CHAPTER

VII.

ITALY IN THE TENTH CENTURY. The death of the Emperor Lambert in October 898 dealt a blow to the royal power in North Italy, the Reg^uim Italkiim of the tenth century. In place of the born ruler,

who had mastered

his

own

vassals

and made

himself protector of the Papacy, there succeeded Berengar, mild and cheatable. Berengar, too, was weak in resources. His own domains lay in the extreme north-east, in Friuli and the modern Veneto, not Lambert’s in the centre; and he had not like Lambert the support of a large gi-oup of the great nobles and bishops who formed the real Two magTiates in especial were equally faithsource of power in Italy. less and formidable, Adalbert the Rich, Marquess of Tuscany, in the centre, and Adalbert, Marquess of Ivrea, on the western frontier. In vain did Berengar marry his daughter Gisela to Adalbert of Ivrea and give the Tuscan his freedom from the prison to which Ijambert had consigned him for revolt. A plot was hatching, when disaster befel king and kingdom. Already in 898 the Hungarians, or Magyars', had raided the present Veneto from their newly-won settlements on the river Theiss. In 899 a lar^r swarm made its way from Atjuileia to Pavia. Berengar, always a gallant warrior, strove to rise to the occasion. From the whole Regnuni Italicum his vassals came to the number of 15,000 men-at-arms. Before them the outnumbered Magyai-s fled back, but were overtaken at the river Brenta. Their liorses were worn out, they could not escape, and the tradition, perhaps influenced by a sense of tragedy, tells of their proffers September they surprised refused bv the haughty Christians. Yet on their heedless foes and scattered them with fearful slaughter. For nearly a year the Lombard plain lay at their mercy, though few fortified cities were taken and they did not cross the Apennines. Amid his faithless vassals, with his land desolated, Berengar submitted to pay blackmail, which at least kept the Magyars his friends if it did not save Lombardy from occasional incursions. The only mitigation of the calamitv was the defeat of the Hungarians on the water when in 900 they assaulted Venice under her doge Pietro Tribuno.

awkwardly like

'

See Vol.

I.

Chapter

xii. (A).