ative peace, or gain advantage in
war--perhaps the first example of the new power in state-craft which
was to revolutionize the political principles of the world; the
individual lived no longer simply to support the state, but the state
existed solely to protect and aid the individual.

If all this be true of the Teutonic nations in general, in the earlier
stages of their development, particularly true is it of the
Lombards,[4] a wild tribe of the Suevic stock, whose few appearances
in history, previous to their invasion of Italy, are connected only
with the fiercest strife and the rudest forms of barbarism. History
seems to have proved that tradition has maligned the Vandal; the Goth
can boast a ruler raised at the centre of Eastern civilization and
refinement; but the Lombard of the invasion can never appear as other
than the rude barbarian rushing from his wild northern home, and
forcing on a defenseless people the laws and the customs suited to his
own rugged nature and the unformed state of society in which he lived.

Such being the case, there is little cause for wonder that the
invading Lombard directed his fury with particular violence against
the corporate towns, whose strength was not sufficient to resist the
attacks of his invading host. Like all other Teutonic tribes 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 th