Still the matter was not hopeless, for he remembered that there was dwelling in the impregnable fortress of Canossa a virtuous and adventurous knight. To him, therefore, Martin addressed himself, and Azzo listened to his complaint. He and a chosen band of cavaliers donned their harness, and, repairing to the lake Benacus, conducted thence the persecuted Adelais to the fortress of Canossa. And this was well and chivalrously achieved, for virtue was protected; and in affording this protection, Azzo defied the power of the King of Italy. The subsequent fate of Adelais it falls not within my province to detail. The student of Italian history knows that she married Otho the Great, Emperor of Germany, and that this marriage was a main cause of uniting the sovereignties of Germany and Italy.[228] * * * * * [Sidenote: But little martial chivalry in Italy.] [Sidenote: Condottieri.] The growth and developement of chivalry in subsequent times were checked by political circumstances. Of them the chief was the formation of the republics in the north of Italy during the twelfth century. The power of the feudal nobility was far less than in any other country, and the nobles were the humble allies of the towns.[229] The citizens trusted rather to the security of their fortifications than their own strength in the field, for their infantry could not resist the charges of Italian cavalry; and, except such nobles as were in alliance with them, their force consisted of infantry. The superiority of the chivalric array of the various lords and feudal princes of Italy to the militia of the cities[230] was one great cause of that great political revolution,--the change of the republics into tyrannies. The power of knights over armed burghers having been experienced, and the towns not possessing in sufficient numbers a force of cavalry, the practice arose of hiring the service of bodies of lancers, who were commonly gentlemen of small fortune but of great pretensions, and who found war the readiest way of gratifying their proud and luxurious desires. In the fourteenth century another great change occurred in the military affairs of Italy. I shall lay it before my readers in the lucid diction of the English historian of that country. "The successive expeditions of Henry VII., of Louis of Bavaria, and of John of Bohemia, had filled Italy with numerous bands of German cavalry, who, on the retirement of their sovereigns, were easily tempted to remain in a rich and beautiful country, where their services were eagerly demanded, and extravagantly paid. The revolution in the military art, which in the preceding century established the resistless superiority of a mounted gens-d'armerie over the burgher infantry, had habituated every state to confide its security to bodies of mercenary cavalry; and the Lombard tyrants in particular, who founded their power upon these forces, were