Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes

Rome, 1347: a notary's son raises the mob, drives out the barons, restores the Republic, is crowned tribune — and rules for seven months. Bulwer-Lytton gave English the pen mightier than the sword and the dark and stormy night; here he wrote the best of his historical novels, and Wagner made an opera of it. The tribune's fall is not the barons' doing; it is his own, and Bulwer sees it exactly.