History of the Latin and Teutonic nations (1494 to 1514)

Front matter

..

W* s ^ x

* a\

Introduction

More than eighty-four years have passed since Leopold von Ranke published, in October, 1824, his earliest work, " The Latin and Teutonic Nations." He was then not quite twenty-nine; when he died, on May 23, 1886, he was in his ninety-first year, but was still at work on his unfinished "World History." Between the first book and the last there is a close connection. It may, indeed, be said that his " Latin and Teutonic Nations," his histories of the Popes, of the Spanish and Ottoman Empires, of the Reformation, of the Wars of Religion in France, of the Seventeenth Century in England, and other works, were all exploratory voyages for the discovery of the world, which was from early years his goal. "You know," he wrote in 1826, " my old aim, the discovery of the sea of World History ".; and again in 1828, "the discovery of the unknown World History would be my greatest fortune." It is in this sense that Lord Acton has called him the most prompt and fortunate of European pathfinders. Thus, a quite peculiar interest is inherent in the first essay of the great historian's ceaseless historical activity, an essay which decided, or rather indicated, the direction which his intellect was to take.

A revised translation of a juvenile work published not far from a century ago is a lot which has fallen to few modern historians. As such has been Ranke's fortune, it may be instructive to form some estimate of the causes. These must be sought in the qualities of the writer, in the x INTRODUCTION

choice of his subject, and in some degree in the changing fashions of historical reading. The two former causes will receive consideration here ; publication can alone test the latter.

Ranke did not possess the high literary distinction of a Gibbon or a Froude. In point of style he can scarcely compare with Gregorovius, whose Teutonism was modified by Italian influence, as was that of Heine by French. Nevertheless there is a certain graceful simplicity which few German historians can claim, and a conscientious r striving after clearness, not only of thought but of expression. Ranke, from the first, was not content to write for ' the learned few ; he exacted no special knowledge, but appealed to the intelligent reading public. The existence of such a public in England explains the early appreciation which his works found here. He himself was not satisfied with his initial measure of success in respect of style and lucidity. He wrote to his brother that his "Latin and Teutonic Nations " was a hard book, but not, he hoped, obscure. Yet when Raumer praised its matter but criticized its language and form, he confessed that the criticism was just, and elsewhere he writes of the obscurities and unevennesses of his own work. In the full sunshine of his fame the prayer of Ranke was still for light — for clearness — for in clearness lies the truth.

Naturally enough, this deliberate simplicity, this absence of grandiose periods, dissatisfied some of the contemporaries of his earlier works. It was a pompous age, and the ambling paces of Ranke's narrative fell short of its ideal of a highflying Pegasus. The very softness and sweetness of his if style drew merriment from Heine, who compared it to well-cooked mutton with plenty of carrots. If Ranke's style was as transparent as water, it was said, it was also as tasteless. This characteristic undoubtedly increases the

INTRODUCTION xi

difficulty of translation, for the picturesque simplicity, natural in the German, if faithfully rendered into English, gives at times the impression of affectation.

Apart from his lucidity, the artistic element in Ranke, which is chiefly to be noticed, is his power of rapid portraiture. He rarely attempts an elaborate picture, and he is not always successful when he does. But the quick and true line-drawing enables the reader to seize the essential features of his characters without' any interruption of the narrative. This art is less noticeable in " The Latin and Teutonic Nations " than, for instance, in "The History of the Popes," but an exception may be found in his portrait of the Emperor Maximilian, though this is, indeed, somewhat more detailed than is his wont. Ranke probably never aimed at being a colourist ; his natural gift was that of an artist in black and white, or at most in tinted line. Nevertheless, when he takes up the palette, he shows a fine and delicate sense for atmosphere and texture, the result less of technical skill than of imaginative indwelling in his subject.

Literary merit alone could not have raised Ranke to his seat among the Immortals. The wings which bore him upward were an almost religious zeal for history, humanity, impartiality, and thought. His enemies called him a bookmaker and a fraud, but in truth history was for Ranke a religion; it was the manifestation of God's work upon mankind. In 1825 he told his brother, after his first success, that he meant to spend his whole life in the fear of God and in history, and his intention never faltered. Yet in this religion there was little that was abstract or doctrinal ; it was eminently human. Personality was what Ranke loved to study ; the personality of individuals, and then the personality of nations. Only through these could he attain to the personality of mankind at large. Abstract history had little charm for him ; he would have nothing to do with xii INTRODUCTION

types. " One must enjoy an individual," he wrote, " in all his aspects, just as one enjoys flowers without thought of the species to which they are to be referred." His very art of portraiture was probably unconscious, and is scarcely to be ascribed to style ; it was the necessary outcome of his insight. History was for him a Muse who lived and breathed and moved; thus it is that his books are instinct with her life.

Impartiality must have been all the more difficult for an historian who felt so keenly as did Ranke. Yet when he I describes such momentous conflicts as the French Wars i of Religion or the English Great Rebellion, he is not a partisan. Even in his " History of the Reformation," ■ where the cause of his own religion and nation is involved, he is scrupulously just. In quite modern times impartiality is regarded as being almost a matter of course in a true historian, but to a Prussian writer in the nineteenth century it was well-nigh an impossibility, especially if he were in State pay. Ranke, though born a Saxon, became a loyal subject of the Hohenzollern ; he enjoyed the intimate confidence of his Emperor and of Bismarck, yet he cannot be fairly classed with the professional champions of Prussian policy; he preserved to the end the splendid isolation of his intellect. " He decided," wrote Lord Acton, "to repress the poet, the patriot, the religious or political partisan, to sustain no cause, to banish himself from his books, to write nothing that could gratify his own feelings, or disclose his own private convictions."

The range of knowledge and interest enjoyed by Ranke is now becoming rare. Modern research has the defects of its qualities ; it is almost necessarily microscopic, and every new mass of materials that is unearthed must make it more so. The sphere of the more thorough modern historian is always narrowing, whereas that of Ranke was

INTRODUCTION xiii

ever widening. He was by nature what he was still striving to be to the day of his death, a universal historian. He early had the impudence to criticize the antiquarianism of Niebuhr; he good-humouredly laughed at those who took the more trouble in proportion to the insignificance of their subject. As a teacher he may be said to have belonged to the Pre-Seminarist school. He had much belief in the educational power of lectures covering a long period of history, and though he had a weak and indistinct utterance he never yielded to the temptation of preferring the laboratory to the chair. Pupils were made to work out their subject for themselves. His method seems greatly to have resembled that of the Oxford or Cambridge tutor; pupils brought their youthful essays on somewhat general topics, and the Professor criticized as they read, or discussed the subject afterwards to the accompaniment of sausages and beer. Research for its own sake was actually discouraged ; it must be the means, and not the end. Buildings, he would say, must always have sure foundations, but the highest aim of the student should not be the construction of cellar vaults. In Ranke's own practice archivial research was the last rather than the first stage. He thoroughly mastered his subject, and learned what to look for, he then resorted to archives for confirmation or illustration. Thus he appeared to know his way about collections before he had ever seen them. This was the despair of custodians who had to ply him with bundle on bundle of documents, and complained that he read with his hand, just as a recent Oxford professor was accused of judging books and examination papers by smell rather than by sight.

It was natural that Ranke's work should from time to time be depreciated by the growing school of archivist and researcher, or by those who worked on older methods. Leo Gervinus, Bergenroth, and Gindely all made him the xiv INTRODUCTION

butt of fierce attacks. Researchers complained that he neglected the most weighty stores of knowledge for the more showy, that he merely skimmed the documents which he professed to study, and peppered his pages with quotations, to give a show of erudition. One professor refused to place his books on the shelves of the University library ; another pronounced that nothing was to be learnt from his " Reformation." Doubtless in some of the strictures there was an element of truth. Ranke's researches were indeed considerable, but they were necessarily not so close and minute as those of workers who confined their studies to the history of a score of years. It is well to remember that so sound a researcher as Arneth declared before a Congress of historians that Ranke alone among writers of prose had furnished a masterpiece to every nation — to Germany, that is, and France, to England, Italy, and Spain, to the Ottoman Empire, even to Servia. Sufficient allowance was not made for his previous preparation, nor yet for the power of speed, which is a distinguishing mark of genius in archivial research as in all else. At any rate, Ranke had the good fortune to outlive most of his critics and their criticism. That he formed such pupils as Giesebrecht, Waitz, Sybel, Lorenz, and our own Lord Acton, is a proof of the educational value of his methods.

Lord Acton dwells upon this side of Ranke's work. He regards a prize essay on Henry I, set in 1834, and in which Waitz beat Giesebrecht, as the foundation of what has been for so long incomparably the first school of history in the world, not for ideas or eloquence, but for solid and methodical work. " Ranke has not only written," he elsewhere says, "a larger number of mostly good books than any other man that ever lived, but has taken pains from the first to explain how the thing is done." And again, " Ranke taught the modern historian

INTRODUCTION xv

to be critical, to be colourless, to be new. We meet him at every step. There are stronger books than any one of his, and some may have surpassed him in political, religious, philosophic insight, in vividness of the creative imagination, in originality, elevation, and depth of thought, but by the extent of important work well executed, by his influence on able men, and by the amount of knowledge which mankind received and employs with the stamp of his mind upon it, he stands unrivalled." Any one who has had any experience of a school of history will realize how well-nigh impossible it is to be at once a prolific writer and a fruitful teacher. Yet this was Ranke's feat.

The strength of Ranke consisted, perhaps, above all, in his power of thought. Whenever he wrote he thought. This is by no means a platitude. It is possible to write a very tolerable and useful history without any thought at all. History is frequently a mere matter of repetition — not of verbal iteration, but of idea and arrangement. Want of thought is, in fact, the danger to which the narrative, and especially the universal historian, is exposed. Ranke escaped this owing to his insight, his vitality, his power of co-ordination, his strategic mastery of his facts. A very appreciative critic, Dr. A. Guilland, has said that Ranke was intelligent rather than original. It is difficult now to judge equitably of the originality of an historian who wrote more than three-quarters of a century ago, because many of the thoughts and methods which were then original have become commonplace. The general lines of any given period have from much reading and much writing become fairly fixed, and the historian cannot stray far from them without becoming bizarre or paradoxical. But originality can always find its vent in the treatment of detail and illustration, and of this art Ranke gave convincing proof from his very earliest book.

xvi INTRODUCTION

This earliest book has a special interest for several reasons. It was accompanied by a subsidiary volume, which has not been translated, containing an elaborate critique of the authorities upon whom Ranke had mainly to rely. Their importance was at once recognized, and, what was better still, they provoked discussion as to the originality of his method. "A new art of employing authorities," wrote Lord Acton, " came in with Ranke in 1824." The result was the author's promotion from a school at Frankfurt on the Oder to the post of Extraordinary Professor in the University of Berlin. This was the making of Ranke's career ; he could now both learn and teach in one of the world's chief intellectual capitals. The provincial schoolmaster was to become, in Dollinger's words, a Praecefitor Germaniae. Looking backwards from the close of this long career the reader will find that " The Latin and Teutonic Nations " contains the protoplasm from which Ranke's historical principles were gradually evolved, and in particular the blending of wide philosophical conceptions with illustrative detail. "What a wealth," writes Lorenz, " of ideas fermenting and in part obscure, set forth in a form which, while it makes reading difficult, nevertheless enchains the fancy." Ranke in after years had little parental affection for his firstborn, and wished first to exclude it from the edition of his collected works, and then to give it a new form. Lorenz himself saved it for posterity by insisting that he would spoil one of his most original and instructive contributions to history.

Ranke chose a magnificent subject, and this he himself admitted to the end. Until the close of the eighteenth century it would be hard to find two decades so rich in interest and importance as those whose history he tells. That this is now a commonplace is due mainly to the influence of this very book. It is true that the author

INTRODUCTION xvii

owes something to accident, for his scheme comprised a larger period with 1535 as its concluding date. This would have led him into a fresh range of ideas, personalities, and aims. His final date, moreover, was singularly inconclusive ; no halt could have been possible until the year 1559. Even as it is, the date with which he closes is not, as will be seen, a scientific finale. The Preface sets forth that the author's intention is to confine himself in the main to the interaction of those nations of Latin and Teutonic origin, whose history is the kernel of all modern history. Internal or constitutional events he would only treat in so far as they were necessary to the understanding of external enterprises. For example, the growth of absolutism in Spain was a necessary condition of the success of the Spanish Crown in Italy ; the strength or weakness of Maximilian at his several Diets is reflected in the flux or reflux of his international influence. The common movements of a certain group of European nations is therefore the subject of this volume.

To prove how old the idea of this unity of European nations is, the Introduction opens with the dream of a Visigothic kingdom fusing the Germanic tribes with the old Roman world. At its close Ranke calls the three general movements of these nations — that is, the migrations, the crusades, and the colonization — the three deep breaths. It would almost seem as if he regarded the move of the Western powers upon Italy at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a fourth deep breath. In a measure this does partake of the character of the other three. The southernly or easternly march of Germans, French, Spaniards, and particularly Swiss, was almost a migration. Then, again, to more than one mind Italy was the stepping-stone for a crusade against the infidel ; the threatened French advance from Naples upon Constantinople was to be the rival or the complement of the conquest of Granada. Charles VIII xviii INTRODUCTION

was too weak of purpose to abandon the pleasures of Naples for the sterner task of a crusade, but there is no reason to rate his high-flown expressions as mere bombast. And, finally, the colonizing enterprises of the European nations, especially those of the Portuguese, directly affected the fortunes of the Italian wars. Had the source of her commerce with the East not been tapped by Portugal, Venice might have made a better fight with Europe. The fourth great breath, in fact, began to be drawn in before the third was quite exhausted.

The offensive movement against Italy was begun by France, but Charles VIII's invasion in 1494 was rather the occasion than the cause for the enterprise of the other nations. These were prompted by no mere jealousy of France, or by a desire to preserve the balance of power. Maximilian had already begun his intrigues with Milan ; it was always certain that as soon as an Emperor was strong enough, he would revive his imperial pretensions. It was unlikely that the legitimate line of Aragon, which now wielded the forces of Castile, and which already possessed the ports of Sicily, would long acquiesce in its exclusion from Naples by the bastard branch. Julius II, as Cardinal, had long ago brought down the Swiss hordes, all too willing, upon the fat Lombard plains ; it was no mere raid that they now intended, but substantial occupation.

Upon Charles VIII's apparently futile expedition followed the partition wars, which form the bulk of the present volume. Louis XII doubted if he could realize the Orleanist claims on Milan without the co-operation of Venice, the most subtle antagonist of Charles VIII. Hence arose the Milanese partition war. The French king was then certain that the pretensions of his Crown to Naples were valueless unless he could offer a quid pro quo to Spain; the outcome was the Neapolitan partition war.

INTRODUCTION xix

The thieves quarrelled, to the disadvantage of the less clever but more enterprising thief, and Naples passed in its integrity to Spain. Alexander VI, after stealing oddments in the general confusion, was at the moment of his death balancing the prospects of a partition of Central Italy by an alliance with either France or Spain. Finally, Julius II, most fatal of all Italians to Italian freedom, engineered the most criminal of all partition wars. In the League of Cambray, France, Spain, and Germany were all to have their share of Venetian territory. It was of small advantage to Italy that the Pope himself, Mantua, Ferrara, and Savoy were to have such share of the spoils as fall to camp-followers. Julius recognized too late his own mistake, and bragged of the expulsion of all foreigners. The only result was a fresh partition, the temporary exclusion of France, the most humane and least persistent of partitioning powers, the permanent settlement of Spain, the introduction of the migrating Swiss, while, if he had had his will, the Austrian occupation of the Venetian mainland would have been anticipated by three centuries. Italy had become the Thieves' Kitchen of Europe, and Julius II had made himself responsible for the fixtures.

Such a theme as this gave full scope for Ranke's interest in personality, his range of knowledge, and his constructive power. Italy throughout occupies the centre of his canvas, but in the distance, and, it may be added, in the corners there are bits of landscape and seascape, which might well form separate pictures, but which, nevertheless, have their fitting place in the general composition. Beyond the Alps the fortunes of the Italian wars, and of Maximilian's shifting relations with France, are seen to affect not only the raids of the Duke of GueMers on the northernmost Netherlands, but the most technical details of constitutional reform in Germany. In a few lines something xx INTRODUCTION

is learnt of the domestic peculiarities of Wiirttemberg, a second-rate German state, which is in the process of conversion from a county into a duchy. At first sight this appears to be an otiose, if not inartistic, detail, but all of a sudden it is made to account for Maximilian's triumphant appearance before the Diet of Freiburg, and that leads to his enhanced reputation with the European powers. The quarrels of Swiss and Grisons with Swabians and Tyrolese contributed largely to Louis XII's occupation of Milan, their pacification led to Ludovico Moro's return, while an internal Swiss squabble determined the fate of Lombardy. Ranke touches but lightly and allusively on American exploration ; but he levies heavy contributions on the shores of North Africa, on the Red Sea, and on the Indian Ocean, from Mombasa to Malacca. Here it is that he proves, in his most effective manner, the unity of the history of the Western nations. The Portuguese, after fighting the Moors on the shores of the Atlantic, found the same enemies at Mozambique, and strove with them for the spice trade of Calicut. The battles of Spaniards or Portuguese at Bugia, Tripoli, Diu have active connection with the clash of Latin and Teutonic nations in Italy. Until the French occupation of the hinterland of Algiers, there was, perhaps, only one statesman who comprehended the essential factors of the North African problem, and that was Ximenes.

Ranke perpetually brings the Western and Eastern incidents of his period into mutual relation. The Venetians, after Almeida's victories in 1507, sent metal and gun-founders and shipwrights to the Soldan, whose fleet was manned in part by Venetian and Dalmatian sailors. " His victory and his loss was their victory and their loss. Their maritime life and command of the seas were alike dependent upon the issue that was to be fought out in

INTRODUCTION xxi

India in the year 1508." Again, while February 3, 1509, crushed the trade of Venice, the battle of May 14 destroyed her mainland power ; Italy, in the phrase of Ascanio Sforza, ceased to be the inner court of the world. Not only, indeed, were the profits of the Eastern trade withdrawn from Venice, but went to swell the resources of her enemies. The profit of one hundred and seventy-five per cent., which the house of Fugger derived from the despatch of three ships to Calicut, enabled them to finance Maximilian in his attack on Padua. And as with Portuguese so it is with Spaniards. In 15 n Ximenes had apparently persuaded Ferdinand to undertake in person the conquest of North Africa. Ferdinand, on his way to Malaga, was stopped by news from Romagna, and thus it was that the Spanish force, intended for the permanent occupation of North Africa, from Algiers to Tripoli, was shipped to Italy to be beaten at Ravenna.

It seems ungrateful to complain that one who has given so much should have denied a little more; and yet it must be confessed that the close of this volume leaves the subject incomplete. Ranke was, in this case, too much influenced by the chronology of reigns. He made the death of Louis XII his dividing line. This was natural, as the personality of his successor was so striking that it immediately calls up a fresh slide in the magic-lantern. Then, again, Francis I at once suggests the name of his rival, Charles V. Nevertheless, the scientific frontier line is not 15 14, but 1516, for it was then that the Italian partition wars closed. Not until 1521 did the conflict between Charles V and Francis I for the domination of Italy begin ; their relations were particularly friendly until at least the close of 15 16. Ranke himself admits, in the Conclusion added in his second edition, that his work breaks off at the very moment of the crisis. The death

c xxil .INTRODUCTION

of Louis XII left the situation in Italy indeterminate. It was as impossible that France should submit to defeat by the Swiss Cantons as it was that England should recognize Majuba or Magersfontein as a final verdict. It was not chivalry, nor mere love of fight, but political necessity that drove the French king and nation into the campaign of Marignano. The victory of Marignano connects itself with the defeat of Novara rather than with that of Pavia. In 1514 Spanish troops were still prowling about Italy, seeking whom they should devour. While Spaniards occupied Brescia, Imperialists still held Verona, and these were the two chief cities of the Venetian mainland. The Swiss nominally in the service of the new Duke of Milan, Maximilian Sforza, were in reality absorbing Lombardy. The Holy League still stood in arms against France and Venice. Thus if Ranke must needs choose the end of a reign as his conclusion, it should have been that of Ferdinand, for the Spanish king had become of more weight in European politics than the French. Ferdinand's death occasioned the formation of the huge aggregate of Habsburg power, which was to be the dominating factor in the succeeding period. It was closely followed by four treaties, three of which have been of abiding validity. The treaty of Noyon, the most important for the moment, regulated ' the relations between France, Spain, and the Netherlands on the most amicable terms. The Eternal Peace of Freiburg bound the Swiss to French service down to the Revolution ; it determined the curious, curly frontier which still twists in and out on the shores of Lakes Maggiore and Lugano. Their defeat at Marignano had decided that the Swiss should not be a substantial Italian power, a buffer state dividing the Habsburg and the Valois. Equally strange and equally permanent was the line drawn on the east between Venetian and Austrian territory by the treaty of December, 15 16.

INTRODUCTION xxiii

This line gave to Maximilian the uppermost slice of the Lago di Garda, and the town of Roveredo on the Adige ; instead of accepting the rapid Isonzo as the natural boundary, racial and geographical, between Slav and Italian, it created a highly artificial frontier, which to the present day gives a breadth of the Friulian plain with its Italian population to Austria, and leaves to Italy, heiress of Venice, a Slavonia irredenta in the sub- Alpine hills. Finally, the victory of Marignano determined the Concordat of Bologna, which may be said to have guided the relations between Church and State in France until almost yesterday.

It would be dishonest to pretend, that even within its limits " The Latin and Teutonic Nations " is a perfect book. Ranke well knew that it -was not. He was still struggling to attain his ideal of style — simple, smooth, and clear. The volume has been criticized on the ground that it was based solely on printed authorities; but Ranke replies, in the Preface to his second edition, that these authorities were very numerous and very good, that only on reaching the succeeding period he felt obliged to go behind the printingpress. It may be regretted that this second edition wasnot more thoroughly revised in the light of later learning. This appeared in October, 1874, to celebrate the jubilee of Ranke's literary activity. He revised the pages on a holiday in the country, away from books ; he confesses that the work is essentially the same. Yet some of the small mistakes might well have been corrected, and they are probably responsible for errors in later text-books. In 1824' Ranke had not as yet visited Italy, and his geography is occasionally at fault. He writes of Louis XII's operations on the Adda as taking place among heights and valleys, whereas the only excrescence on the plain was the dyke of a canalized streamlet. It is elaborately argued that the French attacked the Venetian vanguard, whereas xxiv INTRODUCTION

authorities printed by 1874 prove conclusively that it was the rear. The battle of Ravenna is a hotch-potch of bright anecdotes, without a feeling for tactics. Treviso is, by implication, placed in the Friuli, while Gian Galeazzo Visconti's widow is wrongly represented as giving Verona to Venice to obtain her alliance against Carrara. Caesar Borgia has enough crimes for which to answer, but it was not men, but bulls that he shot from horseback, as they charged across the piazza of St. Peters. A more serious mistake, often repeated by others, occurs in the very second paragraph of the book. Here Rene of Provence is made to disinherit his grandson, Rene of Lorraine, and leave Anjou to his nephew, the Count of Maine, who in turn bequeathed it to the Crown. But Anjou was an apanage which could not descend in either the female or the collateral line, and it lapsed to the Crown upon old Rene's death. But a Pharisee could doubtless have found motes in all the eyes of Argus. In spite of blemishes, " The Latin and Teutonic Nations " will remain an inspiring example of what can be done by a young writer who will both read and think. Most honest historians would be thankful if their last book were as good as Leopold von Ranke's first.