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