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To-day there was a rumour at the mess table that the Austrians had abandoned Legnano, one of the four fortresses of the quadrilateral. I do not put much faith in it at present, but it is not improbable, as we may expect many strange things from the Vienna government.
This ancient veteran, with his back to the field, was the fugitive Æneas, leaving Troy behind. And these, around me, belonged to the columns of Barbazona, scattered at Legnano by the revengeful Milanese. Cobweb, and thick dust, and faded parchment had somewhat softened those elder events; but in their day they were tangible, practical, and prosaic, like this scene.
The Duke of Saxony remained at home, and Barbarossa went on without his aid to meet defeat at Legnano. Giovanni met Stefano by chance in Venice when the Emperor went there to sign the peace treaty. "His armies were doomed from the first," the jester said in his hoarse guttural sing-song. "They were weighted with the souls of the martyred hostages of Crema.
Finally we might prefer the people that people, instinctively and persistently faithful to Roman traditions, which absorbed into itself the successive hordes of barbarian invaders, civilized them, and adopted them as men of Italy; that people which destroyed the kingdoms of the Goths and Lombards humbled the Empire at Legnano, and evolved the Communes; that people which resisted alien feudalism, and spent its prime upon eradicating every trace of the repugnant system from its midst; that people which finally attained to the consciousness of national unity by the recovery of scholarship and culture under the dominion of despotic princes.
I never received anything more for this job; and all the moneys I paid out during the said two years were the 1000 ducats with which I promised to cast it. These were disbursed to me in instalments by Messer Antonio Maria da Legnano, a Bolognese." The statue must have been more than thrice life-size, if it rose fourteen feet in a sitting posture.
In actual extent and productiveness his estates fairly surpassed those of his imperial cousin, and the defection of such a man signified the death knell of the latter's cause. The battle of Legnano, fought on May 29, 1176, ended in disaster and defeat.
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.
It is a fruit of this principle that makes the modern Italian look back with sorrow and pride over a dreary waste of seven centuries to the famous field of Legnano; it was this principle kindled the beacons which yet burn on the rocks of Uri; it was this principle that broke the dykes of Holland and overwhelmed the Spanish with the fate of the Egyptian oppressor.
The bridge thrown up at Follonica was still intact up to seven in the morning on the 10th, but the troops and the military and the civil train that remained followed the Po without crossing to Stellata, in the supposed direction of Ponte Lagoscura. Yesterday guns were heard here at seven o'clock in the morning, and up to eleven o'clock, in the direction of Legnano, towards, I think, the Adige.
The first quarrels with Milan led to the formation of the Lombard league, and a long war in which the battle of Legnano gave the confederates a decisive victory. The mutual rivalries of the States, however, prevented them from turning this to good account.
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