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I have reserved for the last, the most potent and
forcible cause of destruction, the domestic hostilities of
the Romans themselves. Under the dominion of the Greek and
French emperors, the peace of the city was disturbed by
accidental, though frequent, seditions: it is from the
decline of the latter, from the beginning of the tenth
century, that we may date the licentiousness of private war,
which violated with impunity the laws of the Code and the
Gospel, without respecting the majesty of the absent
sovereign, or the presence and person of the vicar of
Christ. In a dark period of five hundred years, Rome was
perpetually afflicted by the sanguinary quarrels of the
nobles and the people, the Guelphs and Ghibelines, the
Colonna and Ursini; and if much has escaped the knowledge,
and much is unworthy of the notice, of history, I have
exposed in the two preceding chapters the causes and effects
of the public disorders. At such a time, when every quarrel
was decided by the sword, and none could trust their lives
or properties to the impotence of law, the powerful citizens
were armed for safety, or offence, against the domestic
enemies whom they feared or hated. Except Venice alone, the
same dangers and designs were common to all the free
republics of Italy; and the nobles usurped the prerogative
of fortifying their houses, and erecting strong towers, (39)
that were capable of resisting a sudden attack. The cities
were filled with these hostile edifices; and the example of
Lucca, which contained three hundred towers; her law, which
confined their height to the measure of fourscore feet, may
be extended with suitable latitude to the more opulent and
populous states. The first step of the senator Brancaleone
in the establishment of peace and justice, was to demolish
(as we have already seen) one hundred and forty of the
towers of Rome; and, in the last days of anarchy and
discord, as late as the reign of Martin the Fifth,
forty-four still stood in one of the thirteen or fourteen
regions of the city. To this mischievous purpose the
remains of antiquity were most readily adapted: the temples
and arches afforded a broad and solid basis for the new
structures of brick and stone; and we can name the modern
turrets that were raised on the triumphal monuments of
Julius Caesar, Titus, and the Antonines. (40) With some
slight alterations, a theatre, an amphitheatre, a mausoleum,
was transformed into a strong and spacious citadel. I need
not repeat, that the mole of Adrian has assumed the title
and form of the castle of St. Angelo; (41) the Septizonium of
Severus was capable of standing against a royal army; (42)
the sepulchre of Metella has sunk under its outworks; (43)
the theatres of Pompey and Marcellus were occupied by the
Savelli and Ursini families; (44) and the rough fortress has
been gradually softened to the splendor and elegance of an
Italian palace. Even the churches were encompassed with
arms and bulwarks, and the military engines on the roof of
St. Peter's were the terror of the Vatican and the scandal
of the Christian world. Whatever is fortified will be
attacked; and whatever is attacked may be destroyed. Could
the Romans have wrested from the popes the castle of St.
Angelo, they had resolved by a public decree to annihilate
that monument of servitude. Every building of defence was
exposed to a siege; and in every siege the arts and engines
of destruction were laboriously employed. After the death
of Nicholas the Fourth, Rome, without a sovereign or a
senate, was abandoned six months to the fury of civil war.
"The houses," says a cardinal and poet of the times, (45)
"were crushed by the weight and velocity of enormous stones;
(46) the walls were perforated by the strokes of the
battering-ram; the towers were involved in fire and smoke;
and the assailants were stimulated by rapine and revenge."
The work was consummated by the tyranny of the laws; and the
factions of Italy alternately exercised a blind and
thoughtless vengeance on their adversaries, whose houses and
castles they razed to the ground. (47) In comparing the days
of foreign, with the ages of domestic, hostility, we must
pronounce, that the latter have been far more ruinous to the
city; and our opinion is confirmed by the evidence of
Petrarch. "Behold," says the laureate, "the relics of Rome,
the image of her pristine greatness! neither time nor the
Barbarian can boast the merit of this stupendous
destruction: it was perpetrated by her own citizens, by the
most illustrious of her sons; and your ancestors (he writes
to a noble Annabaldi) have done with the battering-ram what
the Punic hero could not accomplish with the sword." (48) The
influence of the two last principles of decay must in some
degree be multiplied by each other; since the houses and
towers, which were subverted by civil war, required by a new
and perpetual supply from the monuments of antiquity.