der III) was founded in opposition to Pavia, which per- sistently sided with the emperor. Finally in 1178 at Legnano, the Milanese assisted by the Brescians, Nova- rese, Vercellese, and Piacentians, defeated the imperial troops; and Frederick was glad to make peace with the pope and the Lombards. At Venice a truce of six years was concluded, and confirmed by the Treaty of Constance (1183), which recognized the franchises of the communes, their right to free election of consuls, to administer justice according to their own laws, and to assess taxes, so that they came to be as it were vas sal states, which recognized the supreme overlordship of the emperor. Once the struggle for freedom was over, the communes began once more their unfortu- nate rivalries, and they found only too ready an occa- sion in the endless struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines. Milan, Brescia, and nearly all the com- munes in which the burghers held control, were on the Guelph side; those wherein the nobles and the classes privileged by the emperors had the upper hand, like Pavia and Cremona, declared for the Ghibellines. From these civil dissensions a few changes in the con- stitution of the communes arose, the principal one be- ing the creation of the podesta, or chief magistrate, necessitated by the urgency of putting an end to the dispute arising from the political and judicial powers exercised by the consuls.
The podesta was elected by the general assembly of the people, and had to be a foreigner, that is, a citizen from some other commune; be belonged to the same political colour and had to be of knightly family. He sat in judgment in all criminal cases, saw that sen- tences were carried out, commanded the army, and declared war or peace. Hence arose the prominence of certain families, especially when the same citizen was chosen by more than one town, and this led to dictatorships which gave rise to the signorias, to be found in the towns of Lombardy and elsewhere. The league of the communes was a thorn for the empire and in 1220 Frederick II tried once more to break it and to conquer the Guelph republics of Lombardy. To prevent assault, when Frederick came in 1225 to bold a diet at Cremona, the cities of Lombardy formed an- other league at San Zeno di Mosio in the neighbour- hood of Mantua. The emperor placed the confederate towns under a ban, and with the help of a Saracen army, which he brought from Sicily, and of the troops of the Ghibelline cities, despite the interposition of Honorius III and Gregory IX, he laid waste the coun- try of the League, and in 1247 defeated it at Cortenova. But his victory was of small avail. In vain did he be Biege Brescia; Genoa and Venice rallied to the League, which had its revenge at Parma and elsewhere, until Frederick died excommunicated in 1250, and the Lom- bards could draw breath. In the period that follows we find the more powerful families quartering them- selves in the various cities. The Torriani and the Vis- conti at Milan; the San Bonifacios and the Scaligers at Verona; the Vitali and the Rusconi at Como; the Este at Ferrara; the Bonaccolsi at Mantua; the Correggeschi at Parma, etc.
Among these the Visconti quickly became the most powerful and for two centuries were lords of Lom- bardy. At first they sought to have themselves appointed imperial vicars whenever the emperors were formidable or were coming into Italy, as did Henry VII and Louis the Bavarian; but afterwards they cared little for the emperor and acted as though inde- pendent lords. Matthew I, styled the Great, was created lord in perpetuity in 1295, had himself made count in 1311, placed himself at the bead of the Ghi- bellines and added to his dominions Pavia, Bergamo, Piacenza, and Tortona. Seventy years later Gian Galeazzo ruled over the whole of Lombardy including Parma and Riggio, to which he added Verona and Vicenza which he took from the Scaligers, and Bolo- gns, Siena, and Pisa, and then he purchased from the
Emperor Wenceslaus the title of duke. He gave his daughter, Valentina, in marriage to Louis I, Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI of France, and as a dowry he gave her the cities of Asti and Cherasco, which later formed the basis of the pretensions of France to rights over the country around Milan. At the death of Filippo-Maria in 1447 without heirs other than a daughter, married to Sforza, a condottiere of mercenary troops, of whom there were many in Italy, Sforza succeeded him in 1450 and thus began a new dynasty that lasted nearly a century. About this time France began to assert its claims. Louis XII and Francis I occupied the duchy, driving out Lud- ovico il Moro and Maximilian his son. Emperor Charles V drove back France at the battle of Pavia, and restored Milan to the Sforzas, but only for a short time, as Francis, the last son of Ludovico, died with- out issue in 1535. Then the duchy became a fief of Spain, and as such it remained till 1706 when it passed to Austria, which took possession of it during the War of Succession, at the death of Charles II. A few years later the death of Emperor Charles VI of Austria reopened the War of Succession, and Milan fell into the hands of the Spaniards (1745); at the peace of 1748 it was given back to Austria, which held it until the outbreak of the French Revolution, when Bona- parte established there the Cisalpine Republic and later the Kingdom of Italy. At the fall of Napoleon it went back to Austria and together with the terri- tory of the Venetian Republic it made up what was known as the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom. The wars of Piedmont, allied with France in 1859 and with Prussia in 1866, took away Lombardy and Venice from Austria, and helped to make the present Kingdom of Italy.
The earliest historian of Lombardy is PAULUS WARNEFRID (730-797), known as Paulus Diaconus, a Benedictine of Monte Cassino, and chancellor of King Desiderius. His Historia Langobardorum is an important authority for the traditions, customs, and political history of his people to the and of the eighth century (P. L., XCV: Mon, Ger. Hid: Senpl. Rev. Langob. Berim. 1878) See also TROTA, Coder diplom. Lango- bard. (Naples, 1852), and besides the histories of Lao, HART- MANN, CANTE, SCHMIDT, and other the valuable work of HODGKIN, Italy and her Invaders, V-VI (London, 1895): Pou- PARDIN, Hist. des principauta lombardes de l'Italie mirid. (Paris, 1907): LDEM. Inačit. polit. et adm, des princip. lombardes (Paris, 1907). For the relations of the Roman Church with the Lom- barda Liber Pontificalis, ed, Duentes (Paris, 1885), pamim, and DUCHESNE, Les ficha d'Italie et l'invasion lombarde in Manges archéol, et d'his, XXIII, XXIV (Paris, 1903); also CurvELLUCCI, La chiese cattoliche ed i Lombardi ariani in Studi Storici, IV (6), XIII. On the Lombard communes see DAN- TTER in Revus Europienne, 1850, III-IV, and Williams. The Communes of Lombardy, VI to X century, in Johns Hopkina Univ. Hid. Studios (Baltimore, 1891), The medieval chroot clem of Lombardy are to be found u MURATORI, Script, For sal Patria Monumenta, and the Archivo Storico Lombardo (1725), 28 vol., folio, pamim; see also the Mon. Germ. Hist., the Vendo (Milan, 1874, sqq.) For Lombard art see MALVBest, Le glorie dell' arts Lombarda (Milao, 1892), 590-1850, also the his- tories of ecclesiastical art by KRAUS, KOEN, and others Onthe medieval financial operations of the Lombards see PITOD, Let Lombards en France el Paris (1892), and all economics] his- toria of the Middle Ages, Đ. ■., ČUNNINGHAM, Western Cirihan- tion. PAOLO SILVA.
Loménie de Brienne, ETIENNE-CHARLES DE, French cardinal and statesman, b. at Paris, 1727; d. at Sens, 1794. He was of noble lineage, studied at the Collège d'Harcourt and then at the Sorbonne, where, in spite of certain suggestions of unorthodoxy, he was given the doctorate of theology. Ordained priest in 1752, he became successively Vicar-General of Rouen (1752), Bishop of Condom (1760), and Archbishop of Toulouse (1762). Forced by the philosophers upon Louis XVI, who feared his ambition and despised his private life, he was made in 1788 ministre principal and Archbishop of Sens, the second richest see in France. As a minister, he was popular with the As- sembly of the Notables, but failed to win the Parle- ment over to his financial schemes, and fell after announcing the convocation of the States General for
