Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part VI

There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than
to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in
opposition to their inclination and interest. A torrent of
Barbarians may pass over the earth, but an extensive empire must
be supported by a refined system of policy and oppression; in the
centre, an absolute power, prompt in action and rich in
resources; a swift and easy communication with the extreme parts;
fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion; a regular
administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined army
to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair. Far
different was the situation of the German Caesars, who were
ambitious to enslave the kingdom of Italy. Their patrimonial
estates were stretched along the Rhine, or scattered in the
provinces; but this ample domain was alienated by the imprudence
or distress of successive princes; and their revenue, from minute
and vexatious prerogative, was scarcely sufficient for the
maintenance of their household. Their troops were formed by the
legal or voluntary service of their feudal vassals, who passed
the Alps with reluctance, assumed the license of rapine and
disorder, and capriciously deserted before the end of the
campaign. Whole armies were swept away by the pestilential
influence of the climate: the survivors brought back the bones of
their princes and nobles, 142 and the effects of their own
intemperance were often imputed to the treachery and malice of
the Italians, who rejoiced at least in the calamities of the
Barbarians. This irregular tyranny might contend on equal terms
with the petty tyrants of Italy; nor can the people, or the
reader, be much interested in the event of the quarrel. But in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Lombards rekindled the
flame of industry and freedom; and the generous example was at
length imitated by the republics of Tuscany. 1421 In the Italian
cities a municipal government had never been totally abolished;
and their first privileges were granted by the favor and policy
of the emperors, who were desirous of erecting a plebeian barrier
against the independence of the nobles. But their rapid progress,
the daily extension of their power and pretensions, were founded
on the numbers and spirit of these rising communities. 143 Each
city filled the measure of her diocese or district: the
jurisdiction of the counts and bishops, of the marquises and
counts, was banished from the land; and the proudest nobles were
persuaded or compelled to desert their solitary castles, and to
embrace the more honorable character of freemen and magistrates.
The legislative authority was inherent in the general assembly;
but the executive powers were intrusted to three consuls,
annually chosen from the three orders of captains, valvassors,
144 and commons, into which the republic was divided. Under the
protection of equal law, the labors of agriculture and commerce
were gradually revived; but the martial spirit of the Lombards
was nourished by the presence of danger; and as often as the bell
was rung, or the standard 145 erected, the gates of the city
poured forth a numerous and intrepid band, whose zeal in their
own cause was soon guided by the use and discipline of arms. At
the foot of these popular ramparts, the pride of the Caesars was
overthrown; and the invincible genius of liberty prevailed over
the two Frederics, the greatest princes of the middle age; the
first, superior perhaps in military prowess; the second, who
undoubtedly excelled in the softer accomplishments of peace and
learning.

142 (return) [ After boiling away the flesh. The caldrons for
that purpose were a necessary piece of travelling furniture; and
a German who was using it for his brother, promised it to a
friend, after it should have been employed for himself, (Schmidt,
tom. iii. p. 423, 424.) The same author observes that the whole
Saxon line was extinguished in Italy, (tom. ii. p. 440.)]

1421 (return) [ Compare Sismondi, Histoire des Republiques
Italiannes. Hallam Middle Ages. Raumer, Geschichte der
Hohenstauffen. Savigny, Geschichte des Romischen Rechts, vol.
iii. p. 19 with the authors quoted.—M.]

143 (return) [ Otho, bishop of Frisingen, has left an important
passage on the Italian cities, (l. ii. c. 13, in Script. Ital.
tom. vi. p. 707-710: ) and the rise, progress, and government of
these republics are perfectly illustrated by Muratori,
(Antiquitat. Ital. Medii Aevi, tom. iv. dissert xlv.—lii. p.
1-675. Annal. tom. viii. ix. x.)]

144 (return) [ For these titles, see Selden, (Titles of Honor,
vol. iii. part 1 p. 488.) Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. ii. p.
140, tom. vi. p. 776,) and St. Marc, (Abrege Chronologique, tom.
ii. p. 719.)]

145 (return) [ The Lombards invented and used the carocium, a
standard planted on a car or wagon, drawn by a team of oxen,
(Ducange, tom. ii. p. 194, 195. Muratori Antiquitat tom. ii. dis.
xxvi. p. 489-493.)]

Ambitious of restoring the splendor of the purple, Frederic the
First invaded the republics of Lombardy, with the arts of a
statesman, the valor of a soldier, and the cruelty of a tyrant.
The recent discovery of the Pandects had renewed a science most
favorable to despotism; and his venal advocates proclaimed the
emperor the absolute master of the lives and properties of his
subjects. His royal prerogatives, in a less odious sense, were
acknowledged in the diet of Roncaglia; and the revenue of Italy
was fixed at thirty thousand pounds of silver, 146 which were
multiplied to an indefinite demand by the rapine of the fiscal
officers. The obstinate cities were reduced by the terror or the
force of his arms: his captives were delivered to the
executioner, or shot from his military engines; and. after the
siege and surrender of Milan, the buildings of that stately
capital were razed to the ground, three hundred hostages were
sent into Germany, and the inhabitants were dispersed in four
villages, under the yoke of the inflexible conqueror. 147 But
Milan soon rose from her ashes; and the league of Lombardy was
cemented by distress: their cause was espoused by Venice, Pope
Alexander the Third, and the Greek emperor: the fabric of
oppression was overturned in a day; and in the treaty of
Constance, Frederic subscribed, with some reservations, the
freedom of four-and-twenty cities. His grandson contended with
their vigor and maturity; but Frederic the Second 148 was endowed
with some personal and peculiar advantages. His birth and
education recommended him to the Italians; and in the implacable
discord of the two factions, the Ghibelins were attached to the
emperor, while the Guelfs displayed the banner of liberty and the
church. The court of Rome had slumbered, when his father Henry
the Sixth was permitted to unite with the empire the kingdoms of
Naples and Sicily; and from these hereditary realms the son
derived an ample and ready supply of troops and treasure. Yet
Frederic the Second was finally oppressed by the arms of the
Lombards and the thunders of the Vatican: his kingdom was given
to a stranger, and the last of his family was beheaded at Naples
on a public scaffold. During sixty years, no emperor appeared in
Italy, and the name was remembered only by the ignominious sale
of the last relics of sovereignty.

146 (return) [ Gunther Ligurinus, l. viii. 584, et seq., apud
Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 399.]

147 (return) [ Solus imperator faciem suam firmavit ut petram,
(Burcard. de Excidio Mediolani, Script. Ital. tom. vi. p. 917.)
This volume of Muratori contains the originals of the history of
Frederic the First, which must be compared with due regard to the
circumstances and prejudices of each German or Lombard writer. *
Note: Von Raumer has traced the fortunes of the Swabian house in
one of the ablest historical works of modern times. He may be
compared with the spirited and independent Sismondi.—M.]

148 (return) [ For the history of Frederic II. and the house of
Swabia at Naples, see Giannone, Istoria Civile, tom. ii. l. xiv.
-xix.]

The Barbarian conquerors of the West were pleased to decorate
their chief with the title of emperor; but it was not their
design to invest him with the despotism of Constantine and
Justinian. The persons of the Germans were free, their conquests
were their own, and their national character was animated by a
spirit which scorned the servile jurisprudence of the new or the
ancient Rome. It would have been a vain and dangerous attempt to
impose a monarch on the armed freemen, who were impatient of a
magistrate; on the bold, who refused to obey; on the powerful,
who aspired to command. The empire of Charlemagne and Otho was
distributed among the dukes of the nations or provinces, the
counts of the smaller districts, and the margraves of the marches
or frontiers, who all united the civil and military authority as
it had been delegated to the lieutenants of the first Caesars.
The Roman governors, who, for the most part, were soldiers of
fortune, seduced their mercenary legions, assumed the Imperial
purple, and either failed or succeeded in their revolt, without
wounding the power and unity of government. If the dukes,
margraves, and counts of Germany, were less audacious in their
claims, the consequences of their success were more lasting and
pernicious to the state. Instead of aiming at the supreme rank,
they silently labored to establish and appropriate their
provincial independence. Their ambition was seconded by the
weight of their estates and vassals, their mutual example and
support, the common interest of the subordinate nobility, the
change of princes and families, the minorities of Otho the Third
and Henry the Fourth, the ambition of the popes, and the vain
pursuit of the fugitive crowns of Italy and Rome. All the
attributes of regal and territorial jurisdiction were gradually
usurped by the commanders of the provinces; the right of peace
and war, of life and death, of coinage and taxation, of foreign
alliance and domestic economy. Whatever had been seized by
violence, was ratified by favor or distress, was granted as the
price of a doubtful vote or a voluntary service; whatever had
been granted to one could not, without injury, be denied to his
successor or equal; and every act of local or temporary
possession was insensibly moulded into the constitution of the
Germanic kingdom. In every province, the visible presence of the
duke or count was interposed between the throne and the nobles;
the subjects of the law became the vassals of a private chief;
and the standard which he received from his sovereign, was often
raised against him in the field. The temporal power of the clergy
was cherished and exalted by the superstition or policy of the
Carlovingian and Saxon dynasties, who blindly depended on their
moderation and fidelity; and the bishoprics of Germany were made
equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and population,
to the most ample states of the military order. As long as the
emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every vacancy
these ecclesiastic and secular benefices, their cause was
maintained by the gratitude or ambition of their friends and
favorites. But in the quarrel of the investitures, they were
deprived of their influence over the episcopal chapters; the
freedom of election was restored, and the sovereign was reduced,
by a solemn mockery, to his first prayers, the recommendation,
once in his reign, to a single prebend in each church. The
secular governors, instead of being recalled at the will of a
superior, could be degraded only by the sentence of their peers.
In the first age of the monarchy, the appointment of the son to
the duchy or county of his father, was solicited as a favor; it
was gradually obtained as a custom, and extorted as a right: the
lineal succession was often extended to the collateral or female
branches; the states of the empire (their popular, and at length
their legal, appellation) were divided and alienated by testament
and sale; and all idea of a public trust was lost in that of a
private and perpetual inheritance. The emperor could not even be
enriched by the casualties of forfeiture and extinction: within
the term of a year, he was obliged to dispose of the vacant fief;
and, in the choice of the candidate, it was his duty to consult
either the general or the provincial diet.

After the death of Frederic the Second, Germany was left a
monster with a hundred heads. A crowd of princes and prelates
disputed the ruins of the empire: the lords of innumerable
castles were less prone to obey, than to imitate, their
superiors; and, according to the measure of their strength, their
incessant hostilities received the names of conquest or robbery.
Such anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and
manners of Europe; and the kingdoms of France and Italy were
shivered into fragments by the violence of the same tempest. But
the Italian cities and the French vassals were divided and
destroyed, while the union of the Germans has produced, under the
name of an empire, a great system of a federative republic. In
the frequent and at last the perpetual institution of diets, a
national spirit was kept alive, and the powers of a common
legislature are still exercised by the three branches or colleges
of the electors, the princes, and the free and Imperial cities of
Germany. I. Seven of the most powerful feudatories were permitted
to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the exclusive
privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; and these electors were
the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of
Brandenburgh, the count palatine of the Rhine, and the three
archbishops of Mentz, of Treves, and of Cologne. II. The college
of princes and prelates purged themselves of a promiscuous
multitude: they reduced to four representative votes the long
series of independent counts, and excluded the nobles or
equestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in the Polish diets,
had appeared on horseback in the field of election. III. The
pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely
adopted the commons as the third branch of the legislature, and,
in the progress of society, they were introduced about the same
aera into the national assemblies of France England, and Germany.

The Hanseatic League commanded the trade and navigation of the
north: the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and
intercourse of the inland country; the influence of the cities
has been adequate to their wealth and policy, and their negative
still invalidates the acts of the two superior colleges of
electors and princes. 149

149 (return) [ In the immense labyrinth of the jus publicum of
Germany, I must either quote one writer or a thousand; and I had
rather trust to one faithful guide, than transcribe, on credit, a
multitude of names and passages. That guide is M. Pfeffel, the
author of the best legal and constitutional history that I know
of any country, (Nouvel Abrege Chronologique de l’Histoire et du
Droit public Allemagne; Paris, 1776, 2 vols. in 4to.) His
learning and judgment have discerned the most interesting facts;
his simple brevity comprises them in a narrow space. His
chronological order distributes them under the proper dates; and
an elaborate index collects them under their respective heads. To
this work, in a less perfect state, Dr. Robertson was gratefully
indebted for that masterly sketch which traces even the modern
changes of the Germanic body. The Corpus Historiae Germanicae of
Struvius has been likewise consulted, the more usefully, as that
huge compilation is fortified in every page with the original
texts. * Note: For the rise and progress of the Hanseatic League,
consult the authoritative history by Sartorius; Geschichte des
Hanseatischen Bandes & Theile, Gottingen, 1802. New and improved
edition by Lappenberg Elamburg, 1830. The original Hanseatic
League comprehended Cologne and many of the great cities in the
Netherlands and on the Rhine.—M.]

It is in the fourteenth century that we may view in the strongest
light the state and contrast of the Roman empire of Germany,
which no longer held, except on the borders of the Rhine and
Danube, a single province of Trajan or Constantine. Their
unworthy successors were the counts of Hapsburgh, of Nassau, of
Luxemburgh, and Schwartzenburgh: the emperor Henry the Seventh
procured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and his grandson
Charles the Fourth was born among a people strange and barbarous
in the estimation of the Germans themselves. 150 After the
excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or
promise of the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the
exile and captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the
earth. The death of his competitors united the electoral college,
and Charles was unanimously saluted king of the Romans, and
future emperor; a title which, in the same age, was prostituted
to the Caesars of Germany and Greece. The German emperor was no
more than the elective and impotent magistrate of an aristocracy
of princes, who had not left him a village that he might call his
own. His best prerogative was the right of presiding and
proposing in the national senate, which was convened at his
summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the
adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power and
the richest source of his revenue. The army with which he passed
the Alps consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of
St. Ambrose, Charles was crowned with the iron crown, which
tradition ascribed to the Lombard monarchy; but he was admitted
only with a peaceful train; the gates of the city were shut upon
him; and the king of Italy was held a captive by the arms of the
Visconti, whom he confirmed in the sovereignty of Milan. In the
Vatican he was again crowned with the golden crown of the empire;
but, in obedience to a secret treaty, the Roman emperor
immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night within the
walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch, 151 whose fancy revived the
visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the
ignominious flight of the Bohemian; and even his contemporaries
could observe, that the sole exercise of his authority was in the
lucrative sale of privileges and titles. The gold of Italy
secured the election of his son; but such was the shameful
poverty of the Roman emperor, that his person was arrested by a
butcher in the streets of Worms, and was detained in the public
inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of his expenses.

150 (return) [ Yet, personally, Charles IV. must not be
considered as a Barbarian. After his education at Paris, he
recovered the use of the Bohemian, his native, idiom; and the
emperor conversed and wrote with equal facility in French, Latin,
Italian, and German, (Struvius, p. 615, 616.) Petrarch always
represents him as a polite and learned prince.]

151 (return) [ Besides the German and Italian historians, the
expedition of Charles IV. is painted in lively and original
colors in the curious Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii.
p. 376-430, by the Abbe de Sade, whose prolixity has never been
blamed by any reader of taste and curiosity.]

From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent majesty
of the same Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull,
which fixes the Germanic constitution, is promulgated in the
style of a sovereign and legislator. A hundred princes bowed
before his throne, and exalted their own dignity by the voluntary
honors which they yielded to their chief or minister. At the
royal banquet, the hereditary great officers, the seven electors,
who in rank and title were equal to kings, performed their solemn
and domestic service of the palace. The seals of the triple
kingdom were borne in state by the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne,
and Treves, the perpetual arch-chancellors of Germany, Italy, and
Arles. The great marshal, on horseback, exercised his function
with a silver measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground,
and immediately dismounted to regulate the order of the guests.
The great steward, the count palatine of the Rhine, place the
dishes on the table. The great chamberlain, the margrave of
Brandenburgh, presented, after the repast, the golden ewer and
basin, to wash. The king of Bohemia, as great cup-bearer, was
represented by the emperor’s brother, the duke of Luxemburgh and
Brabant; and the procession was closed by the great huntsmen, who
introduced a boar and a stag, with a loud chorus of horns and
hounds. 152 Nor was the supremacy of the emperor confined to
Germany alone: the hereditary monarchs of Europe confessed the
preeminence of his rank and dignity: he was the first of the
Christian princes, the temporal head of the great republic of the
West: 153 to his person the title of majesty was long
appropriated; and he disputed with the pope the sublime
prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils. The oracle
of the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a pensioner of
Charles the Fourth; and his school resounded with the doctrine,
that the Roman emperor was the rightful sovereign of the earth,
from the rising to the setting sun. The contrary opinion was
condemned, not as an error, but as a heresy, since even the
gospel had pronounced, “And there went forth a decree from Caesar
Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” 154

152 (return) [ See the whole ceremony in Struvius, p. 629]

153 (return) [ The republic of Europe, with the pope and emperor
at its head, was never represented with more dignity than in the
council of Constance. See Lenfant’s History of that assembly.]

154 (return) [ Gravina, Origines Juris Civilis, p. 108.]

If we annihilate the interval of time and space between Augustus
and Charles, strong and striking will be the contrast between the
two Caesars; the Bohemian who concealed his weakness under the
mask of ostentation, and the Roman, who disguised his strength
under the semblance of modesty. At the head of his victorious
legions, in his reign over the sea and land, from the Nile and
Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, Augustus professed himself the
servant of the state and the equal of his fellow-citizens. The
conqueror of Rome and her provinces assumed a popular and legal
form of a censor, a consul, and a tribune. His will was the law
of mankind, but in the declaration of his laws he borrowed the
voice of the senate and people; and from their decrees their
master accepted and renewed his temporary commission to
administer the republic. In his dress, his domestics, 155 his
titles, in all the offices of social life, Augustus maintained
the character of a private Roman; and his most artful flatterers
respected the secret of his absolute and perpetual monarchy.

155 (return) [ Six thousand urns have been discovered of the
slaves and freedmen of Augustus and Livia. So minute was the
division of office, that one slave was appointed to weigh the
wool which was spun by the empress’s maids, another for the care
of her lap-dog, &c., (Camera Sepolchrale, by Bianchini. Extract
of his work in the Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iv. p. 175. His
Eloge, by Fontenelle, tom. vi. p. 356.) But these servants were
of the same rank, and possibly not more numerous than those of
Pollio or Lentulus. They only prove the general riches of the
city.]