fact that the Imperial Crown was elective enabled the electors to sell
their votes for extended privileges. At last, against the raids of the
petty nobles, whom the Emperor could not control, the cities leagued
together, took the matter in hand, attacked the fortresses, levelled
them and gave to the inmates short shrift, a halter and a tree. In
Italy the towns proceeded in a less summary manner. Surrounded as they
were on all sides by a serried rank of castles, where the nobles held
undisputed sway over their serfs and controlled the arteries of trade,
the cities were compelled to proceed against them; but instead of
sending them to the gallows, they contented themselves with forcing
them to take up their residence within the town walls. But though the
feudal lordship of these nobles had been destroyed, their opulence,
their lands, the prestige of their names remained untouched, and in
place of disturbing the roads they filled the streets with riot. They
reared in the towns those wonderful towers that we still see at
Bologna, San Gemigniano, Savona, &c. "From the eighth to the thirteenth
century," says Ruskin, "there was little change in the form;--four-
square, rising high and without tapering into the air, storey above
storey, they stood like giants beside the piles of the basilicas and
the Lombardic churches... their ruins still frown along the crests of
every promontory of the Apennines, and are seen from far away in the
great Lombard plain, from distances of half a day's journey, dark
against the amber sky of the horizon." [Footnote: Lectures on
Architecture, 1853.]

I propose dividing my subject of cliff castles into four heads:--

1. Those that were seigneural strongholds.
2. Those that with castle and town occupied a rock.
3. The fastnesses of the _routiers_, the Companies in the Hundred