Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/59

 with entry upon a period of riot and brawl, which made the streets unsafe for quiet citizens. Every kind of misdemeanour revelled at this season in Rome, which became for the time a perfect bear-garden, in which criminals let out of jail enjoyed. themselves mightily at the expense of peace-loving folks. The lawlessness which then reigned in Rome was a recognised order of things, consecrated by custom, and looked upon as a prescriptive right during the period of Conclave, just as the right of mummery during the Carnival season. The origin of this strange state of things must be sought in the general want of discipline that distinguished the armed force kept by States in the middle ages, and especially in that kept by the Pope. The trained bands were so many bodies of mutinous and lawless brawlers, who seized every opportunity for indulging their natural disposition to insubordination, outrage, and crime. Their pay as a rule was terribly in arrear, and therefore they hardly ever failed to begin operations on the decease of a Pope by a demand to have their claims settled or they would do no duty. These men, swept together from all corners, true mer-