Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (distant reading .txt) 📖

Walter de Montreal was buried in the church of St. Maria dell’ Araceli. But the “evil that he did lived after him!” Although the vulgar had, until his apprehension, murmured against Rienzi for allowing so notorious a freebooter to be at large, he was scarcely dead ere they compassionated the object of their terror. With that singular species of piety which Montreal had always cultivated, as if a decorous and natural part of the character of a warrior, no sooner was his sentence fixed, than he had surrendered himself to the devout preparation for death. With the Augustine Friar he consumed the brief remainder of the night in prayer and confession, comforted his brothers, and passed to the scaffold with the step of a hero and the self-acquittal of a martyr. In the wonderful delusions of the human heart, far from feeling remorse at a life of professional rapine and slaughter, almost the last words of the brave warrior were in proud commendation of his own deeds. “Be valiant like me,” he said to his brothers, “and remember that ye are now the heirs to the Humbler of Apulia, Tuscany, and La Marca.”

This confidence in himself continued at the scaffold. “I die,” he said, addressing the Romans—“I die contented, since my bones shall rest in the Holy City of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the Soldier of Christ shall have the burial-place of the Apostles. But I die unjustly. My wealth is my crime—the poverty of your state my accuser. Senator of Rome, thou mayst envy my last hour—men like Walter de Montreal perish not unavenged.” So saying, he turned to the East, murmured a brief prayer, knelt down deliberately, and said as to himself, “Rome guard my ashes!—Earth my memory—Fate my revenge;—and, now, Heaven receive my soul!—Strike!” At the first blow, the head was severed from the body.

His treason but imperfectly known, the fear of him forgotten, all that remained of the recollection of Walter de Montreal (The military renown and bold exploits of Montreal are acknowledged by all the Italian authorities. One of them declares that since the time of Caesar, Italy had never known so great a Captain. The biographer of Rienzi, forgetting all the offences of the splendid and knightly robber, seems to feel only commiseration for his fate. He informs us, moreover, that at Tivoli one of his servants (perhaps our friend, Rodolf of Saxony), hearing his death, died of grief the following day.) in Rome, was admiration for his heroism, and compassion for his end. The fate of Pandulfo di Guido, which followed some days afterwards, excited a yet deeper, though more quiet, sentiment, against the Senator. “He was once Rienzi’s friend!” said one man; “He was an honest, upright citizen!” muttered another; “He was an advocate of the people!” growled Cecco del Vecchio. But the Senator had wound himself up to a resolve to be inflexibly just, and to regard every peril to Rome as became a Roman. Rienzi remembered that he had never confided but he had been betrayed; he had never forgiven but to sharpen enmity. He was amidst a ferocious people, uncertain friends, wily enemies; and misplaced mercy would be but a premium to conspiracy. Yet the struggle he underwent was visible in the hysterical emotions he betrayed. He now wept bitterly, now laughed wildly. “Can I never again have the luxury to forgive?” said he. The coarse spectators of that passion deemed it,—some imbecility, some hypocrisy. But the execution produced the momentary effect intended. All sedition ceased, terror crept throughout the city, order and peace rose to the surface; but beneath, in the strong expression of a contemporaneous writer, “Lo mormorito quetamente suonava.” (“The murmur quietly sounded.”)

On examining dispassionately the conduct of Rienzi at this awful period of his life, it is scarcely possible to condemn it of a single error in point of policy. Cured of his faults, he exhibited no unnecessary ostentation—he indulged in no exhibitions of intoxicated pride—that gorgeous imagination rather than vanity, which had led the Tribune into spectacle and pomp, was now lulled to rest, by the sober memory of grave vicissitudes, and the stern calmness of a maturer intellect. Frugal, provident, watchful, self-collected, ‘never was seen,’ observes no partial witness, ‘so extraordinary a man.’ (“Vita di Cola di Rienzi”, lib. ii. c. 23.) ‘In him was concentrated every thought for every want of Rome. Indefatigably occupied, he inspected, ordained, regulated all things; in the city, in the army, for peace, or for war. But he was feebly supported, and those he employed were lukewarm and lethargic.’ Still his arms prospered. Place after place, fortress after fortress, yielded to the Lieutenant of the Senator: and the cession of Palestrina itself was hourly expected. His art and address were always strikingly exhibited in difficult situations, and the reader cannot fail to have noticed how conspicuously they were displayed in delivering himself from the iron tutelage of his foreign mercenaries. Montreal executed, his brothers imprisoned, (though their lives were spared,) a fear that induced respect was stricken into the breasts of those bandit soldiers. Removed from Rome, and, under Annibaldi, engaged against the Barons, constant action and constant success, withheld those necessary fiends from falling on their Master; while Rienzi, willing to yield to the natural antipathy of the Romans, thus kept the Northmen from all contact with the city; and as he boasted, was the only chief in Italy who reigned in his palace guarded only by his citizens.

Despite his perilous situation—despite his suspicions, and his fears, no wanton cruelty stained his stern justice—Montreal and Pandulfo di Guido were the only state victims he demanded. If, according to the dark Machiavelism of Italian wisdom, the death of those enemies was impolitic, it was not in the act, but the mode of doing it. A prince of Bologna, or of Milan would have avoided the sympathy excited by the