When for nearly forty years Rome had been deserted by the popes, who had betaken themselves in 1309 to a long residence at Avignon, France, and when the Eternal City was virtually without an imperial government--the Teutonic emperors having likewise abandoned her--she fell back upon the memories of her great past, recalling the glories of her ancient supremacy and the means whereby it had been established and maintained. Whatever might promise to restore it she was ready to welcome. At this time the real masters of Rome were the princes or barons dwelling in their fortified castles outside or in their strong palaces within the city. Over the northern district, near the Quirinal, reigned the celebrated old family of the Colonnas; while along the Tiber, from the Campo-di-Fiore to the Church of St. Peter, extended the sway of the new family of the Orsini. Other members of the nobility, in the country, held their seats in small fortified cities or castles. Under such domination Rome had become almost deserted. "The population of the seven-hilled city had come down to about thirty thousand souls." When at peace with one another--which was rarely--the barons exercised over the citizens and serfs a combined tyranny, while the farmers, travellers, and pilgrims were made victims of their plunder. At this period Petrarch--that "first modern man"--wrote to Pope Clement VI that Rome had become the abode of demons, the receptacle of all crimes, a hell for the living. "It was in these circumstances that a momentary revival of order and liberty was effected by the most extraordinary adventurer of an age that was prolific in adventurers." This was Cola Di Rienzi, who was born in Rome about 1313, and who is sometimes styled "an Italian patriot." In his ambitious endeavor to reinstate the Caesarean power in Italy he appears alternately in the figure of a hero and the character of a charlatan. Believing himself the founder of a new era, he was inflamed by his successes, and ended in "mystical extravagances and follies which could not fail to cause his ruin." Cola Di Rienzi was born of humble parents, though he afterward tried to gratify his own vanity and to gain the ear of Charles IV by claiming to be the bastard son of Henry VII. A wrong which he could not venture to avenge excited his bitter hostility against the baronage, while the study of Livy and other classical writers inspired him with regretful admiration for the glories of ancient Rome. He succeeded in attracting notice by his personal beauty and by the rather turgid eloquence which was his chief talent. In 1342 he took the most prominent part in an embassy from the citizens to Clement VI; and though he failed to induce the Pope to return to Rome, which at that time he seems to have regarded as the panacea for the evils of the time, he gained sufficient favor at Avignon to be appointed papal notary.