for 63 years the monarchy that he had founded. To the Carlovingian race succeed, before the close of the 9th cen tury, the Saracenic and Hungarian conquests; and to the desultory and relentless warfare of these barbarians, are owing the defences and bulwarks which the inhabitants found it necessary to throw around their cities. Before these expeditions, all the Italian cities were open and unprotected; they took no interest in the government; they had no military; and they even claimed too little consideration to imagine that they had a country: but, when they were reduced to defend themselves by their own force against a system of plunder which extended over all the country, without the advantage of support from any army, their abandoned situation suggested the necessity of raising walls and ramparts, of forming a militia, and of electing magistrates. The inferior orders of the people were thus in turn called into action, and, by exerting themselves, acquired that energy of character which was to render them worthy of the name and functions of citizens. It is evident that the barons, grossly ignorant as they were in the times of which we are speaking, were not quite blind to all the effects of these multiplied securities. The jealousies of Berenger and Lothaire induced the Lombards to call in the assistance of Otho the Great against the former; and from this time we date the union of Italy with the German empire. Otho, entering Italy in the year 951, set at liberty Adelaide, widow of Lothaire, (whom Berenger was suspected to have poisoned,) married her, and caused himself to be crowned King of Lombardy. No revolution had a more marked influence over the character of a nation, its constitution, and future destiny, than the union of the two crowns of Germany and Lombardy effected with regard to the Italians; and, if the historical records of the tenth and eleventh cen turies were sufficient for us to trace from that epoch the history of the cities, we should commence it with the reign of the Othos. To the munificence and policy of these Princes, they owed their municipal constitution and the first germs of a republican spirit; the distance of the court gave them the habitude of independence; and, when the family of Otho was extinct, the wars excited by pretenders to the crown gave the cities experience in battle, and the right of combating beneath their own banners. Compelled,' says M. SIMONDE, by the barrenness of historians who are our guides, to leave in shade those times that are imperfectly known, we shall continue, in the following chapters, to indicate only the influence of the great revolutions of the mo parchy on the national constitution and manners of the people. We shall shall collect afterward, separately, the little light which remains to us concerning some republics, of which the enfranchisement takes date from the time that we have described; commencing only with the 12th century to study the interior of the cities, and to follow closely and in detail their generous efforts in the cause of liberty.' We direct our readers to the above recapitulation, that they may judge for themselves of the degree of unnoticed merit' yet lost to us by the failure of history to delineate these benighted times; and to shew how much more easy it is to suppose, than to find, any interest in a mere succession of atrocities and horrors. During the greater part of this time, public spirit was so completely extinguished, that twenty Saracens were permitted to establish themselves quietly at Frassinetto, and, surrounded by warlike but independent and disunited barons, to await the arrival of re-inforcements. - The constitution which Otho the Great gave to the Italians, after having subdued the kingdom of Berenger, was of all others the most adapted to preserve to the monarch his authority during the long absences which the administration of his German states made necessary. Before the invention of troops of the line,- before it was discovered that free men would consent to sell their volition as well as their arms for pay, despotism could have no regular and durable establishment. The ascendancy of a great man, when insured by his presence, brought every thing down to his authority; more particularly if this ascendancy were seconded by ideas of duty and of gratitude: but, in his absence, the sentiment of personal interest regained its empire, and the obedience of the inferior was exactly proportioned to the benefit which he expected to derive from public order. Otho had led into Italy a strong army, but it was feudal; every officer, in virtue of his barony, - was held to service for an appointed time; and every knight was obliged, during the same time, to follow his baron, from whom he had received a knight's tenure. After the expedition, the army had the right and the desire of returning to their homes. If Otho had determined on fixing in Italy some great chieftain, with troops, he would have been compelled to assign lands to him and his vassals, and to grant him the plunder of a province for the support of foreigners; and such an expedient, by raising enemies against him, would certainly have ill suited a monarch who was absent from his kingdom. If he had contented himself with appointing governors to provinces, without oppressing the inhabitants, they must have supported themselves, destitute as they were of troops, by the affections of the people alone. If, again, he placed confidence in the Italian barons, י barons, he remained at their mercy in proportion to his dis tance still more than his predecessors had done. 3. Yet Otho was powerful, and covered with glory: during the four years which he had employed in subjecting the kingdom of Lombardy, at the head of a warlike army, he had every where held his sceptre with vigour; always victorious over the barbarians whom he had combated, superior to the rebellions of his subjects and of his son himself, cherished by his soldiers, and respected by the clergy although he had deposed two pontiffs, and fettered the whole church The strength of his character, which led him to form a decided judg ment that was not to be moved, and always to o aim at great things, added farther to his power: but with all his power he would have been unable to preserve to himself despotic authority beyond the moment at which he had repassed the mountains. Indeed he was too wise and too great to undertake it, and availed himself, F, on the con trary, of his power to lay the foundations of liberty. The cities had hitherto been governed by their Counts, who in many instances were also their prelates; and who, being almost all Italians, were but little devoted to the Emperor. Yet he neither dispossessed them, nor, by any formal act, limited their prerogatives but he encouraged the cities to set bounds to their authority, and to extend their immunities. The Count, like the King, was unpro vided with regular troops; and, to execute his orders in a populous city trained to arms, alone against a multitude, his only ly resource was to conciliate the affections of the citizens by giving up his prerogatives; or to call in the authority of the King, who was indisposed to favour his pretensions. Left, therefore, in a great degree to themselves, the cities assumed, with the assent of the Emperor, a municipal form of government; and these constitutions were established during the reigns of Otho the Great and his descendants without opposition, without tumult, and without the attestation of any charter to their legitimacy: so that their antiquity is proved only by the prescription which the cities alleged in after-times, whenever any attempt was made to contest their privileges. The new municipalities preserved for their bene factor, Otho the Great, a feeling of gratitude which lived as long as his family; they thought not of liberating themselves entirely from the yoke of the Germans, until the last Otho died without children; and then they saw themselves disengaged, by this event, from every connection with the house of Saxony. M. DE SISMONDI has affixed to this portion of his history, which may justly be esteemed the second epoch, as the conquest of Charlemagne will stand foremost, a chronological table of the reign of the first German emperors, with their expeditions into Italy, for the purpose of convincing his readers how small a part they took in the government of that country. With the death of Otho III. in 1002, in the flower of his days, was extinguished the Saxon dynasty, after having extended for forty years over Italy united to Germany; and the civil war 7 excited excited by the election of his successor gave the Italian cities an occasion of trying their strength, and gaining assurance that they needed no protector. 1 Pavia and Milan, no longer united under one government, became the rival capitals, as their kings became the discordant governors of Lombardy. This jealousy, common to all cities nearly of a size, and not subject to some one preponderating metropolis, gave birth to devastating incursions on the borders, of each other. All were exercised in arms; all abandoned themselves to the hatred which they felt for their neighbours; all were accustomed to regard their country as inclosed within the circumference of their own city-walls; and they rather adopted the name of King to justify their quarrels, than espoused the cause of the monarchs for whom they appeared to combat. Not only did the cities engage in these acts of rapine, but, whenever the monarch was absent, the barons availed themselves of their fastnesses to commit every possible outrage on the estates of their neighbours; and a general confusion and universal ruin of the country were the consequences, of these private wars. • The ravage which accompanied these disputes of the nobles was rather suspended than repressed, during Conrad's reign, by the exhortations of some pious men; who pretended, or perhaps really believed, that Heaven had revealed to them that God had commanded men of every persuasion to observe a truce for four days in the week, viz. from the first hour of Thursday to the first hour of Monday. All men, whatever fault they had committed, were then to be free to exercise their several employments; and temporal and spiritual punishments were to fall on every person who, during the truce of God, exercised any vengeance on any of their enemies or those of the state. This peace was preached for the first time in 1033, by the Bishops of Arles and Lyons, and was about the same time introduced into Italy but it never obtained there a complete establishment. The Italians were, of all Christians, the least superstitious, and the least disposed to believe in an order said to emanate from Heaven.' said t During the greater portion of time under consideration, Rome was yet nominally at least a province of the eastern empire. Although surrounded by Lombards, it remained secure in its sacred majesty. The Pope was acknowleged in Constantinople the seat of government; and the people, little indebted to the Greek Emperor and unacquainted with his person, naturally conferred on his representative the honours which he himself was not present to claim. In the eighth century, however, a revolution was operating which had the most durable influence not only over Rome but over all the east. The reformation, or, as the western church would call it, the heresy of the Iconoclasts, alienated the Latin subjects from their Greek sovereigns; sovereigns; it engaged the Popes in destroying the authority of the Emperors over Rome, of which they were the representatives; and it was the primary cause both of independence to the city and of sovereignty to the church. Religion, which, in proportion as it flowed farther from its source, became more polluted by its admixture with worldly pomps and ceremonies, had now boldly adopted, under a change of names, all that was was essential in Paganism. This most remarkable change was the consequence of a pretended discovery of images of Jesus Christ and of the Virgin, which were attributed to a heavenly artist, and declared to be axepo TONTO, since no human art could have framed their equals. These images, after having been themselves the work of a miracle, were soon used as the instruments by which miracles were effected. They gained victories over the enemies of religion and the state; they repulsed the Persians from the walls of Edessa; they cured the infirm; and they speedily obtained for themselves all the honours of divinity. Other images, from other origins, intruded on their exclusive rights; Christianity retrograded to polytheism; statues and images were acknow leged to contain in themselves something divine; and they were honoured, not as representations, but independently and on account of their own inherent virtues; a degree of worship exceeding Pagan grossness. As Islamism was founded about the same period, whose essence it is to reject all resemblances of the divinity, idolatry was no sooner introduced than it was exposed by these zealous enemies to the Christian faith: but, besides exposing idolatry, the Mussulmans conquered many nations of idolatrous Christians; they put to flight the miraculous Labarum; they took Edessa in defiance of its boasted images; they dispersed and destroyed altars, with their images and pictures; and the eastern Christians, who had most witnessed the inefficacy of these powerless figures, were the foremost to make reflections unfavourable to their cult. Leo, the first iconoclast, was the chief of one of those mountaineer tribes which, secure in their fastnesses, preserved the religion of their ancestors pure and undefiled in Asia Minor; and, when promoted to the throne of Constantinople he signalized his reign by a most violent attack on the new superstitions, the worship of images, and the progress of monastic idlers. The schism gained ground, and was rendered irremediable by a refusal on the part of the Romans to pay the customary tributes to an Emperor who was the apostle of the iconoclasts. At the same time, Ravenna and other states opened their gates to Liutprand king of the Lombards, and all Italy was lost to the Grecian dynasty, |