The same vitality which had won Milan her own freedom impelled her to the oppression of the weaker communities around her. Her first fulfilment of this tragic law of progress was the destruction of her neighbour, Lodi, a strong and flourishing community, whose rivalry was a constant menace to her own trade and prosperity. There was a long-standing hatred between the two cities. The times lent abundant pretext to the Communes to make war upon one another. The quarrel between Empire and Church entangled them all in its immense web. Each, in embracing the one or the other cause, was guided by its local sympathies and antipathies, and reflected the general strife on a smaller scale in its relations with its neighbours.
In 1111, Milan, ally of the Church, scarcely waiting till Lodi’s protector, the Emperor Henry V., had turned his back for the time on Lombardy, attacked the smaller city in full force, and ruined it to the foundations. The miserable inhabitants, sternly forbidden to rebuild their old homes, made poor little hamlets in which to shelter themselves in the vicinity, and there dragged on a poverty-stricken existence under the oppressive yoke of their conquerors, who jealously deprived them of every means of recovery. Yet the wonderful vitality which animated these young Italian communities preserved Lodi from utter despair, and smouldered in her, ready to burst out in revolt on the first opportunity.
Milan’s next enterprise was the subjugation of Como, which was fast developing into a rich and powerful community, strong in the possession of a lake navy. That city, however, resisted with great vigour, retaliating with frequent success upon her aggressors, and before she was finally subdued the war dragged on for ten years. Nearly all the North Italian cities united with Milan against her, and she was finally captured and burnt down in 1127, and her inhabitants compelled to swear fealty to Milan. During the quarrel for the Empire between Lothair and Conrad, after the death of Henry V., and the preoccupation of each of those monarchs in turn with the affairs of Germany, the great Lombard city pursued her sovereign way unchecked. Pavia, the old royal city, and her chief rival, whose subjugation was to cost Milan yet three centuries of almost ceaseless warfare, now felt, as often before, the strength of her arm, and was compelled to bow to her will in the general councils of Lombardy, and, with powerful Cremona and the rest of North Italy, to follow her lead.