Imperial troops could arrive to protect them; already they had endured servitude for two generations. . . .' In spite of their protests, the envoy went to Milan. The consuls received him in a full meeting of the people; but the crowd, beside itself with passion, snatched the missive from the hands of him who read it and trod it underfoot. The Emperor was defied, and it was only with difficulty his messenger escaped with his life. The Lodesi are said to have taken to the woods; but in a calmer moment the Milanese themselves grew afraid, and with the other cities of the plain sent delegates with the customary donation to the new Emperor. Pavia and Cremona, however, were not slow to accuse her, nor she, as answering them, to invade their territories. It was thus into a veritable pandemonium that Frederick descended when he entered Cisalpine Gaul in 1154.

He came down the Adige valley to Roncaglia. There in comitia he decided what to do-namely, to support the weaker of the two factions in Lombardy: that is to say, the faction led by Pavia, to which Lodi belonged.

The first town to feel the weight of his arms was Tortona. He took it after a brave defence of sixty-two days, and when its people had departed burnt it to the ground. He then marched to Pavia, where he received the Iron Crown, and so to Rome to receive the Golden Crown from the Pope, and returned over the Alps, having achieved nothing but a threat.

Meanwhile Milan, knowing what to expect, tried, in the year 1158, to make friends with the Lodesi; but the Lodesi would not, for they knew that Frederick was on his way back into Italy. At or near Brescia he held diet, and there forbade private war and summoned the Milanese deputies to come before him. They came, and tried to bribe him with money and to befool him with He refused the bribe and would not hear the excuses. War was declared upon Milan. But first Frederick crossed the Adda and laid the foundation

excuses.

stone of the new city of Lodi. The village chosen for this honour was known as Monteghezzone. What recommended it was its situation on the river, well defended, and, as Frederick believed it to be, the key to Lombardy. This new city thus founded is, of course, the Lodi we know.

There is not perhaps very much to see in Lodi-a few churches, and here and there a picture-but a spot so famous is well worth a visit; nor indeed is it without interest for us to-day, and for this cause that it was at the passage of the Bridge of Lodi, on May 10, 1796, that Napoleon led his grenadiers not without heroism. But now let us see what this little town so strangely famous has to offer us.

And first there is the Duomo. This, so far as the exterior goes, is a building in the Lombard style, probably modelled on the mother church of old Lodi. The porch is fine in the usual Lombard manner, borne by pillars resting upon two lions. Within the church has been quite modernised; but it contains certainly a relic from the mother city in a relief of the Last Supper, which is probably older than the advent of the Lombards into Italy. Here, too, is a polyptych by Calisto Piazza da Lodi, painted in 1529.

No one who visits Lodi should omit to visit the Church of S. Francesco, a Gothic building of the fourteenth century, for it has some old frescoes; but the really great sight in Lodi is, as I have already suggested, the Church of the Incoronata, a work of Giovanni Battagio, who built the Sanctuary of the Madonna outside Crema. The Incoronata was begun in 1476. It is an octagon. in form, and though not, I think, so fine as the Sanctuary outside Crema, is an exquisite and delightful thing. It is, too, very charmingly decorated and has a beautiful carved cantoria, while Calisto Piazza da Lodi has covered it with his paintings. This follower of Romanino has left us over the entrance door an Adoration of the

Magi. In the chapel of S. John Baptist are four scenes from the life of that saint-the Preaching, the Baptism of Christ, the Feast of Herod and the Decapitation of S. John. In the chapel of the Crucifixion are five scenes from the Way of the Cross-Christ taken Captive, the Flagellation, the Way to Calvary, the Nailing to the Cross and the Crucifixion. In the chapel of S. Paul we have the Conversion of S. Paul, which is his in part, and in the chapel of S. Lorenzo a fresco of the marriage of S. Catherine that is doubtfully his. Other works, too, are to be seen here.

But when all is said and done, Lodi is chiefly interesting to us for its curious foundation and for that terrible fight on May 10, 1796, in which Napoleon bore so fine a part, in which he utterly defeated the Austrians, and was able therefore five days later to enter Milan. Surely Lodi, if she was not avenged in 1162, was avenged then!

IT

CHAPTER XVI

PIACENZA

Tis but twenty-two miles, less than an hour's journey in the train from Lodi, through Casale Pusterlengo and Codogno, and so across the Po for the first time in our journey, into Piacenza, an old and a famous city of the Romans. Even though one comes by train that crossing of the Po impresses itself upon the mind, while by road the passage is never to be forgotten, for you make it by a bridge of boats, with the swirling, cruel river within a few feet of you, and horribly strong and overwhelming. And it is well that this should be so; for, by crossing the Po, we leave Lombardy proper and come into that part of the new province of Emilia which, since the sixteenth century, has been known as the Duchy of Parma, over which ruled the House of Farnese.

I say that the province is now known as Emilia, nor is this name in any sense a new one; for all this country south of the Po, between Piacenza where it ended and Rimini where it began, was traversed and fed from the end of the Second Punic War by the great Roman highway, the Via Emilia, so called after M. Æmilius, the consul who constructed it. Piacenza, or Placentia, as the Romans called it, was the true terminus of this road, and the true nodal point of all this country from which various roads departed again, north, south, east and west, crossing Cisalpine Gaul with highways. Why was this? To answer that question we must say something of the history of the city.

No traveller, no observant traveller at any rate, can come to Piacenza to-day without being impressed by two things about it: first, that it is situated in an open plain, sandy and liable to flood, and open to all the winds of heaven; second, that strategically its position on the right bank of the Po, with two great loops of that river thrust forward on either side before it, and flanked on the west by the Trebbia and on the east by the Nure, is enormously strong. It will not, therefore, surprise him to learn that Placentia was the first fortress the Romans established upon the Po after the end of the Gallic War in 219 B.C.; they placed 6000 colonists within it and gave them Latin rights, and bade them hold it against all comers.

It was doubtless their intention to proceed from this strong place, and from Cremona to the north of the great river, which they founded about the same time, to the conquest and the administration of all Cisalpine Gaul. They were already busy with plans for the road which should connect Piacenza with Rimini, through Mutina (Modena), a strong place of the Gauls already in their hands, when a tremendous disaster prevented them. That disaster was the advent of Hannibal into this plain, scarcely quiet and certainly not pacified after the long war.

Hannibal's advent, as might be expected, put new heart into the Gauls, and the rising of the Gauls put new heart into the Carthaginians. The former attacked Placentia and ravaged its territory, and drove many of the colonists to take refuge in Mutina; but the city held out bravely none the less, and became the head-quarters of the army with which Scipio meant to face Hannibal. It might seem that the genius of Hannibal, the unprecedented daring of his great march from Spain through Gaul and over the Alps, had taken the Romans utterly by surprise. The troops that were on the Po were there not to face a great army, but to keep the irregular and