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LEFT ITALY 213 ITALY Its purpose was to give instruction to demobilized soldiers. Army and Navy. — After the conclu- sion of the World War, the field army was composed of 12 Territorial Army Corps, subdivided into 30 divisions and 2 cavalry divisions. See Armies. The total strength of the field army at the end of 1919 was 800,000, and it was in- tended to i-educe it gradually to 250,000. The total number of men mobilized dur- ing the war was 5,615,000. The total casualties amounted to 949,576. Of this 496,921 were dead. Special troops are maintained in Libya, Erithrea, and in of paternal authority of the bishop, grew steadily in these troubled times, espe- cially in the struggle against the Lom- bard kings. Italy, with the exception of the duchy of Benevento and the republics of Lower Italy, thus became a constitu- ent part of the Frankish monarchy, and the imperial crown of the West was bestowed on Charlemagne (800). On the breaking up of the Carlovingian em- pire Italy became a separate kingdom and the scene of strife between Teutonic invaders. At length Otto the Great was crowned emperor at Rome (961), and the year after became emperor of what ST. MARK'S, VENICE, ITALY Italian Somaliland. For a general ac- count of the modern Italian navy and its strength, see Navy. History. — The ancient history of Italy will be found under Rome (q. v.) The modern history begins with A. D. 476, when Odoacer, chief of the Herulians, a German tribe who had invaded the coun- try, was proclaimed King of Italy. In 568 the Lombards (Longobardi), a Ger- man people originally from the Elbe, led by their king, Alboin, conquered the Po basin and founded a kingdom which had its capital at Pavia. The kingdom of the Lombards included Upper Italy, Tuscany, and Umbria, with some outly- ing districts. But on the N. E. coast the inhabitants of the lagoons still retained theii independence, and in 697 elected their first doge and founded the republic of Venice. The power of the Pope, though at first recognized only as a kind was henceforth known as the Holy Roman Empire. The history of mediaeval Italy is much taken up with the party quarrels of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and the quar- rels and rivalries of the free republics of Middle and Upper Italy. In Tuscany the party of the Guelphs formed them- selves into a league for the maintenance of the national freedom under the leader- ship of Florence; only Pisa and Arezzo remained attached to the Ghibelline cause. In Lombardy it was different, Milan, Novara, Lodi, Vercelli, Asti, and Cremona formed a Guelph confederacy, while the Ghibelline league comprised Verona, Mantua, Treviso, Parma, Pia- cenza, Reggio, Modena, and Brescia. Commercial rivalry impelled the mari- time republics to mutual wars. At Meloria the Genoese annihilated (1284) the navy of the Pisans, and completed