The Lombard communes; a history of the republics of north Italy

Preface

In tracing this history of the city-states of Lombardy I have rehed in the main for the facts on Lanzani's " Storia dei Comuni itahani," and on the works, earlier in date, but differing but little as to the events recorded, of Leo, von Raumer, and Sismondi. But I have carefully checked their statements by reference to Muratori's great compilation, the "Annali d' Italia," and to the contemporary chronicles published by him in the " Rerum Italicarum Scriptores."

For special points I have consulted numerous other works, amongst which are specially to be named Salzer's " Ueber die Anfange der Signorie in Oberitalien " and Cipolla's " Storia di Verona." Cantu, in his " Storia degli Italiani " and " Storia di Como," gives many curious details as to life and manners. Ferrari's " Histoire des Revolutions d'ltalie," though its political theories are wild in the extreme, gives perhaps the best idea of the warfare between city and city, and the fury of internal factions.

There are, however, one or two points in regard to which I differ from most of the writers quoted.

Lanzani, following Ferrari and others, lays down a theory of the origins of the internal feuds of the Italian cities, which has found great favour in the peninsula. He holds that these factions were, in a large measure, the result of an antagonism between the civic nobility, who were to a certain extent of Roman descent, or who, at any rate, had imbibed Roman ideas, and the country nobles, men in whom German ideas still survived, and who had been forced by the victorious burghers to come and live within the walls of the cities.

6 PREFACE

But this theory seems to me to be entirely unsupported by evidence, a point already mentioned by Salzer. It is often easy to class the noble families of a city into two opposing factions. But it would be practically impossible to find any case in which one of these factions represented the original civic aristocracy, the other the conquered country nobles.

Again, Leo and Sismondi, in their account of the factions in the north-east of Italy in the early thirteenth century, represent the family of Romano as at the head of a noble or Ghibelline party, in opposition to a popular Guelf one. But, apart from the fact that the use of the names Guelf and Ghibelline is here an anachronism, the attitude of the house of Romano towards the Empire and towards the nobles is entirely misrepresented. So far from being a partisan of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, Ezzelino the Stammerer, the first of his house to rise to prominence, had so incurred the enmity of Barbarossa, that a special clause to secure him against the Emperor's vengeance was inserted into the Peace of Constanz. His son Ezzelino the Monk sided with Otho of Saxony, the rival of Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen. And though the last and most famous Ezzelino won most of his renown as a partisan of Frederick II., in his early career, as Gittermann has clearly shown, he had been hostile to that sovereign.

And in the second place, when the house of Romano appears as the chief disturbing element in the north-east of Italy we find it, not heading a faction of country nobles against the burghers of the towns, but, on the contrary, allied with the popular party in Verona, and with Salinguerra of Ferrara, whom we are expressly told was supported by the " plebeians " there, and in opposition to the great noble houses of the Veronese Mark — the Marquises of Este, the Counts of San Bonifazio, the Lords of Camino and Camposampiero. To all these great nobles the House of Romano must, as a matter of fact, have appeared as mere upstarts.

I have selected the maps to illustrate as far as possible the manner in which now one faction now the other got

PREFACE 7

the upper hand in the Communes. The boundaries of the various city-states are taken from those given in the historical atlases of Spruner-Menke and Droysen, with some small modifications suggested by the chronicles. The material at present available for Piedmont is very unsatisfactory. With regard to maps iv and v, I have coloured the whole of the district subject to each city with the colour of the faction which for the moment was the prevailing one in the city itself. But it must be remembered that in almost every case there was a body of exiles in possession of a greater or lesser number of the country castles and the districts adjoining them.

A book dealing with Italy hardly seems complete without some mention of literature and art. But as regards literature in the vulgar tongue and painting, though the Tuscans before the date at which this work ends had already achieved some of their greatest triumphs in these fields, what the Lombards had accomplished is so slight as to be hardly worth noticing.

With architecture, however, things are very different. Lombardy possesses a remarkable wealth of monuments, extending from the days of the Roman Empire to those of the Renaissance. In a city like Verona, for instance, there is an almost unbroken succession of remains covering the whole of that period.

The epoch more especially dealt with in this work, the age of the free cities, has left us abundance of memorials in both religious and secular edifices. In Modena and Parma, in Cremona and Pavia we find churches in that style of Romanesque architecture to which the special name of Lombard is given, within whose walls were held the first assemblies of the burghers of the growing city republics, before whose altars knelt the men who went forth to conquer at Legnano, to whose shrines came some German Caesar to return thanks for a fleeting victory over the liberties of the Communes. And to these solemn piles, with their porches supported by lions carved in marble, their fa9ades covered with grotesque carvings of men and animals, their massive walls relieved by round-arched colonnades, their high raised sanctuaries

8 PREFACE

under which are dim crypts supported by contorted pillars, succeed the lighter forms of the pointed arch, introduced from beyond the Alps.

As regards secular buildings, the grim square towers still stand in Bologna and Mantua, Pavia and Asti which recall the days when round their bases rang the clash of arms of rival factions, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Piacenza show us noble examples of the magnificence of the Communes. The public palace, or seat of government, called by various names — Palace of the Commune, Broletto, Palace of Justice or of Reason — is still one of the chief features of these and other cities. From under the great archway the Carroccio bearing the battle-flag of the republic was drawn into the piazza by the hands of children or noble ladies, while the bell in the great tower above rang out defiance to some rival Commune. In the great halls in the upper storey met the various councils of the state. From the richly decorated balcony projecting from the centre of the pile the rulers harangued the people, or, if they lost the favour of the fickle populace, were hurled down to the vengeance of the mob seething in the piazza below.

But there is no lack of books in English dealing with these buildings from the point of view of architecture. My intention has been rather to tell of the purposes for which these edifices were constructed, and the times of which they are a memorial.

Contents

PAGE PREFACE . . . . . . . .5

TABLE OF PRINCIPAL DATES . . . . . I3

GENEALOGICAL TABLE . . . . . . 15

CHAPTER I WHAT LOMBARDY IS, AND HOW MUCH . . . . iq ^ CHAPTER n THE RULE OF THE BISHOPS . . . . .28

CHAPTER ni THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES . . . . .50/

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V MILAN AND FREDERICK BARBAROSSA . . . -99

CHAPTER VI THE LOMBARD LEAGUE .

10 CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

PAGE THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTADO AND THE GROWTH OF

CHAPTER VIII THE WARS OF THE CITIES AND THE FACTIONS OF THE MARK 202

CHAPTER IX

FREDERICK, THE WONDER OF THE WORLD, AND THE SECOND ^

LOMBARD LEAGUE ...... 232

CHAPTER X FREDERICK'S WAR WITH THE LOMBARDS AND WITH THE CHURCH . 263

CHAPTER XI THE FALL OF EZZELINO — THE CAREER OF OBERTO PELAVICINI 3IO

CHAPTER XII GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES AND THE RISE OF THE POPOLO . 34I

CHAPTER XIII

THE RISE OF THE TYRANNIES — THE COMING OF HENRY OF

CHAPTER XIV VISCONTI AND DELLA SCALA . . . . . ' 407

CHAPTER XV THE LAST STRUGGLES OF THE COMMUNES .... 435 /

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BOLOGNA ....

VERONA ....

TOMB OF THEODORIC, RAVENNA .

CHARLEMAGNE

OTHO I. ,

HENRY IV. .

GREGORY VII.

" TORRE E LOGGIA "

ISOLA COMACINA

CONRAD III. . .

FREDERICK I. . . .

MILAN. NAVIGLIO GRANDE

MILAN. PORTA TICINESE .

ALEXANDER III. AND THE DOGE OF VENICE

HENRY VI. (FROM A MINNESINGER MS. OF THE I4TH

SAN GEMIGNANO ....

A TOWER, MANTUA ...

GATEWAY, CITTADELLA

TOWERS OF SAN GEMIGNANO

SOAVE. A FORTRESS OF THE COUNTS OF SAN BONIFAZIO

SOAVE. ANOTHER VIEW .

TREVISO. SALONE DEL GRAN CONSIGLIO

COMO. BROLETTO . . .

FREDERICK II. WITH HIS HAWKS .

SEAL OF FREDERICK II. A HOHENSTAUFEN KNIGHT

MAROSTICA ......

century)

Frontispiece

Facing page

I)

!J

J)

10 „

I>

..

H

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BASSANO

VICENZA

MONSELICE

BERGAMO. BROLETTO

BASSANO. EZZELINO'S CASTLE

SOAVE. THE KEEP

BOLOGNA. TOMB OF R. PASSEGGIERI

CITTADELLA, WITH PRISON OF MALTA

VERONA. ROMAN BRIDGE .

VERONA. CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO

PIACENZA. CATHEDRAL .

VERONA. PALAZZO DELLA RAGIONE BOLOGNA. LEANING TOWERS THE GREAT TOWER OF CREMONA .

THE CASTLE OF ESTE THE CASTLE OF SIRMIONE .

VERONA. CHURCH OF SAN ZENONE ELECTION OF HENRY VII.

VERONA. BRIDGE AND CASTLE OF THE VICENZA. CHURCH OF SAN LORENZO TOMB OF CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA MANTUA. PALACE OF THE BONACCOLSI PAVIA IN THE i6tH CENTURY

SCALIGERS

Facing page

LIST OF MAPS.

GENERAL MAP OF LOMBARDY LOMBARDY IN 12 12 LOMBARDY IN 1 255 LOMBARDY IN 1280 LOMBARDY IN 13IO LOMBARDY IN I336

TABLE OF PRINCIPAL DATES

A.D,

410. Alaric takes Rome.

476, Odovacer deposes the Emperor Romulus Augustulus.

493. The Goths conquer Italy.

553. Justinian subdues all Italy,

568. The Lombards invade Italy.

750 or 51. The Lombards capture Ravenna.

754. Pepin, king of the Franks, invades Italy.

756. Pepin's donation of the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis to St. Peter.

773, Lombard kingdom destroyed by Franks.

800. Charlemagne receives the Imperial Crown in Rome from Pope Leo III. >^962. Otho the Great crowned Emperor at Rome. 1074. Degree of Pope Gregory VII. concerning Investitures. 1 122. Concord of Worms. 1 152. Accession of Frederick Barbarossa. 1 162. Destruction of Milan. .1167. The Lombard League formed. 1 176. Battle of Legnano. 1 1 83. Peace of Constance.

1 197-1209. Contest for Imperial Crown between Philip of — Hohenstaufen and Otho of Bavaria.

I2I2. Otho quarrels with Pope Innocent III., who sets up

Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen as Emperor. 1220. Frederick II. crowned at Rome. 1226. Second Lombard League formed. 1237, Battle of Cortenuova. 1247. Revolt of Parma from Frederick II.

1250. Death of Frederick II. The Great Interregnum till 1273. 1259. Downfall of Ezzelino. 1266. Invasion of Charles of Anjou. 1277. The Visconti expel the Delia Torre from Milan. 1290. Downfall of William of Montferrat. 1302. The Delia Torre expel the Visconti from Milan. 13 10. Henry of Luxemburg comes to Italy.

14 TABLE OF PRINCIPAL DATES

A.D.

13 13. Death of the Emperor Henry of Luxemburg.

1327. Louis of Bavaria comes to Italy and deprives the Visconti of

their power. 1330. King John of Bohemia comes to Italy. 1332. League formed by the Despots of Lombardy against

King John. 1336. Piacenza surrenders to Azzo Visconti.

THE SAXON LINE

Henry I. " The Fowler," German King, 919-936.

Otho I., King 936, Emperor 962 ; I died 973.

Henry, Duke of Bavaria.

Henry II., Duke of Bavaria.

Saint Henry, Emperor 1002-1024.

THE SALIAN OR FRANCONIAN LINE

Conrad " The Salic," great grandson of Liutgarde, sister of I Otho II., Emperor 1024-1039.

THE HOHENSTAUFEN LINE.

Agnes = Frederick, Duke of j Swabia.

Lothair of Saxony, 1125-1138.

Frederick, Conrad III., Otho, Bishop

Duke of Emperor of

Swabia. 1138-1152. Freisingen.

Frederick " Barbarossa," Emperor I 1152-1190.

Otho of Bavaria or Saxony, d. 12 18.

Henry VI., Emperor 1190-97.

Frederick

Philip of Swabia, killed 1208.

Frederick II., Emperor 1112-1150.

Manfred,

killed 1266

(illegitimate).

Conradin, beheaded 1268.

ROUGH LIST OF BOOKS USEFUL FOR THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF THE LOMBARD COMMUNES

Cantia, C. Ezzelino da Romano. Milan, 1879.

„ Storia degli Italiani. Turin, 1855.

„ „ dellaCittaedellaDiocesidiComo. Florence, 1856.

Cipolla. Compendio della Storia politica di Verona. Verona, igoo. Conferenze Fiorentine suUa vita italiana, Articles by Bonfadini and

others in. Milan, 1895.

Ferrari. Histoire des Revolutions d'ltalie. Paris, 1858. Fisher. The Medieval Empire. London, 1898. Gittermann. Ezzelino von Romano. Stuttgart, 1890. Hegel. Geschichte der Stadtverfassung von Italien. Leipzig, 1847. Lanzani. Storia dei communi italiani dalle origini al 1313. Milan,

1881.

Von Raumer. Geschichte der Hohenstaufen. Leipzig, 1840. Salzer. Ueber die Anfange der Signorie in Oberitalien. Berlin, 1900. Sismondi. Histoire des Republiques italiennes. Paris, 1840. Symonds. The Renaissance in Italy. London, 1898. Tout. The Empire and the Papacy. London, 1878. Villari. Le Invasioni barbariche in Italia. Milan, 1901.

„ I Primi due Secoli della Storia di Firenze. Florence, 1893. Street, Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages. London, 1874.

CHAPTER I

The Lombards were the last of the Germanic tribes who effected a settlement within the limits of the Roman Empire. They selected the Italian peninsula itself for attack, and pushed their conquests far and wide through the land, until their dominions stretched from the Alps to those lands in the south once known as Apulia and Lucania. But, as they entered Italy from the north, the first object of their attack was the fertile plain watered by the Po. There they established the seat of their government, there they settled down most thickly on the conquered soil, and there they have left until our own day the impress of their name.

Lombardy, then, in the earliest sense of the word, comprised the whole territory bounded by the Alps, the Apennines and the sea, with the exception of those portions which still remained subject to the Emperors who reigned at Constantinople. Subsequent political changes have altered the extent of territory to which the name has been applied. On the west, the name Pedemonte, or Piedmont, at first given to the districts lying close to the foot of the Alps, has, with the growth of the power of the House of Savoy, gradually extended its signification, until it came to be applied to the whole country as far east as the Ticino and the Scrivia. The north-eastern corner of the peninsula, detached for a time from Italy, and added to the German kingdom as a " Mark " or frontier province, received from this circumstance the name of Veronese or Trevisan Mark. This district, bounded by the Mincio and the Po, corresponded roughly with the territory occupied by the ancient people of the Veneti. When in the fifteenth century the city of Venice brought it under her sway it was natural that the old name Venetia should be revived and applied to all this region. South of the Po the great Roman road, the Via Emilia, had given in ancient times its name to the district it traversed. This name persisted under the form Emiha, and as the lands south of the Po became politically detached from those lying north of the river, we find the name of Emilia given to the states ruled by the Dukes of Parma and of Modena.

In our own day, then, Lombardy designates the land lying between the rivers Ticino, Po, and Mincio. But for the student of the history of medieval Italy

"The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair,"

is most conveniently taken as including the whole space between Alps and Apennines watered by the Po and its tributaries.

It is the history of the city life of this region, the rise of republican institutions in the face of the feudal system which prevailed in Western Europe, the contests which resulted between the two opposing principles, the conflicts between city and city, and the final extinction of freedom at the hands of tyrants, themselves, for the most part, the offspring of republican institutions, that I wish to trace in these pages.

The central physical feature of the regions with which I am about to deal is the great River Po, which, flowing nearly due east from its source under Monte Viso to the many mouths by which its waters mingle with those of the Adriatic Sea, during its course of over four hundred miles, forms, as it were, a great central artery running through the plain between the Alps and the Apennines, and affording an easy means of communication from the sea to Casale in Montferrat.

The whole level space between the two mountain ranges seems once to have been a gulf of the Adriatic. Only the chain of the Cottian Alps connected Italy with the rest of Europe. The streams flowing from the mountains and bringing with them masses of detritus, in the course of ages silted up this gulf, until they finally produced an alluvial plain intersected from north to south by numerous rivers flowing from the Alps or the Apennines, which unite to form one main channel, the Po.

The Alps, as is natural from their greater mass, supplied the larger portion of the material of the newly formed land. Hence we find that the lowest point of the depression between the two ranges, that, namely, through which the Po takes its course, is much nearer to the Apennines than to the Alps. It is, in fact, only in the neighbourhood of Parma that the plain begins to extend to any considerable distance south of the river.

This plain, level as it seems when viewed from a church tower, or from the outlying spurs of the mountains, shows, on a closer view, a certain variety of elevation. Besides the moraines, which mark the former limits of Alpine glaciers, and which sometimes attain the height of a thousand feet, there are several isolated groups of hills, rising like islands above the surrounding levels. The chief of these, the hills of Asti and Montferrat, divide the broad valley in which Turin lies from the rest of the plain, and cause the course of the Po to deviate considerably to the north-east. These hills rise to a height of more than two thousand feet, and are separated from the main chain of the Apennines by the valley of the Tanaro.

Another isolated group, the Monti Euganei, lies south of Padua, and rises to the height of 1,890 feet. These hills, with the Monti Berici, near Vicenza, and the ranges which run between this city and Verona, give to a large part of the north-eastern corner of the peninsula, the former Trevisan Mark, a hilly character which is of importance for the history of the district during the Middle Ages.

Besides these isolated groups, the Alps, and to a less degree the Apennines, send out foothills of lesser or greater elevation. We have, therefore, in addition to the Lombard plain strictly so called, a considerable tract of hill country in which several important towns are situated.

The great lakes which are found in this hill country along the foot of the Alps have but small importance for our history. On the other hand, the rivers which flow from them, or which issue direct from the valleys into the plain, have always, either as natural boundaries between state and state, or as means of defence against an enemy, played a great part in the story of Lombardy.

They are almost all tributaries of the great central artery, the Po. Of those in the extreme east which flow direct into the Adriatic, some such as the Reno and Adige, have either at one time flowed into the Po, or are closely connected with it by side branches and canals. The chief of these rivers are, from west to east, the Dora Baltea, Sesia, Ticino, Adda, Oglio, Mincio, and Adige on the north, and the Tanaro, Trebbia, Taro, Panaro, and Reno on the south of the main river. To the north-east the Brenta and the Piave make their way through many mouths into the Venetian lagoons, and the Isonzo, flowing into the head of the Adriatic Sea, divides the purely Latin lands from those in which the Slavonian element begins to prevail. f In the earliest ages in which we hear of this region the uncertain glimpses which history gives us of it show it as already the seat of many great cities. In the centre Etruscan civilisation flourished, and a league of twelve cities, of which Felsina, the later Bologna, and Mantua were the chief, ruled from the Apennines to the lakes. Already Padua rose among its waters, the refuge, so men said, of Trojan Antenor, and the Veneti, a people of uncertain origin, held the country where the Euganean hills looked over the marsh lands round the mouths of Brenta and Adige.

Then came a wave of Celtic invaders from across the Alps. The Veneti held their ground against them ; but the Etruscan League, with its civilisation and the cities which were its seat, disappeared, scarcely leaving more than a dim tradition to mark its existence.

When next we obtain a sight of the valley of the Po it is for the most part a Celtic land, the home of a warlike race, pastoral rather than agricultural, dwelling but little in cities, whose territory, covered with dense forests and tracts of marsh land, seemed cold and savage to the dwellers to the south of the Apennines.

Next came the Roman, who secured his hold of the land by building walled towns, opening up great roads, and establishing a Roman population in the midst of the newly-conquered Gauls.

To the period of the Roman conquest belongs the foundation of many great cities. Etruscan Felsina rose again as Bononia ; Mutina, Cremona, Placentia ; later on Parma, Regium, Dertona, Hasta, and many others were built to serve as bulwarks of the new Power. The centres of the Gallic tribes, Mediolanum, Comum, Pergamum, Brixia, grew from collections of wooden houses to fenced cities of brick and stone. Mantua, a survival apparently of the Etruscan power, received new life ; wealthy Patavium and the other towns of the Veneti welcomed the conquerors from the Tiber as friends and kinsmen. The forests disappeared, the swamps were drained, a multitude of cities sprang up amid rich cornfields and vineyards; and when the rest of Italy, exhausted by war and by the disappearance of the smaller landowners, was ceasing to be a nurse of men, and was fast becoming a land of pastures and pleasure grounds, the valley of the Po was in all the vigour of a new life.

One of the characteristic features of the north of Italy at the present day is the density of its population and the number of cities it contains. As most of these centres of population were already in existence in the days of the later Roman Empire, and as the history of Lombardy is before all a history of separate city-states, it will be well here to enumerate the chief.

Their geographical position, too, is important ; their history has often differed according as they lie in the level plain, or are set on hills, or nestle in mountain valleys. They may, therefore, be conveniently grouped into classes, as cities of the plain, the hill, or the mountain.

Beginning with the first and most important class, we find on the west, and to the north of the Po, Vercelli on its river, the Sesia, which descends from the spurs of Monte Rosa. About fourteen miles to the north-east is Novara, the territory of which in later days ran up by the Lake of Orta to end below the Simplon range. Thirty miles due east brings us to Milan — Mediolanum, the "Middle City " ^ — the old capital of the Insubrian Gauls, later on the seat of Emperors of the West, at the time when Roman strength, though fading fast, was still able to offer a stout resistance to the barbarians, throughout the Middle Ages the political, as it is now the intellectual and commercial, centre of North Italy.

Its rival Pavia, the champion of the Ghibellines, lies only twenty-two miles south of Milan, on the Ticino, not far from its junction with the Po. Some eighteen miles from Pavia, and twenty miles to the south-east of Milan, is Lodi, whose name, but not whose site, brings us back to the old Laus Pompeia which fell a victim in the year nil to the enmity of Milan.

Beyond the Adda is Crema, a colony from Cremona ; and about twenty miles to the south-east we come to the latter city, which lies on the Po, and was once the ruler of the district between that river and the Oglio.

East of Cremona, and distant forty miles from it, lies Mantua, surrounded by the waters of the Mincio, which here expands into lagoons.

" Here wanton Mincius winds along the meads, And shades his happy banks with bending reeds."

Still proceeding eastwards, we come to where " many-domed Padua proud " stands among the winding streams of Brenta and Bacchiglione.

This portion of Italy is broken by isolated hills.

' Cf. Midh in Ireland.

Verona on the rushing Adige, Vicenza, thirty miles east at the foot of the Monti Berici, and the small town of Este at the foot of the southernmost peak of the Colli Euganei, serve as a transition to the second class of cities, those of the hills ; for, though not precisely hill towns, much of their territory is hilly if not actually mountainous, a fact which has had considerable influence on their history.

Still farther to the east is Treviso, which closes our enumeration of the cities of the plain north of the Po ; for Udine and Aquileia scarcely come into the tale of the Lombard cities ; and although Venice does so come in, yet she must stand alone, separate from all other communities as the city of the sea.

South of the Po, amidst the many streams into which the great river breaks up before seeking its rest in the Adriatic is Ferrara — " La gran donna del Po " — about forty-seven miles south of Padua. Bologna, south-west of Ferrara, though in the plain, lies near to the range of the Apennines, to the summit of which its territory extended. ^ Modena, twenty-three miles to the north-west, Reggio, Parma, and Piacenza, all lying along the great Roman highway the Via Emilia, while themselves cities of the plain, ruled over a large extent of mountainous country. Finally, Alessandria, youngest of all these cities, built by the Lombard League in 1168 to command the passes between Genoa and Piedmont and Lombardy, and to hold in check the feudal lords of Liguria and Montferrat, closes our survey of this group.

Passing now to the second group, those towns which are either themselves built on heights, or which lie in midst of hilly districts, we have first those situated round

' Ferrara was not founded until 1604 A.D., and was an outpost of the Exarchate of Ravenna against the Lombards. Strictly speaking it and Bologna are in Romagna, the portion of the Roman province of -.Emilia which was not conquered by the Lombards. The two cities are so closely connected with the rest of the Lombard cities that for convenience they may be included among their number. The main stream of the Po no longer flows by Ferrara.

the upper waters of the Po and its affluents in the modern Piedmont.

Turin, nowadays the most important of these, never played a very important part in the Middle Ages, a fact to be explained, no doubt, by the power of the feudal lords of the Houses of Savoy and Montferrat, who held the hill country in the neighbourhood, and to one or the other of whom it was generally subject. The city itself lies in the plain beside the Po, but close by, on the opposite side of the river, the hills of the Montferrat range rise abruptly.

Chieri, near Turin, now quite a small town, was in the Middle Ages much more important than its neighbour. It hes among the hills of Montferrat. Chierasco and Alba on the Tanaro, Acqui on the Bormida, Asti on the southern edge of the Montferrat range, Tortona and Bobbio farther east, are all in the hill country. With the one exception of Asti, none of them ever attained to much importance, or to any long-continued independence from outside control.

Separated from this group by the width of the Lombard plain are Bergamo, situated on a hill at a height of 1,245 feet above the sea, and some thirty miles north-east of Milan, and Brescia, another thirty miles to the east of this, both where the foothills of the Alps sink down into the plain. Their territories in the Middle Ages ran up to the ridges of the High Alps which separate the Italians from the German-speaking peoples.

Here, too, we must name Como, itself built on a piece of level ground on the shores of its lake, but surrounded on all sides by steep hills, which, with semi-Alpine valleys between them, extend over almost the whole district subject to the city.

To the east, in the Trevisan Mark, we have only the already mentioned Verona and Vicenza in this class.

The cities lying well in among the mountains are but few in number and small in importance. Aosta and Ivrea, in the valley of the Doria Baltea under the shadows of Monte Rosa and Mont Blanc ; Susa, in the deep valley leading up to the Mont Cenis ; Trent, among the mountains of South Tyrol ; Feltre and Belluno, on the upper waters of the Piave, are all that need be mentioned in this group.