re
faithfully reported, the Republic separates itself abruptly from the
Papacy, and claims a kind of precedence in honor before the Empire.
Frederick is said to have interrupted the Legates in a rage before
they could finish their address, and to have replied with angry
contempt. The speech put into his mouth is probably a rhetorical
composition, but it may have expressed his sentiments. 'Multa de
Romanorum sapientia seu fortitudine hactenus audivimus, magis tamen
de sapientia. Quare satis mirari non possumus, quod verba vestra
plus arrogantiae tumore insipida quam sale sapientiae condita
sentimus.... Fuit, fuit quondam in hac Republica virtus. Quondam
dico, atque o utinam tam veracitur quam libenter nunc dicere
possemus,' etc.

Strengthened by their contest with Frederick Barbarossa, recognized in
their rights as belligerent powers, and left to their own guidance by
the Empire, the cities were now free to prosecute their wars upon the
remnants of feudalism. The town, as we have learned to know it, was
surrounded by a serried rank of castles, where the nobles held still
undisputed authority over serfs of the soil. Against this cordon of
fortresses every city with singular unanimity directed the forces it had
formed in the preceding conflicts. At the same time the municipal
struggles of Commune against Commune lost none of their virulence. The
Counts, pressed on all sides by the towns that had grown up around them,
adopted the policy of pitting one burgh against another. When a noble
was attacked by the township near his castle, he espoused the
animosities of a more distant city, compromised his independence by
accepting the captaincy or lieutenancy of communes hostile to his
natural enemies, and thus became the servant or ally of a Republic. In
his desperation he emancipated his serfs, and so the folk of the Contado
profited by the dissensions of the cities and their feudal masters. This
new phase of republican evolution lasted over a long and ill-defined
period, assuming different characters in different centers; but the end
of it was that the nobles were forced to submit to the cities. They were
admitted to the burghership, and agreed to spend a certain portion of
every year in the palaces they raised within the circuit of the walls.
Thus the Counts placed themselves beneath the jurisdiction of the
Consuls, and the Italic population absorbed into itself the relics of
Lo