It is recorded (to
the confusion of those who think primitive barbarism is virtue) that
the corruption of those rude and brutal old times was great, that all
classes were sunk in vice, and that the clergy were especially venal
and abominable. After the death of Charlemagne, in the ninth century,
wars broke out all over Italy between the factions supporting
different aspirants to his power; and we may be sure that Mantua had
some share in the common quarrel. As I have found no explicit record
of this period, I distribute to the city, as her portion of the
calamities, at least two sieges, one capture and sack, and a
decimation by famine and pestilence. We certainly read that, fifty
years later, the Emperor Rudolph attacked it with his Hungarians, took
it, pillaged it, and put great part of its people to the sword. During
the siege, some pious Mantuans had buried (to save them from the
religious foe) the blood of Christ, and part of the sponge which had
held the gall and vinegar, together with the body of St. Longinus.
Most unluckily, however, these excellent men were put to the sword,
and all knowledge of the place of sepulture perished with them.

At the end of these wars Mantua received a lord, by appointment of the
Emperor, and the first lord's son married the daughter of the Duke
of Lorraine, from which union was born the great Countess Matilda.
Boniface was the happy bridegroom's name, and the wedding had a wild
splendor and profuse barbaric jollity about it, which it is pleasant
enough to read of after so much cutting and slashing. The viands were
passed round on horseback to the guests, and the horses were shod
with silver shoes loosely nailed on, that they might drop off and be
scrambled for by the people. Oxen were roasted whole, as at a Kentucky
barbecue; and wine was drawn from wells with buckets hung on silver
chains. It was the first great display of that magnificence of which
after princes of Mantua were so fond; and the wretched hinds out of
whose sweat it came no doubt thought it very fine.

Of course Lord Boniface had his wars. There was a plot to depose
him discovered in Mantua, and the plotters fled to Verona. Boniface
demanded them; but the Veronese answered stoutly that theirs was
a free city, and no man should be taken from it against his will.
Boniface marched to attack them; and the Veronese were such fools as
to call the Duke of Austria to their aid, promising submission to his
government in re