Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE ORIGIN OF THE FLO%EV£TIV£E COMMUTE I HEN the Longobards became masters of nearly the whole of Italy, and subjected it to their long and cruel sway, they are known to have appointed a duke to every one of the principal cities they occupied. Rome remained free from them,
