DISASTER SUCCEEDS VICTORY
Clement had written to this legate saying that Cola had exceeded the limits of his authority, breaking the pontifical and imperial decrees and favouring Louis of Hungary against Joanna of Naples whom the pope held to be innocent of the accusation of complicity in the murder of her husband Andrea. He gave orders for Cola to revoke the very fatuous laws he had made and ordered him to be contented with the government of Rome. But Cola was unwilling to receive such admonitions, which prevented the fulfilment of his designs. The Colonnas in the meanwhile arrived from Palestrina, and favoured by the discontent commencing in Rome they entered upon the perilous venture of storming Rome at the gate of San Lorenzo. Among the chief barons were Stefano Colonna, the younger, and Giovanni his son, who died fighting. Cola felt certain of the prefect Da Vico,—who, however, secretly favoured the Colonnas, the Orsini, and the Savelli,—and had tried to imbue the others with his enthusiasm, saying that St. Boniface, i.e., Boniface VIII, had appeared to him and assured him of victory over the Colonnas. They in fact were conquered (the 20th of November). Many of the most illustrious barons died in that fierce battle, which was the grave of the old Roman nobility. The tribune, being no warrior, could not boast of a real victory, but he nevertheless celebrated his triumph, and like the ancients, he had arms hung up in the temples, and he laid his steel sceptre and his crown of olive leaves at the feet of the Virgin in Santa Maria in Ara Cœli, boasting before the people of having done with his sword what neither pope nor emperor had been able to do.
The next day he made his son Lorenzo a cavalier (knight) at the scene of victory, sprinkling him with water from the ditch in which Stefano Colonna had fallen, and bathing him with blood and water, he said to him: “Thou shalt be a cavalier of victory”; and thus in vain and barbarous ceremonies he lost precious time in which he could easily have surprised Marino. The people murmured at seeing Rienzi sprinkle his son with the blood of the Colonnas, for he seemed like an Asiatic tyrant, who forgot the execution of justice in his love of eating and drinking.
Mount Aventine, Rome
Cola began to be suspicious of the populace, and fearing their fury he was in no hurry to assemble them for parliament. He had to cease governing Sabina, although in the name of the church he continued to issue laws and tracts. He approached the legate, but he did not recover the good will of the people, who now regarded him as a tyrant (December, 1347).
Together with a pontifical vicar, he assembled the parliament of the people, proposing a tax on salt, but in this the citizens did not concur, and soon afterwards a council was formed of twenty-nine sages. But scarcely were they assembled than he accused two of the members of treachery; a tumult arose, and Cola, alarmed, and to reassemble the sole public council and to excuse himself of any excess, said that he wished to hold the court in the name of the pope and according to the orders that the cardinal brought him in his name. But he postponed publishing them (the 10th of December), and thus from hesitancy to hesitancy, from vanity to vanity, he worked his own ruin.
The people were no longer with him, he was no longer the tribune of a few months previous—full of confidence and enthusiasm. He did not know how to keep the vicar on his side; and he withdrew to the legate at Montefiascone, who was commencing operations against the tribune, as he sided with the Colonnas and Savelli.
Letters arrived from the pope, accusing Cola of having summoned to his court the Bavarian and the Bohemian, and for having incited the Italian cities to assemble to elect the emperor, which he had asserted to be a matter independent of the church and the city of Rome; in fact he had incited the people to abandon him. Although Cola then abandoned (at least in appearance) all his pretensions, it was too late.
Petrarch had left Valchiusa to come to Rome to visit the tribune and the city, no longer in the hands of the barons, no longer decimated by massacres, but ruled by a vigorous hand of ancient Roman descent. When he arrived at Genoa, he heard on the way bad reports of Cola’s government. He then wrote to him to reprove his decadence, and quoting Cicero and Terence, he strove to inspire him with Roman steadfastness. “The foot must be well planted,” he said to him, “so as to be firm and not to present a ridiculous spectacle to the enemies.”
But these oratorical exhortations were fruitless—resistance had become impossible; the legate, the people, were all against him; and those who a few months before had hailed him as the restorer of the Roman Republic now grumbled at him as the “iniquitous one who wished to tyrannise by force.”
John Pipino of Altarmara who was put in prison by Robert had been set free by Andrew in 1343. When Andrew was killed he left the kingdom and went to Hungary, where he incited King Louis to go down to Italy to vindicate the death of his brother, whilst he went to Rome to await him. The tribune had banished him from Rome for the robberies he had committed near Terracina, but favoured by the enemies of Cola, he was able to fortify himself in the district of the Holy Apostles, under the protection of the Colonnas.
Cola liberated the prefect Da Vico; but he was mistaken in thinking to acquire a powerful friend, for he had already voted against the tribune; his orders were not followed. The tribune was now quite cast down and disheartened at seeing that the country which had glowed with the ardour of a whole populace was now destitute of one in his favour; and he fell to weeping and sighing.
The people meanwhile came to the Campidoglio, but full of a bad spirit and actuated by his enemies. Cola appeared before them and told them how much he had done in his tribunate; he justified his conduct, and said that if his fellow-citizens were not satisfied with him it was the fault of their jealousy, and that he would renounce power in the seventh month from that in which he had assumed it. But the eloquent language which had once affected Clement VI, and intoxicated the people with enthusiasm, was now received coldly, and not a voice rose in his defence.
Weeping, Cola came out on horseback, and to the sound of trumpets and with imperial accompaniments he passed through the city almost in triumph and shut himself up in the castle of St. Angelo. When the tribune descended from his grandeur, he bewailed the others who were associated with him and he lamented over the unhappy people. The barons did not dare to set foot in Rome for three days, and they finally returned, with the legate, who disapproved of most of the deeds of the tribune, and condemned him as a heretic. The count Pipino was executed eight days afterwards in the Abruzzi, and a mitre was put upon his head with the inscription that he was mockingly called the “liberator of the people of Rome.”
Cola on the arrival of the king of Hungary fled to the Naples district from the dangers which menaced him.
RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF CASTOR AT ROME