The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century | Page 6

the Lombards were
entirely unskilled in the art of attacking fortified towns; hence the only

mode of siege with which they were acquainted was that of starving out
the inhabitants, by cutting off all source of supply by ravaging and
destroying the surrounding country. This fact, unimportant as it may
seem at the first glance, materially affected the whole course of the
later history of some of the Italian cities. By this means we are enabled,
even at this early epoch, to divide them into two classes. First, those
cities which, after a more or less short resistance, yielded to the rude
tactics of the barbarians and were made subject by them, for example
Milan and Pavia.[5] Second, those cities like Venice and Ravenna,[6]
which, by means of a connection with the sea which the invaders could
not cut off, were enabled to gain supplies by water, and so resist all
efforts of the besieging host to capture them. They never fell
completely under the Lombard yoke, and either retained a sort of
partial autonomy or yielded allegiance to some other power. It is the
cities of the former class that are the subject of this investigation.
The condition of these inland towns at the time of the invasion was, as
we have seen, weak in the extreme. The defenses, where they existed,
were of a character to afford little protection, and the bulk of the
inhabitants were so enervated from a life of poverty and oppression that
they were almost incapable of offering any resistance in their own
defense. They were reduced to such a condition as to be only too
grateful if their rough conquerors, after an easy victory, disdainfully
spared their lives, and left them to occupy their dismantled dwellings.
This seems to have been the almost universal method of procedure. The
Lombards did not in any sense, at first, think of occupying the
conquered cities; for the reasons already given they despised, because
they could not yet comprehend, the life of the civilian. They contented
themselves with pulling down the walls, razing the fortifications, and
destroying every mark which would make of the city anything but an
aggregate of miserable dwellings. The inhabitants were for the most
part spared, and left to enjoy, if the term can be used for such an
existence, what the conquerors did not think worth the having. These
felt the fruits of their victory to lie in the rich arable lands of the
surrounding plains, and here they settled down, each in his own holding,
portioned out by lot to every soldier; the town being considered but as a

part of the civitas or district, if I may use the term, of the dux or
overlord, from whom the several _milites_, or landholders of the
surrounding territory, had their tenure, and who himself held directly
from the king.
It is the very insignificance of the municipal unit at this time that makes
it so difficult to determine anything accurate of its position. It existed,
but little more can be said of it; indeed, even this statement might be
questioned, if we make that term signify a corporate existence, as will
be seen further on when we come to discuss the question of the
unbroken corporate existence of the towns. In a feudal age, or in an age
of incipient feudalism, obligation, either claimed from an inferior or
yielded to a superior, is a good index of rank and importance. Until we
find the cities fulfilling certain obligations required by a higher power,
we can learn little to tell of their condition or of their internal history.
On the other hand, when we find the time come for fulfilling certain
obligations, we can safely argue that the cities have acquired certain
functions which put them in a position to meet the obligations which
their growing importance has caused to be exacted of them. To trace
these steps accurately and satisfactorily is impossible, but by the aid of
collateral evidence a rough idea of the epochs at least of their progress
can be gained.
For this first period, then, we see the towns reduced to the lowest
depths of wretchedness and disintegration; critically speaking hardly
existing, but simply holding together. In studying institutions and
tracing the course of their development, we must always remember that
the uninterrupted continuance of their history may depend as much on
the moral force of their existence as on the more limited and defined
fact of their accurate and legal recognition by others. In every society a
state of fact must in time become a state of law, as wise legislation is
more the recognition by law of existing conditions than the formulating
of new codes. So the towns, even at the period immediately succeeding
their conquest by the Lombards,