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LXIX.

❝ domestic tyrants, the city was rescued by Char lemagne 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 "vanquished? Am I a captive? Am I not encom"passed with the banners of a potent and invin"cible army? You impose conditions on your

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master; you require oaths; if the conditions are just, an oath is superfluous; if unjust, it is crimi"nal. Can you doubt my equity? It is extended "to to the meanest of my subjects. Will not my "sword be unsheathed in the defence of the Capi"tol? By that sword the northern kingdom of "Denmark has been restored to the Roman empire. "You prescribe the measure and the objects of my

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bounty, which flows in a copious but a voluntary "stream. All will be given to patient merit; all "will be denied to rude importunity t." 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;

Otho of Frisingen, who surely understood the language of the court and diet of Germany, speaks of the Franks in the 12th century as the reigning nation, (Proceres Franci, equites Franci, manus Francorum); he adds, however, the epithet of Teutonici.

Otho Frising. de Gestis Frederici I. 1. ii. c. 22. p. 729 723. These original and authentic acts I have translated with freedom, yet with fidelity.

LXIX.

Capitol; and if the numbers and valour of the Ger- CHAP. mans 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 antipope in the chair of St Peter; and twelve Pisan gallies were introduced into the Tyber; but the senate and people were saved by the arts of negociation and the progress of disease; nor did Frederic or his succes sors 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 the great standard, the Caroccio of Milan. After the extinction. of the house of Swabia, they were banished beyond the Alps; and their last coronation betrayed the impotence and poverty of the Teutonic Casars t. Under

U 4

* From the Chronicles of Ricobaldo and Francis Pipin, Mu-
ratori (dissert. xxvi. tom. ii. p. 492.) has transcribed this cu-
rious fact, with the doggrel verses that accompanied the gift.
Ave decus orbis ave! victus tibi destinor, ave!
Currus ab Augusto Frederico Cesare justo.
Væ Mediolanum! jam sentis spernere vanum
Imperii vires, proprias tibi tollere vires.

Ergo triumphorum urbs pores memor esse priorum
Quos tibi mittebant reges qui bella gerebant.

Ne si dee tacere (I now use the Italian Dissertations, tom. i,
P. 444.) che nell' anno 1727, una copia desso Caroccio in mar-
mno dianzi ignoto si scopri nel Campidoglio, presso alle carcere
di quel luogo, dove Sisto V. l'avea falto rinchiudere. Stava
esso posto sopra quatro colonne di marmo fina colla sequente
inscrizione, &c. to the same purpose as the old inscription.

The decline of the Imperial arms and authority in Italy. is related with impartial learning in the Annals of Murato ri. (tom,

С НА Р.
LXIX.

Wars of the Ro

mans

against the neighbouring cities.

Under the reign of Adrian, when the empire extended from the Euphrates to the ocean, from mount Atlas to the Grampian hills, a fanciful historian * 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 "we dreaded the shades of the Arician groves, "when we could triumph without a blush over the "nameless villages of the Sabines and Latins, and "even Corioli could afford a title not unworthy of "a victorious general." The pride of his contemporaries was gratified by the contrast of the past and the present; they would have been humbled by the prospect of futurity; by the prediction, that after a thousand years, Rome, despoiled of empire, and contracted to her primæval limits, would renew the same hostilities, on the same ground which was then decorated with her villas and gardens. The adjacent territory on either side of the Tyber was always claimed, and sometimes possessed, as the patrimony of St Peter; but the barons assumed a lawless independence, and the cities too faithfully copied the revolt and discord of the metropolis. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,

(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.

* Tibur nunc suburbanum, et æstivæ Præneste deliciæ nuncupatis in Capitolio votis petebantur. The whole passage of Florus (1.1. c. 11.) may be read with pleasure, and has deserved the praise of a man of genius, (Oeuvres de Montes. quieu, tom. iii. p. 634. 635. quarto edition).

LXIX.

turies, the Romans incessantly laboured to reduce CHAP. or destroy the contumacious vassals of the church and senate; and if their headstrong and selfish ambition was moderated by the Pope, he often encouraged their zeal by the alliance of his spiritual arms. Their warfare was that of the first consuls and dictators, who were taken from the plough. They assembled in arms at the foot of the Capitol; sallied from the gates, plundered or burnt the harvests of their neighbours, engaged in tumultuary conflict, and returned home after an expedition of fifteen or twenty days. Their sieges were tedious and unskilful; in the use of victory, they indulged the meaner passions of jealousy and revenge; and," instead of adopting the valour, they trampled on the misfortunes of their adversaries. The captives, in their shirts, with a rope round their necks, solicited their pardon. The fortifications, and even the buildings of the rival cities, were demolished, and the inhabitants were scattered in the adjacent villages. It was thus that the seats of the cardinal bishops Porto, Ostia, Albanum, Tusculum, Preneste, and Tibur, or Tivoli, were successively overthrown by the ferocious hostility of the Romans *. Of these †, Porto and Ostia, the two keys of the

Tyber,

Ne a feritate Romanorum, sicut fuerant Hostienses, Portuenses, Tusculanenses, Albanenses, Labicenses, et nuper Tiburtini destruerentur, (Matthew Paris, p. 757.). These events are marked in the Annals and Index (the 17th volume) of Muratori.

For the state or ruin of these suburban cities, the banks of the Tyber, &c. see the lively picture of the P. Labat, (Voyage en Espagne et en Italie), who had long resided in the neighbourhood of Rome; and the more accurate description of which P. Eschinard (Roma, 1750, in octavo) has added to the topographical map of Cingolani.

CHAP. Tyber, are still vacant and desolate; the marshy LXIX. and unwholesome banks are peopled with herds of

buffalos, and the river is lost to every purpose of navigation and trade. The hills, which afford a shady retirement from the autumnal heats, have again smiled with the blessings of peace; Frescati has arisen near the ruins of Tusculum; Tibur, or Tivoli, has resumed the honours of a city, and the meaner towns of Albano and Palestrina are decorated with the villas of the cardinals and princes of Rome. In the work of destruction, the ambition of the Romans was often checked and repulsed by the neighbouring cities and their allies; in the first siege of Tibur, they were driven from their camp; Battle of and the battles of Tusculum † and Viterbo might be compared, in their relative state, to the memorable fields of Thrasymene and Cannæ. In the first of these petty wars, thirty thousand Romans were overthrown by a thousand German horse, whom Frederic Barbarossa had detached to the relief of Tusculum; and if we number the slain at three, the prisoners at two thousand, we shall embrace the most authentic and moderate account. Sixty-eight years afterward, they marched against Viterbo,

Tuscu

lam,

A. D.

1167.

*Labat (tom. iii. p. 233-) mentions a recent decree of the Roman government, which has severely mortified the pride and poverty of Tivoli in civitate Tiburtinâ non vivitur civiliter.

I depart from my usual method, of quoting only by the date the Annals of Muratori, in consideration of the critical balance in which he has weighed nine contemporary writers who mention the battle of Tusculum, (tom. x. p. 42-44.).

Matthew Paris, p. 345. This bishop of Winchester was Peter du Rupibus, who occupied the see thirty-two years, (A. D. 1206-1238), and is described, by the English his torian, as a soldier and a statesman, (p. 178. 399.).

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