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.
FREDERICK ONCE MORE AGGRESSIVE
[1174-1175 A.D.]
In the beginning of October, 1174, Frederick, at the head of a formidable army, again re-entered Italy. He passed from the county of Burgundy into Savoy, and descended by Mont Cenis. Suza, the first town to which he came on his passage, was taken and burned; Asti, in alarm, opened its gates, and purchased its security from pillage by a heavy contribution; but Alexandria stopped the progress of the emperor. This city, recently founded by the league of Lombardy, did not hesitate to enter into a contest with the imperial power for the sake of its confederates; although its mud walls were an object of derision to the Germans, who first gave this town the surname of Alessandria della paglia, or of straw. Nevertheless these walls of mud and straw, but defended by generous and devoted citizens, resisted all the efforts of the most valiant army and the most warlike monarch of Germany. Frederick consumed in vain four months in a siege, which was prolonged through the winter. The inundation of rivers more than once threatened him with destruction, even in his camp; sickness also decimated his soldiers. Finally, the combined army of the Lombard League advanced from Piacenza to Tortona; and on Easter Sunday of the year 1175, Frederick found himself obliged to raise the siege, and to march for Pavia, to repose his army.
This last check at length compelled the emperor to acknowledge the power of a people which he had been accustomed to despise. The chiefs of the Lombard army showed themselves well prepared for battle; but still respecting the rights of their monarch, declined attacking him. He entered into negotiations with them; all professed their ardent desire to reconcile the prerogatives of the emperor and the rights of the Roman church with those of liberty. Six commissioners were appointed to settle the basis of a treaty which should reconcile the several claims. They began by demanding that the armies on each side should be disbanded. Frederick did not hesitate to comply; he dismissed his Germans, and remained at Pavia, trusting solely to the fidelity of his Italian Ghibellines. Legates from the pope arrived also to join the commissioners; and the negotiations were opened. But the demands of Frederick were so high as to render agreement almost impossible. He declared that he desired only his just rights; “but they must be those,” said he, “which have been exercised by my predecessors, Charlemagne, Otto, and the emperors Henry III and Henry IV.” The deputies of the towns opposed to this the concessions of Henry V and Lothair; but even these could no longer satisfy them. For the Italians, liberty had advanced with civilisation; and they could not now submit to the ancient prerogatives of their masters, without returning to their own ancient barbarism.
THE BATTLE OF LEGNANO; THE PEACE OF CONSTANCE
[1175-1177 A.D.]