forcing on a defenseless people the laws and the customs suited to his
own rugged nature and the unformed state of society in which he lived.

Such being the case, there is little cause for wonder that the
invading Lombard directed his fury with particular violence against
the corporate towns, whose strength was not sufficient to resist the
attacks of his invading host. Like all other Teutonic tribes the
Lombards were entirely unskilled in the art of attacking fortified
towns; hence the only mode of siege with which they were acquainted
was that of starving out the inhabitants, by cutting off all source of
supply by ravaging and destroying the surrounding country. This fact,
unimportant as it may seem at the first glance, materially affected
the whole course of the later history of some of the Italian cities.
By this means we are enabled, even at this early epoch, to divide them
into two classes. First, those cities which, after a more or less
short resistance, yielded to the rude tactics of the barbarians and
were made subject by them, for example Milan and Pavia.[5] Second,
those cities like Venice and Ravenna,[6] which, by means of a
connection with the sea which the invaders could not cut off, were
enabled to gain supplies by water, and so resist all efforts of the
besieging host to capture them. They never fell completely under the
Lombard yoke, and either retained a sort of partial autonomy or
yielded allegiance to some other power. It is the cities of the former
class that are the subject of this investigation.

The condition of these inland towns at the time of the invasion was,
as we have seen, weak in the extreme. The defenses, where they
existed, were of a character to afford little protection, and the bulk
of the inhabitants were so enervated from a life of poverty and
oppression that they were almost incapable of offering any resistance