When the inhabitants of the cities of Italy associated for their common defence, their first necessity was to guard against the brigandage of the barbarian armies, which invaded their country and treated them as enemies; the second, to protect themselves from the robberies of other barbarians who called themselves their masters. Their united efforts soon insured their safety; in a few years they found themselves rich and powerful; and these same men, whom emperors, prelates, and nobles considered only as freed serfs, perceived that they constituted almost the only public force in Italy. Their self-confidence grew with their power; and the desire of domination succeeded that of independence. Those cities which had accumulated the most wealth, whose walls enclosed the greatest population, attempted, from the first half of the twelfth century, to secure by force of arms the obedience of such of the neighbouring towns as did not appear sufficiently strong to resist them. These greater cities had no intention to strip the smaller of their liberty; their sole purpose was to force them into a perpetual alliance, so as to share their good or evil fortune, and always place their armed force under the standard of the dominant city.[b] FOOTNOTES [3] [“The archbishop of Milan was the most powerful prince when there was not an Italian emperor or king of Italy in the north of the peninsula. Milan owes almost all her glory to her archbishops.”--MILMAN, _History of Latin Christianity_.] [4] [The famous and splendid ceremony of the espousal of the doge with the Adriatic was instituted to symbolise this conquest.] [5] The following is a list of the doges of Venice from about the beginning of the eighth to the close of the thirteenth centuries: