crowned there by three
cardinals in the Pope's stead, while the Orsini remained grimly
intrenched in their own quarter, and each party held its own, even after
Henry had prudently retired to Tivoli, in the hills.

[Illustration: ISLAND IN THE TIBER]

At last the great houses made a truce and a compromise, by which they
attempted to govern Rome jointly, and chose Sciarra--the same who had
taken Pope Boniface prisoner in Anagni--and Matteo Orsini of Monte
Giordano, to be Senators together; and there was peace between them for
a time, in the year in which Rienzi was born. But in that very year, as
though foreshadowing his destiny, the rabble of Rome rose up, and chose
a dictator; and somehow, by surprise or treachery, he got possession of
the Barons' chief fortresses, and of Sant' Angelo, and set up the
standard of terror against the nobles. In a few days he sacked and
burned their strongholds, and the high and mighty lords who had made the
reigning Pope, and had fought to an issue for the Crown of the Holy
Roman Empire, were conquered, humiliated and imprisoned by an upstart
plebeian of Trastevere. The portcullis of Monte Giordano was lifted, and
the mysterious gates were thrown wide to the curiosity of a populace
drunk with victory; Giovanni degli Stefaneschi issued edicts of
sovereign power from the sacred precincts of the Capitol; and the
vagabond thieves of Rome feasted in the lordly halls of the Colonna
palace. But though the tribune and the people could seize Rome,
outnumbering the nobles as ten to one, they had neither the means nor
the organization to besiege the fortified towns of the great houses,
which hemmed in the city and the Campagna on every side. Thither the
nobles retired to recruit fresh armies among their retainers, to forge
new swords in their own smithies, and to concert new plans for
recovering their ancient domination; and thence they returned in their
strength, from their towers and their towns and fortresses, from
Palestrina and Subiaco, Genazzano, San Vito and Paliano on the south,
and from Bracciano and Galera and Anguillara, and all the Orsini castles
on the north, to teach the people of Rome the great truth of those days,
that 'aristocracy' meant not the careless supremacy of the nobly born,
but the power of the strongest hands and the coolest heads to take and
hold. Back came Colonna and Orsini, and the people, who a few months
earlier had acclaimed their dictator in a fit of justifiable i