Part 2 (1/2)
The truth was, that the senate and citizens, exasperated beyond measure at Frederic's treatment of their amba.s.sadors, and at his superior generals.h.i.+p in occupying the city and effecting his coronation in their teeth, had met at the Capitol while he was at St.
Peter's; and pa.s.sed the resolution not to let so mortifying a day pa.s.s over without striking a blow in revenge.
Wherefore, as soon as the coronation was finished, and the scene clear, the furious populace burst over the Tiber; and, after first butchering what few German soldiers still lingered imprudently at St.
Peter's, rushed on to the grand attack.
Frederic no sooner heard this unwelcome news, than he started from table, gave the word to arm, and sallied out to encounter the enemy.
The battle that ensued was maintained on both sides with unflinching courage and varied fortunes: now the Romans drove the Germans beyond their lines; now the Germans pursued the Romans into the heart of the city. Such was the hatred which each party felt against the other, that not only the men but the women joined in the struggle. When it had thus lasted till sunset, victory declared for the Germans. The Romans fled on all sides with a loss of more than 1000 killed or drowned, and 200 captured. The emperor, as Otto of Frisingen a.s.serts, [4] had the extraordinary good fortune to lose in such an obstinate and bitter combat only two men,--one killed and one made prisoner.
”Such!” cried Frederic, as he beheld the defeat of the enemy, and recollected the terms of the senate the day before, ”Such, O! Rome, is the price which thy Prince pays for thy crown; such the way in which we Germans buy our empire!” [5]
On the morrow he turned over his prisoners to Peter, the prefect of Rome; who executed some, as notorious ringleaders, on the spot; and allowed others to ransom themselves at exorbitant rates. Indeed, that stern functionary would have put the whole of them to death, had not Adrian, in whose breast this unfortunate outbreak had produced the liveliest regret, interfered in their behalf, so that it was reluctantly resolved to set them free.
Notwithstanding his victory, as no market for provisions could be opened for his army, by reason of the animosity of the Roman peasantry, Frederic was obliged to raise his camp, and seek a more friendly and fruitful neighbourhood, where the soldiers might enjoy repose after so trying a campaign. The spot he removed to was near Tivoli. Here he halted for several days, and received a visit in his quarters from Pope Adrian, who kept with the emperor the feast of SS.
Peter and Paul. Both sovereigns appeared at high ma.s.s on this occasion wearing their insignia of state. After the service, Adrian solemnly absolved the emperor's troops from all guilt which the slaughter they had made of the Romans in the late conflict might appear to lay them under; the maxim adopted being that ”he who fights out of obedience to his prince against the enemy of the state, must not be deemed a murderer but an avenger.” [6]
And yet Frederic did not hesitate to seize an opportunity which now offered of breaking his oaths, and of repaying the pope's good offices by invading his rights. For, on the citizens of Tivoli offering him, at his secret instigation, the sovereignty of their city, which belonged to the Holy See, he accepted it; and only on Adrian's determined opposition to such an usurpation, affected to restore it with reservation of his imperial prerogatives over the place;--prerogatives which he could not define, and which meant in fact nothing more than the renewal of his aggression at the next more favourable opportunity. For now the complaints of his army, worn out by fatigue, exposed, moreover, to every vexation, through the ever increasing animosity of the Italians, and hence doubly impatient to return into Germany, from which it had been absent much longer than the terms of feudal service required, obliged Frederic to think of finis.h.i.+ng his campaign, and marching home directly, if he did not mean to be left alone in the heart of a hostile country; a predicament into which the desertion of his men was already beginning to betray him. He accordingly took the road back into Germany soon after he had made rest.i.tution to the pope as above described; and after running many perils in his progress through regions so justly hostile to him, regained his own states beyond the Alps, not so much gratified by the acquisition of the imperial crown, as embittered by what he had gone through in pursuit of it, and resolved not to delay longer than he could help a second invasion of Italy, which should compensate the mishaps and mortifications of the first.
[1] Muratori, Storia d' Italia, vol. 7. p. 135. Leipsic, 1748.
[2] Muratori, Dissertazione sopra le Antichita Italiane, dissert. 4.
[3] Otto Frisingensis, lib. 1. cap. 23.
[4] Otto Frisingensis, ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Otto Frisingensis, ibid.
V.
While Frederic was yet fighting his way home through Italy, Adrian had to face about and confront another foe in William, the Norman king of Sicily.
William had lately succeeded his father Roger, a wise and able monarch, to whom however his son, as so commonly happens, bore no sort of resemblance; but by his incapacity and total subjection under the influence of a profligate favourite of low birth, named Wrajo, soon threw the state, which Roger had left in so prosperous a condition, into the worst disorder.
The breach between him and the pope arose out of a letter which the latter had occasion to address to the king at Salerno, in which the royal t.i.tle was omitted, and that of mere lord subst.i.tuted. Adrian did this because William had a.s.sumed the crown of Sicily without first asking it of the pope, who, as the feudal patron of that island by ancient compact with its Norman conquerors under Robert de Guiscard, in the time of Pope Leo IX. (A. D. 1053), justly felt his rights infringed by a proceeding which set at nought their established forms.
In revenge of this pretended insult, William refused to negotiate with the amba.s.sadors through whom it came; and, furthermore, gave orders to his chancellor Scitinius, whom he had just made viceroy of Apulia, to attack the domain of the Church, which that officer accordingly did, by laying siege to Beneventum, and devastating its territory. But as this proceeding caused a number of disaffected crown va.s.sals of Apulia, already secretly tampered with by agents of the Greek emperor, anxious to recover his lost sway in Italy, to revolt against the Sicilian government,--many of whom in so doing marched to the relief of Beneventum,--Scitinius was soon obliged to raise the siege of that city, and turn his arms against some more vulnerable point. To this end, he pa.s.sed direct into the Campagna, and there set fire to the towns of c.i.p.arano, Barbuco, and Todi; after which, he made his retreat, demolis.h.i.+ng by the way the walls of Aquino, and driving a crowd of monks out of their convents, which he gave up to the plunder of the soldiers.
These events had transpired while Frederic Barbarossa was yet advancing towards Rome, to demand the imperial crown, and on his arrival formed one of the heads of complaint to him on the part of the pope, who hoped to use the strong arm of the professed champion of the Church in redressing her wrongs. Frederic, indeed, expressed the warmest zeal in the pope's cause, and, none the less so, as it presented, under the appearance of a sacred duty, a prospect so inviting to his own ambition. But, as we have seen, he was reluctantly compelled by his murmuring soldiers to close his campaign and return home. He did not, however, lose sight of Sicily; which, as will be described in the sequel, gave rise to a fresh and sharper quarrel between him and the pope.
Disappointed in his hopes of a.s.sistance from Frederic, Adrian, with characteristic energy, resolved to a.s.sist himself; and rejoined to the ruffianism of William with a ban of excommunication, a proceeding which instantly decided in the pope's cause several of the most powerful n.o.bles of Apulia, especially Robert Count of Loritelli, the king's cousin, Andrew Count of Rupi Canino, Richard Count of Aquila, and Robert Prince of Capua; men who, like the bulk of their order, were impatient to shake off the oppressive and ignominious yoke of the royal favourite Wrajo. Backed by these, who again were secretly encouraged by the court of Constantinople, Adrian followed up his ban of excommunication, by invading at the head of his troops the Terra di Lavoro, which he totally subdued, and then proceeded to Beneventum, where he fixed his head quarters.
William, who in the mean time was in Sicily, and lulled asleep to every interest under the noxious influence of Wrajo, no sooner became aware of his bad fortune across the water,--where, owing to the events just related, all his Italian possessions, with the exception of Naples, Amalfi, Sorrento, and a few other towns and castles of secondary importance, were wrested from him,--than he presently shook off his lethargy, sailed over to Salerno, and from that city sent amba.s.sadors to the pope to negotiate a peace.
To this step he was urged all the more by finding out that Emanuel, the Greek emperor, after refusing to stand his ally at the beginning of the war, was in correspondence, through his minister Palaeologus, with Adrian; trying to procure from the latter the cession of three sea-ports of Apulia in consideration of a large sum of money, and of the promise to expel the Sicilian king from his Italian dominions. The offers which William made were, namely: to pay a sum equivalent to that tendered by Emanuel; to surrender the three sea-ports in question as an indemnification for the damage done by Scitinius; and to swear fealty to the pope as the liege lord of Sicily.
At first Adrian doubted if these terms were genuine, and sent a cardinal to Salerno, to learn the truth. On being advised that all was straightforward, he declared his readiness to accept them. But a cabal in the German interest among the cardinals now put in such a strong opposition to the pope's intention, that, taken by surprise, he dropped it, and retracted his favourable answer to William.