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.