In 1860 the Swiss were finally dislodged by Victor Emanuel's envoy, General Manfredo Fanti; and, unarmed and closely guarded by a double file of the King's soldiers, the last representatives of papal power were driven from the fortress of Paul III., and having passed a night in the cathedral, they were ousted for ever from the precincts of Perugia. Paul III.'s fortress had now been entirely pulled down by an infinite number of willing hands, and the present great buildings of the Prefettura, which represents the modern government of a prosperous town, took their place on the former site of the Baglioni palaces. * * * * * With the loss of Perugia's independent existence in 1540 the light of romance was lost to her history. But from that minute, and in spite of all her anguish and humiliation, she learned the final lesson of how to live at peace within herself, and be at peace with all her neighbours. This lesson she had never learned through all her battlings in the past. She had risen fighting, and fighting she had flourished. It would be inaccurate to say that fighting she fell. Perugia never fell. She was merely caught and tamed. Anyone familiar with the cities of Umbria will at once recognise in this, their head, something forcible, strong, grand, and enduring, which neither nobles, emperors, nor popes were able to beat out of her; something which has kept her what she was at the beginning: Perugia, the city of plenty, and fitted her to be what she is now: Perugia the capital of Umbria; as grand in her unity with her great mother, as she was powerful in her strife. CHAPTER IV _The City of Perugia_ "C'est une vieille ville du moyen âge, ville de défense et de refuge, posée sur un plateau escarpé, d'où toute la vallée se découvre."--H. TAINE, _Voyage en Italie_. Having glanced thus rapidly over the history of Perugia we turn with fresh interest to examine the city itself, and to trace through what remains of its earliest walls and houses, the character of those same fascinating, if pugnacious persons, who built those walls, fought over them, lived and died within them. Perugia is an excellent mirror of history, combining on its surface not only a reflection of the immortal past but of a prosperous present, and with the exception of ancient Roman influences, which, for some obscure reason, have almost entirely vanished, it would be difficult to find a nest of man more perfect or unchanged in all its parts. Battered and abused by warfare and by weather the stones of the middle ages may be and are, but they have not been destroyed, and there is something grand and clean in the modern buildings which confirms, rather than destroys, the æsthetic charm and splendour of the old.