_The Free City_
“... Venne il dì nostro
O milanesi, e vincere bisogna.”—CARDUCCI.
After the blows and humiliation which the Milanese Church suffered in
the eleventh century from the united attack of Rome and the people, it
was no longer able to stem the popular movement towards freedom.
Throughout the long civil war the incipient Republic had been developing
and gradually limiting, more and more, the domination of the archbishop
and the nobles. This process, which was being repeated everywhere in
Lombardy, was greatly favoured by the weakness of the Empire during the
long minority of Henry IV. The cities, freed from the intervention of a
foreign suzerain, were able to shake off to some extent the rule of
feudalism. The great war waged later by Gregory VII. and his kindred
spirit, the Gran Contessa Matilda, against Henry IV. and the claims of
imperialism, promoted, with the power of the Papacy, the freedom of the
Communes, and showed in these two great elements of the national life
unity of aim, Italy’s best defence against the stranger.
By the end of the eleventh century Milan was, in all its external
relations, practically a free city, owning little more than nominal
allegiance and a ceremonious reverence to the Emperor, and allying
herself now with him, now with his resolute foe Matilda, or defying the
one and the other, as it pleased her best. Within the community itself
the principle of popular freedom and representation was recognised in
the government, and by means of constant insurrections the lower orders
had forced the nobles to recognise their rights. The Commune, whose
birth historians have dated from the great revolution of 1066 when
Lanzone kept Archbishop Ariberto and the nobles in exile for three
years, was now in full being. The institution about this time of
elective magistrates, whose title of _Consuls_ revived the old Latin
tradition of the city, marks the emancipation of the young Republic from
the archiepiscopal despotism. But the share of the ordinary citizens in
the privileges of this Constitution was still much restricted. The
Consuls appear to have been chosen exclusively at first from the higher
class, whose hereditary habit of authority fitted them to govern, and
under a constitutional form these officials tended to repeat the old
aristocratic oligarchy. But the nobles had no longer any legal support
in their attempts to tyrannise, and the whole system of government was
in a state of flux, and subjected to ceaseless modifications and change
by the continual revolts of the people, who, by the simple force of
numbers, made their strength felt, and vindicated their growing
pretensions to a larger part in the affairs of their city.
The same vitality which had won Milan her own freedom impelled her to
the oppression of the weaker communities around her. Her first
fulfilment of this tragic law of progress was the destruction of her
neighbour, Lodi, a strong and flourishing community, whose rivalry was a
constant menace to her own trade and prosperity. There was a
long-standing hatred between the two cities. The times lent abundant
pretext to the Communes to make war upon one another. The quarrel
between Empire and Church entangled them all in its immense web. Each,
in embracing the one or the other cause, was guided by its local
sympathies and antipathies, and reflected the general strife on a
smaller scale in its relations with its neighbours.
In 1111, Milan, ally of the Church, scarcely waiting till Lodi’s
protector, the Emperor Henry V., had turned his back for the time on
Lombardy, attacked the smaller city in full force, and ruined it to the
foundations. The miserable inhabitants, sternly forbidden to rebuild
their old homes, made poor little hamlets in which to shelter themselves
in the vicinity, and there dragged on a poverty-stricken existence under
the oppressive yoke of their conquerors, who jealously deprived them of
every means of recovery. Yet the wonderful vitality which animated these
young Italian communities preserved Lodi from utter despair, and
smouldered in her, ready to burst out in revolt on the first
opportunity.
Milan’s next enterprise was the subjugation of Como, which was fast
developing into a rich and powerful community, strong in the possession
of a lake navy. That city, however, resisted with great vigour,
retaliating with frequent success upon her aggressors, and before she
was finally subdued the war dragged on for ten years. Nearly all the
North Italian cities united with Milan against her, and she was finally
captured and burnt down in 1127, and her inhabitants compelled to swear
fealty to Milan. During the quarrel for the Empire between Lothair and
Conrad, after the death of Henry V., and the preoccupation of each of
those monarchs in turn with the affairs of Germany, the great Lombard
city pursued her sovereign way unchecked. Pavia, the old royal city, and
her chief rival, whose subjugation was to cost Milan yet three centuries
of almost ceaseless warfare, now felt, as often before, the strength of
her arm, and was compelled to bow to her will in the general councils of
Lombardy, and, with powerful Cremona and the rest of North Italy, to
follow her lead.
But the aggressive and tyrannic conduct of the great city was preparing
for her an awful day of retribution. In 1152, the death of the Emperor
Conrad and the election of his nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, opened a
new era for Italy. The young monarch, half barbarian, half Paladin, was
resolved to restore the power of the Empire in Italy. The first step
towards this end was the reduction of the chief vassal, Milan, to the
obedience which she had so long forgotten. Her sins against her
neighbours gave him a pretext. One day, at a Diet at Constance (1153),
two citizens of Lodi, bearing heavy crosses upon their shoulders, to
signify the grievous afflictions which Milan had put upon their
community, entered the hall, and kneeling before the Emperor, besought
his protection and help. Frederick, having listened to their tale, swore
to punish their arrogant and usurping foe. He straightway despatched an
envoy, named Sicherius, to the Milanese, commanding them to cease from
oppressing Lodi. But so little was the distant power of the Empire
feared, in comparison with that of the great Lombard city near at hand,
that when the two Lodigiani, who had undertaken their mission without
the knowledge of their fellow-citizens, returned home, and proclaimed
the benevolent intentions of the new monarch, the people were
inexpressibly dismayed. With woeful countenances they execrated the
‘most stupid men’ who had brought them into this plight, and when
Sicherius appeared shortly after, they entreated him to abandon his
journey, lest he should bring the vengeance of Milan upon them. The
envoy, however, not daring to disobey the imperial mandate, proceeded on
his way, and presented his letters in Milan. The Consuls read them,
flung them on the ground, and stamped them under foot, imperial seal and
all, with fury and contempt. Sicherius himself escaped with difficulty
from their hands. Returning to Lodi, he told his tale, and the unhappy
citizens prepared themselves for immediate ruin.
But Milan, having recovered calmness and begun to contemplate her rash
act with some trepidation, spared them for the time, and awaited the
development of events. This was not slow. Frederick, deeply offended,
descended upon Lombardy in the following year, with an enormous host,
fully resolved to humble the arrogant Milanese. He held a great Diet at
Roncaglia. Hither with the rest of the princes and magnates of Italy
came the Consuls of Milan, and offered all the ceremonial tokens of
submission and reverence. But the impossibility of reconciling the
differences between the monarch and the Republic quickly became evident.
Milan utterly refused to release Lodi and Como from her rule. The
Emperor soon proceeded to open hostility against the city. But he found
his task no light one. Milan’s sister communities were still withheld by
fear from lending aid to her foe, whose glittering show of authority
they held for transitory and insubstantial. Even Lodi was only persuaded
with difficulty to forswear her forced oath of fealty to her oppressor
and give credence to Frederick’s promises of protection. Her diffidence
was well justified. Frederick contented himself with besieging and
destroying Milan’s faithful ally, Tortona, capturing a few outlying
castles and laying waste her territory, and then, intent on compelling
Pope Hadrian to confirm his election by crowning him in Rome, he passed
on southwards (1155). The defiant Milanese immediately proceeded to
rebuild Tortona and to wage fierce war with the Pavesi, who, true to
their traditions, had given enthusiastic obedience to the new
representative of the Empire. Meanwhile Frederick, having received the
imperial diadem, made his way back through the eastern parts of Italy,
translating his heroic aspirations into a reality of fire and blood and
spoliation, and finally, having exhausted his treasury, returned into
Germany. His unlucky protégés of Lodi were abandoned to the mercy of
their enemies. Their villages were surprised and captured by the
Milanese, and the people compelled to flee in the darkness of night.
‘Who, seeing the women stumbling along the way, with their little ones,
some in their arms, some clinging to their garments, some falling behind
wailing—who seeing them fall into the ditches in the darkness and the
rain, would not have been sad and moved to compassion? Who would not
have been melted into tears?’ cries the chronicler Morena. Many died
from the hardships which they suffered, and the rest took refuge in
hamlets and in friendly Cremona. For the second time the Milanese
destroyed their homes and razed their city to the ground.
The other allies of the Emperor also suffered the vengeance of the
arrogant city. Novara and Pavia and other communes had to lament defeat
and devastation. Thus Milan prepared for the new coming of the Emperor,
who, all well knew, was but biding his time and gathering strength for
the work of punishment. In 1158 he crossed the Alps again, followed by a
mighty host of vassals. He proceeded directly against Milan. The
citizens, who had fortified themselves during his absence with an
immense fosse and huge earthworks which enclosed a much wider circuit
than the old walls, calmly awaited his attack. With his company of
tributary kings and princes and archbishops, the Emperor sat down with
all solemn preparation round the city. To each gate was allotted a
prince in command of an army. Seeing the magnificent array and the
determined purpose of the invader, Milan’s fickle allies, one and all,
sent their forces to join him, anxious to propitiate the stronger party,
and not unwilling to strike a blow at their domineering leader. No less
than a hundred thousand fighting-men surrounded the city. Milan was
confronted with the fate which she had pitilessly inflicted on others.
Struck by sudden dismay, or persuaded by treacherous counsels, she had
hardly endured the siege for a month before she surrendered and humbled
herself to acknowledge the supremacy of the Emperor. Satisfied with her
prompt submission, Frederick confined his revenge to the exaction of his
full imperial rights, a penalty grievous enough to a community so long
accustomed to complete freedom. She was compelled to take the oath of
fealty to the Emperor, to restore to him the _regalia_—which consisted
chiefly of the produce of certain taxes—to renounce all pretensions of
sovereignty over Lodi and Como, and to accept an imperial legate as her
supreme magistrate.
Frederick’s victory was, however, little more than a mockery. Milan’s
vitality and spirit of independence were too strong to be so easily
subdued. As soon as the Emperor had passed on to another part of Italy,
she boldly broke the newly-established peace and assaulted the German
garrisons left behind in Lombardy. Her example fired many of the other
cities to violate the obedience which they had sworn to the Emperor, and
the whole of North Italy was soon in arms again. Too rashly, however,
had the Milanese disregarded the nature of him whom they were defying.
Vowing to accomplish his purpose without mercy this time, Frederick
hastened back. Before attacking Milan again, he encamped before her
devoted ally, the small city of Crema, which, after a siege conducted
with barbarous ferocity, he captured and burnt. Still delaying his
vengeance on the chief offender, he spent two years in laying waste the
Milanese territory and capturing her castles, and having effectually
destroyed her sources of supply, he sat down once more (1161) before the
city marked by his implacable will for destruction.
The siege lasted for seven months. No noble deeds of valour and chivalry
distinguished the German Paladin’s emprise; he accomplished his work by
the slow and cruel hand of famine. Every gate was closely blockaded, and
all compassionate bearers of food from outside to the starving people
were almost without exception captured, and either ruthlessly scourged
or maimed of the right hand. Frederick showed the besieged none of the
respect due to gallant foes. He strung up his prisoners on gallows,
nobles and plebeians alike, in the view of their kinsfolk and friends
within, or sent them back sightless into the city. Within the walls,
hunger reached such a pitch that in their madness husbands and wives,
fathers and sons, turned upon one another. The hideous selfishness of
bodily need disfigured the gaunt faces in the streets, while the
spectacle of the mutilated wretches who had passed through the Emperor’s
hands, breathed into all hearts dreadful apprehensions of their future
fate. In their despair the people cried out for surrender, and at last
the Consuls, aware of the inflexibility of the foe, and fearing that to
resist longer was to sacrifice the entire people to the extremity of his
vengeance, threw themselves upon the mercy of the Emperor, and
surrendered the city at discretion (1162).
The scenes which follow paint vividly for us the tragedy of the great
city’s downfall. The magnitude of the punishment which Frederick meted
out to Milan invests him with a kind of sublimity. This was his
opportunity to deliver a blow which should resound to the four corners
of the earth, and accomplish, once for all, by the horror of its mere
narration, the subjugation of the rest of rebellious Lombardy. None knew
better than this mediæval monarch how to surround his revenge with all
those awful aspects and illusions of terror that impress the minds of
men. Day after day, processions of citizens, with bowed heads, and ropes
round their necks, presented themselves before him at his command, as he
sat enthroned in state in rebuilt Lodi, the Empress Beatrice at his
side, his vassal kings and princes on either hand, and still the doom of
the city remained unspoken. The eight Consuls—some of the noblest
patricians of Milan—came, holding their naked swords in their right
hands, and swore to do the will of the Conqueror. Next appeared three
hundred cavaliers, and kissing the Emperor’s foot, delivered up to him
the Milanese standards; while to Mastro Guitelmo, a man much revered by
his fellow-citizens, was committed the bitter charge of laying the keys
at his feet. Still another mark of humiliation was demanded of them, and
a day or two later came the Sacred Car itself, with the banner of the
Cross, and all the most venerable insignia of the Republic, to be
surrendered for the completion of Milan’s shame.
Then at last the voice from the throne spoke, commanding that beside
every gate of the city the fosse should be filled up and the walls
destroyed, so that he might march in in triumph. Milan—who for centuries
had proudly claimed the right of keeping all sovereigns excluded from
the enclosure of her walls—was now herself to lay low her defences to
admit a victorious monarch. A few days later Frederick made his entrance
with his army over the ruined walls, and the dreadful fiat went forth,
dooming the great city to complete destruction. The inhabitants were
ordered to quit their homes, taking with them what they could carry. No
entreaty, no tears, even of his own followers, could move Frederick’s
resolve. The piteous spectacle of the outcast people, huddled in masses
outside the walls in the bitter cold of March, homeless, not knowing
where to go, and uttering loud lamentations, could not change his
inexorable purpose. With an extremity of cruelty he committed the work
of ruin to Milan’s neighbours and bitterest foes—the men of Lodi, Pavia,
Novara, Como, Cremona—all burning to retaliate a thousand wrongs. They
threw themselves with fury upon the doomed buildings, each community
satiating its vengeance on the quarter facing towards its own city. In a
very few days an incredible amount of destruction was wrought. But it
was the work of months to raze to the ground the towers, the fine
palaces and public buildings, many of them surviving from the days of
the Roman Empire, and the crowded habitations of a vast population. The
churches and religious houses alone were spared, and for a while the
campanile of the Cathedral, a tower of admirable beauty and height,
which had not its like, they say, in all Italy, still rose untouched
above the ruins, a beacon of consolation to the despairing people. But
at last, the implacable decree of the conqueror pronounced its sentence,
and that, too, fell. Finally not more than a fifth part of the fair
city, which men called the flower of Italy—the May City—was left
standing.
From the spectacle of burning Milan, which he watched with his own eyes,
the magnanimous Avenger passed on with his Empress to celebrate the
Feast of Olives at Pavia! Frederick was now the dread of all Italy. The
trembling cities of Lombardy crept to his feet and kissed them. The
crown of Italy, hitherto withheld from him and now conceded by fear, was
set upon his head. As for the Milanese, crowded in the poor villages and
suburbs around their ruined city, and barely able to exist, they were
fain to accept any conditions which he imposed.
But the great Emperor’s fortunes had reached the flood, and the turn was
at hand. To have made his triumph enduring he must have exterminated all
Lombardy. While the Milanese people breathed, the Republic lived in
spirit, only awaiting the least relief from the pressure of the
conqueror to take substance once again. And now that its sins and
arrogance had been wiped out by such an awful expiation, the hatred and
jealousy of the sister Communes changed to compassion. The deep roots of
a common nationality began to stir. Moreover, all were enslaved alike,
all groaned together under the intolerable oppression of the imperial
officers who had been substituted for their old system of
self-government. ‘They who had been used to live without restraint at
ease and in liberty, and to dispose of their own affairs according to
their will, held this bondage as the deepest shame, saying among
themselves that it was better to die than to suffer such shame, such
dishonour,’ writes Morena. Ground down with grievous and irregular
taxation, their noblest citizens flung as hostages into the governors’
dungeons, their industry and commerce strangled, they began to regard
war even with the terrible Barbarossa as preferable to this degradation
and slow ruin. Their spirit of revolt was encouraged by that great
counterbalancing power to the Empire, the Papacy, which after a period
of schism and depression was lifting its head once more. In Alexander
III., now completely victorious over the rival Pope Victor, nominated by
Barbarossa, the Communes found that inspiration and direction which it
was Rome’s traditional part to give to the cause of freedom and
nationality. The papal excommunication laid upon their oppressor gave
the consecration of a religious cause to rebellion. Fomented by secret
emissaries from Rome, the movement grew and gathered head. Disturbances
broke out everywhere in North Italy, and culminated in a meeting of
envoys from five Communes—Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, Mantua,
Ferrara—with the delegates of Milan at a convent near Bergamo (1167),
and the formation of a defensive alliance, which was to become the
famous Lombard League. The first thing resolved on by the allies was the
rebuilding of Milan and the protection of the city from every foe until
she should grow strong enough to defend herself. A week or two later the
unhappy Milanese, huddling together in their wretched hovels, and
momentarily expecting a second destruction from their old enemies of
Pavia, were rejoiced at the sight of the horsemen of Bergamo, with their
banner displayed, riding swiftly to their succour. Troops from the other
friendly cities followed. The Milanese were solemnly conducted into
their ruined city on the 27th April 1167, and the work of restoration
began. With marvellous rapidity new walls and dwellings grew up.
Gathering confidence and strength every day, the League soon broke into
active hostility against those communities which remained faithful to
the Emperor, and the castles occupied by his garrisons. Lodi was
compelled by force to join the new fellowship. Fresh accessions came
continually, and by the end of the following year the League numbered
twenty-three cities, all sworn to resist the usurpations of the emperor
with the sword. Pavia, almost alone, remained aloof, faithful to her
hate of Milan.
Frederick, returning hastily from a campaign against the Pope, found his
castles captured, Milan re-risen defiant from her ashes, and all North
Italy armed against him. The Emperor was not equal to this new
situation. His former triumph had, in fact, only been achieved by the
aid of a part of the cities themselves, and his German levies,
diminished by fighting and pestilence, were powerless to contend with a
vast hostile combination of all together. His army and his very person
were in utmost peril. There was one way only of salvation for
him—retreat. In a manner very different to the majesty of his coming,
with furtive haste, unknown even to his allies, he stole back to Germany
early in 1168.
Six years passed before the Emperor felt himself strong enough to
confront his rebellious vassals again. In his prolonged absence the
Lombard League had acquired mighty strength. Milan had arisen from her
chastening of shame and sorrow stronger and more honourable than before.
Renouncing her old vexatious claims upon her smaller neighbours, she now
contented herself with the dignity of leadership among the Communes. The
League gathered itself together to meet the new onslaught of Barbarossa,
and though he spread terror and desolation throughout the land, his
effort to subdue the steady resistance of the cities was fruitless. His
purpose was contrary to the laws of nature, and the stars in their
courses fought against him. Pavia, Como and the Marquis of Montferrat
supported him alone of all North Italy. In May 1176, impatient to strike
a crushing blow against the rebels, Frederick was marching with new
reinforcements from Germany to join his Lombard allies when, a few miles
from Milan, between Busto Arsizio and Legnano, he encountered the
Milanese army, which had come forth with the Sacred Car in its midst to
stay his progress. A great battle took place. Driven back at first by
the Teuton cavalry, the Republican soldiers, who had taken a desperate
vow to conquer or to die, rallied around the Caroccio, and fought with
such obstinate courage that they beat back every assault of the foe, and
at last, with a sudden rush, utterly routed them and drove them into
flight. The slain, the captives, and the fugitives drowned in the Ticino
could not be numbered. The monarch’s treasure-chest fell into the hands
of the victors, and a more precious booty still, his shield, his banner
and his lance. His very person was missing after the battle, and the
Empress, waiting in the Castle of Baradello, clothed herself in black
and mourned him for dead. He had, however, escaped in safety, and a few
days later made his way to Pavia.
The splendid victory of Legnano decided once and for all the fate of
Lombardy. Frederick realised at last the strength of the despised
citizen forces, and condescended to seek for peace. In the following
year (1177) at Venice was held that famous meeting of Pope, Emperor and
the Consuls of the Lombard Communes, at which legend and art express the
humiliation of the invader and the triumph of Italy, by picturing the
monarch prostrate beneath the foot of the Pope. A truce of six years was
agreed upon at this Congress, and at the end of that period the famous
Peace of Constance (1183) finally confirmed to the cities all the
privileges for which they had so nobly fought. The right of
self-government, of war and peace, the possession of the regalia, with
other minor prerogatives, were secured to them in perpetuity, and the
only dues to be paid by them to the Emperor were a ceremonial fealty, an
annual tribute, certain supplies when he visited the country in person,
and the acceptance of his legate as the ultimate judge in the courts of
judicature.
Thus did Lombardy win freedom. For reborn Milan, her new position and
dignity was signalised in 1186 by the appearance of her late foe and
oppressor in the character of a gracious guest, and the celebration of
the marriage of his son, Henry, King of the Romans, with Constance of
Sicily, in the basilica of St. Ambrogio. But the narrow crooked streets
that had grown hastily up around the churches, and the few surviving
fragments from the destruction of 1162, were no image of the imperial
Milan of the past, nor did the fair words and mutual promises of
friendship which passed between Frederick and the citizens express the
real feelings of either party. When, sick at the failure of his worldly
projects, the yet vigorous warrior turned his ambition to that holier
enterprise, the conquest of the Sepulchre of Christ, and leaping one hot
day into an insignificant stream in Syria, was drowned in its shallow
flow, all Milan broke into rejoicing. Nor was there ever kindness
between the Republic and his descendants. The Milanese consistently
opposed and thwarted the policy of Henry VI., and after his early death
did their utmost to depress the House of Suabia by warmly supporting
Otho IV. against the interests of Henry’s infant son Frederick.
During the reign of Otho, while the political field was divided between
him and the young Suabian prince, the disputed imperial authority had no
power to harm, and Milan was free to resume the interrupted process of
development and expansion. As before, this process was not a peaceful
one. The subsidence of the Teutonic flood had left behind bitter dregs
in Lombardy in the shape of new causes of feud and animosity between
individual Communes. Relieved from the pressure of Frederick’s tyranny,
the cities readjusted themselves on the lines of their former divisions.
The Lombard League broke up into warring elements, and the restless land
fermented with a cruel internecine strife.
[Illustration: ATRIUM OF ST. AMBROGIO]
But when, some years later, Frederick II., grown to manhood, had cast
off the bondage in which the Pope had fettered his youth, and seated on
the imperial throne proved himself indeed _the third blast of Suabia_,
heir in spirit as in blood of his mighty grandsire, the Communes proved
true to one another, and to the newly threatened cause of freedom, and
the great Lombard League, with Milan at its head, sprang to life again
to face the tyrant. During the long and desolating wars which
Frederick’s ambition inflicted upon North Italy, Milan steadfastly
fought against him, even when most of her fellows had been induced by
fear or self-interest to desert the good cause. Late in 1237 her army,
which had marched to the aid of the Brescians, was surprised by the
imperial host at Cortenuova and suffered a crushing defeat. Multitudes
of her soldiers perished, and the Sacred Car itself, stuck fast in
morasses, had to be abandoned in the retreat. Its defenders were able,
however, to save the Cross and Banner, and break the car to pieces.
Frederick’s exultation over these fragments, upon which he bound the
captive Podestà of Milan, Pietro Tiepolo, son of the Doge of Venice, and
dragged him, in imitation of a Roman triumph, through the streets of
Cremona, is a measure of the importance which he attached to his victory
over the Lombard city.
With the defeat of Cortenuova the cause of the Communes seemed lost. All
trembled beneath the heel of the conqueror, save Milan and the ‘lioness’
Brescia, and one or two others. To the Emperor’s summons to surrender at
discretion the Milanese returned messages of defiance. They had the
support of the Pope, whose emissaries, the mendicant friars, mingled
everywhere with the masses of the people, exhorting them to resistance.
In 1239, Gregory proclaimed a crusade against the oppressor, whose
destruction thus became a sacred obligation upon the faithful. The Cross
and the Sceptre, irreconcilable emblems, now confronted each other with
a clear and definite issue.
A year and a half passed after Cortenuova before Frederick actually
invaded the Milanese territory. The Republic, heartened by the
magnificent example of Brescia, whose successful resistance to a nine
months’ siege had delayed the Emperor’s designs against the chief city
and greatly dimmed his military glory, went boldly forth to meet him. A
noble of gigantic stature, named Ottobello da Mandello, towering in his
mail of proof over friends and foes alike, led the citizen knights
undauntedly against Frederick’s Saracen troops from Sicily, whose dark
faces and infidel garb, joined to ferocious courage, made them a name of
terror throughout Italy. With the Milanese fought Gregorio da
Montelungo, papal legate, and the Franciscan Fra Leone da Perego,
afterwards Archbishop of Milan, besides a great number of friars, Minor,
Preaching and Umiliati, _who not only, girding themselves with swords
and putting on helmets, displayed the false image of soldiers_, but also
excited the citizens to the conflict by promising absolution to all who
offended the person of the Emperor or of any of his followers, as
Frederick himself complained in a letter to the King of England. No
regular pitched battle, however, took place. The Republicans fought with
the stratagem of those attacked in their own country, and by cunningly
entangling the enemy amid their streams and canals, opening dams and
loosing the waters upon him, plunging him into hidden pitfalls, and
surprising him with sudden attacks in his most embarrassed moments,
drove him by the aid of sword and flood out of their territory.
Six years later (1245) the Emperor again invaded the Milanese country,
which in the meanwhile had been laid bare by a desolating war of several
years with his ally, Pavia. But fortune was still against him. His son
Enzo, newly created King of Sardinia, encountering a citizen force one
day, ventured himself too boldly in single combat with a Republican
knight, and was overthrown and made prisoner. Frederick, having obtained
his release, withdrew his army, and made no further attempt to subdue
the great Lombard city.
Thus was Milan’s account with the House of Suabia closed for ever. With
the failure of Frederick’s fortunes and his death in 1250 was
extinguished the last appearance of that great mediæval idea—the Holy
Roman Empire—as a dangerous element in Italian politics. The imperial
tradition might linger on and cause a temporary disturbance from time to
time in the peninsula, influencing the vicissitudes of its internal
quarrels, but it had no longer power to revolutionise or molest the
settled constitution of the free Lombard Communes. The mediæval triumph
of Italy over the foreigner was accomplished. In the course of the last
two centuries, Milan, in whose development is mirrored that of all
Lombardy, had completely asserted and defined her nationality. In her
Church, in her constitution, law and sentiment, she was now one at last
with the rest of Italy. It remained for her, leader in the long struggle
now happily determined, to produce in the epoch of Strong Men which was
about to succeed the epoch of the People, the man strong enough to
overthrow all rivals and to weld the many independent cities and States
of the peninsula into a united Italy under an Italian king. How she
tried to do this and failed will be seen later.