Rienzi the Last of the Roman Tribunes by Edward George Lytton Bulwer-Lytton Biography & Autobiography Historical Europe & Italy

<p><strong>. . . having had occasion to read the original authorities from which modern historians have drawn their accounts of the life of Rienzi I was led to believe that a very remarkable man had been superficially judged and a very important period crudely examined.</strong> And this belief was sufficiently strong to induce me at first to meditate a more serious work upon the life and times of Rienzi. I have taken a view of his character different in some respects from that of Gibbon or Sismondi. But it is a view in all its main features which I believe (and think I could prove) myself to be warranted in taking not less by the facts of History than the laws of Fiction. -- From Bulwer-Lytton's Preface</p>