[1161-1163 A.D.]
The siege of Crema exhausted the patience of the German army. At this period, soldiers were unaccustomed to such protracted expeditions. When they had accomplished their feudal service, they considered they had a right to return home. The greater number, accordingly, departed; but Frederick, with immovable constancy, declared he would remain, with the Italians only of the Ghibelline towns, to make war against the Milanese; and placing himself at the head of the militias of Pavia, Cremona, and Novara, carried on the war a whole year, during which his sole object was to destroy the harvests, and prevent the entrance of any kind of provision into Milan. In the month of June, 1161, a new army arrived from Germany to his aid. His subjects began to feel ashamed of having abandoned their monarch in a foreign country, amongst a people whom they accused of perfidy and rebellion. They returned with redoubled animosity, which was soon manifested by ferocious deeds; they tortured and put to death every peasant whom they surprised carrying provisions of any kind into Milan.
The rich citizens of the republic had aided the government in making large magazines, which were already in part exhausted; an accidental fire having consumed the remainder, hunger triumphed over courage and the love of liberty. For three entire years had the Milanese, since they had been placed under the ban of the empire, supported this unequal contest; when, in the beginning of March, 1162, they were reduced to surrender at discretion. In deep despair they yielded up their arms and colours, and awaited the orders of the emperor. Frederick, harsh and haughty, was not ferocious; never had he put to death by the executioner rebels or enemies whom he had vanquished. He suffered nearly a month to elapse before he pronounced his final determination; perhaps to augment the anxiety of the subdued, perhaps, also, to pacify his own wrath, which he at last vented on walls and inanimate objects, while he pardoned man. He ordered the town to be completely evacuated, so that there should not be left in it a single living being. On the 25th of March, he summoned the militias of the rival and Ghibelline cities, and gave them orders to raze to the earth the houses as well as the walls of the town, so as not to leave one stone upon another.
Those of the inhabitants of Milan whom their poverty, labour, and industry attached to the soil, were divided into four open villages, built at a distance of at least two miles from the walls of their former city. Others sought hospitality in the neighbouring towns of Italy; even in those which had shown most attachment to the emperor. Their sufferings, the extent of their sacrifices, the recollection of their valour, and the example of their noble sentiments, made proselytes to the cause of liberty in every city into which they were received. The delegates of the emperor also (for he himself had returned to his German dominions), the podestas whom he had established in every town, soon made those Lombards who had fought with him feel only shame and regret at having lent their aid to rivet his yoke on their own necks. All the privileges of the nation were violated; justice was sacrificed to party interest. Taxes continually augmenting had increased sixfold; and hardly a third part of the produce of the land remained to the cultivator. The Italians were universally in a state of suffering and humiliation; tyranny at length reached even their consciences.
RIVAL POPES
On the death of Pope Adrian IV, in September, 1159, the electing cardinals had been equally divided between two candidates; the one a Sienese, the other a Roman. Both were declared duly elected by their separate parties; the first, under the name of Alexander III; the second, under that of Victor III. Frederick declared for the latter, who had shown himself ready to sacrifice to him the liberties and independence of the church. The former had been obliged to take refuge in France, though almost the whole of Christendom did not long hesitate to declare for him. While one council assembled by Frederick at Pavia rejected him, another assembled at Beauvais not only rejected but anathematised Victor. Excommunication at length reached even the emperor; and Alexander, to strengthen himself against Frederick, endeavoured to gain the affections of the people, by ranging himself among the protectors of the liberties of Italy.
[1163-1167 A.D.]
Frederick re-entered Italy in the year 1163, accompanied not by an army, but by a brilliant retinue of German nobles. He did not imagine that in a country which he now considered subdued, he needed a more imposing force; besides, he believed that he could at all times command the militias of the Ghibelline towns; and, in fact, he made them this year raze to the ground the walls of Tortona. He afterwards directed his steps towards Rome, to support by his presence his schismatic pontiff; but, in the meantime, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso, the most powerful towns of the Veronese marches, assembled their consuls in congress, to consider the means of putting an end to a tyranny which overwhelmed them. The consuls of these four towns pledged themselves by oath in the name of their cities to give mutual support to each other in the assertion of their former rights, and in the resolution to reduce the imperial prerogatives to the point at which they were fixed under the reign of Henry IV. Frederick, informed of this association, returned hastily into northern Italy, to put it down. He assembled the militias of Pavia, Cremona, Novara, Lodi, and Como, with the intention of leading them against the Veronese marches; but he soon perceived that the spirit of liberty had made progress in the Ghibelline cities as well as in those of the Guelfs; that the militias under his command complained as much of the vexations inflicted by his podestas as those against whom he led them; and that they were ill-disposed to face death only to rivet the chains of their country. Obliged to bend before a people which he considered only as revolted subjects, he soon renounced a contest so humiliating, and returned to Germany, to levy an army more submissive to him.
Other and more pressing interests diverted his attention from this object till the autumn of 1166. During this interval his anti-pope, Victor III, died; and the successor whom he caused to be named was still more strongly rejected by the church. On the other side, Alexander III had returned from France to Rome; contracted an alliance with William, the Norman king of the Two Sicilies; and armed the whole of southern Italy against the emperor.