[5] Second,
those cities like Venice and Ravenna,[6] which, by means of a
connection with the sea which the invaders could not cut off, were
enabled to gain supplies by water, and so resist all efforts of the
besieging host to capture them. They never fell completely under the
Lombard yoke, and either retained a sort of partial autonomy or
yielded allegiance to some other power. It is the cities of the former
class that are the subject of this investigation.
The condition of these inland towns at the time of the invasion was,
as we have seen, weak in the extreme. The defenses, where they
existed, were of a character to afford little protection, and the bulk
of the inhabitants were so enervated from a life of poverty and
oppression that they were almost incapable of offering any resistance
in their own defense. They were reduced to such a condition as to be
only too grateful if their rough conquerors, after an easy victory,
disdainfully spared their lives, and left them to occupy their
dismantled dwellings.
This seems to have been the almost universal method of procedure. The
Lombards did not in any sense, at first, think of occupying the
conquered cities; for the reasons already given they despised, because
they could not yet comprehend, the life of the civilian. They
contented themselves with pulling down the walls, razing the
fortifications, and destroying every mark which would make of the city
anything but an aggregate of miserable dwellings.
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