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But it is better that nature alone should cultivate their fields, and that the Paduans should eat only what she is pleased to provide for them, than that, by robbing the shrine of St Antony, they should forfeit the good esteem of so powerful a patron, "the thrice holy Antony of Padua; the powerful curer of leprosy, tremendous driver away of devils, restorer of limbs, stupendous discoverer of lost things, great and wonderful defender from all dangers."
This government, or something like it, endured for more than a century, during which period the Mantuans seem to have done nothing but war with their neighbors in every direction, with the Veronese chiefly, with the Cremonese a good deal, with the Paduans, with the Ferrarese, with the Modenese and the Bolognese: indeed, we count up twelve of these wars.
There the Paduans held their masques and holiday-shows; there rose the mighty castle that was stormed on a feast-day by armed men with missiles of oranges and pomegranates; there stalked Donatello's mighty wooden horse, towering high above the crowd in the Carnival cavalcades; there, after Ezzelin the Terrible had for years enriched the ground with Paduan blood and hung the Paduan bodies high on gibbets, the freed and happy people celebrated the expulsion of the tyrant by instituting the famous horse-races, in which the prizes were scarlet cloth and gloves and a sparrow-hawk.
Having wasted eight precious days, the enemy, on the 24th of August, advanced to the attack. A Genoese force, under Doria's brother, landed upon San Nicolo; while the Paduans attacked San Spirito and Santa Marta. They found the besieged in readiness. Directly the alarm was given, the Venetians flocked to the threatened points, and repulsed the enemy with slaughter.
The Mantuans, far from imitating the ungrateful Paduans, who, when the Crusaders liberated them from Eccelino, grudged these brave fellows three days' pillage of their city, and even wished back their old tyrant, the Mantuans, we say, seemed not in the least to mind being devoured, but gratefully elected the Gonzaga their captain-general, and purchased him absolution from the Pope for his crimes committed in the sack.
But there were times when the Prato echoed with the noise of battle. Blood flowed through the moat about the statues swifter than the sluggish waters of to-day. What stern, mighty figures have that Prato for their background! Alaric the Goth, Attila, Ezzelin, all fought with the rebellious Paduans on those gray stones.
The Paduans next ruled her forty years, and the Veronese seventy-seven, and the Milanese seventeen years; then she reposed in the arms of the Venetian Republic till these fell weak and helpless from all the Venetian possessions at the threat of Napoleon.
First, the boy helping his father to shave the beards of the Paduans; then the young adventurer flushed with hope, jogging on his way to Rome; then the grave young man, with his vast physical development shrouded in the monkish habit; then, in 1800, when Napoleon was busy in Italy, the monkish garments thrown aside, he wanders about the continent, stared at everywhere for his size and strength of limb; then as lecturer on hydraulic machinery, and exhibitor of feats of strength at Astley's Theatre; then, under the patronage of the Pasha, constructing a machine to water some gardens on the banks of the Nile; then engaged by the English Consul in Egypt, Mr.
When the Paduans, before their city was as yet invested, saw the arrival within their walls of these chosen youths of the Venetian patriciate, with their numerous troop of friends and followers, they considered Padua as good as saved; and when the imperial army, posted before the place, commenced their attacks upon it, they soon perceived that they had formidable defenders to deal with.
But, as the lad said, "what matters it about relationship now? What will become of relationship, if the Genoese and Paduans land here, raze the city to the ground, and scatter us over the face of the earth? No.
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