nd accompanied by
such followers as he could collect, the Pope made a desperate attempt to
dislodge the Senate and their guards from the Capitol, and at the head
of the storming party he endeavoured to ascend the old road, known then
as Fabatosta. But the Pierleoni and their men were well prepared for the
assault, and made a desperate and successful resistance. The Pope fell
at the head of his soldiers, struck by a stone on the temple, mortally
wounded, but not dead. In hasty retreat, the dying man was borne by his
routed soldiers to the monastery of Saint Gregory on the Coelian,
under the safe protection of the trusty Frangipani, who held the
Palatine, the Circus Maximus, and the Colosseum. Of all the many Popes
who died untimely deaths he was the only one, I believe, who fell in
battle. And he got his deathblow on the slope of that same Capitol where
Gracchus and Manlius had died before him, each in good cause.

It has been wrongly said that he had all the nobles with him, and that
the revolution was of the people alone, aided by the Pierleoni. This is
not true. So far as can be known, the Frangipani were his only faithful
friends, but it is possible that the Count of Tusculum, seventh in
descent from Theodora, and nephew of the first Colonna, at that time
holding a part of the Aventine, may have also been the Pope's ally. Be
that as it may, the force that Lucius led was very small, and the
garrison of the Capitol was overwhelmingly strong.

Some say also that Arnold of Brescia was not actually in Rome at that
time, that the first revolution was the result of his unforgotten
teachings, bearing fruit in the hearts of the nobles and the people, and
that he did not come to the city till Pope Lucius was dead. However that
may be, from that time forward, till the coming of Barbarossa, Arnold
was the idol of the Romans, and their vanity and arrogance knew no
bounds. Pope Eugenius the Third was enthroned in the Lateran under the
protection of the Frangipani, but within the week he was forced to
escape by night to the mountains. The Pierleoni held Sant' Angelo; the
people seized and fortified the Vatican, deprived the Pope's Prefect of
his office, and forced the few nobles who resisted them to swear
allegiance to Jordan Pierleone, making him in fact dictator, and in name
their 'Patrician.' The Pope retorted by excommunicating him, and allying
himself with Tivoli, but was forced to a compromise whereby he
acknowledged the Sen