_The Reign of Faction_
“Factions alone are the cause of our great ills.”—PRATO.
So wrote a Milanese chronicler in the sixteenth century. Had the people
but one mind, he adds, assuredly no city would be more pleasant and
fortunate than theirs. His complaint holds equally good for the
thirteenth century. The presence of a foreign invader did indeed produce
a temporary union of heart and hand, and so far the earlier generations
show a noble contrast to their descendants of three hundred years later.
But even while Frederick II. was still in the land, and in response to
opportunities of selfish advantage offered by alliance with him, there
were constant defections from the League, and we find the whole of North
Italy seething with the warfare of city against city. After his death,
when the mutual rage and hate was no longer checked by any fear of a
general oppressor, the strife was continued with worse fury under _the
diabolical names of Guelf and Ghibelline_, to use the expression of a
contemporary writer, the divisions between city and city being repeated
within each community itself. The Lombard scene dissolves into a
whirling confusion of fratricidal war, in which beneath the
cross-currents and blind purposes of individual passion and greed, we
may distinguish the two steady principles of the Church and democracy on
the one side, and the aristocratic and feudal element, deriving its
right from the Empire, on the other. In Milan the issue, which had long
before defined itself as a struggle between nobles and people, remains
fairly clear. The plebeians had forced their way more and more into the
government. Their right to share in the election of the Consuls had been
long conceded, and some among them had even taken a place in that august
body. In 1198 they had acquired the strength of union and organisation
by forming themselves into an association calling itself the _Credenza
di Saint Ambrogio_, with elective magistrates and officers of its own,
and a certain share in the government and the revenues of the community.
This body consisted of the lesser trades and guilds, but excluded the
mass of poorer artisans and labourers. The merchants, bankers, traders
in wool, etc., had their corporation also; the lesser nobles were banded
in a society called the _Motta_, and the great nobles formed the
_Società dei Gagliardi_, so that no less than four _factions_ existed in
Milan at the opening of the thirteenth century, besides the populace,
which threw its weight on one side or another, with the quick
inconsistency of irresponsibility and impulse. Each faction had its
separate claims and ambitions, but the tendency of the three lower ones
was to unite against the great nobles, who, amid continual uproar and
conflict, were gradually stripped of their exclusive power and
privileges. And in 1258 the last and most sacred enclosure of their
caste was stormed and carried by the Vulgar: a decree of the Republic
threw open the highest offices of the Ambrosian Church to plebeians. The
twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, in fact, the Epoch of the People,
and though all classes, high and low, fought loyally together against
Barbarossa and Frederick II., it was the democratic preponderance in the
city which determined its steady opposition to the imperial pretensions.
The same principle threw Milan on the Guelf side, which she upheld with
ardour in the general Lombard warfare, manifesting her party zeal
especially in a fierce intermittent war with Pavia. That city was as
necessarily Ghibelline, though the party cry on either side was but the
excuse for the efforts of the one to hasten and the other to delay the
inevitable absorption of the lesser by the greater.
With the power of the people was associated as of old the predominance
of papal influence in the city and the depression of the archiepiscopal
See. St. Peter had now completely subjected St. Ambrose. The assumption
of supremacy in temporal as well as spiritual matters on the part of the
Popes, their constant interference by means of legates, the activity of
their innumerable and ubiquitous agents, the friars, had indeed reduced
the seat of Ariberto to comparative insignificance, while the decay of
feudal power and the depression of the aristocracy had robbed it of its
wealth. But even assisted by the Pope, and at the height of their
strength and triumph, the popular forces were impotent to establish any
enduring order in the city. The nobles were still too powerful to submit
peaceably to political inferiority. Moreover, as the offices and honours
once confined to them became open to all, the successful and wealthy
plebeians tended to join the upper class, which began to lose
distinction of race in that of wealth and ability. The aristocracy, thus
continually replenished with new blood, received fresh vigour and life,
and the old divisions gradually merged into two classes, the _milites_,
who fought on horseback and in armour, and the _plebs_, or general mass
of citizens, who, little trained and lightly armed, accompanied the
horsemen into battle on foot. The struggle between these two radical
orders transformed Milan’s short period of republican liberty into a
scene of anarchy and civil warfare, leading to the inevitable end of
faction and strife, the tyranny of an individual.
Already by the end of the twelfth century the struggle of the factions
over the annual election of the Consuls occasioned so much tumult and
bloodshed, that the citizens in despair agreed with one accord to submit
themselves to the government of a Podestà chosen from outside. But this
device for peace ended by aggravating the strife. The faction uppermost
for the time appointed a fierce partisan from another city, perhaps the
leader of an exiled faction, who embroiled Milan with his own Commune,
and exalted his sympathisers within her walls at the expense of the
other party. The general discontent and disorder was reflected in
constant changes in the Constitution. In the absence of any stable
principle of government the power tended to fall into the hands of
individuals. This was the opportunity of the nobles, from whose order
the leaders of men naturally sprang. Taking advantage of the forces
ready to their hands, these put themselves at the head of aristocrats or
plebs, without much regard for principle, and in so doing resumed their
ancient pre-eminence in the community, and initiated the new Epoch of
Great Men, which was to succeed the failing Epoch of the People.
This process, at work throughout Lombardy, is shown in the second half
of the thirteenth century in Milan by the gradual narrowing of the
general party issue into a struggle for predominance between two great
Houses, who represent and sum up in their mutual quarrel the diverse
aims of the factions, and divide the community into two sharply defined
and bitterly hostile bands, which fall inevitably, though by no means
very precisely, into the wide general division of Guelf and Ghibelline.
These were the Houses of the Della Torre, or Torriani, and of the
Visconti.
In the race for supremacy the first far outstripped the second. The
Della Torre were country nobles, who had, however, long been subjects
and citizens of Milan, and though living usually on their estates in the
Valsassina, they often appeared in the city and took part in its
government and politics. They are named among the Capitani—the great
secular nobles of Milan—from early in the twelfth century. They had from
the first aided and protected the cause of the people against their own
order, and it was this sympathy which lifted them to greatness on the
democratic wave of the thirteenth century.
The power of this House in Milan arose first out of the gratitude of the
city for the compassionate succour which Pagano della Torre, head of the
House in 1237, gave to the wounded and starving fugitives from the
disastrous battle of Cortenuova, whom he sheltered and tended in the
Valsassina, and afterwards helped to get back safely to Milan. The
Commune rewarded him with offices and with gifts of houses, and from
that time the Torriani became regular inhabitants of the city and the
principal leaders of the people’s faction.
Pagano _the Good_ himself died in 1241, but left a numerous kindred to
inherit his popularity. In this year Frate Leone da Perego was elected
Archbishop of Milan. The new Primate secretly aspired to raise his See
to its old power and importance, and to shake off the tutelage of the
Pope, and though but a year or two before he had fought loyally, as we
have seen, beside the papal legate in the ranks marshalled against
Frederick II., he now put himself at the head of the aristocratic party,
and even invoked, it may be suspected, the aid of the powerful forces of
heresy. But against the nobles was ranged Martino della Torre, nephew of
Pagano, as leader of the people, who, in 1249, elected him their head
with the title of _Anziano_,—Ancient—of the Credenza, and the Franciscan
Leone was more than matched by the Dominican Pietro da Verona, whose
zeal, sanctity, and awful inquisitorial powers were the strongest
support of the Papacy in Milan. The murder of the Inquisitor in 1252 was
almost certainly prompted by partisan motives. But it failed signally in
its political as in its sectarian purpose, and for Papacy, people, and
the Dominican Order alike, the bloody crown of the Martyr became an
emblem of united strength and triumph. His death was followed by
insurrections of the people. After a few years of comparative peace
under the strong Podestà Manfredo Lancia, the feud between the two
parties broke out afresh, and the Archbishop and nobles were driven out
of the city. The following year a reconciliation took place (1257), and
was solemnly confirmed in a treaty called the ‘Peace of St. Ambrose.’ In
this the privileges already won by the popular party were formally
conceded to them. All dignities and offices in the Commune, from the
highest minister down to the town-trumpeter, were to be equally divided
between the nobles and the Plebeians. Both sides swore to observe the
peace in perpetuity. Yet two months later it was broken, and the nobles
once more banished by the all-powerful Della Torre. They united with the
Ghibellines of the other cities, and even treated with the terrible
Ezzelino da Romano, whom the trembling populations of North Italy
believed to be the son of the Devil. They promised him the Lordship of
Milan if he would aid them, and in 1259, the last desperate year of his
evil course, the Trevisan chief, issuing forth from Brescia, made a
sudden stealthy dash with his famous horsemen upon the city. Martino
della Torre, deceived as to the invader’s movements, had led the
Milanese to meet him in another direction, and the city was undefended
for the moment, and must have fallen into Ezzelino’s hands had not
warning reached Martino just in time for him to hasten home and man the
walls, thus defeating Ezzelino’s purpose.
The growing power of the Della Torre began before long to rouse
suspicion and distrust in Rome, in spite of their steady championship of
the popular cause. The hold of the Papacy upon Milan was in fact
somewhat uncertain. The people still remembered with pride the ancient
tradition of their Church, and were inclined at times to resent the
constant interference of the Pope and his inquisitorial friars. In this
feeling lay the possibility of a union between the Archbishop and the
democratic party, which it was the policy of Rome to avert, even at the
cost of prolonging and aggravating the miserable state of civil war in
Milan. On the death of Frate Leone in 1257, the Della Torre sought to
raise Raimondo, a son of Pagano the Good, to the archiepiscopal throne.
Their intention was defeated by the opposition of the nobles, secretly
instigated by Urban IV., and after some years of controversy over the
vacant seat, Urban, thinking to hold the balance of parties in his own
hands, appointed to it Otto Visconte (1263). The paradoxical spectacle
of the Pope raising a Ghibelline noble to power, and the noble accepting
it from the Pope—one of those strange eddies constantly occurring in the
political current of the day—was completed by the alliance of the Della
Torre with the celebrated Captain, Oberto da Pellavicino, protector of
heretics, close comrade once of Ezzelino and the Ghibellines, and mortal
foe of the Church. Into the hands of this typical figure of the North
Italian drama, Martino, pressed by the hostility of the nobles and the
secret machinations of the Pope, had in 1259 surrendered the Lordship of
Milan for five years. Under his leadership the Torriani oppressed the
friars, drove out the papal legate, Cardinal Ottaviano da Ubaldino, and
on the elevation of Otto Visconte to the See, seized upon all the
episcopal territories and revenues, and kept the new prelate for years
out of his ecclesiastical capital. Pope Urban retaliated with spiritual
thunders, and Milan lay long under the heavy spell of the papal
interdict.
The Visconti and the Torriani were already deadly foes. The House of the
Snake, which in Archbishop Otto, was now about to begin its great
ascent, to the overthrow and destruction of the Tower of its rivals,
probably derived its origin and name from one of the Viscounts of the
Carlovingian rule, who had succeeded in converting the territory
entrusted to his administration into an hereditary appanage. It was, in
any case, of great antiquity in the city. The famous cognizance which
its later career invested with a peculiar terror, is said to have been
won by a noble crusader of the House, also an Otto, in single combat
with a Saracen, who carried a shield emblazoned with the device of a
seven-coiled serpent devouring a child. Otto slew the Saracen and
adopted the device, which he transmitted to his descendants, and with it
who knows what mysterious and persistent curse of guile and cruelty?
It is with Archbishop Otto, however, that the real fortunes of the House
begin. Strong, crafty and determined, with a power of biding his time
observable in a singular degree in all the notable members of his race,
Otto was the right man to foster and direct the gradually reviving power
of the nobles in Milan and lead them to victory over the Della Torre and
the people. But for fifteen years he fought and intrigued in vain,
leading his fellow-exiles and the forlorn hope of the Ghibelline party
in Lombardy against the swelling tide of Guelf success, which the death
of Ezzelino da Romano, the overthrow of the House of Suabia in Manfred
and Corradino, and the ascendency of Anjou in the South, had brought to
the full. The domination of the Torriani seemed to become every day more
assured. Heads of the Lombard League, Martino and his family were
all-powerful in North Italy. They drove the Ghibellines out of the
surrounding cities, and established their own sympathisers in power
everywhere. Many of the Communes accepted the actual sway of the great
House. Martino died in 1263, and was buried in the Monastery of
Chiaravalle. He was succeeded by his brother Filippo, on whose death,
two years later, Napo, a son of the good Pagano, assumed the
chieftainship.
[Illustration: CHIARAVALLE]
Meanwhile the capital itself, spared, under the protection of these
great lords, the bloody succession of sieges and captures which laid
waste its neighbours, where the more evenly balanced parties caused
revolutions with bewildering frequency, increased rapidly in wealth and
luxury. The narrow, tortuous streets overflowed with the full,
rich-coloured, sharply chequered life of the thirteenth century. Some
terrible scene of Ghibelline prisoners slaughtered in the market-place,
and dragged, mangled and bleeding, at the tails of horses through the
streets, with yelling crowds of children after them, is succeeded by a
May-Day holiday, when the most illustrious youths and maidens of the
city, splendidly adorned, ‘weave joyful dances’ beneath pavilions spread
in all the open spaces. And the blue sky roofing the sunny squares is
suddenly darkened by the smoke ascending from the death-pyre of a
heretic, while lean mendicant Brothers look on with triumph, certain
that the cry which comes from that breaking chrysalis is the voice of
the Devil discomfited. Now troops, knights and men-at-arms in clanking
armour, with tattered banners held high, trample in over the drawbridge,
returning from some exploit against the Ghibellines. Or it is a
multitude of moaning Flagellants, in white shrouds stained with blood,
whose self-inflicted lashes can scarcely fall fast enough to keep time
with the pangs of their guilty consciences, as they hurl themselves
against the gates, which the stout captains of the city keep shut,
judging that fifteen different sects within their walls are enough,
without admitting these crazy penitents to upset the unsteady minds of
the people.
The narrow streets were filled with the hum of busy industries. Fine
palaces and comfortable dwellings abounded, with wells and mills and all
the necessaries of a prosperous existence. But wealth and its pleasant
habits were causing the Milanese to forget the liberty for which they
had once made all sacrifice. That word of sinister omen—_Signore_—was
heard without protest among them. They had granted the title voluntarily
to Martino della Torre, and both he and Filippo called themselves
Perpetual Lords of Milan. The people preferred a domination which at
least secured them peace, to the loss and suffering caused by continual
civil struggles. Moreover, absorbed in trade and in peaceful industry,
they had no time or inclination for the rapidly developing art of war,
and a class of highly trained professional soldiers, fully equipped with
weapons and armour, who engaged themselves for hire to any Commune, were
superseding more and more the old city militia, composed of all the
able-bodied men. These mercenaries, who owned no allegiance except to
the master who paid them, lent enormous power to the ruler of a city,
who, by means of them, was able to overawe discontent in the people.
Thus, aided by the conditions of the times, the Torriani gradually
established a virtual despotism over Milan, though careful not to alarm
the popular mind by any grander sounding titles. It was not long,
however, before they abandoned even this degree of caution, and in 1273
Napo persuaded the Emperor Rudolph to grant him the title of Imperial
Vicar of Milan, thus obtaining a legal sanction for his usurpation.
[Illustration: VIA DEL PESCE]
Napo was a wise and prudent man, but in this step he went too far. The
Della Torre fortune was even then on the wane. The Milanese might
rejoice in the peace which despotism bestowed, but they loudly resented
being called upon to pay for it by new and heavy taxation, and all the
lovers of liberty feared the novel and arrogant title of Imperial Vicar.
Among the supporters of the ruling House themselves, the long course of
power enjoyed by the Torriani had bred envy and enmity. Dissensions
arose, and the discontented were punished by spoliation and banishment.
Numbers abandoned the party and joined Otto Visconte. Tumults shook the
city once more, and sedition secretly gathered head. Napo, feeling his
power slipping from him, used the cruel and tyrannous measures of
despair to save himself and his House. Otto and the exiles, on the other
hand, braced by adversity and clinging together in a determined band,
were daily gaining strength. They were aided by the other Ghibellines of
Lombardy, especially by the Pavesi, and with continual attacks and raids
upon the Milanese territory they strove to vex and weaken the party in
power. Nevertheless, for some years still their cause seemed hopeless.
The Della Torre, who had cast off Oberto da Pellavicino when they were
strong enough to do without him, had reconciled themselves with the
Papacy in 1274, and their great prestige was apparently strong enough to
defy defections and subdue discontent.
But time and circumstance were steadily undermining the great House, and
with a sudden crash it fell. On a certain January night in 1277, the
wife of Matteo Visconte was delivered, we are told, of her first son,
who, because he was born _ad cantu galli_, as the cocks were
crowing—heralding a false dawn, as their habit is in winter
midnights—was named _Galeazzo_, first of the many of that name who were
to crow over Milan. It was at this very moment that Otto Visconte—who,
with his great-nephew, father of the new-born babe, and the rest of his
kinsmen, had been making desperate attacks upon various points in the
Milanese country, with little success so far—was creeping stealthily in
the darkness, at the head of a strong body of fighting men, towards
Desio, a village ten miles from Milan, where the Della Torre, disdainful
of their oft-beaten foe, were sleeping encamped, with but a small force
and under a careless watch. Awakened by the noise of attack, these
latter rushed to arms; but too late. The enemy was in their midst.
Francesco della Torre, son of Napo, fell pierced with wounds. The chief
himself, overthrown in his weighty armour, lay grieving helplessly upon
the ground, and with a crowd of sons and kinsmen was made captive. All
was over. Otto Visconte rode victorious at last into Milan, where the
citizens, who had heard of the discomfiture of their lords as they were
starting with the Caroccio to the rescue, suited their faith to the
occasion, and with immense applause and jubilee proclaimed the prelate
Lord of Milan.
Thus, by the hazard of a moment’s battle, the long supremacy of the
Torriani was overthrown. Napo was imprisoned in the terrible Tower of
Baradello, whose ruins still crest a hill a mile or two on the Milanese
side of Como. Here, within the bars of a cage, the once mighty chief
languished for a year and a half till he died.
Meanwhile, the change of ruler had brought the city none of the relief
from war and its burdensome cost, which the people had fondly expected.
The kinsmen and adherents of the exiled family in the city were very
numerous and strong, and the whole Guelf party in Lombardy was anxious
to bring about the restoration of the Torriani. The new Lord of Milan
was attacked with fury, and could only maintain himself by the energetic
use of the sword, and by those same methods of proscription and
banishment with which his predecessors had made themselves odious.
Otto was now, however, an old man, and worn out by the ceaseless
struggles of his life. His mind was beset with the fears and suspicions
of one who, under the stress of ambition, had himself practised overmuch
deceit and treachery, and some years before his death, in 1295, he had
surrendered the chieftainship to the young and ambitious Matteo. With
extraordinary prudence and sagacity, Matteo steered his way amid the
rocks and stormy waves of his course, beating back the open attacks of
his enemies, matching their plots and snares with an invincible
subtlety, and so ingratiating himself with the citizens by a show of
moderation, piety and benevolence, that in a few years his somewhat
unstable authority had transmuted itself, in accordance with the
apparent will of the people, into virtual sovereignty. By force of craft
rather than arms he had made himself master in Como, Alexandria, Novara
and the Montferrat territory, and his conciliatory policy towards the
opposite party won for him enormous influence as arbitrator in the
disputes which ever racked Lombardy. He even propitiated Pope Boniface
VIII. by politic concessions, which in no way lessened his own power. In
1294 his gifts and flattery prevailed upon the Emperor Adolfo to grant
him the potent title of Imperial Vicar of Lombardy.
But the stealthy march of the Visconte’s ambition did not go unchecked.
His pretensions roused the Guelf party to new efforts against him, and
the impetuosity and recklessness of his sons as they grew up wrecked his
careful plans, and excited once more to fiery heat those party passions
which it was his aim to smooth and allay. His love for the splendid
Galeazzo, born at the cock-crow of the Viscontean day, was the father’s
undoing. In pursuance of his policy of tranquillising the party strife
which forbade all stable and settled government in North Italy, Matteo
made a marriage for this son with Beatrice d’Este, widow of Nino
Visconte, Judge of Gallura, and sister of the Marquis of Ferrara,
recognised chief of the Guelf party in Lombardy. The marriage was of
evil omen for the Visconti. We all know those sad words on the little
durability of woman’s love which fall from the ghost of the forgotten
husband in the _Purgatorio_.[1]
Footnote 1:
Canto viii., vv. 73-81.
The foreboding of disaster which they contain was justified; for though
in the end the Viper was able to give Beatrice as fine a sepulture as
the Cock of Gallura could have done, yet the events which soon fell out
might well have made her regret the _bende bianche_ which she had
exchanged for the bridal garland. The marriage, far from reconciling the
two political parties, had only thrown together a pair of extremely hot
and indiscreet heads in Galeazzo and Azzo VIII. of Ferrara. The vast
ambitions which both were suspected of nourishing roused the fear of
Guelfs and Ghibellines alike. Appointed Captain of the Milanese people,
Galeazzo only succeeded in alienating the citizens and strengthening his
enemies by his injudicious and unfortunate military enterprises. The
Torriani and their partisans, who had long suffered eclipse, had begun
to regain influence and allies, and a formidable league was formed in
Lombardy to overthrow the Visconti. A long struggle followed, and day by
day Matteo’s power waned in the city. The people, whose inveterate
distrust of the nobles his sagacity and conciliatory measures had been
unable to overcome, grew more and more discontented. Jealousy of the
Visconte’s power, and resentment at his policy towards the Guelfs, had
alienated many of the nobles themselves. The day came when Matteo
perceived that his position was no longer tenable. Without waiting for a
catastrophe which might have ruined his House for ever, he quietly
abandoned the city to his foes and took his departure (1302).
The Guelf supporters of the Della Torre now entered Milan, and were
received with a great outburst of popular joy. A short period of anarchy
followed, caused by the nobles, who had helped to drive out the
Visconti, but had no desire to see the Della Torre in their place. After
a few months, however, the sons of Napo succeeded by the favour of the
lower classes, to whom their name was still dear, in restoring
themselves to power, while in all the surrounding cities, whose fortunes
were always bound up with Milan’s, their partisans drove out the
Ghibellines and reinstated the Guelfs.
Mosca, Guido, and Enrico della Torre now ruled the city, at first with a
show of deference to the will of the Republic, but after a few years
with a sovereignty fuller than that which the Visconti had enjoyed. The
people were, in fact, accustoming themselves to a single rule. In 1307
Mosca died, and Guido assumed sole authority. Meanwhile the Visconti
were dispersed in various directions. Galeazzo and his wife Beatrice had
taken refuge with her kindred at Ferrara, and the other sons of Matteo
had found places of safety where the powerful alliances of the family
secured them from pursuit by the Della Torre. The shrewd chief himself,
after vainly attempting to reverse the fortune of war, had withdrawn to
a remote country villa on the Lake of Garda, and having apparently
renounced all public activity, was passing his time in the innocent
pastimes of fishing and thinking. But his keen eye watched every
movement on the field of politics. He had spies and agents everywhere,
and was but waiting the moment for a spring upon his foes. With cynical
satisfaction he noted the inevitable course of the new tyranny in Milan;
the jealousy and suspicion awaking within the city itself, and in the
subjects and allied communities around at the growth of Guido’s
despotism, the disloyalty of his near kindred and dependants, greedy for
a share of power, and all the embarrassments of a chief in whom a noble
and generous temper was not seconded by the sagacity and self-control
which distinguished the observer himself. An oft-told story relates that
Guido, at the height of his prosperity, sent a messenger to his fallen
rival to ask him derisively how he fared, and when he hoped to see Milan
again. Matteo was wandering beside the lake, discoursing with a
companion. ‘You see how I live,’ he said to the envoy, ‘suiting myself
to my fortunes. Tell your Lord that I am waiting till the sins of the
Torriani have reached the measure of mine to return to my country.’ The
expectation of the philosopher was justified as time went on, and Guido
began to resort to cruel and oppressive means of preserving his power.
In 1309 he imprisoned his cousin Cassone, Archbishop of Milan, and his
nephews, the sons of Mosca, on suspicion of plotting against him, and
was only withheld from further revenge by the protests of his own
friends. The subsequent banishment of these kinsmen, who thenceforth
sought his ruin, helped to prepare the disasters which were soon to fall
upon his House.
The Guelf party was indeed fast losing its hold once more on Lombardy,
owing to the hostile feeling in the cities towards King Robert of
Naples, who, as champion of the Church and head of the Guelfs, was
seeking to establish his sovereignty over North Italy. At the same time
a new turn of the wheel was preparing in Germany, where, in 1310, Henry
of Luxemburg was elected Emperor, and immediately manifested his
intention of descending into Italy to exercise the imperial authority
for the purpose of restoring order and peace in the factious Communes.
Matteo Visconte in his hut of exile saw that his moment was come. With
characteristic insight he gauged the noble soul of the new Emperor, with
its lofty ideals and conviction of a divine mission as peacemaker. His
agent, Francesco Garbagnate, made his way to the imperial Court, where
he insinuated himself into Henry’s favour, and ever at his ear whispered
of the woes of Lombardy, and of Milan, the splendid city, groaning under
a despotic oppressor; of thousands of exiles languishing in poverty; of
their chief, patiently enduring his evil fortunes without attempting
retaliation or revenge.
The anticipation of the Emperor’s coming was by no means so pleasing to
Guido della Torre and his friends. The mere thought of this spectre of
imperialism, which, when men believed it was well laid at last, ever
rose to disturb the settlement of the turbid elements of Italian life,
seems to have stirred the Republican chief to uncontrollable
indignation. ‘What have I to do with Henry of Luxemburg?’ he cried,
stamping furiously, in a great assembly of his party convoked to deal
with the situation. To his experienced and unillusioned mind the
Emperor’s purpose was simply the exaltation of the Ghibellines and the
destruction of the Guelfs. With passionate entreaties and prophecies of
impending peril, he sought to raise a league against Henry, but nearly
all his former supporters and allies, tired of his ascendency and afraid
of the King of Naples, had pledged themselves to welcome the new-comer.
In November 1310 the Emperor arrived at Asti, whither almost all the
magnates of North Italy, both Guelf and Ghibelline, hastened to do him
homage. One day there entered the Court a man who, by the simplicity of
his attire and following, appeared a person of little consequence.
Throwing off his hood and cloak, he ran and knelt before the Emperor,
and kissing his feet, saluted him as the longed-for peacemaker and
consolation of the exiles, and implored his compassion. The suppliant
was Matteo Visconte, who, for fear of his enemies, had come thus
disguised and secretly. Henry welcomed him with the greatest kindness,
and having listened earnestly to his recital of the wrongs which he and
his had suffered, promised to give them speedy relief. Matteo then
turned to some of the Guelf nobles present, his fiercest enemies, and
with the most admirable display of a meek and forgiving spirit, offered
to embrace them. But they, knowing well the perfidy of his fair seeming,
repulsed him with scorn and heaped revilements upon him. To all of which
the Visconte replied with perfect mildness and goodwill, pointing to the
Emperor—‘Here is our king, who is come to give us peace; the end of all
our woes is at hand.’ His foes, perceiving how completely he had put
them in the wrong and won the Emperor’s confidence by his show of
magnanimity, began to misdoubt them of the future and wish that they had
heeded Guido della Torre’s warnings. The game was now, in fact, despite
Henry’s good intentions, in the hands of the wily Ghibelline chief.
Besides all the barons and magnates of his own faction, the exiled
Archbishop Cassone della Torre and a number of other Milanese Guelfs,
whom Guido had offended by his tyranny, ranged themselves under Matteo’s
leadership, and by the advice of this greatly preponderating section of
his Italian vassals, Henry was persuaded to turn his steps early towards
Milan.
He sent officers before him to prepare for his reception in the ruler’s
palace, which as sovereign he expected to occupy. But he had forgotten
Milan’s traditional privilege of keeping the Emperor outside her gates.
Relying upon this, Guido della Torre refused to give up the palace.
Nevertheless Henry proceeded on his way, and as he neared the city, the
Milanese, who had heard the rumour of his great goodness, came forth in
multitudes to meet him. At his right hand rode Matteo Visconte. The
obsequious bearing of the Ghibelline chief contrasted strangely with the
grudging welcome offered by the Lord of the city, who appeared last of
all to greet the monarch, and forgot to lower his standard before the
Imperial Eagles. This omission was roughly remedied by some of the
German soldiers, who seized the defiant banner and flung it in the mud.
His pride met only a mild rebuke from the Emperor, who, having entered
in state with his queen, took up his abode in the archiepiscopal palace.
At first all went well. The Archbishop and all the other exiles were
restored to their homes and possessions, and Henry made the Visconti and
Torriani swear perpetual peace. The reconciliation was celebrated in the
eyes of all the people by a ceremony in the Piazza of St. Ambrogio,
where the Emperor appeared seated on a great throne, with the members of
the two rival Houses placed side by side at his feet. An Imperial Vicar
was appointed to keep peace in the city, and the factions in the
neighbouring Communes having been pacified in like manner, Henry was
crowned in Milan by Archbishop Cassone, amid extraordinary joy and
festivity.
Not for long, however, did the lion and the lamb thus couch together.
Even while the Emperor still lingered in Milan, suspicion and discontent
began to seethe among the citizens. The old fear and hatred of the
Empire, which still lived in the descendants of Barbarossa’s victims,
was fanned by the heavy exactions of the imperial officers, who demanded
an enormous sum as a coronation gift from the already exhausted
citizens. The German troops were also a continual vexation to the
people. The Torriani did all they could to foster the growing spirit of
revolt. Guido and his cousin the Archbishop forgot their feud in their
common desire to get rid of the Emperor, and the Visconti themselves
were found ready to sympathise with the general discontent. It was
rumoured in the imperial palace that Galeazzo Visconte and Francesco
della Torre had been seen joining hands in sign of amity at a meeting
outside the gates. But whatever the other members of his House might be
doing, the Head of the Visconti sat aloof, peacefully unconscious,
apparently, of what was going forward.
Henry and his ministers grew uneasy, as the hostility of the city became
ever more visible and menacing. At last, on a day in February, the storm
burst. The whole of Milan rose suddenly in wild tumult, crowding and
clamouring round their old leaders, the Torriani, who appeared with all
their followers in full armour in the market-place. Before long Galeazzo
Visconte also arrived upon the scene, mounted on his war-horse and
arrayed for battle. But to the surprise and dismay of the conspirators
he ranged himself with the imperial troops, who came charging down upon
the Torriani and their disorderly host. Meanwhile, at the first sound of
tumult, the Emperor, suspecting treachery, had despatched officers to
arrest Matteo Visconte. They found that veteran sitting in the quiet
loggia of his palace, most innocently occupied in reading a book.
Hastening with them to the Court, he cast himself down before the
Emperor, protesting his perfect loyalty and innocence of all offence,
and offered his best services to aid in subduing the rebellion. The
adherence of the Visconti was the Emperor’s salvation. By the powerful
assistance of Galeazzo and his followers, the Germans, after a brief,
fierce battle, completely overcame the rebels. The Torriani perceived
too late that they had been outwitted and ruined by the cunning of the
rival House, on whose help they had been led to depend. Simone and
Francesco, Guido’s sons, fled at a gallop out of the city, while the old
chief himself rose with difficulty from a bed of sickness and crept over
a garden wall into the precincts of a nunnery, whence he was able after
a while to escape into safety. Their adherents were put to the sword,
and their houses were sacked and utterly destroyed by the Germans, who
with vindictive fury, swept through the streets, slaying and spoiling
without mercy.
Thus was the power of the Della Torre in Milan for ever overthrown. The
Visconti, having cleverly disposed of their rivals, had now to rid
themselves of the Emperor, in order to regain their old sovereignty.
Henry, vexed at the bloodshed which had already stained his fair white
banner of peace, and beginning to realise the secret strength of the
spirit of faction, sent Matteo and Galeazzo into exile, lest he should
appear to have favoured the Ghibellines in the late affair. But the fall
of the Torriani had filled the Guelfs with distrust and fear of him. He
passed on his way, to find the cities of Lombardy arming against him and
his task of peace-making growing more and more difficult of
accomplishment. Hardly was he gone from Milan before the Visconti
returned, and in a very short time Matteo succeeded in making himself
once more all-powerful. A year later the wisdom of the Milanese Serpent
appeared to have completely charmed the Imperial Eagle, when in return
for a timely supply of gold to support the Emperor’s enterprise, Matteo
won the legal confirmation of his authority over the city, with the
title of Imperial Vicar of Milan.