shape from the beginning. When Frederic
first intervened in Lombardy he came to protect the smaller cities
against the imperialist ambitions of Milan, to restore the public peace,
to investigate innumerable complaints of force and fraud. Many of the
cities hailed him as a deliverer; against him were only the clients of
Milan, or those who, on a humbler scale, aspired to emulate her policy.
Even so it was no easy matter to chastise the most insignificant of the
contumacious communes; and Milan, who refused point-blank to give
satisfaction for her lawless acts of conquests, or even to renounce what
she had won, could not safely be attacked.
Two circumstances were against the Emperor. Any war against the Lombards
must be a war of sieges; but the military science of the age was more
skilful in defence than in attack. And no war could be carried to a
prosperous conclusion without Italian help; for it was impossible to
interest the German princes in the wars of Italy, or to exact
substantial help from them. The first of these difficulties Frederic
Barbarossa never overcame. With the second he was more successful in the
middle period of the conflict (1158-1162); and it was then that the
representatives of Lombard independence were most nearly overwhelmed.
In 1158 he came back from Germany to besiege Milan, having carefully
concluded treaties with her rivals in Lombardy, in the Mark of Verona,
in Emilia and the Marches. With their help he starved the impregnable
city into a surrender on terms dictated by himself. In these there was
nothing to excite suspicion or alarm. It was a matter of course that the
Milanese should take the oath of allegiance and emancipate the enslaved
cities. He stipulated further for a palace in the city, and for the
restitution of all imperial prerogatives (_regalia_) which the
consuls had usurped; but the full import of these latter articles only
became clear some two months later, when he announced his future policy
at a Diet held on the plain of Roncaglia. He disclaimed the intention of
ruling as a tyrant, but demanded that his lawful rights should be
respected. As guardian of the public peace, he would permit no private
wars to be waged and no leagues to be formed among the cities. As lord
of the land, he claimed, under the title of _regalia_, a formidable
list of rights and dues which the jurists of Bologna had compiled at the
expense of much historical research. It included the nomination of the
highest magistrate in every city; the supreme jurisdiction in appeals
and criminal causes; the control of mints, markets, and highways; and
rights of purveyance and taxation. Some of these had been in abeyance
from time immemorial; most of them had been exercised by the cities for
more than fifty years. Frederic held that no prescription could avail
against the Crown; and, if this attitude seemed more appropriate to a
Justinian than to a King of the Lombards, there was still something to
be said for his claims on grounds of public policy. Till a strong
monarchy was re-established in Italy, city would oppress city, and the
strong would rob the weak. But such a monarchy could only be maintained
if an ample revenue were assured, and if the powers arrogated by the
communes were curtailed.
Even those cities which had originally supported Frederic began to waver
when they saw the logical consequences of his policy. They were not
disposed to cavil at any measures that he might take against Milan. But
to deal with friend and foe on the same principles struck them as
injustice. To run the risk of enslavement by a neighbour was an evil;
but it was worse to lose for ever the prospect of enslaving others. And
what guarantee was there that the new absolutism, once firmly in the
saddle, would always be benevolent, or would always be represented by
officials of integrity? The claims of the Emperor might be in a sense
historical; but the cities knew, if he did not, that the so-called
restoration of _regalia_ was in effect a revolution. The time was
nearly ripe for general defection; loyalty was strained to
breaking-point when Frederic began to appoint for each city a resident
commissioner (_podesta_), empowered to exercise the regalian rights
and to collect the revenue accruing from them. But Milan was still
feared and hated. When she alleged that her recent treaty of
capitulation was infringed by the decrees of Roncaglia, and when she
expelled the envoys whom Frederic had sent to instal a _podesta_,
the other cities rallied to the imperial cause. There was one notable
exception. The little commune of Crema had been ordered to destroy her
walls; she refused, and made common cause with her great neighbour.
The imperial ban was issued against both cities (April 1159); troops
were hurriedly called up from Germany, and contingents were obtained
from the Italian allies, until Frederic had in the field a force
estimated at 100,000 men. But for six months he was held in check by the
resistance of Crema, which he had planned to reduce with a small force
while the main bulk of his levies were gathering for the siege of Milan.
The attack on Crema was cordially seconded by the citizens of the
neighbouring Cremona, who gave their assistance in diverting the
watercourses which ran through the city, and lent Frederic the most
famous of living engineers to make his siege-machines. Crema was
completely invested; and every known method of assault was tried. The
moat was filled with fascines, and movable towers of wood, so high as to
overtop the battlements, were brought up to the walls; which were also
attacked with rams, and undermined by sappers working in the shelter of
huge penthouses. But breaches were no sooner made than repaired; every
scaling-party was repulsed; and the defenders derided the Emperor in
opprobrious songs. For once in his life he descended to bluster and
ferocious inhumanity. He swore that he would give no quarter, he
executed captives within sight of the walls, and he suspended his
hostages in baskets from the most exposed parts of the siege-towers.
Fortunately for his fame he relented, when hunger and the desertion of
their master-engineer compelled the Cremesi to sue for terms. They
received permission to depart with as much property as they could carry
on their backs. The rest fell to the imperial army; and the men of
Cremona were commissioned to demolish the city, which they did with a
goodwill. The turn of Milan followed; the Emperor, warned by experience,
fell back upon the slow and costly, but irresistible method of blockade.
At the end of eight months (May 1161-Feb. 1162) the city was
surrendered, evacuated, and condemned to destruction--a sentence which
it was found impossible to execute completely, so solid were the
ramparts and so vast the buildings they enclosed. For the moment all
resistance seemed at an end. The policy outlined at Roncaglia could at
length be put in force through the length and breadth of Lombardy; and
Frederic departed for Germany, leaving trustworthy lieutenants to
complete the vindication of his Italian rights. It only remained to try
conclusions with a recalcitrant Pope and the evasive Normans of the
South. The Emperor already saw himself in imagination the master of
Italy, and even of the Western Mediterranean. Five years passed without
bringing him nearer to his goal. Then Frederic returned to effect the
expulsion of Alexander III from Rome. He succeeded in this object, and
was crowned in St. Peter's by the anti-Pope of his own choosing (August
1167). It was the highest point of his fortunes, and the calamities
which followed were so unforeseen and terrible that contemporaries saw
in them the hand of God. While he was still in Rome, a pestilence broke
out which cost him two thousand knights and his best counsellors. He was
forced to fly from the infected city. On his way to the north he found
the road barred by a new and formidable coalition. The Lombard League
had come into existence--an alliance organised by Cremona, hitherto the
staunchest of imperial allies, and closely linked with Venice, which
Frederic had regarded as a negligible quantity. Of the intentions of the
League there could be no doubt. The members were already engaged in the
rebuilding of Milan; they had admitted to their inmost councils a legate
of Alexander III; they announced that they would only render to the
Emperor his ancient and undoubted rights. Frederic would not trust
himself in their vicinity. Accompanied by a handful of knights he
escaped ignominiously to the north, taking a circuitous route through
Savoy. The Leaguers no longer troubled to mask their true intentions. As
a token of their unity they built the city of Alessandria, named after
Frederic's bitterest enemy, the lawful Pope; and they solemnly
repudiated the appellate jurisdiction of the imperial law-court (1168).
Six years elapsed before Frederic could return to demand satisfaction,
and even then he could only muster some eight thousand men. From October
1174 to April 1175 he was engaged, first in besieging Alessandria, and
then in making fruitless overtures to the League for a compromise. By
the end of 1175 he was virtually blockaded in Pavia with a dwindling
remnant of his army. Reinforced in the spring, he made a rapid march on
Milan, in the hope of taking unawares the headquarters of the League.
But the Lombards were forewarned, and met him, at Legnano (29th May
1176), with a force outnumbering his by more than two to one. The battle
was hotly contested. The Lombard vanguard, composed of cavalry,
scattered before the onslaught of the Germans. The Emperor then led a
charge which penetrated to the centre of the enemy's position. Here was
the banner of Milan, mounted on a triumphal car (_carroccio_) and
guarded by picked burgesses, who had sworn to defend their trust to the
death. Round them the fighting raged for hours; the Germans made no
impression on their ranks, and by degrees the Lombard troops who had
fled returned to renew the battle. At length the imperial
standard-bearer was slain, and Frederic himself unhorsed. Thinking all
was lost, the imperialists fled confusedly towards Pavia, which they
reached after suffering more loss in the flight than in the battle.
Frederic, cut off from his followers, only escaped capture by hiding for
some days until the road to Pavia was clear.
Legnano was no overwhelming catastrophe, but it was ominous that citizen
levies had defeated German knights in a fair field. Frederic's
counsellors insisted that it was foolhardiness to pursue the war
interminably, when at any moment the papal interest might gain the upper
hand in Germany. Peace must be made at any cost with Alexander, and he
would accept no peace from which the Lombards were excluded. Frederic
yielded to the inevitable with a good grace. A treaty was concluded with
the Pope in the same year (November 1176); a few months later, a six
years' truce with the Lombards was arranged at Venice; and at Constance,
in 1183, this was converted into a lasting peace. In form there was a
compromise. The cities, while retaining the regalia and the free
election of their consuls, recognised their allegiance to the Emperor
and his appellate jurisdiction. In reality the Emperor had surrendered
everything of value, and the cities ignored any stipulations in the
treaty which were unfavourable to them.
So matters remained until Frederic II, the grandson of Barbarossa,
having firmly established himself in his Sicilian heritage, began to
meditate a closer union between his dominions north and south of the
Alps. The better to secure his communications with Germany, he prepared
to enforce in Lombardy the imperial rights reserved at Constance (1226).
At once the dormant Lombard League revived. The Alpine passes were so
effectually blockaded that Frederic was left entirely dependent on his
Sicilian forces. He turned the flank of the League at length, by an
alliance with Ezzelin da Romano, the tyrant of Verona, which gave him
access to the Brenner pass; but the League retaliated by lending support
to his rebellious son, Henry, King of the Germans. So began another war
in Lombardy. Legnano was brilliantly avenged on the field of Cortenuova
(1237), where the Emperor routed the Milanese and captured the
_carroccio_, the symbol of their independence. But he, like his
grandfather, was worn out by the difficulties of siege warfare; and in
1240 he turned southward to reduce the States of the Church. One more
attempt he made on Lombardy in the winter of 1247-1248. But a disastrous
fiasco destroyed his hopes and gave a mortal blow to his prestige. For
five months he blockaded Parma, and the city was at the last gasp, when
he imprudently dismissed a part of his troops. The garrison saw their
opportunity, and made a desperate sortie while the Emperor was absent on
a hunting expedition. They surprised and burned the strongly fortified
camp which he had named Victoria; his baggage and even his crown jewels
were captured; more than half of his army were slain or taken, and the
rest fled in confusion to Cremona (18th February 1248). It was necessary
for Frederic to beat a retreat, and he appeared no more in Lombardy. His
son Enzio, whom he left to represent him, was captured next year by the
Bolognese and sentenced to perpetual captivity.
Frederic died in 1250; and from this year we may date both the
disruption of the Empire and the decadence of the free Italian commune.
What he had failed to effect, with the united power of Sicily and
Germany behind him, was accomplished by a score of petty local
dynasties. At Milan the Visconti completed the enslavement which the
Delia Torre had first planned; at Verona it was the Scaligeri who
entered on the imperial inheritance; at Ferrara, the Este; at Padua the
Carrara; at Mantua, the Gonzaga. The tide of despotism rose slowly but
surely, until in the fifteenth century Venice alone remained to remind
Italy of the possibility of freedom.
It is to Germany, rather than Italy or Flanders, that we must look for
the last and perhaps the most fruitful phase in the development of
medieval town life. Free institutions were acquired by the German towns
comparatively late; and although it was the Lombard commune which they
aspired to reproduce, they never succeeded in securing so large a
measure of independent power, or in making themselves the capitals of
petty States. The Hohenstauffen, like the early Capets, were sensible of
the advantages to be gained by alliance with the Third Estate; but
Frederic II was obliged to renounce the right of creating free imperial
cities within the fiefs of the great princes; and most towns were left
to bargain single-handed with their immediate lords. Shut off from any
prospects of territorial sovereignty, the towns, even those which held
from the Empire, were also excluded from the Diet until the close of the
fifteenth century. Trade afforded the only outlet for their activities.
But in trade they engaged with such success that, by the close of the
Middle Ages, Augsburg rivalled Florence as a centre of cosmopolitan
finance, and the Baltic towns had developed a commerce comparable to
that of the Mediterranean. It was the Baltic trade which gave birth to a
new form of municipal league, the famous Hansa. The nucleus of this
association was an alliance formed between Lubeck and Hamburg to protect
the traffic of the Elbe. Other cities were induced to affiliate
themselves, and in 1299 the Hansa absorbed the older Gothland League of
which Wisby was the centre. By the year 1400 there were upwards of
eighty Hanseatic cities, lying chiefly in the lower Rhineland, in
Saxony, in Brandenburg, and along the Baltic coast; but the commercial
sphere of the League extended from England to Russia and from Norway to
Cracow.