Hallam (_Middle Ages_, ch. iii, pt. i) describes Sismondi as stating that Otto "erected" the Lombard cities into municipal communities, and dissents from that view. But Sismondi (_Républiques_, i, 95) expressly says that there are no charters, and that the municipal independence of the cities is to be inferred from their subsequent claims of prescription. As there is nothing to show for any regular government from the outside in the preceding period of turmoil, the inference that _some_ self-government existed before and under Otto is really forced upon us. Ranke (_Latin and Teutonic Nations_, Eng. tr. p. 11) pronounces that the first _consuls_ of the Italian cities, chosen by themselves, appear at the date of the first Crusade, 1100. "Beyond all question, we meet with them first in Genoa on the occasion of an expedition to the Holy Land." (They appear again in 1117 at a meeting of reconciliation for all Lombardy at Milan. Prof. W.F. Butler, _The Communes of Lombardy_, 1906, pp. 76-77.) But this clearly does not exclude prior forms of self-government for domestic needs. Consuls of some kind are noted "in Fano and other places in 883; in Rome in 901; Orvieto, 975; Ravenna, 990; Ferrara, 1015; Pisa and Genoa, 1100; Florence, 1101." Boulting-Sismondi, p. 63. (This last date appears to be an error. The document hitherto dated 1102 belongs to 1182. Villari, _Two First Centuries of Florentine History_, Eng. tr. pp. 55, 84. But there is documentary evidence for Florentine consuls in 1136. _Id._ p. 115.) Hallam himself points out that in the years 1002-6 the annalists, in recording the wars of the cities, speak "of the people and not of their leaders, which is the true republican tone of history"; and notes that a contemporary chronicle shows the people of Pavia and Milan acting as independent states in 1047.