About fifty years afterwards, the same title was granted to the emperor Lewis of Bavaria; and the liberty of Rome was acknowledged by her two sovereigns, who accepted a municipal office in the government of their own metropolis. In the first moments of rebellion, when Arnold of Brescia had inflamed their minds against the church, the Romans artfully laboured to conciliate the favour of the empire, and to recommend their merit and services in the cause of Cæsar. The style of their ambassadors to Conrad the Third and Frederic the First, is a mixture of flattery and pride, the tradition and the ignorance of their own history.* After some complaint of his silence and neglect, they exhort the former of these princes to pass the Alps, and assume from their hands the imperial crown. "We beseech your majesty, not to disdain the humility of your sons and vassals, not to listen to the accusations of our common enemies, who calumniate the senate as hostile to your throne, who sow the seeds of discord, that they may reap the harvest of destruction. The pope and the Sicilian are united in an impious league to oppose our liberty and your coronation. With the blessing of God, our zeal and courage has hitherto defeated their attempts. Of their powerful and factious adherents, more especially the Frangipani, we have taken by assault the houses and turrets; some of these are occupied by our troops, and some are levelled with the ground. The Milvian bridge, which they had broken, is restored and fortified for your safe passage; and your army may enter the city without being annoyed from the castle of St. Angelo. All that we have done, and all that we design, is for your honour and service, in the loyal hope, that you will speedily appear in person, to vindicate those rights which have been invaded by the clergy, to revive the dignity of the empire, and to surpass the fame and glory of your predecessors. May you fix your resi dence in Rome, the capital of the world; give laws to Italy These letters and speeches are preserved by Otho, bishop of Frisingen (Fabric. Bibliot. Lat. med. et infim. tom. v. p. 186, 187), perhaps the noblest of historians: he was son of Leopold, marquis of Austria; his mother Agnes was daughter of the emperor Henry IV., and he was half-brother and uncle to Conrad III. and Frederic I. He has left, in seven books, a Chronicle of the Times: in two, the Gesta Frederici L and the Teutonic kingdom; and imitate the example of Constantine and Justinian, who, by the vigour of the senate and people, obtained the sceptre of the earth." But these splendid and fallacious wishes were not cherished by Conrad the Franconian, whose eyes were fixed on the Holy Land, and who died without visiting Rome, soon after his return from the Holy Land. His nephew and successor, Frederic Barbarossa, was more ambitious of the imperial crown; nor had any of the successors of Otho acquired such absolute sway over the kingdom of Italy. Surrounded by his ecclesiastical and secular princes, he gave audience in his camp at Sutri to the ambassadors of Rome, who thus addressed him in a free and florid oration: "Incline your ear to the queen of cities; approach with a peaceful and friendly mind the precincts of Rome, which has cast away the yoke of the clergy, and is impatient to crown her legitimate emperor. Under your auspicious influence, may the primitive times be restored. Assert the prerogatives of the eternal city, and reduce under her monarchy the insolence of the world. You are not ignorant, that, in former ages, by the wisdom of the senate, by the valour and discipline of the equestrian order, she extended her victorious arms to the East and West, beyond the Alps, and over the islands of the ocean. By our sins, in the absence of our princes, the noble institution of the senate has sunk in oblivion; and with our prudence, our strength has likewise decreased. We have revived the senate and the equestrian order; the counsels of the one, the arms of the other, will be devoted to your person and the service of the empire. Do you not hear the language of the Roman matron? You were a guest, I have adopted you as a citizen; a Transalpine stranger, I have elected you for my sovereign; and given you myself and all that is mine. Your first and most sacred duty is to swear and subscribe that you will shed your blood for the the last of which is inserted in the sixth volume of Muratori's historians. * We desire (said the ignorant Romans) to restore the empire in eum statum quo fuit tempore Constantini et Justiniani, qui totum orbem vigore senatus et populi Romani suis tenuere manibus. Otho Frising. de Gestis Frederici I. Hospes eras, civem feci. Advena fuisti ex Transalpinis partibus; principem constitui 1. 1, c. 28, p. 662-664. republic; that you will maintain in peace and justice the laws of the city, and the charters of your predecessors; and that you will reward with five thousand pounds of silver, the faithful senators who shall proclaim your titles in the Capitol. With the name, assume the character of Augustus." The flowers of Latin rhetoric were not yet exhausted; but Frederic, impatient of their vanity, interrupted the orators in the high tone of royalty and conquest. "Famous indeed have been the fortitude and wisdom of the ancient Romans; but your speech is not seasoned with wisdom, and I could wish that fortitude were conspicuous in your actions. Like all sublunary things, Rome has felt the vicissitudes of time and fortune. Your noblest families were translated to the East, to the royal city of Constantine; and the remains of your strength and freedom have long since been exhausted by the Greeks and Franks. Are you desirous of beholding the ancient glory of Rome, the gravity of the senate, the spirit of the knights, the discipline of the camp, the valour of the legions? you will find them in the German republic. It is not empire, naked and alone; the ornaments and virtues of empire have likewise migrated beyond the Alps to a more deserving people.* They will be employed in your defence, but they claim your obedience. You pretend that myself or my predecessors have been invited by the Romans; you mistake the word; they were not invited; they were implored. From its foreign and domestic tyrants, the city was rescued by Charlemagne and Otho, whose ashes repose in our country; and their dominion was the price of your deliverance. Under that dominion your ancestors lived and died. I claim by the right of inheritance and possession, and who shall dare to extort you from my hands? Is the hand of the Franks and Germans enfeebled by age? Am I van * Non cessit nobis nudum imperium, virtute sua amictum venit, crnamenta sua secum traxit. Penes nos sunt consules tui, &c. Cicero or Livy would not have rejected these images, the eloquence of a Barbarian, born and educated in the Hercynian forest. + Otho of Frisingen, who surely understood the language of the court and diet of Germany, speaks of the Franks in the twelfth century as the reigning nation (Proceres Franci, equites Franci, manus Francorum); he adds, however, the epithet of Teutonici. [The Franks who conquered Gaul were but a small portion of that people. The main body remained in Germany, and occupied extensive territories VOL. VIL 2 B quished? Am I a captive? Am I not encompassed with the banners of a potent and invincible army? You impose conditions on your master; you require oaths; if the conditions are just, an oath is superfluous; if unjust, it is criminal. Can you doubt my equity? It is extended to the meanest of my subjects. Will not my sword be unsheathed in the defence of the Capitol? By that sword the northern kingdom of Denmark has been restored to the Roman empire. You prescribe the measure and the objects of my bounty, which flows in a copious but a voluntary stream. All will be given to patient merit; all will be denied to rude importunity." Neither the emperor nor the senate could maintain these lofty pretensions of dominion and liberty. United with the pope, and suspicious of the Romans, Frederic continued his march to the Vatican; his coronation was disturbed by a sally from the Capitol; and if the numbers and valour of the Germans prevailed in the bloody conflict, he could not safely encamp in the presence of a city of which he styled himself the sovereign. About twelve years afterwards, he besieged Rome, to seat an anti-pope in the chair of St. Peter; and twelve Pisan galleys were introduced into the Tiber; but the senate and people were saved by the arts of negotiation and the progress of disease; nor did Frederic or his successors reiterate the hostile attempt. Their laborious reigns were exercised by the popes, the crusades, and the independence of Lombardy and Germany; they courted the alliance of the Romans; and Frederic the Second offered in the Capitol (See note, p. 94.) These were in time distinguished from their great Western colony by the designation of Ost Franken, Eastern Franks, and after the breaking up of Charlemagne's empire, gave their name (latinized into Austrasia) to the Germanic portion, which was allotted to his grandson Louis. In the subsequent partitions of this kingdom, the Ost Franken continued to be prominent actors; their wars with the Saxons, Thuringians, &c. and their other transactions, are recorded in the Chronicles of Engelhuis and Botho (Leibnitz, Script. Bruns. i. 1093; and iii. 368). In A.D. 912 they constituted, under Eberhard, the duchy of Franken or Franconia, which from A.D. 1024 to 1138, gave to Germany a dynasty of emperors. Barbarossa and his historian might, therefore, very appropriately set forth the courage and pre-eminence of the German Franks.-ED.] * Otho Frising. de Gestis Frederici I. 1. 2, c. 22, p. 720-723. These original and authentic acts I have translated and abridged with freedom, yet with fidelity. the great standard, the Caroccio of Milan. After the extinction of the house of Swabia, they were banished beyond the Alps; and their last coronations betrayed the impotence and poverty of the Teutonic Cæsars.† Under the reign of Adrian, when the empire extended from the Euphrates to the ocean, from mount Atlas to the Grampian hills, a fanciful historiant amused the Romans with the picture of their infant wars. "There was a time," says Florus," when Tibur and Præneste, our summer retreats, were the objects of hostile vows in the Capitol, when From the chronicles of Ricobaldo and Francis Pipin, Muratori (dissert. 26, tom. ii. p. 492) has transcribed this curious fact, with the doggerel verses that accompanied the gift. Urbs, decus orbis, ave! victus tibi destinor, ave! Currus ab Augusto Frederico Cæsare justo. Fle, Mediolanum! jam sentis spernere vanum Imperii vires, proprias tibi tollere vires. Ergo triumphorum potes, urbs, memor esse priorum Ne si dee tacere (I now use the Italian Dissertations, tom. i. p. 444) che nell' anno 1727, una copia desso Caroccio in marmo dianzi ignoto si scopri nel Campidoglio, presso alle carcere di quel luogo, dove Sisto V. l'avea fatto rinchiudere. Stava esso posto sopra quatro colonne di marmo fino colla sequente inscrizione, &c. to the same purpose as the old inscription. [The Caroccio was the car on which, adhering to the ancient custom of their Lombard forefathers, the Milanese raised and transported their standard. Refer to Gibbon's note (ch. 49, vol. v. p. 427), which elucidates what is here obscurely expressed. The other Lombard cities used the same. The Caroccium is described by Muratori (Ant. Ital. 2. 489), as drawn by yokes of oxen, with housings of scarlet cloth, and surmounted by a "vexillum longissimum et rubeum," or "igneum." This again explains the application of the term flamma to standards. See note, ch. 59, vol. vi. p. 480.-ED.] + The decline of the imperial arms and anthority in Italy is related with impartial learning in the Annals of Muratori (tom. x.-xii.); and the reader may compare his narrative with the Histoire des Allemands (tom. iii. iv.), by Schmidt, who has deserved the esteem of his countrymen. [Gibbon has here very justly acknowledged his obligations to Schmidt, from whose history Mr. Hallam has also derived great advantage. It ought to be studied by all who wish to obtain clear conceptions of the struggles which prepared Germany to be what it is now becoming. For the transactions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ranke's History of the Popes (3 vols. Bohn, 1853-4) is the best authority.-ED.] Tibur nunc suburbanum, et æstivæ Præneste delicia, nuncupatis in capitolio votis petebantur. The whole passage of Florus (1. 1, c. 11) uy be read with pleasure, and has deserved the praise of a man of genius. (Œuvres de Montesquieu, tom. iii. p. 634, 635, quarto edition.) |