IMPERIAL CAMPAIGNS AND REVERSES
When Frederick, in the month of October, 1166, descended the mountains of the Grisons to enter Italy by the territory of Brescia, he marched his army directly to Lodi, without permitting any act of hostility on the way. At Lodi, he assembled towards the end of November, a diet of the kingdom of Italy, at which he promised the Lombards to redress the grievances occasioned by the abuses of power by his podestas, and to respect their just liberties; he was desirous of separating their cause from that of the pope, and the king of Sicily; and to give greater weight to his negotiation, he marched his army into central Italy. The towns of Romagna and Tuscany had hitherto made few complaints, and manifested little zeal in defence of their privileges. Frederick hoped that, by establishing himself amongst them, he should revive their loyalty, and induce them to augment the army which he was leading against Rome. But he soon perceived that the spirit of liberty which animated the other countries of Italy worked also in these; he contented himself, accordingly, with taking thirty hostages from Bologna, and having vainly laid siege to Ancona, he, in the month of July, 1167, marched his army towards Rome.
The towns of the Veronese marches, seeing the emperor and his army pass without daring to attack them, became bolder: they assembled a new diet, in the beginning of April, at the convent of Pontida, between Milan and Bergamo. The consuls of Cremona, of Bergamo, of Brescia, of Mantua and Ferrara, met there, and joined those of the marches. The union of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, for the common liberty, was hailed with universal joy. The deputies of the Cremonese, who had lent their aid to the destruction of Milan, seconded those of the Milanese villages in imploring aid of the confederated towns to rebuild the city of Milan. This confederation was called the League of Lombardy. The consuls took the oath, and their constituents afterwards repeated it, that every Lombard should unite for the recovery of the common liberty; that the league for this purpose should last twenty years; and, finally, that they should aid each other in repairing in common any damage experienced in this sacred cause, by any one member of the confederation; extending even to the past this contract for reciprocal security, the league resolved to rebuild Milan.
An Italian Officer, Twelfth Century
The militias of Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Mantua, Verona, and Treviso arrived the 27th of April, 1167, on the ground covered by the ruins of this great city. They apportioned among themselves the labour of restoring the enclosing walls; all the Milanese of the four villages, as well as those who had taken refuge in the more distant towns, came in crowds to take part in this pious work; and in a few weeks the new-grown city was in a state to repel the insults of its enemies. Lodi was soon afterwards compelled, by force of arms, to take the oath to the league; while the towns of Venice, Piacenza, Parma, Modena, and Bologna voluntarily and gladly joined the association.
Frederick, meanwhile, arrived within sight of Rome. The Romans dared to await him in the open field; he defeated them with great slaughter, and made himself master of the Leonine city. The inhabitants still defending themselves in the Vatican, he dislodged them by setting fire to Santa Maria, the adjoining church; Alexander, in his fright, escaped by the Tiber. After his retreat the Romans took the oath of fidelity to the emperor, without, however, receiving his army within their walls; but fever, and the suffocating heat of the Campagna, soon began, by its ravages, to avenge the Italians; from the first days of August an alarming mortality broke out in the camp of the emperor.
[1167-1174 A.D.]
The princes to whom he was most attached, the captains in whom he had most confidence, two thousand knights, with a proportional number of common soldiers, were carried off in a few weeks. He endeavoured to flee from the destructive scourge; he traversed in his retreat Tuscany and the Lunigiana; but his route was marked with graves, in which every day, every hour, he deposited the bodies of his soldiers. He was no longer strong enough to vanquish even the opposition of the little town of Pontremoli, which refused him a passage; and it was by roads almost impracticable that he at length crossed the Apennines. He arrived at Pavia about the middle of September, and attempted to assemble a diet; but the deputies of Pavia, Novara, Vercelli, and Como alone obeyed his summons. He harangued the assembly with great vehemence; and, throwing down his glove, challenged the rebellious cities to a pitched battle. He passed the winter in combating, with his small remaining army, the league of Lombardy; but in the month of March, 1168, he escaped from the Italians, and repassed Mont Cenis, to return and arm the Germans anew against Italy.
After his departure, Novara, Vercelli, Como, Asti, and Tortona also entered into the confederation, which resolved to found, as a monument of its power, and as a barrier against the Ghibellines of Pavia and Montferrat, a new city, on the confluence of the rivers Tanaro and Bormida. The Lombards named it Alexandria (Alessandria), in honour of the chief of the church, and of their league. They collected in it all the inhabitants of the different villages of that rich plain, which extends from the Po to the Ligurian Alps, and secured to them all the liberty and privileges for which they themselves had fought.
Frederick had sacrificed more time, treasure, and blood, to strengthen his dominion over Italy, than any of his predecessors; he had succeeded for a long period in associating the German nation in his ambition. He persuaded the Germans that their interest and their honour were concerned in the submission of the Italians. They began, however, to feel tired of a long contest, from which they derived no advantage; other interests, affairs more pressing, demanded the presence of the emperor at home; and Frederick was obliged to suspend for five years his efforts to subdue Italy. During this period the towns of Lombardy, in the plenitude of their power and liberty, corrected their laws, recruited their finances, strengthened their fortifications, and finally placed their militias on a better war establishment. Their consuls met also in frequent diets, where they bound themselves by new oaths to the common defence, and admitted fresh members into the confederation, which at length reached to the extremity of Romagna.
Frederick, however, did not entirely abandon Italy. He sent thither Christian, the elected archbishop of Mainz, and arch-chancellor of the empire, as his representative. This warlike prelate soon felt that there was nothing to be done in Lombardy; and he proceeded to Tuscany, where the Ghibelline party still predominated. His first pretension was to establish peace between the two maritime republics of Genoa and Pisa, which disputed with arms in their hands the commerce of the East. As he found a greater spirit of pride and independence in the Pisans, he caused to be thrown into a dungeon their consuls, who had presented themselves at the diet of the Tuscan towns convoked by him at San Ginasio, in the month of July, 1173; he arrested, at the same time, the consuls of the Florentines, their allies, while he studiously flattered those of Lucca, of Siena, of Pistoia, and the nobles of Tuscany, Romagna, and Umbria; promising to avenge them on their enemies: but, said he, “to do so more effectually, you must first co-operate with me in crushing the enemies of the emperor.” He thus succeeded in persuading them to second him in the attack which he meditated for the following spring on Ancona.
This city, the most southern of all those attached to the league of Lombardy, contained about twelve thousand inhabitants, enriched by maritime commerce, and confident in the strength of their almost unassailable position. Their town, beautifully situated on the extremity of a promontory, which surrounded a magnificent port, presented on the side open to the continent only precipitous rocks, with the exception of a single causeway. The citizens had accordingly repulsed successively for ages all the attacks of the barbarians, and all the pretensions of the emperors. The archbishop Christian arrived before Ancona in the beginning of April, 1174, and invested the city with an army levied among the Ghibellines of Tuscany and Umbria. The people of Ancona repulsed their attack with their accustomed bravery. But hunger, more formidable than the sword, soon menaced them. The preceding harvests had failed; their granaries were empty; and an enemy’s fleet closed their port. They saw the harvest ripen, without the possibility of a single sack of corn reaching them. All human subsistence was soon exhausted; undismayed, however, they tried to support existence with the herbs and shell-fish which they gathered from their rocks, or with the leather which commerce had accumulated in their magazines. Such was the food on which had long subsisted a young and beautiful woman. Observing one day a soldier summoned to battle, but unable from hunger to proceed, she refused her breast to the child whom she suckled; offered it to the warrior; and sent him, thus refreshed, to shed his blood for his country.
But to whatever distress the people of Ancona were reduced, they rejected every proposal to capitulate. At length the succour invoked from the Guelfs of Ferrara and Romagna approached; Christian saw the fires which they lighted on the mountain of Falcognara, about four miles from Ancona; and, unable to give them battle with an army exhausted by the fatigues of a long siege, he hastily retreated.