Here in Victoria the Emperor felt himself safe for the winter. He had, as usual, at the beginning of the cold weather, dismissed a part of the town levies or sent them off to other theatres of war where the fighting this December was very brisk. In the Spring the town ought to be nearly starved out and could be stormed. The privation in Parma was increasing. Just once the Mantuans and Ferrarese had succeeded in getting a supply of corn into the famine-stricken town. During a short absence of Enzio and Eccelino these allies of Parma had destroyed the fortified bridge at Brescello, and when Enzio in revenge besieged Colorno, which lay on Parma’s own little river, they opened the sluices and flooded the country so that Enzio had to withdraw. The king of Sardinia soon equalised the account. He threw a new bridge over the Po at Bugno between Colorno and Brescello, and from this position he was able to repel all attacks. Parma was thus once more completely shut in and its surrender imminent. Frederick could feel his success assured, and when messengers came out to him to beg his mercy in case Parma should surrender, he sent them back, so the story runs, “with the acid advice ironically imparted in confidence that they had better be economical with their corn, because as long as he lived Parma should get nothing more to eat.”
But, as a chronicler puts it, “confidence is the mother of misfortune,” and the imperial camp let itself be lulled into culpable carelessness. The Emperor was normally distrustful enough; for once he was too trustful. Certainly Parma had spies in his army and were exactly informed of his movements. Thus they knew that on the eighteenth of February, 1248, Victoria’s garrison was weakened by many small diversions; that Enzio was away; that the Emperor according to custom had ridden forth at dawn with his falcons and his hawks and his buzzards, accompanied by his sixteen-year-old son Manfred and some fifty knights: the marshes round Parma lent themselves to the chase of waterfowl. Only Margrave Lancia was left behind in command. The Parma garrison made a sortie as they often did, this time towards the south in the direction of the Apennines. The Margrave with a portion of his army set off in pursuit. The sortie had only been a ruse. No sooner was Lancia gone than the population of Parma, followed by their wives and children, flung themselves suddenly on the almost unguarded camp, rushed over the drawbridges into Victoria, set the town on fire and mowed down the unprepared troops in masses. The Emperor, listening to his falcons’ silver bells, heard suddenly the great alarm bell of Victoria. He galloped back at full speed with his following and found the Margrave heavily engaged. The Emperor came to his assistance, forced his way into Victoria and tried to save what still remained. But he was soon in difficulties himself with his few huntsmen: he could only just cut his way out, and when he saw that all was lost he escaped with barely fourteen horsemen to Borgo San Donnino.
It was the severest defeat of his life. Fifteen hundred of his men were slain, and twice that number taken prisoners—Thaddeus of Suessa, his friend and Lord Chief Justice, was dead, and with him others of the very best: one Aquino and one Hohenburg among them, it would seem. The whole treasury was gone: gold, silver, pearls, gems, solitaires, purple cloths, ceremonial robes; gone was the sceptre, the Royal Seal of Sicily, the heavy giant crown with its many figures like a piece of masonry, which was intended on solemn occasions to be suspended over the head of the world-ruler. A little man from Parma, who was nicknamed “Corto passo” from his tripping gait, had secured this as his booty and brought it in triumph back to Parma. Much other booty from the lighthearted camp-town: the menagerie, the eunuchs, the harem, must have excited interest; other things awakened horror and curiosity: there was, for instance, a statue supposed to be made of Church treasures melted down, which the Emperor was said to have adored. They found experimentally that this idol healed neither the maimed nor the blind; at most it contemned the scriptures. There were magic drawings, charts of the heavens and animal circles which “Beelzebub and Ashtaroth, the Consuls of Darkness,” the astrologers and magicians, made use of. The most important trophy was the carroccio of Cremona, which to Cremona’s shame was drawn by a team of donkeys in triumph into Parma—following the example the Emperor had set.
*
The impression which this defeat made on the world at large was annihilating. This was the end of the Emperor’s power people said, and numerous songs of clergy, townsfolk and wandering minstrels sang the brilliant victory of Parma. It was Frederick’s first serious defeat. Things had gone against him on previous occasions, but he had never before been conquered by the towns, and now his most priceless asset was at stake: the tradition of his invincibility. Frederick diagnosed the situation exactly. Instead of being crushed under the blow he drew new strength from defeat through his fanatic belief in his star, in the Fortuna Augusti. Even defeat must turn to advantage since Fortune dwelt with him, and this defeat spurred him to maximum effort, as at other times victory was wont to do. Under this blow the fifty-year-old warrior showed the tense vigour of his prime. With the scanty following that had followed him to Borgo San Donnino he galloped to Cremona and arrived late that night, having been in the saddle since dawn, “in no wise out of heart.” The terrified populace, men, women and children, poured into the streets and crowded round the Emperor, thanking God with tears that he at least was safe. Frederick spoke to them words of good cheer. Within three days he had assembled a new army, mainly composed of men of Pavia and Cremona, and on the fourth he resumed the offensive. Victoria had fallen on the 18th of February; on the 22nd the Emperor led his forces across to the Po to attack Parma. The mere sound of his name had still such potency that the victors who had intended, under Montelongo, to invest the bridge at Bugno which Enzio was still holding, took to their heels in terror at his approach. King Enzio was consequently able to loot a fleet of some hundred ships which was bringing provisions from Mantua and Ferrara to the half-starved town, and to take three hundred prisoners whom he promptly hanged on either bank.
Frederick could now have restored the previous state of siege, and this was undoubtedly his first intention, for he wrote that he was now laying waste the country round Parma with fire and sword and inspiring courage in his troops by his own presence, and the town should not evade her fate. A council of war was held in the ruins of Victoria, but the vote was against a resumption of the siege. Frederick still camped near in order to secure the road to Pontremoli and the pass which was again threatened. Incidentally he was able to take a preliminary revenge. The Parma forces were pressing on after the Emperor when they were attacked by Lancia with the loyal knights of Parma, sixty Guelf knights were captured and over a hundred slain, amongst them Bernardo Orlando di Rossi, who was hewn in pieces, “our infamous traitor of long standing, the head and tail of the entire opposition.” The most dangerous result of the defeat of Victoria was its effect on opinion at a distance. Parma’s defection had breathed hope into the Guelfs, how much more Parma’s victory! Almost the whole of the Romagna was lost; Ravenna surrendered to Ottaviano, and her secession brought in its train the loss of a number of other towns in the neighbourhood who were her dependents. It is believed that an imperial vicar had here been in league with Pandulf of Fasanella and Jacob of Morra, the two fugitive conspirators who were now fighting in the papalist ranks.
Nevertheless, the Emperor succeeded in restoring the equilibrium of the tottering state. Richard of Theate seems to have won another victory over the papalist general, Hugo Novellus, at Cittanuova in the Ancona March. Novellus was slain and with him Matthew Fasanella, the traitor’s brother. A conspiracy was detected in Reggio and nipped in the bud by Enzio, who had a hundred conspirators publicly beheaded. A Milanese army going to Parma’s assistance hastily turned back when the Emperor moved against Milan. At the same time Feltre and Belluno in the north-east submitted to Eccelino, and a revulsion in Frederick’s favour began to be felt in Vercelli. Frederick was to appear during the summer in Piedmont and take possession of Vercelli. He wrote to his loyal Sicilians that “Fortuna who is ours and who is wont to smile more graciously when we challenge her favours has tu
rned once more on us a smiling face, though lately she had seemed to cold-shoulder us a little.” He told his friends in confidence that he had “thrice thrown a six” at dice, and Fortuna was promising not only invincibility but certain victory.
*
The Emperor’s confidence was never shaken, though numerous minor annoyances occurred at this juncture. It was peculiarly irritating that the entire imperial treasury had been lost at Parma. He was in such straits for money that he maintained that he and his court lacked for the moment the barest necessities, he had scarcely enough to eat, let alone the means for winning victories. New taxes must be raised. The taxes now imposed were double or more than double the average: 60,000 ounces had been levied in Sicily in 1242, 130,000 were raised now. Frederick further commanded all his Italian vicars to impose a tax extraordinary on all monasteries and churches. The Emperor was not wont to consider the taxpayer overmuch; yet when one Sicilian town offered to make a proportional freewill contribution towards replacing the state treasury he declined to accept it. He thanked the citizens warmly for their good will, but in view of existing hardships, and of the intolerable burden which the town was already bearing, he would take the will for the deed. On the other hand he again mortgaged, as he had done once before, the Montieri silver mines at Volterra. Either he or Frederick of Antioch borrowed 12,000 Pisan silver pounds from Siena at 80 per cent interest. The Emperor absolutely had to have cash, and had to resort to extreme measures. New coins were struck in Sicily which, with exchange fees, etc., brought in some 8000 gold ounces. These expedients must have mitigated the money shortage, and we learn that considerable consignments of money reached Frederick with other assistance from the Greek Emperor, John Vatatzes. It must have been about this period that a certain amount of grumbling was heard among the mercenary knights who were drawn from every corner of the Empire, but more especially from Italy and Germany.
The German knights, who came in ever-increasing numbers to serve in Italy, were in these last years almost Frederick’s only link with the North. Since the diet of Verona, which Frederick had held at the time of the Council of Lyons, the German nobles had ceased to attend Frederick’s camp and court; and the feudal knights whom they should have supplied were also missing. “We do not wish to overtax our princes either in personal service or material contribution for the conquest of Italy, though some, thirsty for the glory of the Empire and greedy of our presence, have voluntarily shared our labours and been with us all the time…”, wrote the Emperor once. Except the brothers Hohenburg no German princes had sought to share the Emperor’s labours; and conditions in Germany: the papal oppression which lay heavy on the spiritual princes; the rival kings who divided the secular loyalties; the civil wars in Germany and the general misery, made absence from Germany well-nigh impossible even if they had wished to go to Italy. Frederick could dispense easily enough with the German princes; but he would sorely have missed his German knights. Although the town infantries were taking an increasing share in the fighting, the heavily-armoured knight still formed the flower of every army. The brilliance and the power of the higher command depended on the number of the knights, declared the Emperor, and he naturally valued the German knights above them all. “We want to have Germans as knights, for we rely on their war experience. They must receive their pay and whatever they require without hitch.” Early Hohenstaufens had used mercenary knights as well as feudal cavalry for their short journeys to Rome and campaigns in Italy, but Frederick was permanently in Italy. He was the first, therefore, to establish a permanent corps of German knights as a regular institution. His principle was that Sicily must provide the money and Germany the men. Frederick’s need met a complementary need in Germany. Love of adventure and many another motive drove the German knights into Frederick’s arms. In large and ever-increasing numbers the lower nobility crossed the Alps and joined the imperial armies; counts and gentlemen, ministeriales, made the pilgrimage and hired themselves out, at first to the Emperor only, later to other Ghibelline leaders, and, when the Empire had fallen, to the Guelfs also. Presently counts and dukes also, whose gifts found no scope in Germany, followed the lead and became commandants of large mercenary bands. These independent “Marshals” foreshadow the later type of great mercenary leaders, John Hawkwood for example, or Duke Werner Urslingen (Guarneri) with his “Great Company” of three thousand German lances, who bore on their silver breastplate the motto “Enemy of Pity, of Mercy, and of God.” Under Frederick II one such German force, said to have amounted to eighteen hundred lances, was serving under Count Jordan as Marshal, Frederick having no doubt appointed Jordan to the command.
It is possible either to regret that so much German strength flowed into Italy, or to rejoice that at least some ten thousand German knights escaped the cheerless constriction of Germany after the fall of the Empire. Whichever line we take, Frederick II and the Hohenstaufens must answer for it. Through her mercenary knights Germany played no negligible part in the Italian Renaissance, for the appearance of these northern warriors made a great impression in Italy. The Italians of the late thirteenth century, and still more of later days, would have had no conception of a knight if it had not been for the French and the thousands of young German nobles whom first the Hohenstaufens attracted to Italy. What an impression King Manfred’s victorious Germans of Montaperti left behind them! “Powerful figures, expert in the use of weapons, expert on horseback, they charge like lions let loose, and their war horses are like moving mountains in the flash of the weapons.” They went into battle on the Arbia singing, with the name of God and St. George, their patron saint, on their lips. We learn in great detail how these Germans under the black and silver banner of King Manfred charged against the red lily of Florence: “Never did Hector perform such slaughter among the Greek host as Marshal Jordan this day amongst the Florentines.” After the victory the eight hundred German knights, with wreaths of olive on their helmets, rode behind the trumpets and the royal banner in triumph into Siena and dismounted before the cathedral to thank the Virgin for their victory. In later days the impression made by the Germans was even stronger. Somewhere about the beginning of the Trecento a body of fifteen hundred knights rode into Lombardy, “excellently armed and cast as it were in one piece with their chargers,” and the Italians said “these are the most handsome men that Lombardy has ever seen and all down to the very last of them… fearless knights of lofty stature, still in the flower of their youth, but practised in arms and dauntless in courage.”
A Roman cardinal of those days still called the Germans “the handsomest warriors in the world.” In all the larger towns they erected to their “San Giorgio” altars, chapels and churches. We need not, therefore, be surprised that Donatello in the opening of the fifteenth century, in creating his St. George, unwittingly quickened from the marble a noble German boy. In these forms we still catch the echoes of Germany’s heroic age, the Hohenstaufen age that gave birth to the regal horsemen of Bamberg and Magdeburg, now echoing to its close in Italy. The tortured, distorted, thought-tormented Germany of later Gothic had no eye for the noble pride and aristocratic freedom of such forms. It almost seems as if these young warriors were driven south so that their beauty might not perish fruitlessly, unhonoured and unsung. These homeless heroes were doomed to perish whichever way they turned: “if they mixed too long with the Italians they became inoculated with their vices… but from their homes they come simple and loyal and true hearted.” Their simplicity struck the over-refined, indescribably corrupt Italy of the Renaissance much as of old that of the Germanic tribes had affected the Rome of the Caesars. The Germanic heroic age closed, therefore, as it had begun: singly at first, then in groups, then in ever-growing numbers their warriors had gone to Rome to serve the divine Emperors; they then had conquered Rome, and then—beginning with Dietrich of Bern and ending with Frederick II—they had founded their own States, and then fought on as mercenaries till towards the close of the Renaissance the stream dried up: to Italy’s loss.
*
Within four months of the defeat of Victoria, Frederick II to some extent quieted Italy. Indeed, he felt the situation so secure that he began to toy again with the plan of the preceding year: to march on Lyons. New possibilities of peace seemed open. King Louis of France was just about to start on his Crusade, and that strife at home might not imperil his great undertaking he wanted to see the Empire and the Papacy at peace. Saint Louis had never recognised the Emperor’s deposition, and for all his piety had throughout maintained a correspondence with Frederick, although the Pope assured him that Frederick sought to abolish all worship of God so that he himself might be worshipped alone throughout the universe: an idol of the most revolting depravity. Moreover, Louis wanted the Emperor’s co-operation, for Sicily was always the base for any overseas expeditions. Other important people also interested themselves in securing peace, but all attempts failed. The Pope refused to contemplate any peace which left the Hohenstaufen Empire standing. Disappointed by his failure the French King set sail from Aiguesmortes on his fatal Crusade. These negotiations and the plan of a possible move to Lyons had led the Emperor to enter Piedmont in July 1248, where the accession of Vercelli gave affairs a favourable turn. Pope Innocent IV saw the Emperor again drawing near the Alps and had himself well guarded in Lyons. A papal attempt to divert some Crusaders for an attack on Sicily instead of on the Holy Land fell through. Frederick held a diet in Vercelli and remained many months in Western Lombardy. Towards the end of 1248 he returned to Cremona by way of Pavia. Here he was to meet the bitterest disillusionment of his life.
Frederick the Second Page 76
