." This
was Cola Di Rienzi, who was born in Rome about 1313, and who
is sometimes styled "an Italian patriot." In his ambitious
endeavor to reinstate the Caesarean power in Italy he appears
alternately in the figure of a hero and the character of a
charlatan. Believing himself the founder of a new era, he
was inflamed by his successes, and ended in "mystical
extravagances and follies which could not fail to cause his
ruin."

Cola Di Rienzi was born of humble parents, though he afterward tried to
gratify his own vanity and to gain the ear of Charles IV by claiming to
be the bastard son of Henry VII. A wrong which he could not venture to
avenge excited his bitter hostility against the baronage, while the
study of Livy and other classical writers inspired him with regretful
admiration for the glories of ancient Rome.

He succeeded in attracting notice by his personal beauty and by the
rather turgid eloquence which was his chief talent. In 1342 he took the
most prominent part in an embassy from the citizens to Clement VI; and
though he failed to induce the Pope to return to Rome, which at that
time he seems to have regarded as the panacea for the evils of the time,
he gained sufficient favor at Avignon to be appointed papal notary.

From this time he deliberately set himself to raise the people to open
resistance against their oppressors, while he disarmed the suspicions of
the nobles by intentional buffoonery and extravagance of conduct. On May
20, 1347, the first blow was struck. Rienzi, with a chosen band of
conspirators, and accompanied by the papal vicar, who had every interest
in weakening the baronage, proceeded to the Capitol, and, amid the
applause of the mob, promulgated the laws of the _buono stato_.

He himself took the title of tribune, in order to emphasize his
championship of the lower classes. The most important of his laws were
for the maintenance of order. Private garrisons and fortified houses
were forbidden. Each of the thirteen districts was to maintain an armed
force of a hundred infantry and twenty-five horsemen. Every port was
provided with a cruiser for the protection of merchandise, and the trade
on the Tiber was to be secured by a river police.

The nobles watched the progress of this astonishing revolution with
impotent surprise. Stefano Colonna, who was absent on the eventful day,
expressed his scorn of the mob and their leader. But a popular attack on
his palace convinced