Rienzi

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Rienzi


(Rienzi's word of battle was "Spirito Santo Cavaliere", i.e.
Cavalier in the singular number. The plural number has been
employed in the text, as somewhat more animated, and
therefore better adapted to the kind of poetry into the
service of which the watchword has been pressed.)

Blow, trumpets, blow,
Blow, trumpets, blow,
Gaily to glory we come;
Like a king in his pomp,
To the blast of the tromp,
And the roar of the mighty drum!
Breeze fill our banners, sun gild our spears,
Spirito Santo, Cavaliers!

2.

March, march for your Freedom and Laws!
Earth is your witness--all Earth's is your cause!
Seraph and saint from their glory shall heed ye,
The angel that smote the Assyrian shall lead ye;
To the Christ of the Cross man is never so holy
As in braving the proud in defence of the lowly!
Breeze fill our banners, sun gild our spears,
Spirito Santo, Cavaliers!
Blow, trumpets, blow,
Blow, trumpets, blow,
Gaily to glory we come;
Like a king in his pomp,
To the blast of the tromp,
And the roar of the mighty drum!
Breeze fill our banners, sun gild our spears,
Spirito Santo, Cavaliers!

3.

March, march! ye are sons of the Roman,
The sound of whose step was as fate to the foeman!
Whose realm, save the air and the wave, had no wall,
As he strode through the world like a lord in his hall;
Though your fame hath sunk down to the night of the grave,
It shall rise from the field like the sun from the wave.
Breeze fill our banners, sun gild our spears,
Spirito Santo, Cavaliers!
Blow, trumpets, blow,
Blow, trumpets, blow,
Gaily to glory we come;
Like a king in his pomp,
To the blast of the tromp,
And the roar of the mighty drum!
Breeze fill our banners, sun gild our spears,
Spirito Santo, Cavaliers!

In this order they reached the wide waste that ruin and devastation
left within the gates, and, marshalled in long lines on either side,
extending far down the vistaed streets, and leaving a broad space in the
centre, awaited the order of their leader.

"Throw open the gates, and admit the foe!" cried Rienzi, with a loud
voice; as the trumpets of the Barons, announced their approach.

Meanwhile the insurgent Patricians, who had marched that morning from a
place called the Monument, four miles distant, came gallantly and boldly
on.

With old Stephen, whose great height, gaunt frame, and lordly air,
shewed well in his gorgeous mail, rode his sons,--the Frangipani and the
Savelli, and Giordano Orsini, brother to Rinaldo.

"Today the tyrant shall perish!" said the proud Baron; "and the flag of
the Colonna shall wave from the Capitol."

"The flag of the Bear," said Giordano Orsini, angrily.--"The victory
will not be yours alone, my Lord!"

"Our house ever took precedence in Rome," replied the Colonna,
haughtily.

"Never, while one stone of the palaces of the Orsini stands upon
another."

"Hush!" said Luca di Savelli; "are ye dividing the skin while the lion
lives? We shall have fierce work today."

"Not so," said the old Colonna; "John di Vico will turn, with his
Romans, at the first onset, and some of the malcontents within have
promised to open the gates.--How, knave?" as a scout rode up breathless
to the Baron. "What tidings?"

"The gates are opened--not a spear gleams from the walls!"

"Did I not tell ye, Lords?" said the Colonna, turning round
triumphantly. "Methinks we shall win Rome without a single
blow.--Grandson, where now are thy silly forebodings?" This was said to
Pietro, one of his grandsons--the first-born of Gianni--a comely youth,
not two weeks wedded, who made no reply. "My little Pietro here,"
continued the Baron, speaking to his comrades, "is so new a bridegroom,
that last night he dreamed of his bride; and deems it, poor lad, a
portent."

"She was in deep mourning, and glided from my arms, uttering, 'Woe, woe,
to the Colonna!" said the young man, solemnly.

"I have lived nearly ninety years," replied the old man, "and I may have
dreamed, therefore, some forty thousand dreams; of which, two came true,
and the rest were false. Judge, then, what chances are in favour of the
science!"

Thus conversing, they approached within bow-shot of the gates, which
were still open. All was silent as death. The army, which was composed
chiefly of foreign mercenaries, halted in deliberation--when, lo!--a
torch was suddenly cast on high over the walls; it gleamed a moment--and
then hissed in the miry pool below.

"It is the signal of our friends within, as agreed on," cried old
Colonna. "Pietro, advance with your company!" The young nobleman closed
his visor, put himself at the head of the band under his command; and,
with his lance in his rest, rode in a half gallop to the gates. The
morning had been clouded and overcast, and the sun, appearing only at
intervals, now broke out in a bright stream of light--as it glittered
on the waving plume and shining mail of the young horseman, disappearing
under the gloomy arch, several paces in advance of his troop. On swept
his followers--forward went the cavalry headed by Gianni Colonna,
Pietro's father.--there was a minute's silence, broken only by the
clatter of the arms, and tramp of hoofs,--when from within the walls
rose the abrupt cry--"Rome, the Tribune, and the People! Spirito Santo,
Cavaliers!" The main body halted aghast. Suddenly Gianni Colonna was
seen flying backward from the gate at full speed.

"My son, my son!" he cried, "they have murdered him;"--he halted abrupt
and irresolute, then adding, "But I will avenge!" wheeled round, and
spurred again through the arch,--when a huge machine of iron, shaped as
a portcullis, suddenly descended upon the unhappy father, and crushed
man and horse to the ground--one blent, mangled, bloody mass.

The old Colonna saw, and scarce believed his eyes; and ere his troop
recovered its stupor, the machine rose, and over the corpse dashed
the Popular Armament. Thousands upon thousands, they came on; a wild,
clamorous, roaring stream. They poured on all sides upon their enemies,
who drawn up in steady discipline, and clad in complete mail, received
and broke their charge.

"Revenge, and the Colonna!"--"The Bear and the Orsini!"--"Charity and
the Frangipani!" (Who had taken their motto from some fabled ancestor
who had broke bread with a beggar in a time of famine.) "Strike for
the Snake (The Lion was, however, the animal usually arrogated by the
heraldic vanity of the Savelli.) and the Savelli!" were then heard on
high, mingled with the German and hoarse shout, "Full purses, and the
Three Kings of Cologne." The Romans, rather ferocious than disciplined,
fell butchered in crowds round the ranks of the mercenaries: but as one
fell, another succeeded; and still burst with undiminished fervour
the countercry of "Rome, the Tribune, and the People!--Spirito Santo,
Cavaliers!" Exposed to every shaft and every sword by his emblematic
diadem and his imperial robe, the fierce Rienzi led on each assault,
wielding an enormous battle-axe, for the use of which the Italians were
celebrated, and which he regarded as a national weapon. Inspired by
every darker and sterner instinct of his nature, his blood heated, his
passions aroused, fighting as a citizen for liberty, as a monarch
for his crown, his daring seemed to the astonished foe as that of one
frantic; his preservation that of one inspired: now here, now there;
wherever flagged his own, or failed the opposing, force, glittered his
white robe, and rose his bloody battle-axe; but his fury seemed rather
directed against the chiefs than the herd; and still where his charger
wheeled was heard his voice, "Where is a Colonna?"--"Defiance to the
Orsini!"--"Spirito Santo, Cavaliers!" Three times was the sally led from
the gate; three times were the Romans beaten back; and on the third, the
gonfalon, borne before the Tribune, was cloven to the ground. Then, for
the first time, he seemed amazed and alarmed, and, raising his eyes to
heaven, he exclaimed, "O Lord, hast thou then forsaken me?" With that,
taking heart, once more he waved his arm, and again led forward his wild
array.

At eve the battle ceased. Of the Barons who had been the main object of
the Tribune's assault, the pride and boast was broken. Of the princely
line of the Colonna, three lay dead. Giordano Orsini was mortally
wounded; the fierce Rinaldo had not shared the conflict. Of the
Frangipani, the haughtiest signors were no more; and Luca, the dastard
head of the Savelli, had long since saved himself by flight. On the
other hand, the slaughter of the citizens had been prodigious;--the
ground was swamped with blood--and over heaps of slain, (steeds and
riders,) the twilight star beheld Rienzi and the Romans returning
victors from the pursuit. Shouts of rejoicing followed the Tribune's
panting steed through the arch; and just as he entered the space within,
crowds of those whose infirmities, sex, or years, had not allowed them
to share the conflict,--women, and children, and drivelling age, mingled
with the bare feet and dark robes of monks and friars, apprised of the
victory, were prepared to hail his triumph.

Rienzi reined his steed by the corpse of the boy Colonna, which lay
half immersed in a pool of water, and close by it, removed from the arch
where he had fallen, lay that of Gianni Colonna,--(that Gianni Colonna
whose spear had dismissed his brother's gentle spirit.) He glanced over
the slain, as the melancholy Hesperus played upon the bloody pool and
the gory corselet, with a breast heaved with many emotions; and turning,
he saw the young Angelo, who, with some of Nina's guard, had repaired to
the spot, and had now approached the Tribune.

"Child," said Rienzi, pointing to the dead, "blessed art thou who hast
no blood of kindred to avenge!--to him who hath, sooner or later comes
the hour; and an awful hour it is!"

The words sank deep into Angelo's heart, and in after life became words
of fate to the speaker and the listener.

Ere Rienzi had well recovered himself, and as were heard around him
the shrieks of the widows and mothers of the slain--the groans of the
dying--the exhortations of the friars--mingled with sounds of joy
and triumph--a cry was raised by the women and stragglers on the
battle-field without, of "The foe!--the foe!"

"To your swords," cried the Tribune; "fall back in order;--yet they
cannot be so bold!"

The tramp of horses, the blast of a trumpet, were heard; and presently,
at full speed, some thirty horsemen dashed through the gate.

"Your bows," exclaimed the Tribune, advancing;--"yet hold--the leader
is unarmed--it is our own banner. By our Lady, it is our ambassador of
Naples, the Lord Adrian di Castello!"

Panting--breathless--covered with dust--Adrian halted at the pool red
with the blood of his kindred--and their pale faces, set in death,
glared upon him.

"Too late--alas! alas!--dread fate!--unhappy Rome!"

"They fell into the pit they themselves had digged," said the Tribune,
in a firm but hollow voice.--"Noble Adrian, would thy counsels had
prevented this!"

"Away, proud man--away!" said Adrian, impatiently waving his
hand,--"thou shouldst protect the lives of Romans, and--oh,
Gianni!--Pietro!--could not birth, renown, and thy green years, poor
boy--could not these save ye?"

"Pardon him, my friends," said the Tribune to the crowd,--"his grief is
natural, and he knows not all their guilt.--Back, I pray ye--leave him
to our ministering."

It might have fared ill for Adrian, but for the Tribune's brief speech.
And as the young Lord, dismounting, now bent over his kinsmen--the
Tribune also surrendering his charger to his squires, approached, and,
despite Adrian's reluctance and aversion, drew him aside,--

"Young friend," said he, mournfully, "my heart bleeds for you; yet
bethink thee, the wrath of the crowd is fresh upon them: be prudent."

"Prudent!"

"Hush--by my honour, these men were not worthy of your name. Twice
perjured--once assassins--twice rebels--listen to me!"

"Tribune, I ask no other construing of what I see--they might have died
justly, or been butchered foully. But there is no peace between the
executioner of my race and me."

"Will you, too, be forsworn? Thine oath!--Come, come, I hear not these
words. Be composed--retire--and if, three days hence, you impute any
other blame to me than that of unwise lenity, I absolve you from your
oath, and you are free to be my foe. The crowd gape and gaze upon us--a
minute more, and I may not avail to save you."

The feelings of the young patrician were such as utterly baffle
description. He had never been much amongst his house, nor ever received
more than common courtesy at their hands. But lineage is lineage still!
And there, in the fatal hazard of war, lay the tree and sapling, the
prime and hope of his race. He felt there was no answer to the Tribune,
the very place of their death proved they had fallen in an assault upon
their countrymen. He sympathised not with their cause, but their fate.
And rage, revenge alike forbidden--his heart was the more softened
to the shock and paralysis of grief. He did not therefore speak, but
continued to gaze upon the dead, while large and unheeded tears flowed
down his cheeks, and his attitude of dejection and sorrow was so moving,
that the crowd, at first indignant, now felt for his affliction.
At length his mind seemed made up. He turned to Rienzi, and said,
falteringly, "Tribune, I blame you not, nor accuse. If you have been
rash in this, God will have blood for blood. I wage no war with you--you
say right, my oath prevents me; and if you govern well, I can still
remember that I am Roman. But--but--look to that bleeding clay--we meet
no more!--your sister--God be with her!--between her and me flows a dark
gulf!" The young noble paused some moments, choked by his emotions,
and then continued, "These papers discharge me of my mission.
Standard-bearers, lay down the banner of the Republic. Tribune, speak
not--I would be calm--calm. And so farewell to Rome." With a hurried
glance towards the dead, he sprung upon his steed, and, followed by his
train, vanished through the arch.

The Tribune had not attempted to detain him--had not interrupted him.
He felt that the young noble had thought--acted as became him best. He
followed him with his eyes.

"And thus," said he gloomily, "Fate plucks from me my noblest friend and
my justest counsellor--better man Rome never lost!"

Such is the eternal doom of disordered states. The mediator between rank
and rank,--the kindly noble--the dispassionate patriot--the first to
act--the most hailed in action--darkly vanishes from the scene. Fiercer
and more unscrupulous spirits alone stalk the field; and no neutral and
harmonizing link remains between hate and hate,--until exhaustion, sick
with horrors, succeeds to frenzy, and despotism is welcomed as repose!



Chapter 5.IV. The Hollowness of the Base.

The rapid and busy march of state events has led us long away from
the sister of the Tribune and the betrothed of Adrian. And the sweet
thoughts and gentle day-dreams of that fair and enamoured girl, however
full to her of an interest beyond all the storms and perils of ambition,
are not so readily adapted to narration:--their soft monotony a few
words can paint. They knew but one image, they tended to but one
prospect. Shrinking from the glare of her brother's court, and eclipsed,
when she forced herself to appear, by the more matured and dazzling
beauty, and all-commanding presence, of Nina,--to her the pomp and
crowd seemed an unreal pageant, from which she retired to the truth of
life,--the hopes and musings of her own heart. Poor girl! with all the
soft and tender nature of her dead brother, and none of the stern genius
and the prodigal ambition,--the eye-fatiguing ostentation and fervour of
the living--she was but ill-fitted for the unquiet but splendid region
to which she was thus suddenly transferred.

With all her affection for Rienzi, she could not conquer a certain fear
which, conjoined with the difference of sex and age, forbade her to be
communicative with him upon the subject most upon her heart.

As the absence of Adrian at the Neapolitan Court passed the anticipated
date, (for at no Court then, with a throne fiercely disputed, did
the Tribune require a nobler or more intelligent representative,--and
intrigues and counter-intrigues delayed his departure from week to
week), she grew uneasy and alarmed. Like many, themselves unseen,
inactive, the spectators of the scene, she saw involuntarily further
into the time than the deeper intellect either of the Tribune or Nina;
and the dangerous discontent of the nobles was visible and audible to
her in looks and whispers, which reached not acuter or more suspected
ears and eyes. Anxiously, restlessly, did she long for the return
of Adrian, not from selfish motives alone, but from well-founded
apprehensions for her brother. With Adrian di Castello, alike a noble
and a patriot, each party had found a mediator, and his presence grew
daily more needed, till at length the conspiracy of the Barons had
broken out. From that hour she scarcely dared to hope; her calm sense,
unblinded by the high-wrought genius which, as too often happens, made
the Tribune see harsh realities through a false and brilliant light,
perceived that the Rubicon was passed; and through all the events
that followed she could behold but two images--danger to her brother,
separation from her betrothed.

With Nina alone could her full heart confer; for Nina, with all the
differences of character, was a woman who loved. And this united them.
In the earlier power of Rienzi, many of their happiest hours had been
passed together, remote from the gaudy crowd, alone and unrestrained,
in the summer nights, on the moonlit balconies, in that interchange
of thought, sympathy, and consolation, which to two impassioned and
guileless women makes the most interesting occupation and the most
effectual solace. But of late, this intercourse had been much marred.
From the morning in which the Barons had received their pardon, to that
on which they had marched on Rome, had been one succession of fierce
excitements. Every face Irene saw was clouded and overcast--all gaiety
was suspended--bustling and anxious councillors, or armed soldiers, had
for days been the only visitors of the palace. Rienzi had been seen but
for short moments: his brow wrapt in care. Nina had been more fond, more
caressing than ever, but in those caresses there seemed a mournful and
ominous compassion. The attempts at comfort and hope were succeeded by
a sickly smile and broken words; and Irene was prepared, by the
presentiments of her own heart, for the stroke that fell--victory was to
her brother--his foe was crushed--Rome was free--but the lofty house
of the Colonnas had lost its stateliest props, and Adrian was gone for
ever!--She did not blame him; she could not blame her brother; each
had acted as became his several station. She was the poor sacrifice of
events and fate--the Iphigenia to the Winds which were to bear the bark
of Rome to the haven, or, it might be, to whelm it in the abyss. She was
stunned by the blow; she did not even weep or complain; she bowed to the
storm that swept over her, and it passed. For two days she neither took
food nor rest; she shut herself up; she asked only the boon of solitude:
but on the third morning she recovered as by a miracle, for on the third
morning, the following letter was left at the palace:--

"Irene,--Ere this you have learned my deep cause of grief; you feel
that to a Colonna Rome can no longer be a home, nor Rome's Tribune be
a brother. While I write these words honour but feebly supports me: all
the hopes I had formed, all the prospects I had pictured, all the love
I bore and bear thee, rush upon my heart, and I can only feel that I am
wretched. Irene, Irene, your sweet face rises before me, and in those
beloved eyes I read that I am forgiven,--I am understood; and dearly as
I know thou lovest me, thou wouldst rather I were lost to thee, rather I
were in the grave with my kinsmen, than know I lived the reproach of my
order, the recreant of my name. Ah! why was I a Colonna? why did Fortune
make me noble, and nature and circumstance attach me to the people? I am
barred alike from love and from revenge; all my revenge falls upon
thee and me. Adored! we are perhaps separated for ever; but, by all
the happiness I have known by thy side--by all the rapture of which I
dreamed--by that delicious hour which first gave thee to my gaze, when
I watched the soft soul returning to thine eyes and lip--by thy first
blushing confession of love--by our first kiss--by our last farewell--I
swear to be faithful to thee to the last. None other shall ever chase
thine image from my heart. And now, when Hope seems over, Faith becomes
doubly sacred; and thou, my beautiful, wilt thou not remember me? wilt
thou not feel as if we were the betrothed of Heaven? In the legends of
the North we are told of the knight who, returning from the Holy Land,
found his mistress (believing his death) the bride of Heaven, and he
built a hermitage by the convent where she dwelt; and, though they never
saw each other more, their souls were faithful unto death. Even so,
Irene, be we to each other--dead to all else--betrothed in memory--to
be wedded above! And yet, yet ere I close, one hope dawns upon me. Thy
brother's career, bright and lofty, may be but as a falling star;
should darkness swallow it, should his power cease, should his throne be
broken, and Rome know no more her Tribune; shouldst thou no longer
have a brother in the judge and destroyer of my house; shouldst thou be
stricken from pomp and state; shouldst thou be friendless, kindredless,
alone--then, without a stain on mine honour, without the shame and odium
of receiving power and happiness from hands yet red with the blood of
my race, I may claim thee as my own. Honour ceases to command when thou
ceasest to be great. I dare not too fondly indulge this dream, perchance
it is a sin in both. But it must be whispered, that thou mayest know
all thy Adrian, all his weakness and his strength. My own loved, my
ever loved, loved more fondly now when loved despairingly, farewell! May
angels heal thy sorrow, and guard me from sin, that hereafter at least
we may meet again!"

"He loves me--he loves me still!" said the maiden, weeping at last; "and
I am blest once more!"

With that letter pressed to her heart she recovered outwardly from the
depth of her affliction; she met her brother with a smile, and Nina
with embraces; and if still she pined and sorrowed, it was in that
"concealment" which is the "worm i' the bud."

Meanwhile, after the first flush of victory, lamentation succeeded to
joy in Rome; so great had been the slaughter that the private grief was
large enough to swallow up all public triumph; and many of the mourners
blamed even their defender for the swords of the assailant, "Roma fu
terribilmente vedovata." ("Rome was terribly widowed.") The numerous
funerals deeply affected the Tribune; and, in proportion to his sympathy
with his people, grew his stern indignation against the Barons. Like all
men whose religion is intense, passionate, and zealous, the Tribune had
little toleration for those crimes which went to the root of religion.
Perjury was to him the most base and inexpiable of offences, and the
slain Barons had been twice perjured: in the bitterness of his wrath he
forbade their families for some days to lament over their remains;
and it was only in private and in secret that he permitted them to be
interred in their ancestral vaults: an excess of vengeance which
sullied his laurels, but which was scarcely inconsistent with the stern
patriotism of his character. Impatient to finish what he had begun,
anxious to march at once to Marino, where the insurgents collected their
shattered force, he summoned his Council, and represented the certainty
of victory, and its result in the complete restoration of peace. But
pay was due to the soldiery; they already murmured; the treasury was
emptied, it was necessary to fill it by raising a new tax.

Among the councillors were some whose families had suffered grievously
in the battle--they lent a lukewarm attention to propositions
of continued strife. Others, among whom was Pandulfo, timid but
well-meaning, aware that grief and terror even of their own triumph
had produced reaction amongst the people, declared that they would not
venture to propose a new tax. A third party, headed by Baroncelli--a
demagogue whose ambition was without principle--but who, by pandering
to the worst passions of the populace, by a sturdy coarseness of nature
with which they sympathised--and by that affectation of advancing what
we now term the "movement," which often gives to the fiercest fool an
advantage over the most prudent statesman, had quietly acquired a great
influence with the lower ranks--offered a more bold opposition. They
dared even to blame the proud Tribune for the gorgeous extravagance they
had themselves been the first to recommend--and half insinuated
sinister and treacherous motives in his acquittal of the Barons from
the accusation of Rodolf. In the very Parliament which the Tribune
had revived and remodelled for the support of freedom--freedom was
abandoned. His fiery eloquence met with a gloomy silence, and finally,
the votes were against his propositions for the new tax and the march
to Marino. Rienzi broke up the Council in haste and disorder. As he left
the hall, a letter was put into his hands; he read it, and remained for
some moments as one thunderstruck. He then summoned the Captain of his
Guards, and ordered a band of fifty horsemen to be prepared for his
commands; he repaired to Nina's apartment, he found her alone, and
stood for some moments gazing upon her so intently that she was awed and
chilled from all attempt at speech. At length he said, abruptly--