milan

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The great (and only) victory of emperor Frederick II over Milan

This week we are back to action stations. We resume our narrative in 1235 when Frederick II gathered his vassals in Mainz to implement his grand plan to regain the imperial rights in Northern Italy. He picks up where his grandfather Barbarossa and his father Henry VI had to leave things, trying again, but this time with the resources of Southern Italy behind him….and it’s déjà vu all over again

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 85 – Cortenuova

This week we are back to action stations. We resume our narrative in 1235 when Frederick II gathered his vassals in Mainz to implement his grand plan to regain the imperial rights in Northern Italy. He picks up where his grandfather Barbarossa and his father Henry VI had to leave things, trying again, but this time with the resources of Southern Italy behind him….and it’s déjà vu all over again

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As I said we resume our narrative in 1235. Frederick has just apprehended and imprisoned his son Henry (VII) (in brackets) to regain the support of the imperial princes. He needs them to return imperial power to northern Italy. As this will be the last great struggle of the House of Hohenstaufen and in some ways the last attempt at an empire that is truly Holy, Roman and an Empire, let’s first take a look at the big big picture.

Up until the Investiture controversy that started in 1077, the emperors relied heavily on the imperial bishops to provide the administration of the realm and the resources they needed for war. The bishops had received a large chunk of what used to be the crown lands as well as rights and privileges to fund these activities.

Over the 145 years following Henry IV’s penance in Canossa, the crown’s access to these ecclesiastical resources had become less and less immediate until in 1220 Frederick II granted the Confoederatio cum Principibus ecclesiasticis which formally transferred all imperial rights and privileges within their territory to the bishops in perpetuity. From that point onwards the bishops were no longer obliged to support imperial military efforts beyond the standard duty as an imperial vassal. They still often did, but on their own volition, not because they had to.

The emperors tried fill the gap left by the disappearance of  the imperial church system with other sources of income and soldiers. Henry IV, Henry V, Lothar III and Konrad III tried to create a coherent imperial territory that was meant to do act as the nucleus of a centralised government. That policy put them into conflict with the imperial princes and resulted in endless civil war.

Barbarossa broke out of this gridlock by shifting his focus to Northern Italy. If he could make the rich cities of Lombardy pay for the cost of his administration and his military, he could use that to consolidate royal power as was happening in France and England around that same time. And he would avoid conflict with the imperial princes.

Northern Italy was an attractive target for a number of reasons, apart from the fact that it was rich.

  1. The emperor held the regalia  as successor to the ancient Lombard kings and they had never been given these over to the cities, hence they were still his, and
  2. The imperial princes were happy to support a campaign in Northern Italy in exchange for plunder, land and titles down south, and
  3. The Lombard cities were disunited. There were two principles. #1: All my neighbours are my enemies and #2: My enemie‘s enemies are my friends. Hence my neighbours neighbour is my ally.  political landscape looked like a chessboard where all the White squares fought the black squares.

It is very unlikely that Barbarossa wrote this down as a grand strategic plan, so it just  is ex-post rationalisation, but it sort of helps getting your head around what happened.

Barbarossa’s initial campaign was successful. His army supplied by German princes and Italian allies, namely Cremona and Pavia besieged and ultimately defeated Milan and its allies. On the back of that success Barbarossa issued the Laws of Roncaglia that consolidated all the imperial rights, in particular jurisdiction, taxation and the selection of the city consuls in the hands of the emperor.

However, things went pear shaped fairy quickly. Barbarossa handed out brutal punishment to the defeated cities. Crema and Milan were both flattened, and their citizens were forced to live in the open countryside. The suppression of the Milanese in particular was a costly exercise and the broken communes delivered little if anything to the imperial coffers. As a consequence the tax burden shifted more and more on to the allied cities. Cremona, Lodi and the others had not expected that support for the imperial cause would put them into the same position as their defeated enemies.

The emperor had overstretched the patience of the communes. Led by Cremona, Barbarossa’s former ally, the citizens of Milan returned to the ruins of their old home. The northern Italian cities buried their conflicts and united into a league against Barbarossa. Moreover the papacy, worried about the presence of the emperor just north of Rome, threw its lot in with the league. And the king of Sicily as well as the Byzantine emperor, enemies for centuries, also ganged up on the king form the north.

In 1167 Barbarossa attempted to steal their thunder. He marched one of the largest medieval armies ever mustered down to Rome. He took the city and nearly caught pope Alexander III, but his forces succumbed to dysentery. The flower of German chivalry sank into the filthy mud. After that disaster support for southern adventures vanished. Barbarossa will make one last attempt in 1176 that fails before Alessandria, the city of straw and is followed up by the final defeat at Legnano.

In 1183 Barbarossa signs the peace of Constance that guaranteed the Lombard cities  complete autonomy within the empire in exchange for an annual payment.

The great fight for northern Italy and with it the fight for a sustained basis for imperial rule seems lost for good. But not so fast. As one of the last acts before his death on crusade, Barbarossa plants the seed for one last attempt to gain control of Northern Italy and build a central imperial monarchy, the marriage of his son Henry VI with Constance, the heiress of the kingdom of Sicily.

But for the four decades from 1189 to 1235 nothing comes of it as far as the Lombards are concerned. Philipp of Swabia, Otto IV and Frederick II in his first decades on the throne did not have the resources to make any inroads in Northern Italy. The communes are free to do as they like and what they like is fighting each other. The original Lombard League dissolves in 1208. Whatever payments were made under the peace of Constance seize completely. Lombardy reverts rapidly back into its old chessboard pattern, my neighbour is my enemy, my enemy’s neighbour is their enemy and therefore my friend.

History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Frederick II’s position in 1235 almost perfectly mirrors Barbarossa’s position in 1152, i.e.,

  1. Frederick has  a legal basis to assert imperial rights in Italy as the league had broken the peace of Constance, disobeyed imperial orders and thereby forfeit its autonomy
  2. The imperial princes were obliged to support his move into Italy after he had sacrificed his oldest son for the project and given them the same privileges the bishops had received, and
  3. The Italian cities were again disunited. The Lombard League had reformed in 1226, but with fewer members and less coherence.

But not just that. He also had resources his grandfather could not call upon.

The first of those were the riches and military power of the kingdom of Sicily. Opinions vary about what Sicily could bring to the party, but you would not be laughed out of a history seminar if you guessed them to be similar to England at the time, if not more. We have a register of feudal obligations for the duchy of Puglia and the principality of Capua that adds up to an obligation to field 8,000 knights and 11,000 foot soldiers, for these two principalities alone. That would be larger than both armies fighting at Bouvines combined. However, there is a time element here. A vassal was only obliged to serve for 40 days. To have an army in the field all year round, you need to divide the total by factor 9. That would mean Puglia’s and Capua’s obligation was a more manageable 900 knights and 1,200 foot soldiers and the whole of the kingdom could field maybe 3,000 knights and 5,000 foot soldiers on a continuous basis. And then there were the Saracens of Lucera who were paid soldiers and came allegedly to 7,000. So very sizeable even in a pan-European context.

The other additional military advantage came from a man called Ezzelino da Romano, who is an entirely new type of power player. A type that would dominate Italian politics well into the early modern period. To explain his rise we need to take another look at the political set-up of the Italian communes.

Each of these cities wasp riven with discord. It is often abbreviated as the fight between Ghibellines, supporters of the emperor and guelfs, supporters of the papacy. But the realty was more complex. Socially Ghibellines were often aristocratic knights who happened to live in fortified houses in cities. The Guelphs often recruited amongst the rising merchant and banker class. But then there were all sorts of personal animosities and feuds going back decades. Think Montagues and Capulets. These disparate factions were simply unable to agree on any of their fellow citizens as military and administrative leader. The only solution was to bring in someone from outside who would be neutral, could keep the peace and lead the city’s military contingent in war. This was called a Podesta and he had often dictatorial powers. To stop him from actually becoming dictator, his term was usually limited to just one year.

Being a Podesta became a lucrative career for the nobility of Northern Italy. Some did it as a job, others did it whilst still loyal to their hometown. Venice for instance tried to control the cities on the mainland through Venetian podestas.

Ezzelino was one of these Northern Italian nobles based in what is now the Veneto. He had his first break when he became Podesta of the city of Verona in 1226 where he stayed with interruptions until he resigned in 1230. He returned in 1232 called in by his supporters within the city. Ezzelino was no Cincinnatus. Once he had obtained the role of Podesta, he showed no intentions to leave again after one year as was the law. He simply stayed put, in charge of the military and holding the city fortresses. He did become the city’s tyrant and ruler, ending its time as a self-governing commune.

Ezzelino would remain podesta of Verona until his death. As we will see, Ezzelino will gain more podesta positions over time, usually by force until he commanded almost the entirety of what is now the Italian region of Veneto, minus the city of Venice. Ezzellino was famous for the brutality of his rule. Stories of decapitated adversaries and children of once eminent citizens ending up destitute and begging for food were everywhere. Dante placed him into the 7th circle of hell where murderers and thugs sink into rivers of blood and fire. Ezzelino was one of the first of the Italian city despots, the della Scala, Visconti, Gonzaga, Malatesta and so forth. Ezzelino had declared for Fredrick in 1232 and in 1237 marries Selvaggia, one of Frederick’s illegitimate daughters from a relationship with an unknown mother.

The alliance with Ezzelino would be an important support for his cause but it would also bring him into conflict with Venice. At this time Venice was usually neutral in the fights on the mainland. The city had no mainland territory yet and no intention of acquiring any. They were solely maritime in outlook and focused on the East. They were also formally not part of the Holy Roman empire but of the Empire of Byzantium, so a return of imperial regalia would not necessarily bother them. But that does not mean they would be tolerating a massive thug in the form of Ezzelino da Romano on their doorstep. With Ezzelino came the enmity of Venice.

In summary, we are on the verge of war in Northern Italy. On Frederick’s side are the Imperial princes, the Italian cities of Cremona, Pavia, Parma and a few more, the Kingdom of Sicily and Ezzelino da Romano. On the side of the League were, well the members of the League, that means Milan, but also Lodi, Crema, Bergamo, Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, Padova, Treviso, Mantua, Alessandria and Vercelli and support from Venice.

And what about the pope you ask? Well, technically the pope and Frederick were at peace. They had agreed to a mutual understanding in 1230 after Frederick had chased the papal troops all the way back to Rome and still granted his holiness a generous settlement instead of coming in and slapping him in the face, as the king of France will do so successfully in 1303. In the subsequent period Frederick would regularly support the pope, help him out with soldiers and generally maintain a good relationship. All the excommunication stuff was forgotten…

In light of that the pope could not take sides but had to act as peacemaker. Though in reality he did not want Frederick to succeed. Not at all. If Frederick had won Lombardy, the church would be completely encircled. And in that case, there would be no more kissing of feet and holding of the reins of horses for the successor of St. Peter. So the league had the tacit but not the formal support of Gregory IX.

So much about the lay of the land. Let’s get into the action.

In 1235 at the royal assembly at Mainz, Frederick declares an imperial sanction against the cities of the Lombard league and calls his vassals to go to war in Italy in 1236. He states the following demands:

  • The cities have to swear an oath of fealty to their emperor
  • The re-formed league of 1226 is to be dissolved
  • The imperial regalia as laid out in the laws of Roncaglia to be returned to the emperor
  • The cities provide satisfaction to the emperor to make up for the insults he had endured.

This last point refers to the blocking of the alpine passes that stopped the German vassals of the emperor from joining the crusade in 1226 and coming to his assembly at Ravenna in 1231.

The Lombard cities refused all that by referring to the peace of Constance without saying anything about the failure to make any payments for at least 30 years.

The pope suggested arbitration. An imperial assembly with papal participation was called for Piacenza in 1236 to discuss the fight against heresy, the disagreements in Lombardy and another crusade. Item 1 and 3 were clearly put in to placate the pope, which did not quite work.

The pope laid out the terms of his arbitration which said that whatever the pope decided the emperor was to follow to the letter without recourse, since “the verdict of the Holy see was supreme”. In a private letter Gregory IX came out with his most famous comment: “the necks of kings and princes bent underthe knee of the priest, and Christian Emperors must subject their actions not to the Roman Pontiff alone; they have not even the right to rank him above another priest” In other words, according to Gregory IX, the Emperor of the Romans ranks below a village parson.

This hyperbole of the papacy in the 13th century  never ceases to amaze me. Gregory is writing this letter from Anghani, a small town in the papal lands, because for umpteenth time the pope had been thrown out of Rome by the city magistrate. The pope cannot even get a city bailiff to take his orders but commands an emperor to accept whatever his decision might be.

Frederick does not even respond to the letter. The negotiations which Hermann of Salza was still conducting with the Pope might drag on to the accompaniment of military campaigns. In this affair only deeds could decide.

Frederick II appeared in Verona in August 1236 with a thousand knights that joined another 500 sent ahead to secure this important city at the exit of the Brenner pass. The fact that Ezzelino da Romano, was podesta of Verona was certainly helpful.

The first objective was to link up with the troops gathered at the loyal city of Cremona. An army of the League tried to prevent this by blocking the road between Verona and Cremona. But the Ghibelline cities’ troops took a major detour north via Brescia and joined the emperor which allowed the united army to crack open the road to Cremona.

Ezzelino held the Verona end and Frederick II the Cremona side. And then nothing much happened until the end of October when the cities of Vicenza, Treviso, Padua and Mantua raised an army to take on Ezzelino down in Verona. Ezzelino called on Frederick for help and the emperor’ troops covered the 120km distance to a position east of Verona in 1 day and two nights. When he got there, quote “in the time it takes a man to eat a piece of bread”, he switched strategy and pushed on east to Vicenza.

That was a very smart move. The army of Vicenza was standing before Verona and when they realised the emperor was heading to their defenceless hometown, the Vicentini dropped everything and chased after him. The other contingent did the same for fear their city would be next and Ezzelino was free again. Frederick had half a day on his pursuers, arrived at the city of Vicenza, got in and bang, had conquered his first city. He made Ezzelino the Podesta of Vicenza.

The fall of Vicenza had a big impact on the other eastern cities. Ferrara, Treviso and Padua, the by far richest city of the Veneto safe for Venice itself, all fell to Frederick and his allies. Ezzelino was. Made podesta of all of them and imperial vicar kicking off his tyrannical reign in the Veneto that would last over 20 years.

In the first half of the next year, 1237 military activity in Lombardy itself slowed down. Frederick had to go back to Germany since the duke of Austria had refused to appear at the royal assembly and to support the Italian campaign which was seen and meant as a rebellion. We will talk about that in more detail in a later episode. For now it is enough to mention that Frederick was successful and in a deviation from typical pattern of behaviour north of the Alps, Frederick deposed the duke of Austria and attempted to incorporate the duchy into his personal domain. Now that has not happened for quite a while.

Another sign of how his power and prestige has risen was that the princes without any concessions elected Frederick’s second eldest legitimate son Conrad as king Konrad IV. However, Konrad was not crowned as his brother had been, presumably to keep him on a tighter leash – but then he was just 9 years old.

In the meantime good old Hermann von Salza still tried to negotiate a settlement involving the papacy. Positions had thawed a bit in light of the setbacks for the League. Gregory IX replaced his legate with one more amenable to the emperor. The Lombards as well were looking for some form of compromise. But the Venetians were refusing to back down. Ezzelino on their doorstep and a tighter imperial control over Lombardy made them nervous. They managed to scupper any solution by getting the podesta of Piacenza, who was a Venetian, to make the citizens swear never to accept an imperial podesta, which was one of Frederick’s key demands.

In late summer 1237 Frederick reappears in Italy. His next objective is Mantua, the strategically most important city in Northern Italy. Mantua sits right in the middle of all major road connections north south and east west. It is surrounded by marches and easy to defend. In the 18th century the Habsburgs extend the fortifications and create three artificial lakes that turn it into the key to Italy. Napoleon will spend almost two years trying to break this fortress. Frederick was quicker, or luckier. After his army captured two castles on the way to the city, the political weights in the city councils shifted and Mantua declares for the empire.

Next on the list is Brescia. Frederick takes another fortress that protected its approaches from the south. The road to his target was now open, except for the trifling matter of a League army 10,000 strong standing between him and the city. As the leader of an army of knights, Frederick would have loved to take them on in open battle, but that is exactly what the League does not want to do.

The city contingents had no structural advantage over the armies of knights an emperor could field. What the cities had were two things, the great walls that were almost impossible to break with the technology available at the time, and the resources to pay soldiers to stay in the field almost permanently. Hence the strategic objective was to keep the pressure on the imperial side, prevent them from establishing a long siege, but mostly keeping them wondering about the countryside until the vassal’s allotted time was up and/or the emperor runs out of money. With that strategy the League was quite successful in the late summer and autumn of 1237.

For two months the two armies had lain facing each other near Pontevico, separated by a marshy little river which there flows into the Oglio River. Operations had come to a standstill. The emperor could not allow his heavy cavalry to attack across the marshy land, the Lombards accepted no challenge.  November was almost over.  Negotiations had been unsuccessful in spite of considerable concessions by the towns.  There seemed no hope of dealing a decisive blow to the Lombards before the year was out.

On November 24 Frederick orders his camp to be broken up. His men built bridges across the Oglio, which runs north to south from the alps to the Po River. From the other side of the Oglio it was about 3 to four hours ride south back to Cremona where Frederick had his winter quarters.

As the Lombards see Frederick setting off for home, they too decide the campaign is over for the year. They pack up and march north. The largest contingent of this army was from Milan. To get home, they too had to cross the Oglio. They decided to march about 50km north along the river. That, they thought would be far enough from Cremona and Frederick’s army to be safe from any attacks during the dangerous crossing.

And that is exactly what Frederick’s plan had been. He had only sent his foot soldiers and the train back to Cremona. His armoured knights on horseback and his Saracen bowmen he kept with him on a clandestine march following the Oglio river upstream shadowing the Milanese. They waited for the enemy to cross. On the 27th of November1237 they spotted them near the town of Cortenuova. Immediately the vanguard of 500 knights fell on the unsuspecting Milanese. Shortly after Frederick himself arrived with several thousand knights. Finally he had the open battle he had craved. At this point it was a pure cavalry battle. The Saracens on foot had not yet arrived and the city forces tended to be dominated by riders. The Milanese fell back to their carroccio.

I know I have described the carroccios several times in the podcast but I am still amazed by these contraptions. A Carroccio is an ox-driven cart that carries the standards of the city. It is the rallying point for the army, similarly to the imperial eagles and the French Oriflamme. The difference is that the bannerman of a knightly army sits on a horse and if things turn nasty, he can turn around and run or he may be cut down and the flag disappears in the melee. Once the flag has fallen a knight can also leave the field of battle without much loss of honour as the case is clearly lost.

The concept that it was dishonourable to flee whilst the standards are still flying also apply to the communal armies of Northern Italy. However, an enormous ox-driven cart can neither run away nor is it easily overturned. Hence the knights in the city armies held out longer and fought harder than anyone else. The loss of the Carroccio was the biggest humiliation a city could endure and the capture of an enemy carroccio tends to be celebrated for centuries afterwards. 

Ok, there we are. The Milanese are gathered around their carroccio, determined to defend it to the last. They had done that at their great victory at Legnano where emperor Barbarossa could not break the defence, was unhorsed and trampled into the ground. For three days he had been presumed dead before he returned to Pavia broken and dissheveled.

But this was a different emperor, and it seems a different Milanese army. Frederick and his men attacked in wave after wave. Only when night fell did they have to stop. Frederick ordered his men to sleep in their armour as fighting was to resume at first light. Meanwhile the 7000 Saracenbowmen on foot had arrived, either towards the end of the fighting or in the night.

At sunrise Frederick’s army witnessed a most unusual sight. The Milanese, famed for their courage and ferocity had left. The carroccio stood, undefended. They could see their enemies running home as fast as their legs could carry them. Those who had taken refuge in the nearby town of Cortenuova surrendered. 1000 knights and 3000 foot soldiers were taken prisoner, including Pietro Tiepolo, the podesta of Milan, who was also the son of the doge of Venice.

Vert few medieval battles ended with such comprehensive defeat.

In the contemporary propaganda the battle and the narrative around it takes on a distinctly Roman tinge. Though most of the imperial knights had come from Germany their battle cry had allegedly not been German, but came out in the Latin of ancient Rome: Miles Roma, Miles Imperator they shouted – Roman soldiers, Imperial soldiers.

Frederick entered Cremona a few days later in the manner of a Caesar, Pompey or Trajan. As in the ancient Triumphs staged to honour successful generals, the spoils of war are paraded through the streets of Cremona. The great Carroccio of Milan is not pulled by oxen, but by one of Frederick’s elephants. On its platform, tied to the lowered mast that once flew the standard of proud Milan leans Pietro Tiepolo, podesta of the city and most noble of prisoners.

Frederick II has reached the absolute high point of his political career.

I finish with Ernst Kantorowicz interpretation of the event:

Quote: “The Emperor’s yellow banner with the Roman eagles floated aloft, while from a wooden tower on the elephant’s back trumpeters made known the triumph of the new Divus Caesar Augustus. The emperor himself told the Romans that his triumph was a reversion to the original Roman form.

The intoxication of this exotic, pagan-Roman, assuredly most unchristian, celebration of victory, marked a turning point in Frederick’s life. All the magnificent Roman titles which he, like his predecessors bore, were justified. The empty formula, meaninglessly used, “Imperator Invictus,” suddenly meant once more what it had meant of old. Without the need of transcendental interpretation he was now in the naked literal sense:

FELIX VICTOR AC TRIUMPHATOR.

The shades of Rome, of the Romans and their Caesars, had tasted blood: they began to stir again and to be visible in the flesh once more; a genuine breath of antiquity revivified by life itself.”

Yes, I too struggle with the weird pathos, but it isn’t that wide off the mark. Frederick at this stage of his life increasingly identifies with the emperors of ancient Rome and their practically unlimited power. It is this hybris that will stop him from turning an extremely rare complete victory into a sustainable political position. How that pans out we will discuss next week. I hope you will join us again.

Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to do advertising for products you do not want to hear about. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.    

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Barbarossa’s failed siege of Alessandria

This week we talk about Barbarossa’s next moves after his disastrous fourth Italian campaign. It takes him a few years to come to grips with the failure of his great imperial programme before he makes one last attempt to resurrect it.

History of the Germans
History of the Germans

A narrative history of the German people from the Middle Ages to Reunification in 1991. Episodes are 25-35 min long and drop on Thursday mornings.
“A great many things keep happening, some good, some bad”. Gregory of Tours (539-594)

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

The Interregnum and the early Habsburgs (#138 ff
– Rudolf von Habsburg (#139-141)
– Adolf von Nassau (#142)
– Albrecht von Habsburg (#143)
– Heinrich VII (#144-148)
– Ludwig the Bavarian (#149-153)
– Karl IV (#154-163)
The Reformation before the Reformation
– Wenceslaus the Lazy (#165)
– The Western Schism (#166/167)
– The Ottomans (#168)
– Sigismund (#169-#184
The Empire in the 15th Century
– Mainz & Hessen #186
– Printing #187-#188
– Universities #190
– Wittelsbachs #189, #196-#199
– Baden, Wuerrtemberg, Augsburg, Fugger (#191-195)
– Maps & Arms (#201-#202)
The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg
– Early habsburgs (#203-#207)
– Albrecht II (#208)
-Freidrich III (#209-

Ep. 59: Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190) – Wars in Italy – The City of Straw
byDirk Hoffmann-Becking
Ep. 59: Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190) – Wars in Italy – The City of Straw

Transcript

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 59 – The City of Straw

As you can hear I have a terrible cold and I am afraid it is sniffle, sniffle all the way through this episode. I will re-record it as soon as I am out of it, so if you find it irritating, delete this episode and reload it in say five days.  It if you cannot wait to find out what happens next, here is episode 59.

This week we talk about Barbarossa’s next moves after his disastrous fourth Italian campaign. It takes him a few years to come to grips with the failure of his great imperial programme before he makes one last attempt to resurrect it.

This episode also has an episode website to go with it where you can find transcripts, maps and images. And this time I will even help you find the page, it is on historyofthegermans.com/59

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Florian, Hans and Karin who have already signed up.

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On March 9th, 1168, Barbarossa left Italy via the pass of Mont Cenis disguised as a servant and accompanied by just a small number of attendants. He even had to leave his wife, Beatrix of Burgundy behind in the town of Susa whose inhabitants he feared were about to murder him. He arrived in Basel on March 15th, 1168, and he was not going to return to Italy before September 1174 making these 6 years the longest continuous stay in Germany during his entire reign.

So, how did he react to the catastrophe before Rome and the collapse of his imperial policy?

As we know, medieval monarchs are not exactly famous for oversharing, but we can  get  glimpses of his initial reaction from the circulars he  sent to the German princes in September 1167. That is when he was still in Italy raiding Milanese territory in a futile attempts to bring down the Lombard League.

At that time he writes, quote “the heavens were astonished and the whole world trembled at the news that certain cities of Lombardy, namely, Milan, Piacenza, Cremona, Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua and the Mark of Verona had rebelled against our majesty, against the honour of the empire without cause. The empire that had been preserved until now at great exercian and with the blood of so many illustrious men and princes”. End quote. He describes it as the “Imperium Teutonicorum”, the empire of the Germans, for the first and only time in his reign.  He goes on to say that the Italian cities no longer wished to be ruled by him or to be subject of the lordship of the Germans. But that he would rather die than leave his successors with a much-diminished Reich. This sudden outburst of nationalist sentiment is extremely unusual. Much has been made of this turn of phrase in the past, implying that people were beginning to  think in nationalist categories. But it is important to remember that this is literally the only time the term is used and that it is used at a point of extreme stress when Barbarossa is still figuring out what had gone so badly wrong. Hence  I like to see it as the exception that proves the medieval rulers did not think in nationalist categories.

A few weeks after this “honour or death” shout, he leaves Pavia to save his bacon. And, as I said, even leaves his wife behind as a decoy to escape his pursuers. That is an unexpected behaviour for the man. There was never any indication he lacked personal bravery. He was often found in the centre of the fighting, he even took on menial tasks like operated the battering ram in the siege of Crema, an effort that nearly got him burned to death.

Why did he run? It is not that he absolutely had to. He could have stayed in Pavia and if the city could withstand a siege for long enough, relief from Germany would surely have come. The princes may no longer have  been keen to support Italian campaigns, but they were honour bound to relieve their emperor.

I do not want to fall deep into armchair psychology, but it seems that Barbarossa is utterly shaken by the events of 1167. He had lost his army, he had lost Northern Italy, the funding source of his policies, he had lost Rainald von Dassel, his closest advisor, and he had lost the fight with Pope Alexander III. His standing in Europe had collapsed.

John of Salisbury wrote that quote “the ex-emperor driven out in disgrace and shame, is a fugitive and an exile from Lombardy, has thrown his own Burgundy into confusion as he passed through and has found all of Germany in uproar. Now the fall he has earned seems to be at hand” end quote.

John of Salisbury teaching philosophy, frontispiece miniature of the Policraticus by John of Salisbury, translated by Denis Foulechat.

For the next 6 months his chancery does not produce a single document. Barbarossa ceases to act as ruler, at least temporarily. Some chroniclers claim that Barbarossa had suffered a severe illness as an explanation for this inertia. Only gradually does he return to his previous levels of boundless energy.

Political priorities had to change in light of what had happened. For the first time since 1154, Germany becomes the centre of Barbarossa’s agenda.

His long absences and regular demands for military support had eroded the ability of the imperial administration to maintain peace. Feuding amongst the princes had returned with a vengeance.

In his own homeland of Swabia, the counts of Tubingen and Welf VI were tied in a deadly struggle that had pulled in both the dukes of Zaehringen and the Frederick of Rothenburg, the duke of Swabia.

Tubingen and its castle as it looked in 1643

And then his young brother, Konrad, the Count Palatinate on the Rhine fought with the archbishopric of Cologne, pitting two of the emperors closest supporters against each other..

Burg Rheineck, the cause of teh disagreement between Konrad and the archbishops of Cologne

The biggest source of turmoil was however Saxony. Henry the Lion as duke of Bavaria and duke of Saxony had become an overbearingly powerful force. Whilst Barbarossa had been in Italy, Henry had expanded his territory eastwards into what is today Mecklenburg and Pommern. These lands had been occupied by pagan Slavic peoples since the days of the Great Migration. Margrave Gero and Hermann Billlung had conquered them but they threw off the imperial yoke in 983. After that they been subject to regular raids by Saxon nobles but a permanent integration into the empire was no longer on the agenda. That changed with Lothar III It is now under Henry the Lion that these territories are permanently settled by colonists from Saxony and Flanders and cities like Lübeck, Schwerin and Rostock are established. The last purely pagan society on the Island of Rügen is forcibly Christianised in 1172.  Henry built himself the palace fortress of Dankwarderode, now in the centre of Braunschweig, a structure that rivalled any royal or imperial residence in size and splendour. In 1164 he had become engaged to the then 9-year-old daughter of king Henry II of England, Matilda. The marriage took place in 1168 with all the pomp and circumstance of a royal wedding. His position and demeanour had by now become king-like in every aspect.

Wedding of Henry teh Lion and Matilda of England

For his fellow Saxon nobles such behaviour was unacceptable. Albrecht the Bear and his sons, the Wettiner counts of Meissen and Lusatia, the Landgrave of Thuringia, the archbishops of Magdeburg and of Hamburg-Bremen formed the core of the opposition. As we have seen the Saxons have always been most insistent on their ancient rights and freedoms defending them against emperors. Nor were they willing to bend themselves to a mere duke. An veritable war broke out between Henry and the Saxon magnates which resulted in the burning of Bremen and sieges of Magdeburg and Goslar.

See Welf lands (green) and the lands of Albrecht the Baer top right in pink (unfortunately same colour as Staufer lands

Barbarossa ordered the magnates and Henry the Lion to appear before the Reichstag but the rebels did not head the call, Only upon the third summons did they show, fearing that a no-show would result in an imperial ban. Barbarossa’s efforts resulted in a truce which turned into a more permanent settlement after Albrecht the Baer had died aged 70. The settlement was however not at all equitable. Barbarossa had continued his policy of keeping the Welf on side, almost at all costs. Underlying it was the notion that a united front of the by far most powerful duke and the emperor was the best guarantee for stability.

But it wasn’t much more than stability. The reluctance of the Saxon nobles to show up for the Reichstag is a clear indication that they either did not expect a fair hearing, or worse, did no longer respect the imperial authority.

The silver lining in this otherwise quite grim time came from an unexpected windfall of the catastrophic events before Rome. Before 1168 Barbarossa had very little allodial property, i.e., property he owned in his own right. His most valuable possession was the county of Burgundy he had received through marriage to Beatrix.. His father and his uncle Konrad III had built up a large territorial powerbase stretching along the Rhine River from around Basel to outside Mainz and then along the Main River and into Nürnberg. But the majority of these lands had gone to Frederick of Rothenburg, the son of Konrad III as compensation for missing out on the crown. Rothenburg also took over as duke of Swabia from Barbarossa. Rothenburg died before Rome without an heir and Barbarossa inherits his lands.

The other magnate who died before Rome was Welf VII, the only son of Welf VI, Barbarossa’s uncle and friend. Grieving over the loss of his only son the older Welf gave himself away to a life of debauchery. Hunting, drinking, mistresses, lavish feasts and largesse drained his finances so that he sold his rights to the Lands of Matilda to Barbarossa in 1173.  His true wealth was however in the lands of Swabia around lake Constance/ Those he offered to sell to his nephew Henry the Lion, who was however too stingy to pay the old man on time. So, Barbarossa came in, provided his old friend with the means to enjoy a bit more of his carnal comforts in exchange for some of the richest lands North of the Alps.

Next one was the inheritance of Rudolf of Pfullendorf, another member of Barbarossa’s inner circle who also lost his only son before Rome. This required a bit more finesse as Rudolf was still alive and his daughter was married to the Count of Habsburg. But somehow, he finagled that one and another chunk of valuable Swabian territory came to him. To appease the Habsburgs, they were given the county of Zurich and the advocacy over the abbey of Saeckingen. So, if you had ever asked yourself how come that Wilhelm Tell and the Swiss Confederacy were oppressed by the Habsburgs, that is why.

Then there are a number of further lands he received, again mostly from his closest friends who either themselves or whose male heirs had died on his campaigns. Some he bought, some he wrestled from the heirs in ways that weren’t always cricket. I will not bore you with the names of all the places, but what he ended up with was a fairly coherent territory. If you follow along of historyofthegermans/59 you can see the map showing the Hohenstaufen controlled territories covering a lot of Southwest Germany and an extension eastward onto the modern Czech-German border. This process went on until the end of his reign at which point the personal territories of the Hohenstaufen were almost all coherent and sizeable as those of the Welf.  

Staufer lands in the south west before 1168 (left) and by the end of Barbaroissa’s reign (right)

The sudden focus on enlarging the dynastic territory is probably the biggest political U-turn of Barbarossa’s reign. Until 1168 his political concept was to create an imperial authority that lives above the squabbles of mere princes and cities. A Holy Roman Empire that is universal and can demand allegiance and support in exchange for providing security and the rule of law. The funding of that entity should come from imperial regalia rather than from the territories of the reigning monarch.

He does not give up on that notion, but his build-up of the dynastic lands of the Hohenstaufen is his plan B should the grand plan of being the undisputed leader of Christianity fail permanently.

But this is not the only strategic shift. His attitude towards the schism also shifted. His antipope Paschalis III had died in 1168 and his cardinals had elected a new anti-pope, Calixtus III. Though Barbarossa formally recognised him, he never met the antipope, he did little to support him..

The papal project had clearly failed, and Barbarossa needed to find a way out of it. His biggest constraint was the oath of Wurzburg, where he had sworn not to ever recognise Roland Bandinelli as Pope. As the emperor he could not walk away from this oath without a devastating blow to his credibility and prestige.

In 1169 he came up with a somewhat convoluted but at the same time genius plan. He had made the German princes elect his 4-year-old second son as King Henry VI. He then offered that his son would swear allegiance to Alexander III as the only pope, in exchange for a coronation. That would have solved most problems. Alexander could declare that the empire had returned into the fold of the catholic church, whilst Barbarossa would not have to break his oath. But it did not work out. Barbarossa insisted that all the bishops appointed by his antipopes like Christian of Mainz and Philip of Cologne remained in place which was something Alexander could not accept since there were archbishops of Mainz and Cologne. With two archbishops of Cologne, who will crown the new king. Schisms are messy and they get messier the longer they last.

Little Henry VI was crowned king in August 1169 in Aachen by the archbishop of Cologne, one of those appointed by the antipope. As for his two brothers, his older brother Frederick had been sickly all his life and died either before or shortly after Henry’s coronation.  Henry’s younger brother was initially called Konrad but then renamed Frederick after the death of the eldest. He became the duke of Swabia, though at the age of three his father ran the duchy for the next decade or so.

Having a son who is now king and another one who is a duke means there are options to strengthen the political position of the house of Hohenstaufen through marriages.

The oldest son had been promised to the younger daughter of King Henry II of England. But that son was now dead. And so was the relationship with King Henry II. Barbarossa had tried to forge closer ties with Henry II during the schism as the King of England had himself a major issue with the church. That issue was called Thomas a Beckett. This is not the place to go into detail on this and I assume many of you know the story anyway. But as far as we are concerned, the important point was that Pope Alexander III managed to keep both sides, the archbishop of Canterbury and King believing he was supporting them. So Henry II never really came around to the imperial side even though he did send some envoys to the oath of Wurzburg event. There was even a very brief moment after the murder of Thomas a’Beckett where Barbarossa had his hopes up that England would come across but that vanished quickly. The murder, as we know, backfired badly and Henry II had to do penance before the shrine of his now saintly adversary, which also meant that he was pretty much tied for good to Alexander III.

And that meant Barbarossa turned to Henry II’s arch-enemy, King Louis VII of France, the guy who had stood him up at the bridge near Dijon in 1164. In the world of medieval realpolitik, this was literally water under the bridge. The two monarchs meet in February 1171 on another bridge near another town. And that meeting is a lot more successful. They discover they have something in common, both do not like Henry II very much, which is enough to agree a marriage between Louis’s daughter to Henry VI. They also agreed a treaty of friendship and interestingly agreed to jointly fight the feral mercenary troops of Brabanters that had become a menace after they had returned home to the low countries from Barbarossa’s campaign. We can see a glimpse of the late middle ages here already.

That marriage however never took place because Alexander III appealed to Louis’s brother the archbishop of Reims to block it. But a bridge was built between the Hohenstaufen and the Capetians that would only strengthen over time.

That project having fallen through, another appeared on the horizon, a marriage to Maria, the daughter of emperor Manuel in Constantinople. That is a bit of a surprise, right. Last time we heard about Manuel, he had been funding the league of Verona and teamed up with Venice against the Holy Roman Empire. What happened?

The thing that always happens when 5 guys team up to kick one guy. Suddenly they realise they only ever shared one objective, defeating their enemy. Barbarossa five adversaries in the 1160s were Pope Alexander III, the Sicilians, Venice, the Lombard league and emperor Manuel. All of them felt threatened by Barbarossa’s power in Northern Italy and had buried their differences to overcome him. But now that he is gone, they realise that they have very little in common after all. The first crack appeared in the relationship between Venice and Constantinople. Manuel had been fighting for decades in the Balkans and had just occupied the coast of what is now Croatia. That was within the Venetian zone of influence. Moreover, Manuel also had sort of control of Ancona, on the opposite shore of the Adriatic. Venice was concerned that Manuel could block their shipping routes. And with good reason, because that is exactly what Manuel wanted to do. It is the whole reason why he wasted money on Italian squabbles and wanted a foothold in Italy. And Manuel was right to be afraid of the Venetians, because merely 34 years later they will put an end to the Byzantine empire of old. In 1169 Venice ordered its citizens to leave Constantinople, effectively a trade embargo. Manuel reacted by getting in touch with Pisa and Genoa to make up the shortfall and had all Venetians on his territory  arrested.  He still had a problem, his navy was no match for the Venetians. He needed to stop them to come down the Bosporus and burn his capital to the ground. The only one who could prevent that was King William of Sicily. A marriage alliance is hastily concluded and William is promised the princess Maria. So far so good, but then an epidemic breaks out in Venice and suddenly there is no longer a threat to Constantinople. Manuel who does not trust the Sicilians any more than the Venetians decides to leave William waiting by the alter, something William II of Sicily will never forgive. And so, Manuel now has a spare daughter and an open slot for an ally. Having pissed off everyone else, Barbarossa becomes a choice. Some negotiations ensue that go on until 1174 but nothing comes of it.

Byzantine empire shortly after Manuel. see teh adriatic with Ancona pointed out

An even more unexpected diplomatic effort was directed at Saladin, the ruler of Egypt and avowed enemy of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. They exchanged letters and in 1173 Saladin’s envoys come to Germany bringing gifts and the proposal of a marriage between the sultan’s son and the emperor’s daughter. That is quite something, an alliance between the enemy of the Christians in the middle east and the Holy roman empire. Anyway did not happen either.

Whilst this goes on, another line of diplomacy opens up between Barbarossa and King William II of Sicily, the unlucky suitor of little Maria. He is offered Barbarossa’s daughter Beatrice as part of an alliance between Sicily and the Holy Roman Empire. Now that is new. Ever since the Sicilians had appeared on the scene, the emperors had been fighting them tooth and nail, apart from that very first time they appeared and Conrad II made Rainulf count of Aversa in 1038.

What is clear is that the great anti-Barbarossa alliance is breaking apart. In the end their interests are not as closely aligned as they appeared. And even the imperial position in Italy had made a modest recovery. Pisa and Genoa remained at least positively disposed if not supportive of the empire. A not insignificant chunk of the Lands of Matilda in Tuscany remained loyal. The city of Rome had opened its gates to Paschalis III and even the rather useless anti-pope Calixtus III could hang on to the Holy City, at least as long as the Senate remained opposed to Alexander III.  

In 1174 Barbarossa concludes that he should make one last attempt to re-establish his old dream of the universal empire. As I said, he had invested much in his plan B and was in negotiations with all and sundry, even with Alexander III, but the dream of world domination is hard to give up.

If the grand coalition of the five major powers of Alexander III, Sicily, the Lombard League, Venice and Manuel had broken down on the back of internal differences, why wouldn’t the Lombard league break apart as well. Cremona and Milan had been at each other’s throats ever since the Italian communes had first emerged. And what about Lodi, Como, Novara, Vercelli or Bergamo, did they really live happily under Milanese hegemony? Pavia was still standing and a still an ally.

The Lombard League

In September 1174 Barbarossa appears with an army of 8000 milites in Italy. Knights they were not, but almost all mercenaries. Hardly any of the German princes had volunteered to follow their emperor across the alps. The only names that are confirmed participants in the venture apart from the usual gaggle of bishops, was Barbarossa’s brother Konrad, duke Oldrich of Bohemia who owed the emperor his position and the ever faithful Otto von Wittelsbach.

The only pass open to this army was the Mont Cenis, in what is today the French alps. That is the emergency pass, the one emperors take when things are going badly. It is the pass Henry IV took in that winter dash to hold off Gregory VII and the one Barbarossa had fled across 6 years earlier. None of the traditional routes could be taken as all of them were in the control of the League or of Venice. That led him past the town of Susa whose inhabitants wanted to kill him in his bed 6 last time he passed. Never one for mercy, he had the whole city burned to the ground.

The major alpine passes (then and now)

From there the army progress into Piedmont where they meet up with the army of the Margrave of Montferrato.  Turin and Asti opened their gates. From there, instead of following the open road to Pavia he headed to a red rag the Lombards and the pope had put in his way. That red rag was the city of Alessandria.

There are over 40 cities called Alexandria in Europe and Asia from Alexandria in Egypt, Iskenderum in Turkey,  Termez in Uzbekistan, Merv in Turkmenistan, Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan and even half a dozen cities in Pakistan. The US alone has more than 30 cities called Alexandria.

Not any of those would have brought the wrath of the emperor upon it, because they are all named after Alexander the Great. Alessandria in Italy is not. Alessandria was created in 1168 from a couple of small settlements along the via Emilia. It was created by the Lombard League and they named it after -drumroll- Pope Alexander III. They definitely knew how to trigger this German warrior. Alessandria had to be destroyed. It did not matter that it was not even on his way towards Lombardy or that it was a modest settlement without a major garrison that could attack the supply lines. No, Alessandria had to be wiped out.it was a matter of honour and principle.

Barbarossa’s army had been further reinforced with troops from the ever-faithful city of Pavia and counted almost 20,000 men. The citizens of Alexandria most likely less than half that number were prepared to surrender as soon as the host appeared. If the city surrendered without a fight, the conventions of medieval warfare demanded that the city would remain standing. And that was a no go. Who cares about strategy and genuine military objectives when the reputation of the Empire is at stake.

The army settled down for a siege. It should have been a quick thing. Alessandria had only been founded in 1168 and its walls were not completed in stone but mostly of wood. Its defenders were the citizens of this new town reinforced by just 150 soldiers from Piacenza. The Germans called it the city of straw and believed they could make short thrift of it. But hey, were they wrong.

The founders of Alessandria may not have been able to finish the city walls in stone, but they had dug deep ditches and redirected the river to flow around the city. These turned out to be formidable barriers. The siege started in late autumn and the winter was unseasonably cold. Incessant rain turned the imperial camp into a swamp. The Bohemians deserted. Provisions were scarce. It was ridiculous, this one-horse town was resisting the might of the empire for 6 months.

At Easter 1175 Barbarossa agreed a ceasefire for the holiday and the citizens of the battered settlement agreed. It is a measure of how desperate Barbarossa is by now. Despite it being a holy day and the promise of a ceasefire he ordered 200 of his best men to enter the city through tunnels dug during the siege. His army waited outside the gates, ready to storm once the gates are opened from inside. But the invaders were spotted and killed. The gates did open, but instead of the crack team of Delta Force, the defenders sallied froward, ran down the surprised attackers and burned the siege engines with all their occupants.

The siege of Alessandria in a “patriotic” painting from 1851

On Easter Sunday, April 13th Barbarossa burned and abandoned his camp. He marched towards an approaching Lombard army that was finally sent to relieve Alessandria. The city of straw turned out to be a city of iron. 

The emperor with his chastened army of mercenaries and the whiff of sacrilege hanging over him is heading into battle against the Lombard league.

Next week we will see how this pans out. I hope you will join us again.

Before I go I have to ask you something. I have now been going for over a year with more than 60 episodes in the can. Looking back I realised that I have spent a large chunk of time on growing the audience through social media posts and the like. I do enjoy this to a degree but on balance the time would be better invested in the actual content of the podcast, the website and the offer to Patrons whose generosity keeps this whole thing going and advertising free. Thanks again to all of you lovely Patrons. Let me get to the point. Would you be prepared to put the word out about the History of the Germans? Post something on social media, maybe share one of the recent Audiograms I posted on Twitter and Facebook, forward the link to the podcast to your friends and family, or write a nice review. If you endorse the History of the Germans it is so much more powerful than me telling everyone how wonderful my podcast is. So again thanks to you all for listening and liking the podcast and see you next week.

by on

Italy united against Frederick Barbarossa

This week we will talk about the second part of the pincer movement that brought that Hohenstaufen construct of imperial power crashing down to earth. The first was the schism in the Latin church and the second was the link-up of almost all northern Italian communes in a coalition against Barbarossa, the Lombard League.

History of the Germans
History of the Germans

A narrative history of the German people from the Middle Ages to Reunification in 1991. Episodes are 25-35 min long and drop on Thursday mornings.
“A great many things keep happening, some good, some bad”. Gregory of Tours (539-594)

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

The Interregnum and the early Habsburgs (#138 ff
– Rudolf von Habsburg (#139-141)
– Adolf von Nassau (#142)
– Albrecht von Habsburg (#143)
– Heinrich VII (#144-148)
– Ludwig the Bavarian (#149-153)
– Karl IV (#154-163)
The Reformation before the Reformation
– Wenceslaus the Lazy (#165)
– The Western Schism (#166/167)
– The Ottomans (#168)
– Sigismund (#169-#184
The Empire in the 15th Century
– Mainz & Hessen #186
– Printing #187-#188
– Universities #190
– Wittelsbachs #189, #196-#199
– Baden, Wuerrtemberg, Augsburg, Fugger (#191-195)
– Maps & Arms (#201-#202)
The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg
– Early habsburgs (#203-#207)
– Albrecht II (#208)
-Freidrich III (#209-

Ep. 58: Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190) – Wars in Italy – The Lombard League
byDirk Hoffmann-Becking
Ep. 58: Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190) – Wars in Italy – The Lombard League

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – The Lombard League

This week we will talk about the second part of the pincer movement that brought that Hohenstaufen construct of imperial power crashing down to earth. The first was the schism in the Latin church and the second was the link-up of almost all northern Italian communes in a coalition against Barbarossa, the Lombard League.

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Frank, Rita and Alexander who have already signed up.

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And there are another two housekeeping issues. First, I have a slot at the Intelligentspeech conference on June 25th where I will talk about Crossing the Alps, the German’s relationship with Italy. Many of the things we discuss right now will feature there but also the 18th century longing for “land where the lemons bloom” as well as the nationalist narratives of the 19th and 20th centuries that still have repercussions into modern politics, specifically the Sovereign Debt crisis of 2012. There will be lots more amazing podcasters to listen to so get in there. Jamie Jeffers from the Britsh History Podcast is our star turn. The conference is fully online. Early bird tickets cost $20 and you get 10% discount using the offer code “Germans”.

https://www.intelligentspeechconference.com

The other thing I wanted to tell you about is that I am revamping the Website historyofthegermans.com. There will now be episode pages with the transcript and maps and images to help you follow along. The idea is that you can listen to the podcast and read along with the transcript and when we talk geography a map will show up, when I talk about some church or castle, an image comes up etc. Check it out and leave a comment, even if you think this was not that helpful. It is quite a bit of work and if it isn’t great, then I rather spend my podcast time on something else.

Enough of this, let’s start the show.

Last week we talked about the schism and the catastrophic loss of the army in Rome in the summer of 1167. I did mention that during the time the schism was escalating, Northern Italy had gradually gone into open revolt. To trace these development we go back to the exact same spot where last episode started, the year 1162, when Barbarossa stands in the smouldering ruins of Milan, the city he had ordered to be destroyed and its population to be expelled.

The “chessboard” of Italian citiy alliances before 1162 – pro-Milanese black and anti-Milanese red

After all that military gore and glory our great ruler had to sit down to the boring drudgery of  building a sustainable administration. This administration was to implement the laws of Roncaglia. The laws that had been modelled on the Roman Law of the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine had a professional civil service, an elaborate system of tax assessment and a fair judiciary.

That was something Barbarossa and his advisers had never seen before.. The only monarchy that had something approximating an administrative infrastructure with regular tax income, functionaries reporting to the ruler and central oversight was England. Roland von Dassel had been to England recently but if he had shown an interest in this sophisticated system, it did not impact the setup for the Kingdom of Italy.

The Justinian code itself was also less than useful. It is all good to say that the emperor is the source of all laws, that judges appointed by the ruler adjudicate on his behalf and that taxes can be raised at will. What the codex did not say was that these powers were unlimited only in theory. Even the all powerful Roman emperors had to restrain their lawmaking to things the population could swallow, had to provide justice that was fair in the vast majority of cases and raise taxes equitably. There  should have been a manual, but there wasn’t. Knowledge of the limits of absolute power had been handed down from emperor to emperor and administration to administration. For Barbarossa and his advisors this was unknown territory. They were like teenagers who have been given a drone to play with. Yes they understand how to get the thing in the air but they have no idea how to fly them.

So they made it up as they went along.

Barbarossa’s government had three main elements. The first were the consuls and Podestas of the cities. Some of them were elected by the citizens and the approved by the emperor, that was the case in places like Lodi, Cremona and Pavia, all trusted allies. On the other side of the equation were the former enemies, most prominently Milan where the podesta was an appointed dictator, usually one of Barbarossa’s close advisors. Then there were variations on the theme like Ravenna, where the imperial envoy would lead the election process when in town but otherwise they were free.. And finally there were the maritime republics of Genoa and Pisa that were so powerful that the administration operated without any imperial interference.

The other institution were the imperial legates. This concept was borrowed from the system of papal legates who have acted as very effective representatives of the Pope since the early days of the Church reform.

There were two kinds of legates, the general legate and legates sent for specific tasks.

The general legate was supposed to represent the emperor, hold court, mediate between hostile parties or cities, impose penalties, invest consuls and podestas and receive oaths of allegiance. The general legate or legate for Italy was effectively a sort of viceroy who exercised the entire authority of the emperor. When Barbarossa went home to Germany in 1163, none other than Rainald von Dassel became the viceroy of Italy. Other legates were sent to deliver specific objectives like collect the Fodrum from reluctant cities or raise soldiers. Sometimes the legate was also made the podesta.

An imperial legate taking oaths from Italian cities (a little later from Sercambi’s History of Lucca

And then we have another function, the Vicarius or imperial vicar. His job was to be the head of the judiciary, in particular act as the imperial court of appeal.

Even a cursory look at this structure tells you that there were huge problems with it. The job of Vicarius and general legate have a lot of overlap to start with.

Then there is the inconsistency of imperial influence in the government of the individual cities that would make many feel hard done by. But what really undermined confidence in this imperial administration is the application of the tax laws.

In Roncaglia the Four Great Doctors of law had produced a comprehensive list of all the imperial regalia in each of the cities. That should have been a good start for a reasonably equitable execution of the rights. Most of these regalia had been pre-existing, hence the citizens were used to pay them. The only difference would have been that instead of the funds going to the bishop or the city oligarchy, they would be sent to the imperial legate.

But as you remember, the laws of Roncaglia had another set of provisions, one being the “Lex Tributum”. That asserted the right to levy a poll tax on both  individuals and property. From 1162 the  imperial Podestas gradually introduced these kinds of taxes..

Taxes are always unpopular, in particular newly introduced taxes. And these poll taxes were new in many territories where they would now be applied. The other thing is that tax discipline is linked to whether people think taxes are equitable. Are they levied based on ability to pay, used for a common good and proportional. The taxes raised by imperial legates and podestas  between 1162 and 1167 were none of that.

To start with. Barbarossa did neither have nor did he commission the equivalent of a Doomsday book. He therefore had no idea of the money generation capacity of individual cities. Without that he could not determine who amongst his podestas was particularly egregious. The second element was that the taxation burden fell initially predominantly on the cities that had just been defeated, Milan, Brescia, Piacenza. As these demands weren’t a one-off reparation but seemed a permanent feature of imperial tax policy, these cities could not envisage a point in time where they could live with this new government.

Doomsday book is the record of the “Great Survey” of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of William the Conqueror. The survey’s main purpose was to determine what taxes had been owed during the reign of Edward the Confessor, thereby allowing William to reassert the rights of the Crown and assess where power lay after a wholesale redistribution of land following the Norman conquest

As for the level of taxation we have only biased and not very detailed accounts. Hence we cannot say for certain whether it was oppressive. It is however likely that taxation became excessive, maybe not right at the beginning, but certainly as time went by. And that had to do with a material change in the shape of the imperial army.

By 1162 Barbarossa had spent roughly half his reign in the South and the German princes had supplied him with knights and foot soldiers as they were obliged to under feudal law. We do not know what exactly these feudal obligations were, specifically how many and how often they can be called upon to send troops. But it is noticeable that after 1162 fewer and fewer of the great secular princes came down to Italy. Henry the Lion did not come along in 1167, nor did Henry Jasomirgott or Albrecht the Baer. And when they did, they may have asked for payment. We have one case in the 1175 campaign of a secular prince asking for a subsidy. Hence the German component of the army was predominantly made up of the contingents from the bishoprics and friends and family of Barbarossa. To make up for the shortfall Barbarossa now has to hire mercenaries. And those are expensive, in particular if the campaigns are prolonged.

Where is that cash to come from? Before 1167 Barbarossa’s personal landholdings were fairly modest. Revenues from the royal domain were also not huge based on the limited evidence available. Hence the funding needs had to be covered by the Italian communes. As time goes by  princes become ever more reluctant to die in Italy, leading to more need for mercenaries, which means more funding needs. Soon the tax collection and enforcement of regalia tightens, not just in Milan, Brescia and Piacenza, but everywhere, including the most loyal of loyals, Lodi, Pavia and Cremona.

Staufer family lands in red. The dark is the family owned lands, though most of it was held by Frederick v. Rothenburg until 1167

A rising burden of taxation is usually enough to upset people, but what makes them really, really angry is if the tax collectors are biased and corrupt. Again, all sources we have are from Italians who paid the taxes, but given how medieval notions of property work, it is likely the imperial podestas saw the city the administered as a fief. And as such they could squeeze it at will without breaking the honour code. They did have to send some of the money to the emperor, sure, but all the excess is theirs, right. It is a sign of the immaturity of this administrative system that there was no  accountability and oversight, and absent a register of wealth like the doomsday book, none could be established..

By tradition the oppressed cities had a right to appeal to the emperor and the princely court. But Barbarossa had de facto abolished this right to appeal. He made the vicarius and the legates the highest judges  in the land. There was no possibility to formally take the case further. Even when the citizens of Milan fell on their knees by the side of the road and demanded a hearing, he brushed them off and directed them to Rainald von Dassel.

There we are, new taxes, taxes that are constantly going up and tax collectors that fill their pockets by squeezing even harder and no recourse to imperial justice. In that scenario it was always unlikely that Milan, Brescia and Piacenza would ever become loyal vassals of the empire. These cities will forever dream of throwing off the imperial yoke and take revenge. But when this system gets extended to the loyal cities, they feel even more enraged. They had helped Barbarossa to defeat Milan and its allies, and now they are treated no better than their former foes.

What drives the nail in the coffin is that when uprisings begin, the legates have to grant privileges and exemptions to those cities who threaten to join the uprisings. As city A sees that city B gets relief from taxation for promising not to join city C in rebellion, then City A has all the incentives in the world to at least pretend to rebel. With more and more cities taken off the roster, the remaining ones, i.e., the defeated and the most loyal have to shoulder it all. That is when the powder keg explodes.

But I am jumping ahead. Let’s take it chronologically.

In November 1162 Barbarossa returns back to Germany. He leaves Rainald von Dassel as general legate for Italy behind. The cities of Piacenza, Brescia, Bergamo and Ferrara receive a German count as imperial podesta. The citizens of Milan have to live in a number of villages outside the now empty city are administrated by the bishop of Liege.

Lombardy again

Who was the most oppressive of these podestas is a bit of a tossup between the bishop of Liege and Arnold of Dorstadt who was put in charge of Piacenza. Von Dorstadt systematically plundered the finances of the city that was already struggling with paying back a massive loan taken from Pavia.  Piacenza finally bought off  their podesta with the staggering sum of 11,000 marks of silver. But even that was not enough and the great nobleman allegedly plundered the treasury of the church of Saint Antony on his way out. He seemed to have had pangs of guilt later in life and used his cash to fund the abbey of Dorstadt in his hometown..

The Bishop squeezed the Milanese hard, taking ¼ of all the tilled crops and 1/3 of all the nuts, chestnuts and hay one summer. On top of that he had them bring 100 carts of firewood to the imperial palace at Monza during an imperial visit where they were also made to erect a vast brand-new kitchen that’s supposedly cost 1,000 pounds.

Another key position went to Otto von Wittelsbach who had received the castle of Garda as his personal fief Garda sits on lake Garda and was once the prison for the empress Adelheid. But that was 200 years earlier. By 1162 Garda’s job was to keep an eye on the city of Verona and the Brenner pass.

The Castle of Garda

The Veronese, lukewarm in their allegiance to the empire at the best of times, took offence at having this daredevil fighter right on their doorstep. And in all likelihood old Otto did I am sure the odd spot of plundering and squeezing of merchants and peasants. So the Veronese, together with the citizens of Padua and Vicenza demanded an imperial hearing when Barbarossa had come back to Italy in the winter of 1163. Barbarossa may be able to ignore a rabble of defeated Milanese kneeling in the dirt before his carriage, but he could not quite ignore three major city states requesting an audience.

Some talks were held in Pavia, the bottom line of which was that Verona, Padua and Vicenza would get their day in court provided they accepted an imperial podesta. The imperial allies in Lodi, Cremona, Pavia etc. tried to convince their colleagues that this was nothing but a formality and that in their case the freely elected consuls were made podesta as a matter of course.

But Verona, Padua and Vicenza refused. They had found the guts to resist not just in the strength of their walls and a quick inspection of the rather modest number of soldiers the emperor had brought down with him. What stiffened their resolve was that they had received pledges of support from Venice and from none other than Emperor Manuel in Constantinople. Venice motivation to get involved was fairly simple to deduce. A coherent, tax raising and expansionist Holy Roman empire on their doorstep was the last thing they wanted. And Venice had declared for Alexander III in the deepening schism.

As for Manuel, he had decided long time ago that Italy was his main political objective. Having a foothold on the peninsula was his way to ensure a measure of control over Sicilian, Crusader and Venetian ambitions to take over his empire. And as we know, he had good reason to worry about that. It is also around this time that Manuel is discussing a reconciliation of the Eastern and Latin church with Alexander III with him as emperor both in the East and in the West. Manuel had hence an interest in undermining Barbarossa’s power base in Italy. Barbarossa on the other hand kept attacking the city of Ancona, the main ally of Byzantium on the Italian mainland.

In early 1164 Verona, Padua and Vicenza formed the league of Verona. This was the first league of Italian cities and the first created to defy imperial authority. The members of the league promised each other mutual support against any attack.

The League of Verona (blue) and teh cities that promise neutrality (green)

Barbarossa had no other option than to attack Verona. This siege quickly revealed how fragile imperial administration had become within the two years following the fall of Milan. His own troops from across the alps counted just a few hundred knights. His closest allies provided support, but their enthusiasm was somewhat lukewarm. The siege lasted a sum total of 5 days and ended with imperial withdrawal. The swift and humiliating abandonment of the siege was blamed simultaneously on a bout of malaria and the imminent birth of Barbarossa’s first son, but who cares. What mattered was that the league of Verona had prevailed.

This failure further undermined the imperial administration. The legates had to grant concessions to cities like Ferrara, Mantua and Treviso for the promise not to join the league of Verona.  Barbarossa even apologised for the behaviour of his representatives. This relief from imperial oppression provided quite some food for thought for the city oligarchs across northern Italy. On the one hand there was no legal or other recourse against the ever-increasing financial demands of the imperial legates, meaning these would only ever become harsher. On the other hand, defying the emperor and his creatures was seemingly a low-risk option.

After this debacle the emperor returned to Germany at the end of 1164. He intended to return, not just to go after the league of Verona but also to end the schism by force. And that required a much larger army, an army his German princes would by now be unwilling to provide. And that meant he needed even more mercenaries, which meant he needed even more money. So, he instructed his administrators in Italy to squeeze out as much as they could get from the communes. According to Cardinal Boso, a supporter of pope Alexander III, Barbarossa had become profoundly suspicious of the Italian cities and now preferred to be feared rather than loved by them.

But, where shall the money come from? The defeated communes, Milan, Brescia, Piacenza etc. were already stretched beyond breaking point. The waverers could not be touched for fear they would join the league of Verona. That leaves only one group, the loyal supporters of the empire, Lodi, Cremona, Pavia. A chronicler from Lodi writes that the imperial tax collectors did not just claim what was Caesar’s, but sevenfold what was owed. Everything was taxed, the mills, fishing in the river, hunting with nets, hunting with dogs etc. The Lodese now felt that this oppressive rule was no longer bearable. It was better to die than to bear this humiliation and pain any longer.

The loyal cities initially believed this was mostly the work of the imperial legates and their appointees and that once the emperor was back he would put things right. At the end of 1166 Barbarossa was back.

He held a great assembly in Lodi, the city he had re-founded and supported ever since he first set foot into Italy 11 years earlier. The communes brought their complaints and appealed to the emperor to end the oppression. Barbarossa professed much sympathy for their plight, but in the end did nothing.

He was in a bind. Fundamentally he did not have the fiscal wriggle room to reduce the pressure. And when it came to the excesses of his governors and administrators, what could he do? Corruption and cruelty was so wide spread, for all we know he should send his entire staff home. And what then? After the debacle before Verona, many of the Lombards no longer feared him. His German supporters had come down with him in 1166 hoping for exactly that kind of plunder he would now prohibit. No, things had gone too far for now. Assuming he intended to do something about the obvious problems in his administration, he probably postponed it for after the campaign against Alexander III. Right now, there was nothing to be done.

This recurring refusal to provide justice is what tipped the Italian communes serious irritation first into despair and then into deep anger. The spark that blew up the already crumbly edifice that was the imperial administration came from Cremona.

There is a most likely apocryphal story about  one of the leaders of Cremona, a city that had stood with the imperial side through thick and thin for literally a hundred years. This eminent citizen, had been a member of Barbarossa’s inner circle. One day he was on his way to the council room when he was told that today he was not welcome. Concerned about what was being discussed he investigated. He was utterly shaken when uncovered Barbarossa’s plan. The emperor intended to bring down the walls of all Italian cities, fill their moats and disarm their guards so as to limit their ability ever to resist imperial demands. This Cremonese patrician subsequently invited all other Lombard leaders to the monastery of Pontida where he informed them of the intended final assault on their way of life. All northern Italian cities immediately promised to defend each other against the tyrant and so formed the Lombard League.

The oath of Pontida – 19th century Italian “patriotic” picture

Well this was indeed the result but the process was a bit more complicated. We might not know what triggered it, but in the spring of 1167 the cities of Mantua, Brescia and Bergamo and most importantly, Cremona, met for a colloquium to debate all the harm they had experienced by the hand of the imperial envoys. They agreed a pact of mutual support, modelled on the league of Verona, to defend each other against overreach by the legates.

The citizens of Milan who were still languishing in their village accommodation applied to join as soon as they heard. Cremona and Milan had fought each other for as long as anyone could remember. The same goes for Bergamo. The last thing these cities wanted was to swap imperial oppression against oppression from the Milanese. So they put harsh conditions on a Milanese participation in what is now called the Lombard league. Milan agreed to all their terms, including that Crema would never be rebuilt and its lands were to be granted to Cremona. No fortifications were to be built between Milan and Cremona and Milan and Bergamo etc., etc., pp

Milan, Trezzo and Lodi

All these negotiations happened in secret, but rumours were running like wildfire through the communes of Italy. The Imperial podesta in Milan became suspicious and demanded first a hundred new hostages, then 200 more. He asked for even more money, presumably to hire mercenaries. The army of Pavia mustered near Monza and some citizens of Milan who had been neutral or supportive of the empire received messages to leave their accommodation now, before they would all be wiped out. For days as their representatives negotiated with the other cities, the terrified population of Milan expected to be murdered in their beds and their houses torched.

On April 27th, 1167 first an army from Bergamo, then one from Brescia and finally from Cremona arrived near Milan. Under great jubilation they led the citizens back into their devastated city where they immediately began the slow process of rebuilding. The imperial administration of Milan and their support vanished without a trace.

In 1171 the Milanese honoured the cities of Cremona, Brescia and Bergamo by putting a relief and a plaque on the rebuilt Porta Romana depicting their  return under the shields of the Lombard League. And surprise, surprise that image is on the artwork for this episode.

The triumphant entry into Milan from 1171

The now five cities then took their armies to Lodi, that changed sides after a brief siege. Lodi, the city that the emperor had re-founded, where he had himself a great palace built that was the centre of his administration when he was in Italy, Lodi that had been a sworn enemy of Milan, that had been burnt down several times and that had so enthusiastically devastated Milan Lodi joined the Lombard League. The League then besieged the mighty castle of Trezzo that held the key to Lombardy and had been a focal point of military activity during the two previous sieges of Milan. Trezzo held out until mid- August hoping for relief but in vain. Piacenza was next to sign a treaty of friedship with its old friends the Milanese and its old archenemies, the Cremonese. The joint army moved on to Parma, a city Barbarossa was utterly convinced would remain loyal. Again, Parma surrendered and joined, as did Bologna. Less unexpectedly, several months later, on December 1, 1167 the league of Verona and the Lombard league joined together. They agreed on the key political objective, not to completely throw off the imperial yoke, but to limit the regalia to those exercised in the hundred years before Barbarossa’s reign.

Within a month the imperial administration in Italy had completely disintegrated. Only Pavia, Novara and Vercelli remained loyal to the emperor. I doubt that was because they loved the imperial tax collector but more that they feared the power of a resurgent Milan.

Lombard league mebers – white bit in the centre is Pavia

The old chessboard model of Italian politics where all the white squares were constantly at war with the black squares suddenly went all white, or all black, whatever you prefer. The imperial tyranny had forged a coherent political entity from Venice to Pisa and from Ferrara to Verona. If the emperor were to attack one city an army from all Lombard cities could be raised quickly and brought to its defence.

What did Barbarossa do? Well, you know already. He was in Italy in the spring and summer of 1167. With a very large army. This army however was directed at the city of Rome.

In hindsight, the right thing for him to do would have been to return to Lombardy when he heard about the formation of the league , overrun the still broken walls of Milan and call an end to this rebellion. Hindsight is a fabulous thing, but rarely available at decision time.

If we put ourselves into Barbarossa’s shoes, the options were two. He could go back up to Lombardy, but that would have meant to leave Alexander III in control of Rome. And that would have been the last time he had a shot at Alexander III. No way he could muster a similarly sized army again. The financial support from Lombardy would surely be reduced even if he regained the upper hand over the communes. And without money there will be no mercenaries and the princes certainly had enough of Italy.  

If on the other hand Rome falls quickly, he could turn his men around and still knock these pesky towns for six. It might even be easier because having captured Alexander III the schism would be over, and he would control the papacy.

Option 2 looks rationally the better one. What he is unlikely to have thought about was option 3, the thing that actually happened.

The great old defence mechanism of the popes, disease, ended all of Barbarossa’s plans. Only days after breaking the walls and gaining entry into the holy city, dysentery took hold. His men and a large number of princes died within days, amongst the Rainald von Dassel, the man who helped design his policies and who he had put in charge of Italy. That we talked about in detail last week.

Malaria in Italy

Barbarossa’s return journey from Rome in the summer of 1167 turned into a nightmare. He managed to get to Pisa, a city still loyal as no taxes had been levied there. They gave him a great reception and hosted a meeting where he made plans to go to Lombardy using soldiers from Pisa, Lucca and other Tuscan cities.  But before that army could muster the cries for help from Pavia became shrill. Lodi had sided with the League. He needed to get there fast if he wanted to rescue anything of his previous acquisitions. But crossing the Apennine mountains proved difficult. The city of Pontremoli, not one of the greatest of medieval Italian powers and previous recipient of imperial largesse blocked his path. Even they had joined the Lombard league. The imperial bodyguard was barely able to ensure the safety and security of the empress Beatrix and the two sons, barely toddlers at the time. She had to protect them rom flying arrows with her shield. They only got through by climbing along mountain paths above the town of Pontremoli.

Strategic positioon of Pontremoli on the route between Tuscany and Padua

Somehow they reached Pavia where Barbarossa declared the imperial ban over the cities of the Lombard league by throwing down the gauntlet. But all he could muster were a few raids into Milanese territory that had little effect. As the league geared up to besiege Pavia, the decision was made to go home. At that point even Novara and Vercelli joined the League.

We talked about the return journey last time. The bribe for the count of Savoy, the rush to Susa where he was nearly murdered and the solitary transition of the mountain pass. Next week we will talk about what he did when he got back – well for nearly 6 years, very little. Only after that does he gradually regain his mojo and takes another run at Italy. Let’s see how that pans out. I hope to see you then.

And in the meantime, if you feel like supporting the show or want to get hold of these bonus episodes, sign up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. All the links are in the show notes.

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….and then Barbarossa razes Milan to the ground

This week we will see how the Italian Communes take the Laws of Roncaglia. Not well is the understatement of the 12th century. Prepare for some epic sieges and harsh imperial justice.

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 56 – The siege of Crema

First up, a quick apology for the delayed publication of this episode. I did go away for Easter and all that chasing of eggs and barbecuing is not conducive to producing history podcasts. Normal service will resume next Thursday. 

This week we will see how the Italian Communes take the Laws of Roncaglia. Not well is the understatement of the 12th century. Prepare for some epic sieges and harsh imperial justice.

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Now back to the show. Last week Barbarossa promulgated the laws of Roncaglia, or more precisely endorsed the application of Roman law for the Italian part of the empire. Roman law was the laws of Imperial Rome where the emperor is the source of all laws and laws apply at the pleasure of the ruler. And more tangible terms, the emperor reclaimed almost all the imperial regalia, the rights to mint coins, charge tolls and hold markets, rights worth 30,000 pounds of silver annually. Not just that but he also asserted his right to build fortified palaces inside all Italian cities, take over their jurisdiction and appoint podestas with dictatorial powers. That made him at least theoretically the richest prince in Christendom.

Though I thought I had done a reasonable job with last episode, and it was one of the more research-intensive ones I have done, but I must admit that I had missed something quite important. I did not talk about what the emperor offered the Italian cities in return for all that gold, palaces and sheer power. His deal was the same deal his most eminent predecessor, the divine Augustus had offered the Roman people in exchange for their republican freedoms – peace.

Civil strife in Italy was even more endemic and certainly even more brutal than in Germany. Each one of these cities was out to destroy the other, raze them to the ground and salt the earth. This kind of  fighting had been going on for at least 40 years and from any third party perspective, the communes should be worn out and begging for peace.

Thomas Hobbes would have seen this anarchic situation where his Leviathan would naturally assume all the rights and powers to bring safety and security for his subjects to live in. And if you look at European history between 1100 and 1800, 9 out of 10 times a society was offered peace in exchange for submission, they took it.

But the world of the Italian communes in the 12th century was the odd one out. These cities were at it hammer and tongs and saw no reason to stop. They may not be quite a war hungry as the Greek Polis of the classical period, but war was in their blood. Peace was for the wimps over in Bergamo, Tortona, Lodi or whichever competitor your own city most despised. Conflict and violence was not limited to the relationship between communes but also within communes. There was regular fighting between the bishop, the urban aristocrats, the merchants, the lower vassals, major landowners in the Contado like monasteries, and the urban underclass, all that in ever changing alliances. To say it with the Mandalorian, this is the way.

And way, did Barbarossa not get that. He did understand violence, that is not the problem. He had grown up in the German civil wars of the investiture controversy. But the difference was that in Germany the fighting was between cousins who were coveting political dominance or a specific right or land. But they weren’t out to utterly eradicate their opponents, roots and all. The rules of chivalry that gradually emerged also put limitations on the violence. And finally, the political actors were individuals who could be appeased, whilst the city factions and whole cities were like the Lernean hydra where you can cut off one head and two new ones would grow in their stead.

Bottom line, peace was not what the Italians wanted. As for the other component of Barbarossa’s successful policy in Germany, the integration of the powerful magnates in the decision-making process, there seems to have been little of that in Italy. In the German lands he could use established processes like royal assemblies and courts of princes. Italy had no established coordination mechanism between the different communes and Barbarossa did not establish one. Whether he did not do that due to the complexity involved in regular consultations or out of snobbery is hard to determine from the sources.  

There we are. If the Italians are not willing to submit in exchange for peace, that can only mean one thing, war. And an epic war it will be, a war that lasts with interruptions for 19 years, until 1177. 

Barbarossa, despite all the learned speeches and smart Doctors of Law and all that clever legalese was not going to leave his great new governance model to chance. At Roncaglia he demanded hostages from all the cities, not just from hostile Milan and its allies or waverers like Verona and Piacenza, but even from loyal Pavia and Cremona who had supported him all the way.

The first issues did not materialize in Milan, but in Genoa. Genoa had traditionally been loyal to the empire and had sent valuable presents to the first assembly at Roncaglia in 1155. But they boycotted the second assembly in 1158 and had hence not sworn to the laws of Roncaglia. The emperor came down to Liguria and demanded fealty and the regalia from the proud maritime republic. The Genoese refused saying, quite rightly, that they occupied but a modest amount of land in the empire whilst protecting the Middle Sea from Barcelona to Rome from Muslim attack something it would cost the Reich 10,000 marks of silver a year if they did it themselves.

Well, neither side had appetite for a full-blown conflict. Barbarossa had dismissed the bulk of his army and Genoa’s walls were in a pitiful state. So, the parties came to an agreement whereby Genoa paid the cash-strapped German 1,200 Mark silver and made hollow promises to hand over the proceeds of the regalia in the future and Barbarossa declared himself satisfied. The Genoese did what any sensible city father would do afterwards. They rebuild their walls post haste and within 53 days they were back in a shape to repel any attacker, at which point they probably ceremoniously burned the laws of Roncaglia and called the departed emperor names. 

He did not hear that because he was already further south taking over administration of the Lands of Matilda in Tuscany. These lands were still contested between the Empire and the Papacy and had been granted to Welf VI, Barbarossa’s uncle. The Welf had however done pretty much nada with this extremely wealthy fief.  That was now to change, imperial administrators took up the collection of dues and cities were sworn to the laws of Roncaglia. This expansion of imperial authority did not stop at the borders of the papacy. Agents were dispatched as far south as Campania to collect the Fodrum and even the cities in the papal states were instructed to hand over the Regalia. All that irritated Pope Hadrian IV adding to the massive irritation he already felt for the man he had crowned not so long ago.

By early 1159 the new administration was taking shape. Imperial envoys, including Rainald von Dassel and Otto von Wittelsbach were sent on another tour of Lombardy, this time not to demand an oath and soldiers, but to install the new imperial Podestas. Amongst others they went to Pavia, Cremona and Piacenza where they selected two of the most respected and most loyal citizens and installed them as the city’s new rulers. These cities, even Piacenza that had traditionally been hostile and had been ordered to reduce their walls and fill in their moats accepted the imperial order.

The first real resistance came from the small town of Crema, east of Milan. Crema, like Piacenza had been traditionally allied with Milan. They were ordered to take down their walls completely. Why? Crema had not done anything to deserve this, well apart from being the archenemy of Cremona.  And the Cremonese had paid the emperor 15,000 mark of silver, another utterly shocking amount of money,  for getting rid of Crema.

Here is a bit of background to the history of Crema, which is the same word as cream in Italian and Cremona, which sounds a bit like large cream in Italian. Cremona is the older and larger city dating back to the Roman empire and is the seat of a bishop. Crema was a lot younger. It appears for the first time as a possession of Matilda of Tuscany in 1074. It was very much a new town that benefitted from drainage of the wet but fertile zone between the Adda and Oglio rivers. This new land attracted farmers from across Lombardy and also many aristocrats who were looking for a community away from the cities run by bishops and merchants. All that puts little Crema at loggerheads with Cremona. The Cremonese, inhabitants of Cremona saw the new settlement as an invasion of their territory. Crema was after all within the diocese of Cremona. The Cremasci, inhabitants of Crema, did not care much about ownership rights and dioceses. They reenforced their walls, established a strong and stable alliance with Milan and gained a reputation for military prowess that very much exceeded the size of their city.

The imperial order to take down their walls was nothing short of an order to abandon their home and subject themselves to Cremonese attack. No way the Cremasci could take it. They jumped the imperial envoys who barely escaped with their lives.

News of the events in Crema including the bribe of 15,000 quickly reached Milan. Not the kind of thing that lengthens the odds of a smooth implementation of the Laws of Roncaglia.

Rainald von Dassel and Otto von Wittelsbach had stopped at new Lodi when they heard the news. Initial soundings from the metropolitan city were not encouraging for Barbarossa’s cause. The Milanese insisted on the peace agreement with the emperor from last year. This agreement explicitly allowed consular elections, so why should they have to accept some Podesta appointed by the Kaiser. And that was pretty much the line of argument the consuls and citizens of Milan took when they received Rainald and Otto into their splendid City Hall. Arguments were going back and forth, and the envoys finally offered the consuls to be elected as long as they were invested by the emperor.

The consuls agreed to take this proposal to the people who had gathered inside the Cathedral. The response was less than positive. The people not only refused but broke out into full on rioting, screaming that these imperial creatures were to die. Last minute the consuls could calm down the mob and stop them from massacring the paladins.

The city leadership is now stressed out and begs the envoys not to tell the emperor and that they would do as requested and even threw in a huge pile of money.

The envoys returned and told what happened. This whole procedure was humiliating to the envoys and even more humiliating to the emperor.

But at that point he could not do that much. He had dismissed his army and it would take a while to get reinforcements from the north. Hence he went through a charade of negotiations. He called the Milanese before an imperial session where he harshly demanded why they were unwilling to adhere to the oaths they had sworn at Roncaglia. To that they allegedly responded that they may have sworn the oath but never had any intention of keeping them. If they really had said that, the only way they could have justified that was by saying that they had been coerced to take that oath. That feeds my theory that the assembly at Roncaglia really only accepted the laws because they were surrounded by imperial soldiers.

Anyway, the Milanese clearly did not want to yield. It still took a few more months before they could be formally put into the imperial ban for refusing to appear at the third summons.

In the meantime, both sides begin putting their ducks into a row.

Barbarossa sends an order for a new army to Germany. Interestingly, this time the order goes to henry the Lion, his uncle Welf VI and his wife, Beatrix who could raise troops in Burgundy. This is interesting because what he does here is a clever way to overcome the structural deficiencies of a medieval army of vassals. A vassal was only obliged to serve for a set period of time and there were often even more limitations for services in a different country. That had been a problem for almost all of Barbarossa’s predecessors who had called all their vassals down to Italy in one go and found that they returned home after 12 to 18 months, which often meant all the gains of the campaign were almost immediately lost.

Barbarossa established a rotation system. In his first part of the campaign, he had demanded suit from the duke of Austria, the king of bohemia and the duke of Zaehringen. Henry the lion, the most resourceful German prince was allowed to stay home which means he could not refuse the imperial call now. This rotation system allowed Barbarossa to remain on campaign in Italy for years.

In the first campaign against Milan his army, though truly huge by medieval standards was not able to completely encircle the city. His new contingents were unlikely to be larger than last time, so a full investment of the city was not an option. The other point was that Milan did not fall because of a breach in the walls or a battle outside the walls. Milan fell because of its biggest vulnerability, its size. Milan had 150,000 inhabitants and that number had risen even further during the siege when the inhabitants of the surrounding area seek refuge behind its fortifications. Feeding these people and providing enough drinking water was the city’s Achilles heel.

What he needed to do to defeat Milan was to cut them off from food supply. The lands of Milan, as mentioned before, is a giant river island. Access to its Contado required crossing the Ticino, the Adda and the Po River. That was once their first line of defense but will now be their key vulnerability. Crossing these rivers to bring large amounts of food into the city requires bridges. If the imperial army can block all the bridges and devastates the land surrounding Milan, food will become scarce and sooner or later the city will fall.

And that is why he spends the next three years building a ring of fortified cities surrounding the Contado of Milan. Going anticlockwise from the southeast we have the city of Lodi that had moved to a new location. The Lodese are working overtime to set up the new fortifications. Milan will try several times to interrupt the effort but gets repulsed. Further north, Frederick helps the inhabitants of Come to rebuild their fortifications and neutralizes their old enemy and ally of Milan, the now lost city on the island in Lake Como. Bergamo, Novara, Vercelli and above all Pavia, do not need the slightest encouragement to go after the Milanese which covers the western and southern shore.

Piacenza is the big issue. They have a bridge across the po river and could resupply Milan. Not only that, but its city leadership is also showing signs of wanting to revive its old alliance with Milan. Hence the order to reduce their fortifications. Things come to a head when they stole some of the £1,200 the Genoese had been sending the emperor. Barbarossa does not have an army large enough to besiege Piacenza and quite frankly they did not work superfast at taking their walls down. So, he simply enters the city in all his splendor as a guest and the Piacentini do not dare to lay hands on him. They hand back the funds and promise to support the blockade.

That gives the emperor an inner ring around Milan that allows him to block all large-scale food supplies into the Contado. He then proceeds to lay waster to the territory itself. His army will constantly raid the lands around Milan for the next three years and at times drag out Milanese armies. It is a re-run of the torched earth policy that worked so well before, just on a larger scale.

This elaborate and sophisticated plan now needs one last element to succeed. The cities that sit outside this ring and have traditionally been allies of Milan need to be brought to heel. Brescia gets beaten by the Cremonese and caves early on. Tortona is too far and too small.

But there was one town that still defied the grand scheme. And that was the small town of Crema. Crema mattered because it lies right behind Lodi, was fiercely loyal to Milan and militarily punching well above its weight. Crema was the weakest link in the strategy and hence Crema needed to be brought down, brought down at all cost.

Crema was surrounded by a swamp, a moat and an impressive set of walls. These walls built to repel Cremonese attacks for 50 years and were well out of proportion to the size of the city. In 1138 emperor Lothar had besieged Crema but failed to break in.

The siege began in July 1159. The first to arrive before the four heavily fortified gates were the Cremonese. The emperor arrived a few days later and over time the reinforcements of Henry the Lion and Beatrix of Burgundy appeared so that the small city of maybe 10,000 could be completely surrounded. Whilst Milan was to be starved out, for Crema that would not work since the city was smaller and better provisioned. Inside the city were not just the warlike Cremasci, but also opponents of the imperial cause from Brescia, Piacenza and a contingent of Milanese.

This siege was conducted with utmost brutality. Either side would publicly execute its prisoners in full view of the other side and allegedly even torture them.

To break the formidable walls, the besiegers built multiple siege engines. One of those was an enormous moveable siege tower. The tower was allegedly 70 feet tall and 30 feet wide. It was mounted either on wheeled axles or logs and it took 500 men to move it. It had six stories of which the first one was on the level of the city walls and had a bridge the soldiers could go across on to the walls. The top five floors contained rooms from where a thousand archers could clear the walls of defenders.

The initial plan was to cross the moat with battering rams and the tower following behind, providing cover for the men operating the battering ram. To implement this plan the moat needs to be filled first. Over 2,000 wagons filled with dirt are brought forward and their content dumped in. That done the battering rams crossed over followed by the tower. The Cremasci responded by hurling stones from five mangonels and several petraries at the tower. The tower, which had cost near 2,000 pounds of silver had to be protected.

For that Barbarossa had the hostages he had taken earlier tied to the tower assuming the Cremasci would not want to kill their own people. The hostages were tied to the tower day and night and at night were made to hold a candle showing the defenders that they were still there.

The Cremasci remained undeterred and kept the bombardment of the tower going, even though the hostages were badly maimed, and some killed. It is said that the hostages themselves encouraged the defenders to keep shooting.

Barbarossa had the tower withdrawn, probably because it had not worked or maybe even he was appalled by the brutality. The engineers came up with a different solution. They covered the tower in double braided bundles of faggots, hides and bales of wool.

In the meantime, the battering ram had managed without air cover and created a gap in the wall. The city’s population built a new defensive line inside the wall overnight preventing the besiegers from breaking through. They sent out a commando squad in the night through a tunnel to destroy the ram, which failed. The next day they dropped incendiary material on to top of the housing of the battering ram, which almost did for Barbarossa who had been inside directing operations from the front.

The army had brought battering rams forward on several gates now but the city was still holding out by January 1160. The fact that little crema could tie down the bulk of the Imperial army was not just an embarrassment but increasingly a problem. The Milanese were trying to use the absence of imperial troops to regain the initiative. They besieged the small town of Erba to break the blockade and who knows how long it would take before the old allies of Milan regain the courage to rejoin the fight.

At this point Marchesius, the master engineer of Crema defected to the imperial side. Whether he was bribed, had despaired of the cause of the little city or had been held under duress in the first place, we do not know. What he did though was pointing out the weaknesses in the city’s defenses. His recommendation was to attack again at the place the walls had initially been breached but this time to bring the tower up to the walls. He also constructed a second siege engine so that the wall could be attacked on two locations. The troops of Konrad, Count Palatinate on the Rhine and Barbarossa’s half brother and Otto von Wittelsbach were to lead the operation. They did manage to get onto the top of the walls under cover of the tower’s archers but did not manage to completely dislodge the Cremasci. Konrad’s standard bearer, Bertolf of Urach jumped off the wall into the city hoping his troops would follow him. But they stayed up and he was left alone in amongst the enemy. He was immediately cut down and one of the defenders scalped him, combed his hair and attached the gruesome trophy o his helmet. Whilst this goes on the defenders keep lobbing stones at the two towers and, fearing to be cut off, Konrad ordered his men to retreat.

Though the attack had failed, the two towers remained in position and any damage was quickly repaired. At that point the outcome was obvious. The brave citizens of Crema decided that the situation was hopeless. They began negotiations and capitulated on January 26th, 1160.

The next day the inhabitants of the city all left, being allowed to carry their moveable possessions on their backs. Even the men were allowed to leave as were the soldiers from Brescia, Piacenza and Milan after handing over their weapons.

The army of Germans and Italians then looted Crema for five days, burning the city down in the process. Not just the walls, but all the houses and even the churches were razed. Nothing was to remain of the city of Crema. It will be 25 years before Crema is re-founded and it is today a quiet, beautiful little town where Germans are no longer at risk of being scalped.

With Crema gone, the war of attrition with Milan became the focus of imperial activity. Because the siege had taken so long, Piacenza had rejoined their alliance with Milan so that most of the effort was focused on disturbing supply into Milan. The other key activity was the comprehensive destruction of Milanese food production in the Contado.

As before Barbarossa had to send back the re-enforcement he had received from Henry the Lion and others in 1160 as their time was up. New contingents from Bohemia, Thuringia and the archbishopric of Cologne were expected for April 1161. The Milanese tried to take advantage of the weakened position of the emperor and made a major attempt at taking out Lodi. But that failed. Subsequent attempts to break the blockade failed as imperial forces were strengthened. The conflict remained brutal and Milanese prisoners were hanged, and soldiers had hands cut off. It was genuinely nasty.

By August 7th, 1161 Milan was ready to negotiate. They had asked several German princes, including Barbarossa’s half-brother Conrad, the Landgrave of Thuringia and the Bohemian dukes to intercede on their behalf. They offered to reduce their walls, fill in their moat, destroy some tower houses, hand over 300 hostages and pay a fine of 10,000.

The princes had guaranteed the Milanese safe conduct for the negotiations and so the consuls arrived with a small contingent of knights. It is not clear what exactly happened there but Rainald von Dassel by now elevated to archbishop of Cologne and hence in control of 500 knights fell upon the Milanese and a fight broke out. Barbarossa ordered the princes to join the fight by they reduced being deeply offended that von Dassel had refused to honor their promise of safe conduct. Barbarossa and some parts of the imperial army joined Rainald despite the complaints.

The outnumbered Milanese fled towards the city, but the citizens refused to open the gates for them fearing the imperial army would follow them through. Several hundred Milanese knights and  consuls were taken prisoner. Thus ended negotiations

After that the siege tightened further and the imperial army apprehended anyone who dared to step outside the walls. Those found to be collecting food or wood had their hands cut off. The blockade became tighter and tighter and hunger took hold of the city of 150,000.

On 21st of February they dispatched their consuls to the emperor offering two options, unconditional surrender or a negotiated settlement. The second offer included the total destruction of their walls and towers, the building of an imperial palace of whichever size and location he desired, the acceptance of a podesta and a fee to be determined.

Though several princes suggested to take the negotiated option, in the end the hard liners around Rainald von Dassel prevailed. It was to be unconditional surrender. The Milanese were made to bring their Carrioco, the enormous war cart that was the symbol of civic pride all the way over to Lodi. There they would lay down their banners before the emperor and offer their lives to his mercy.

Barbarossa took 400 hostages and then decided to visit the city himself. He ordered all the inhabitants to leave and entered the empty metropolis with his army. And then he decided his verdict. Milan, that had so often razed cities to the ground, that had shown no mercy to the people of Lodi, of Como, of Novara or Pavia should suffer the same fate. The whole of the city was to be destroyed, its walls broken and the moats filled in, their houses taken down and the great campanile knocked down. Nobody was allowed to live there anymore, only the venerable churches were allowed to remain. The Milanese were told to move into the countryside and live in villages, as they had ordered the Lodese not so long ago.

Each of the Italian allies and the German contingents were given a section of the city and destruction raged for five days. Most of it was done with fire, but some, like the Lodese who had suffered so much from Milanese oppression were the most thorough.the Campanile fell on the cathedral, destroying on off the most splendid Romanesque churches and  making way for its current duomo.

This destruction of Milan is often attributed to the counsel of Rainald von Dassel, now Archbishop of Cologne. His hardline stance was very consistent across his career, and he did advice the emperor on this. Equally some of the Lombard communes insisted on a brutal punishment. But ultimately the decision and responsibility lay with Barbarossa himself.

Of all the loot that was taken from Milan during the five days following March 26th the most famous went to Rainald von Dassel. The relics of the three kings, the magi who had brought presents to Bethlehem at Jesus’ birth. He took them from the church of Saint Eustorgio where they were kept since Constantine had sent them in 314. They are now in a most magnificent shrine in the Cathedral of Cologne, a shrine believed to be the largest reliquary in the western world.

The year 1162 could well have been the high point of Barbarossa’s reign. All his opponents in Lombardy are now not just defeated but utterly destroyed. A viable system to maintain military power has been established with rotating forces coming over every 12 to 18 months. But it was not.

What put a major spanner in the works is the thing that always puts a spanner in the works of medieval German monarchs, the papacy. The relationship with Pope Hadrian IV had already deteriorated to a point where he was about to excommunicate the emperor in early 1160. That could only be avoided by the pontiff’s sudden death. As we will see next week, the election of a new pope prove difficult and we end up again with a schism, a schism that will last 17 years, dominating the political landscape in Europe.

I hope to see you then.

And in the meantime, if you feel like supporting the show or want to get hold of these bonus episodes, sign up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. All the links are in the show notes.

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Milan was the largest city in Europe and the most economically advanced. Since about 1057 the lower classes in Milan had demanded an improvement in the corrupt and licentious clergy of the city. Street gangs would harass clergymen they suspected of living with women or had acquired their office through the payment of bribes. Rioting became increasingly intense, and the rebels calling themselves the Pataria began to organise under the leadership of a member of the city nobility called Erlembald.

Erlembald received support from the papacy, and even received a papal banner in his fight with the archbishop. This archbishop, Wido who had been captured by the Pataria resigned in 1070, handing over the reigns of the archbishopric to his deputy, Godfrey. Godfrey travelled to the imperial court for his investiture, as had been the tradition with archbishops of Milan for centuries. Whilst Godfrey received ring and staff from King (future emperor) Henry IV (1056-1105), the Pataria raised one of their own, Atto to be archbishop. Atto was recognised by the pope and civil war in the city ensued.

In one of his last acts, pope Alexander II (1061-1073) put pressure on Henry IV by excommunicating his advisors. That excommunication lingered without much effect whilst the situation in Milan changed in favour of the imperial side. The Pataria suffered the loss of its leader, Erlembald in the fighting and after the city had burned down, the imperial party took control. They asked Henry IV for a new archbishop. Henry IV appointed Tedald, one of the members of his chancery to be archbishop of Milan.

This is where the new pope Gregory VII loses it. In December 1075 he writes a letter to Henry IV admonishing him for his decisions in Milan as well as for retaining his advisors who had been excommunicated 2 years before. He threatens to excommunicate the the king unless he reverses his decisions.

More on this story in Episode 32 of the History of the Germans Podcast available here and on Apple, Spotify as well as any other podcasting platform (link: https://history-of-the-germans.captivate.fm/listen)