and persistent. Life or death hung in the balance. It was a conflict for
ascendency that brought the sternest passions into play, and decided the
survival of the fittest among hundreds of competing cities. The deeply
rooted jealousies of Roman and feudal centers, the recent partisanship
of Papal and Imperial principles, imbittered this strife. But what lay
beneath all superficial causes of dissension was the economic struggle
of communities, for whom the soil of Italy already had begun to seem too
narrow. So superabundant were the forces of her population, so vast were
the energies emancipated by her attainment of municipal freedom, that
this mighty mother of peoples could not afford equal sustenance to all
her children. New-born, they had to strangle one another as they hung
upon the breast that gave them nourishment. It was impossible for the
Emperor to overlook the apparent anarchy of his fairest province.
Therefore, when Frederick Barbarossa was elected in 1152, his first
thought was to reduce the Garden of the Empire to order. Soon after his
election he descended into Lombardy and formed two leagues among the
cities of the North, the one headed by Pavia, the center of the
abrogated kingdom, the other by Milan, who inherited the majesty of Rome
and contained within her loins the future of Italian freedom. It is not
necessary to follow in detail the conflict of the Lombard burghs with
Frederick, so enthusiastically described by their historian, Sismondi,
It is enough for our present purpose to remember that in the course of
that contention both leagues made common cause against the Emperor, drew
the Pope Alexander III. into their quarrel, and at last in 1183, after
the victory of Legnano had convinced Frederick of his weakness, extorted
by the Peace of Constance privileges whereby their autonomy was amply
guaranteed and recognized. The advantages won by Milan who sustained the
brunt of the imperial onslaughts, and by the splendor of her martyrdom
surmounted the petty jealousies of her municipal rivals, were extended
to the cities of Tuscany. After the date of that compact signed by the