We will now cross the Alps into
ITALY.
Lombards carried chivalry into Italy.
We shall ascend sufficiently high into the antiquities of nations, if we observe that the system of manners from which chivalry sprang was brought by the Lombards from Germany into the north of Italy. With them in their new, as it had been in their original, seats, the title to bear arms was a distinction conferred by the state, and not a subject of private will and choice. A son did not presume to sit at the same table with his father. For the instruction of youth in military affairs there were public spectacles on Sundays, and on festivals, in imitation of a knightly mêlée. A town or city was divided into two parts, each having its defenders. The mock battles were either general or between small parties, the weapons were made of wood, the helmets were safely padded, and the young warriors displayed splendid banners adorned with fanciful cognisances.[225] The amusement of hawking, which distinguished the Gothic from the Latin and most southern tribes, was common with the Lombards[226]: but more than all the rest, a tone of chivalric gallantry was given to the Italians, even by these long-bearded barbarians.
Stories of chivalric gallantry.
Antharis, one of the Lombard kings, sought in marriage Theudelinda, a daughter of the King of Bavaria; and not wishing to judge through another’s eyes, he disguised himself as a private man, and accompanied his ambassadors to the Bavarian court. After the conditions of the marriage had been discussed and the ceremonies arranged, the disguised prince stepped before the crowd, and, saluting the King, declared that he was the personal friend of Antharis, who wished to receive from him a description of the lady’s charms. Theudelinda accordingly appeared, and the first glance assured Antharis of her being worthy of his love. He did not betray his rank to the assembly; but not altogether able to conceal his joy, he touched the hand of the royal damsel as she presented him a cup of wine; and the matrons about the court, excellent judges of signs of passion, whispered their assurance that such an act of bold familiarity could never have been committed by a mere public or personal representative of Antharis.[227]
For several centuries chivalry shed but few and transient gleams of light over the gloomy waste of Italian history, and I can only select one event which paints in beautiful colours the spirit of romantic gallantry. The wife of Lothaire, King of Italy from the year 945 to 948, was Adelais, a princess of the house of Burgundy. Lothaire was deposed, perhaps murdered by his minister, Berenger; and the usurper persecuted, with the cruelty of fear, Adelais, who has been described by monkish chroniclers, and chivalry will not contradict the character, as being young and beautiful. He confined her in a subterraneous dungeon; and, as if personal insult was his best security, he deprived her of her jewels and her royal apparel. A female servant was her only companion during four months of confinement, wherein she was made to endure every mortification which a noble mind can be exposed to. Her wretched condition was at length discovered by a priest, named Martin, who had not in the retirement of a cloister lost the sympathies of humanity. He immediately employed himself to effect her rescue, and, unseen by her jealous keepers, he worked an aperture through the earth and walls sufficient to admit a slender female form to pass. He conveyed male habiliments into the dungeon, to deceive the eyes of her jailors, and, apparelled in them, Adelais and her attendant made their escape. They were met at the entrance of the aperture by their faithful monk, who fled with them to the most probable place of safety, a wood near the lake Benacus. The wants of nature were furnished to them by a poor man who gained a precarious livelihood by fishing in the lake. Recovered from their fatigue and alarm, Martin left the wood to provide for his fair friend some surer place of safety. He went to the Bishop of Reggio, who, though a humane and well-purposed man, was unable to oppose the might of Berenger. Still the matter was not hopeless, for he remembered that there was dwelling in the impregnable fortress of Canossa a virtuous and adventurous knight. To him, therefore, Martin addressed himself, and Azzo listened to his complaint. He and a chosen band of cavaliers donned their harness, and, repairing to the lake Benacus, conducted thence the persecuted Adelais to the fortress of Canossa. And this was well and chivalrously achieved, for virtue was protected; and in affording this protection, Azzo defied the power of the King of Italy. The subsequent fate of Adelais it falls not within my province to detail. The student of Italian history knows that she married Otho the Great, Emperor of Germany, and that this marriage was a main cause of uniting the sovereignties of Germany and Italy.[228]
But little martial chivalry in Italy.
Condottieri.
The growth and developement of chivalry in subsequent times were checked by political circumstances. Of them the chief was the formation of the republics in the north of Italy during the twelfth century. The power of the feudal nobility was far less than in any other country, and the nobles were the humble allies of the towns.[229] The citizens trusted rather to the security of their fortifications than their own strength in the field, for their infantry could not resist the charges of Italian cavalry; and, except such nobles as were in alliance with them, their force consisted of infantry. The superiority of the chivalric array of the various lords and feudal princes of Italy to the militia of the cities[230] was one great cause of that great political revolution,—the change of the republics into tyrannies. The power of knights over armed burghers having been experienced, and the towns not possessing in sufficient numbers a force of cavalry, the practice arose of hiring the service of bodies of lancers, who were commonly gentlemen of small fortune but of great pretensions, and who found war the readiest way of gratifying their proud and luxurious desires. In the fourteenth century another great change occurred in the military affairs of Italy. I shall lay it before my readers in the lucid diction of the English historian of that country. “The successive expeditions of Henry VII., of Louis of Bavaria, and of John of Bohemia, had filled Italy with numerous bands of German cavalry, who, on the retirement of their sovereigns, were easily tempted to remain in a rich and beautiful country, where their services were eagerly demanded, and extravagantly paid. The revolution in the military art, which in the preceding century established the resistless superiority of a mounted gens-d’armerie over the burgher infantry, had habituated every state to confide its security to bodies of mercenary cavalry; and the Lombard tyrants in particular, who founded their power upon these forces, were quick in discovering the advantage of employing foreign adventurers, who were connected with their disaffected subjects by no ties of country or community of language. Their example was soon universally followed, native cavalry fell into strange disrepute; and the Italians, without having been conquered in the field, unaccountably surrendered the decision of their quarrels and the superiority in courage and military skill, to mercenaries of other countries. When this custom of employing foreign troops was once introduced, new swarms of adventurers were continually attracted from beyond the Alps to reap the rich harvest of pay and booty which were spread before them. In a country so perpetually agitated by wars among its numerous states, they found constant occupation, and, what they loved more, unbridled licence. Ranging themselves under the standards of chosen leaders—the condottieri, or captains of mercenary bands,—they passed in bodies of various strength from one service to another, as their terms of engagement expired, or the temptation of higher pay invited; their chieftains and themselves alike indifferent to the cause which they supported; alike faithless, rapacious, and insolent. Upon every trifling disgust they were ready to go over to the enemy: their avarice and treachery were rarely proof against seduction; and, though their regular pay was five or six times greater in the money of the age than that of modern armies, they exacted a large gratuity for every success. As they were usually opposed by troops of the same description, whom they regarded rather as comrades than enemies, they fought with little earnestness, and designedly protracted their languid operations to ensure the continuance of their emoluments. But while they occasioned each other little loss, they afflicted the country which was the theatre of contest with every horror of warfare: they pillaged, they burnt, they violated, and massacred with devilish ferocity.”[231]
Gradually these foreign condottieri, when not engaged in the service of any particular power, levied war like independent sovereigns; and Italy had fresh reason to repent the jealousy which had made her distrust her own sons. They fought with tenfold more fury now that the contest was no longer carried on by one troop of condottieri against another, but against the Italians themselves, to whom no tie of nature bound them; and so far was any cavaleresque generosity from mitigating the horrors of their wars, that one adventurer, Werner was his name, and Germany his country, declared, by an inscription which was blazoned on his corslet, that he was “the enemy of God, of pity, and of mercy.” But the power of these foreign condottieri was not perpetual. Nature rose to vindicate her rights; and there were many daring spirits among the Italians, who, if not emulous of the fame, were jealous of the dominion of strangers. The company of Saint George, founded by Alberico de Barbiano, a marauding chief of Romagna, was the school of Italian generals. In the fifteenth century, the force of every state was led by an Italian, if not a native citizen; and when the Emperor Robert crossed the Alps with the gens-d’armerie of Germany, the Milanese, headed by Jacopo del Verme, encountered him near Brescia, and overthrew all his chivalry.