listened to the complaints of Como and Lodi against Milan, of
Pavia against Tortona and of the marquis of Montferrat against
Asti and Chieri. The plaintiffs in each case were imperialists;
and Frederick’s first action was to redress their supposed grievances.
He laid waste Chieri, Asti and Tortona, then took the
Lombard crown at Pavia, and, reserving Milan for a future day,
passed southward to Rome. Outside the gates of Rome he was
met by a deputation from the senate he had come to supersede,
who addressed him in words memorable for expressing the
republican spirit of new Italy face to face with autocratic
feudalism: “Thou wast a stranger, I have made thee a citizen”;
it is Rome who speaks: “Thou earnest as an alien from beyond
the Alps, I have conferred on thee the principality.” Moved
only to scorn and indignation by the rhetoric of these presumptuous
enthusiasts, Frederick marched into the Leonine city, and
took the imperial crown from the hands of Adrian IV. In return
for this compliance, the emperor delivered over to the pope his
troublesome rival Arnold of Brescia, who was burned alive by
Nicholas Breakspear, the only English successor of St Peter.
The gates of Rome itself were shut against Frederick; and even
on this first occasion his good understanding with Adrian began
to suffer. The points of dispute between them related mainly
to Matilda’s bequest, and to the kingdom of Sicily, which the
pope had rendered independent of the empire by renewing its
investiture in the name of the Holy See. In truth, the papacy
and the empire had become irreconcilable. Each claimed
illimitable authority, and neither was content to abide within
such limits as would have secured a mutual tolerance. Having
obtained his coronation, Frederick withdrew to Germany, while
Milan prepared herself against the storm which threatened.
In the ensuing struggle with the empire, that great city rose to
the altitude of patriotic heroism. By their sufferings no less
than by their deeds of daring, her citizens showed themselves to
be sublime, devoted and disinterested, winning the purest
laurels which give lustre to Italian story. Almost in Frederick’s
presence, they rebuilt Tortona, punished Pavia, Lodi, Cremona
and the marquis of Montferrat. Then they fortified the Adda
and Ticino, and waited for the emperor’s next descent. He
came in 1158 with a large army, overran Lombardy, raised his
imperial allies, and sat down before the walls of Milan. Famine
forced the burghers to partial obedience, and Frederick held a
victorious diet at Roncaglia. Here the jurists of Bologna
appeared, armed with their new lore of Roman law, and expounded
Justinian’s code in the interests of the German empire.
It was now seen how the absolutist doctrines of autocracy
developed in Justinian’s age at Byzantium would bear fruits in
the development of an imperial idea, which was destined to be
the fatal mirage of medieval Italy. Frederick placed judges of
his own appointment, with the title of podestà, in all the Lombard
communes; and this stretch of his authority, while it exacerbated
his foes, forced even his friends to join their ranks against
him. The war, meanwhile, dragged on. Crema yielded after an
heroic siege in 1160, and was abandoned to the cruelty of its
fierce rival Cremona. Milan was invested in 1161, starved into
capitulation after nine months’ resistance, and given up to total
destruction by the Italian imperialists of Frederick’s army,
so stained and tarnished with the vindictive passions of municipal
rivalry was even this, the one great glorious strife of Italian
annals. Having ruined his rebellious city, but not tamed her
spirit, Frederick withdrew across the Alps. But, in the interval
between his second and third visit, a league was formed against
him in north-eastern Lombardy. Verona, Vicenza, Padua,
Treviso, Venice entered into a compact to defend their liberties;
and when he came again in 1163 with a brilliant staff of German
knights, the imperial cities refused to join his standards. This
was the first and ominous sign of a coming change.
Meanwhile the election of Alexander III. to the papacy in 1159 added a powerful ally to the republican party. Opposed by an anti-pope whom the emperor favoured, Alexander found it was his truest policy to rely for support upon the anti-imperialist communes. They in return gladly accepted a champion who lent them the prestige and influence of the church. When Frederick once more crossed the Alps in 1166, he advanced on Rome, and besieged Alexander in the Coliseum. But the affairs of Lombardy left him no leisure to persecute a recalcitrant pontiff. In April 1167 a new league was formed between Cremona, Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua and Ferrara. In December of the same year this league allied itself with the elder Veronese league, and received the addition of Milan, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma, Modena and Bologna. The famous league of Lombard cities, styled Concordia in its acts of settlement, was now established. Novara, Vercelli, Asti and Tortona swelled its Lombard League. ranks; only Pavia and Montferrat remained imperialist between the Alps and Apennines. Frederick fled for his life by the Mont Cenis, and in 1168 the town of Alessandria was erected to keep Pavia and the marquisate in check. In the emperor’s absence, Ravenna, Rimini, Imola and Forli joined the league, which now called itself the “Society of Venice, Lombardy, the March, Romagna and Alessandria.” For the fifth time, in 1174, Frederick entered his rebellious dominions. The fortress town of Alessandria stopped his progress with those mud walls contemptuously named “of straw,” while the forces of the league assembled at Modena and obliged him to raise the siege. In the spring of 1176 Frederick threatened Milan. His army found itself a little to the north of the town near the village of Legnano, when the troops of the city, assisted only by a few allies from Piacenza, Verona, Brescia, Novara and Vercelli, met and overwhelmed it. The victory was complete. Frederick escaped alone to Pavia, whence he opened negotiations with Alexander. In consequence of these transactions, he was suffered to betake himself unharmed to Venice. Here, as upon neutral ground, the emperor met the pope, and a truce for six years was concluded with the Lombard burghs. Looking back from the vantage-ground of history upon the issue of this long struggle, we are struck with the small results which satisfied the Lombard communes. They had humbled and utterly defeated their foreign lord. They had proved their strength in combination. Yet neither the acts by which their league was ratified nor the terms negotiated for them by their patron Alexander evince the smallest desire of what we now understand as national independence. The name of Italy is never mentioned. The supremacy of the emperor is not called in question. The conception of a permanent confederation, bound together in offensive and defensive alliance for common objects, has not occurred to these hard fighters and stubborn asserters of their civic privileges. All they claim is municipal autonomy; the right to manage their own affairs within the city walls, to fight their battles as they choose, and to follow their several ends unchecked. It is vain to lament that, when they might have now established Italian independence upon a secure basis, they chose local and municipal privileges. Their mutual jealousies, combined with the prestige of the empire, and possibly with the selfishness of the pope, who had secured his own position, and was not likely to foster a national spirit that would have threatened the ecclesiastical supremacy, deprived the Italians of the only great opportunity they ever had of forming themselves into a powerful nation.
When the truce expired in 1183, a permanent peace was ratified at Constance. The intervening years had been spent by the Lombards, not in consolidating their union, but in attempting to secure special privileges for their several cities. Alessandria della Paglia, glorious by Peace of Constance. her resistance to the emperor in 1174, had even changed her name to Cesarea! The signatories of the peace of Constance were divided between leaguers and imperialists. On the one side we find Vercelli, Novara, Milan, Lodi, Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Bologna, Faenza, Modena, Reggio, Parma, Piacenza; on the other, Pavia, Genoa, Alba, Cremona, Como, Tortona, Asti, Cesarea. Venice, who had not yet entered the Italian community, is conspicuous by her absence. According to the terms of this treaty, the communes were confirmed in their right of self-government by consuls, and their right of warfare. The emperor retained the supreme courts of appeal within the cities, and
