THE BATTLE OF CORTENUOVA
[1236-1237 A.D.]
The same year, 1237, Frederick approached Mantua, and thus giving courage to the Ghibelline party, made them triumph over the Guelfs, who had, till then, the ascendant in that city; he was joined there by ten thousand Saracens, whom he summoned from Apulia, and afterwards advanced into the Cremonese territory to attack the confederate army of the Guelfs, commanded by the consuls of Milan, who knew no other art of war but the bravery evinced in battle. Frederick was a more able captain; by manœuvring between Brescia and Cremona, he drew the Milanese beyond the Oglio, and finally succeeded, as they believed the campaign finished, in placing himself between them and their country at Cortenuova near Crema. The Guelfs, although thus cut off from retreat, boldly accepted battle on the 27th of November, 1237, and long disputed the victory. Their defeat was only the more bloody; it cost them ten thousand men killed or taken prisoners, with the loss of the carroccio. The fugitives followed during the night the course of the Oglio to enter the Bergamasque Mountains; they would all, however, have fallen into the hands of the Ghibellines, if Pagan della Torre, the lord of Valsassina, and a Guelf noble, had not hastened to their assistance, opened the defiles covered by his fortresses, and brought them thus safely to Milan. The citizens of this town never forgot so important a service; and they contracted with the house of della Torre an alliance which subsequently proved dangerous to their freedom.
The defeat of the Guelfs at Cortenuova alarmed the towns of Lombardy, the greater number of which detached themselves from Milan. Frederick, entering Piedmont the following year, gave preponderance to the Ghibelline party in the cities of Turin, Asti, Novara, Alexandria, and several others. The constitution was not changed when the power in council passed from one party to another; but the emperor generally reckoned his partisans among the nobility, while the people were devoted to the church; accordingly, the triumph of the aristocracy generally accompanied that of the Ghibelline party. Four cities only, Milan, Brescia, Piacenza, and Bologna, remained at the end of the year opposed to the imperial power. Frederick began his attack on them by laying siege to Brescia; but the Brescians dared to face the storm; they supported, during sixty-eight days, the repeated attacks of the emperor, rendered all his efforts fruitless, and forced him at last to raise the siege with an army weakened and discouraged.
POPE AGAINST EMPEROR
[1238-1243 A.D.]
In the meantime, Gregory IX redoubled his efforts to save the Guelf party from ruin. He saw, with alarm, an emperor, master of the Two Sicilies and of Germany, on the point of vanquishing all resistance in upper Italy. He anticipated that this monarch, whose Mussulman soldiers were constantly passing through the states of Rome, would escape the influence of the church, and soon evince no respect whatever for a religion which he was accused of not believing. Gregory had recourse to the two maritime republics of Venice and Genoa, which, in general occupied with their conquests and commerce in the East, seldom took any part in the politics of Italy. He represented to them that they would be soon deprived of the freedom of the seas, if they did not make some effort to save the champions of liberty and of the church in Lombardy. He at length obtained their agreement to contract an alliance with the four only surviving cities of the league of Lombardy; and finally, towards the beginning of the year 1239, he fulminated another sentence of excommunication against Frederick. This had a greater effect than Gregory ventured to hope. A considerable number of nobles of Guelf origin, seduced by court favours, had been won over to the imperial party. They perceived that, after the anathema of the pope, the emperor distrusted them. The marquis d’Este and the count di San Bonifazio were even warned that their heads were in danger, and they made their escape from the imperial camp; all the other Guelf nobles followed their example, and the Guelf cities gained captains habituated to arms and familiarised with higher ideas of politics.
Gregory began to think he should give still greater weight to the anathemas which he launched against the emperor if they were sanctioned by a council. In the year 1241 he convoked at Rome all the prelates of Christendom. Frederick, who had been established at Pisa since the autumn of the year 1239, exerted himself to prevent the meeting of a council which he dreaded. While the two other maritime republics had declared for the Guelfs, Pisa was entirely of the Ghibelline party. The people were enthusiastically attached to the emperor; and among the nobles, a few only, proprietors of fiefs in Sardinia, headed by the Visconti of Gallura, had forsaken him for the Guelfs. The Pisans, further excited by their jealousy of the Genoese, promised Frederick that they would brave for him all the thunders of the church, and assured him they knew well how to hinder the meeting of the council. A considerable number of French prelates had embarked at Nice for Ostia, on board Genoese galleys. Ugolino Buzzacherino de Sismondi, admiral of the Pisans, lay in wait with a powerful fleet before Meloria, attacked them on the 3rd of May, 1241, sunk three vessels, took nineteen, and made prisoners all the French prelates who were to join the council at Pisa. The republic loaded them with chains, but they were chains made of silver, and imprisoned them in the chapter house of the cathedral. Gregory, alarmed at this reverse of fortune, survived only a few months; he died the 21st of August, 1241; and the college of cardinals, reduced to a very small number, passed nearly two years before they could agree on a new choice. At last, on the 24th of June, 1243, Senibaldi de’ Fieschi, of Genoa, who took the name of Innocent IV, was elected to the chair of St. Peter. His family, powerful in Genoa and in the Ligurian Mountains, was also allied to many noble families, who possessed castles on the northern side of the Apennines; and this position gave him great influence in the neighbouring cities of Placentia, Parma, Reggio, and Modena. The elevation of a Fieschi to the pontificate gave courage to the Guelf party in all these cities.
[1243-1245 A.D.]
Frederick had recourse in vain to the new pope to be reconciled to the church; Innocent IV was determined to see in him only an enemy of religion and of the pontifical power, and a chief of barbarians, who in turns summoned his Germans and his Saracens to tyrannise over Italy. He drew closer his alliance with the cities of the league of Lombardy, and promised them to cause the emperor to be condemned and deposed by an ecumenical council, as his predecessor would have done; but instead of convoking the council in Italy, he fixed for that purpose on the city of Lyons, one-half of which belonged to the empire and the other to the kingdom of France. He determined on placing himself with the prelates whom he had summoned under the protection of St. Louis, who then reigned in France. He went from Rome to Genoa by sea, escaping the Pisan fleet which watched to intercept his passage; he excited by his exhortations the enthusiasm of the Guelfs of Genoa, and of the cities of Lombardy and Piedmont, which he visited on his passage; and arriving at Lyons, he opened, on the 28th of June, 1245, in the convent of St. Just, the council of the universal church. He found the bishops of France, England, and Germany eager to adopt his passions; so that he obtained from them at their third sitting, on the 17th of July, a sentence of condemnation against Frederick II. The council declared that for his crimes and iniquities God had rejected him, and would no longer suffer him to be either emperor or king. In consequence, the pope and the council released his subjects from their oath of allegiance; forbade them under pain of excommunication to obey him under any title whatever; and invited the electors of the empire to proceed to the election of another emperor, while the pope reserved to himself the nomination of another king of the Two Sicilies.