XIV. THE “LAST DAY OF ITALY”

XIV. THE “LAST DAY OF ITALY”

[Sidenote: [1494-1530 A.D.]]

The period was at length arrived when Italy--which had restored intellectual light to Europe, reconciled civil order with liberty, recalled youth to the study of laws and of philosophy, created the taste for poetry and the fine arts, revived the science and literature of antiquity, given prosperity to commerce, manufactures, and agriculture--was destined to become the prey of those very barbarians whom she was leading to civilisation. Her independence must necessarily perish with her liberty, which was hitherto the source of her grandeur and power. In a country covered with republics three centuries before, there remained but four at the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici; and in those, although the word “liberty” was still inscribed on their banners, that principle of life had disappeared from their institutions. Florence, already governed for three generations by the family of the Medici, corrupted by their licentiousness, and rendered venal by their wealth, had been taught by them to fear and to obey. Venice with its jealous aristocracy, Siena and Lucca, each governed by a single caste of citizens, if still republics, had no longer popular governments or republican energy. Neither in those four cities, nor in Genoa, which had surrendered its liberty to the Sforzas, nor in Bologna, which yielded to the Bentivoglios, nor in any of the monarchical states, was there to be found throughout Italy that power of a people whose every individual will tends to the public weal, whose efforts are all combined for the public benefit and the common safety. The princes of that country could appeal only to order and the obedience of the subject, not to the enthusiasm of the citizen, for the protection of Italian independence and of their own.

Immense wealth, coveted by the rest of Europe, was, it is true, always accumulating in absolute monarchies, as well as in republics; but if, on the one hand, it furnished the pay of powerful armies, on the other, it augmented the danger of Italy, by exciting the cupidity of its neighbours. The number of national soldiers was very considerable; their profession was that which led the most rapidly to distinction and fortune. Engaged only for the duration of hostilities, and at liberty to retire every month, instead of spending their lives in the indolence of garrisons or abandoning the freedom of their will, they passed rapidly from one service to another, seeking only war, and never becoming enervated by idleness. The horses and armour of the Italian men-at-arms were reckoned superior to those of the transalpine nations, against which they had measured themselves in France during “the war of the public weal.” The Italian captains had made war a science, every branch of which they thoroughly knew. It was never suspected for a moment that the soldier should be wanting in courage; but the general mildness of manners and the progress of civilisation had accustomed the Italians to make war with sentiments of honour and humanity towards the vanquished. Ever ready to give quarter, they did not strike a fallen enemy. Often, after having taken from him his horse and armour, they set him free; at least, they never demanded a ransom so enormous as to ruin him. Horsemen who went to battle clad in steel were rarely killed or wounded, so long as they kept their saddles. Once unhorsed, they surrendered. The battle, therefore, never became murderous. The courage of the Italian soldiers, which had accommodated itself to this milder warfare, suddenly gave way before the new dangers and ferocity of barbarian enemies. They became terror-struck when they perceived that the French caused dismounted horsemen to be put to death by their valets, or made prisoners only to extort from them, under the name of ransom, all they possessed. The Italian cavalry, equal in courage and superior in military science to the French, were for some time unable to make head against an enemy whose ferocity disturbed their imaginations.

While Italy had lost a part of the advantages which, in the preceding century, had constituted her security, the transalpine nations had suddenly acquired a power which destroyed the ancient equilibrium. Up to the close of the fifteenth century, wars were much fewer between nation and nation than between French, Germans, or Spaniards among themselves. Even the war between the English and the French, which desolated France for more than a century, sprang not from enmity between two rival nations, but from the circumstance that the kings of England were French princes, hereditary sovereigns of Normandy, Poitou, and Guienne. Charles VII at last forced the English back beyond sea, and reunited to the monarchy provinces which had been detached from it for centuries. Louis XI vanquished the dukes and peers of France who had disputed his authority; he humbled the house of Burgundy, which had begun to have interests foreign to France. His young successor and son, Charles VIII, on coming of age, found himself the master of a vast kingdom in a state of complete obedience, a brilliant army, and large revenues; but was weak enough to think that there was no glory to be obtained unless in distant and chivalrous expeditions. The different monarchies of Spain, which had long been rivals, were united by the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of Castile, and by the conquest which they jointly made of the Moorish kingdom of Granada. Spain, forming for the first time one great power, began to exercise an influence which she had never till then claimed. The emperor Maximilian, after having united the Low Countries and the county of Burgundy, his wife’s inheritance, to the states of Austria, which he inherited from his father, asserted his right to exercise over the whole of Germany the imperial authority which had escaped from the hands of his predecessors. Lastly, the Swiss, rendered illustrious by their victories over Charles the Bold, had begun, but since his death only, to make a traffic of their lives, and enter the service of foreign nations. At the same time, the empire of the Turks extended along the whole shore of the Adriatic, and menaced at once Venice and the kingdom of Naples. Italy was surrounded on all sides by powers which had suddenly become gigantic, and of which not one had, half a century before, given her uneasiness.

[Sidenote: [1492-1494 A.D.]]

France was the first to carry abroad an activity unemployed at home, and to make Italy feel the change which had taken place in the politics of Europe. Its king, Charles VIII, claimed the inheritance of all the rights of the second house of Anjou on the kingdom of Naples. Those rights, founded on the adoption of Louis I of Anjou by Joanna I, had never been acknowledged by the people or confirmed by possession. For the space of a hundred and ten years Louis I, II, and III, and René, the brother of the last, made frequent but unsuccessful attempts to mount the throne of Naples. The brother and the daughter of René, Charles of Maine and Margaret of Anjou, at last either ceded or sold those rights to Louis XI. His son, Charles VIII, as soon as he was of age, determined on asserting them. Eager for glory, in proportion as his weak frame and still weaker intellect incapacitated him for acquiring it, he, at the age of twenty-four, resolved on treading in the footsteps of Charlemagne and his paladins; and undertook the conquest of Naples as the first exploit that was to lead to the conquest of Constantinople and the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre.

Charles VIII entered Italy in the month of August, 1494, with thirty-six hundred men-at-arms or heavy cavalry; twenty thousand infantry, Gascons, Bretons, and French; eight thousand Swiss, and a formidable train of artillery. This last arm had received in France, during the wars of Charles VII, a degree of perfection yet unknown to the rest of Europe. The states of upper Italy were favourable to the expedition of the French. The duchess of Savoy and the marchioness of Montferrat, regents for their sons, who were under age, opened the passages of the Alps to Charles VIII. Lodovico the Moor, regent of the duchy of Milan, recently alarmed at the demand made on him by the king of Naples, to give up the regency to his nephew, Giovanni Galeazzo, then of full age, and married to a Neapolitan princess, had himself called the French into Italy; and to facilitate their conquest of the kingdom of Naples, opened to them all the fortresses of Genoa which were dependent on him. The republic of Venice intended to remain neutral, reposing in its own strength, and made the duke of Ferrara and the marquis of Mantua, its neighbours, adopt the same policy; but southern Italy formed for its defence a league, comprehending the Tuscan republics, the states of the church, and the kingdom of Naples.

At Florence, Lorenzo de’ Medici left three sons; of whom Piero II, at the age of twenty-one, was named chief of the republic. His grandfather, Piero I, son of Cosmo, oppressed with infirmities and premature old age, had shown little talent, and no capacity for the government of a state. Piero II, on the contrary, was remarkable for his bodily vigour and address; but he thought only of shining at festivals, tilts, and tournaments. It was said that he had given proofs of talent in his literary studies, that he spoke with grace and dignity; but in his public career he proved himself arrogant, presumptuous, and passionate. He determined on governing the Florentines as a master, without disguising the yoke which he imposed on them; not deigning to trouble himself with business, he transmitted his orders by his secretary, or some one of his household, to the magistrates.

Piero de’ Medici remained faithful to the treaty which his father had made with Ferdinand, king of Naples, and engaged to refuse the French a free passage, if they attempted to enter southern Italy by Tuscany. The republics of Siena and Lucca, too feeble to adopt an independent policy, promised to follow the impulse given by Medici. In the states of the church, Rodrigo Borgia had succeeded to Innocent VIII, on the 11th of August, 1492, under the name of Alexander VI. He was the richest of the cardinals, and at the same time the most depraved in morals, and the most perfidious as a politician. The marriage of one of his sons (for he had several) with a natural daughter of Alfonso, son of Ferdinand, had put the seal to his alliance with the reigning house of Naples. That house then appeared at the summit of prosperity. Ferdinand, though seventy years of age, was still vigorous: he was rich, he had triumphed over all his enemies; he passed for the most able politician in Italy. His two sons, Alfonso and Frederick, and his grandson, Ferdinand, were reputed skilful warriors; they had an army and a numerous fleet under their orders. However, Ferdinand dreaded a war with France, and he had just opened negotiations to avoid it when he died suddenly, on the 25th of January, 1494. His son, Alfonso II, succeeded him; while Frederick took command of the fleet, and the young Ferdinand that of the army, destined to defend Romagna against the French.

It was by Pontremoli and the Lunigiana that Charles VIII, according to the advice of Lodovico the Moor, resolved to conduct his army into southern Italy. This road traversing the Apennines from Parma to Pontremoli, over poor pasture lands, and descending through olive groves to the sea, the shore of which it follows at the foot of the mountains, was not without danger. The country produces little grain of any kind. Corn was brought from abroad, at a great expense, in exchange for oil. The narrow space between the sea and the mountains was defended by a chain of fortresses, which might long stop the army on a coast where it would have experienced at the same time famine and the pestilential fever of Pietrasanta. Piero de’ Medici, upon learning that the French were arrived at Sarzana, and perceiving the fermentation which the news of their approach excited at Florence, resolved to imitate that act of his father which he had heard the most praised--his visit to Ferdinand at Naples. He departed to meet Charles VIII. On his road he traversed a field of battle, where three hundred Florentine soldiers had been cut to pieces by the French, who had refused to give quarter to a single one. Seized with terror, on being introduced to Charles, he, on the first summons, caused the fortresses of Sarzana and Sarzanello to be immediately surrendered. He afterwards gave up those of Librafratta, Pisa, and Livorno (Leghorn), consenting that Charles should garrison and keep them until his return from Italy, or until peace was signed, and thus establishing the king of France in the heart of Tuscany. It was contrary to the wish of the Florentines that Medici had engaged in hostilities against the French, for whom they entertained an hereditary attachment; but the conduct of the chief of the state, who, after having drawn them into a war, delivered their fortresses, without authority, into the hands of the enemy whom he had provoked, appeared as disgraceful as it was criminal.

Piero de’ Medici, after this act of weakness, quitted Charles, to return in haste to Florence, where he arrived on the 8th of November, 1494. On his preparing, the next day, to visit the signoria, he found guards at the door of the palace, who refused him admittance. Astonished at this opposition, he returned home, to put himself under the protection of his brother-in-law, Paolo Orsini, a Roman noble, whom he had taken, with a troop of cavalry, into the pay of the republic. Supported by Orsini, the three brothers Medici rapidly traversed the streets, repeating the war-cry of their family, “Palle! Palle!”--without exciting a single movement of the populace, upon whom they reckoned, in their favour. The friends of liberty, the Piagnoni, on the other hand, excited by the exhortations of Savonarola, assembled, and took arms. Their number continually increased. The Medici, terrified, left the city by the gate of San Gallo, traversed the Apennines, retired first to Bologna, then to Venice, and thus lost, without a struggle, a sovereignty which their family had already exercised sixty years. The same day, the 19th of November, 1494, on which the Medici were driven out of Florence, the Florentines were driven out of Pisa.[d]

CHARLES VIII; HIS ARMY (1494 A.D.)

The French army was now ready to march on Florence. It consisted of thirty-six hundred men-at-arms; six thousand foot-archers from Brittany; six thousand crossbowmen from the central provinces; eight thousand Gascon infantry, at that time the most esteemed in France; all armed with arquebuses and two-handed swords; and eight thousand Swiss or German pikemen and halberdiers. An immense number of attendants followed and increased this splendid force which was led by the king, the duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis XII, the duke of Vendôme; the count of Montpensier; Louis de Ligne, lord of Luxemburg; Louis de la Trémouille and other great seigniors; besides the seneschal of Beaucaire, Briçonnet, bishop of St. Malo, both confidential advisers of Charles; and, though last not least, his father’s old and faithful counsellor Philip de Comines, lord of Argenton, who has left so interesting and instructive a history of his own times to posterity. The French man-at-arms or lance (a name which seems to have been gradually dropped in Italy after the disappearance of transalpine condottieri by whom it was introduced) consisted of six horsemen, of which two were archers; they were nearly all French subjects, and all gentlemen, who were neither enrolled nor removed at the general’s pleasure nor paid by him as in Italy, but received their salary direct from the crown. Their squadrons were always maintained complete, and every man was well equipped both with arms and horses, for their circumstances were equal to it, and there was a good spirit and an honourable emulation to distinguish themselves not only for the sake of glory but promotion; and the same spirit existed among the leaders and generals, who were all lords and barons or of illustrious family and nearly all native Frenchmen. None of the subordinate chiefs commanded more than a hundred lances, and when these were complete they looked only to glory and promotion, which were pursued with a singular devotion to the king whom they considered the source of both. The result of this spirit and this equality was a steadiness in their service, an absence of any desire, whether from avarice or ambition, to change their masters, and a similar absence of any rivalry with other captains for a larger command.

All this differed from the Italian army in which the men-at-arms were at this time principally composed of the lower ranks of society, of strangers from other states, the subjects of other princes; all depending on the condottieri, with whom they agreed for their salary and by them alone was it paid, yet without any generous stimulus to honour, glory, or good service--but on the contrary the certainty of an unfeeling dismissal when no longer wanted. The generals themselves were rarely the subjects of those they served and frequently had different ends and interests, which were sometimes even directly inimical. Amongst them there was abundance of hatred and rivalry and consequent absence of discipline: nor had they always a prefixed period of service; wherefore being entire masters of their troops they left their numbers incomplete, though paid for; defrauded their employers; demanded shameful contributions from them in emergencies, and then tired of the service, or stimulated by ambition or avarice or some other temptation they were not only fickle but unfaithful. Nor was there less difference in the infantry of France and Italy; the latter fought in compact and well-ordered battalions, but scattered over the country and taking advantage of its banks and ditches and all its local peculiarities. The Swiss in French pay on the contrary combated in large masses of an invariable number of rank and file, and never breaking this order they presented themselves like a strong, solid, and almost unconquerable wall where there was sufficient space to deploy their battalions; with similar discipline and similar order did the French and Gascon infantry fight, but not with equal bravery. In their ordnance however the French were far superior to the Italians and sent so great a quantity both of battering and field artillery to Genoa for this war, and of so superior a nature, that the Italian officers were astonished. Hitherto in Italy this warlike arm whether used in the field or fortress had been of a very cumbrous construction; the largest were denominated bombarde and were made both of brass and iron, but of great size--difficult of transport, difficult to place, and difficult to discharge; much time was consumed in loading; a long interval passed after every round; and the effect in general was comparatively trifling with reference to the time and labour employed, there being always a sufficient interval after each discharge for the garrison to repair the damage at their leisure. The French had already cast much lighter pieces of brass ordnance to which they seem to be the first who gave the name of cannon, and used iron shot instead of stone balls: these were placed on lighter carriages, and instead of bullocks as in Italy, they were drawn by horses and kept pace with the army. They were placed in battery with a rapidity that astonished the Italians, and their fire was so quick and well-directed that what had previously been many days’ work amongst the latter was accomplished in a few hours by the Frenchmen; so that this alone made their army formidable to all Italy independent of their native ferocity and valour.[e]

Charles VIII, on receiving from Piero de’ Medici the fortresses of Librafratta, Pisa, and Livorno, in the Pisan states, engaged to preserve to the Florentines the countries within the range of these fortresses, and to restore them at the conclusion of the war. But Charles had very confused notions of the rights of a country into which he carried war, and was by no means scrupulous as to keeping his word. When a deputation of Pisans represented to him the tyranny under which they groaned, and solicited from him the liberty of their country, he granted their request without hesitation, without even suspecting that he disposed of what was not his, or that he broke his word to the Florentines; he equally forgot every other engagement with them. Upon entering Florence, on the 17th of November, at the head of his army, he regarded himself as a conqueror, and therefore as dispensed from every promise which he had made to Piero de’ Medici--he hesitated only between restoring his conquest to Piero, or retaining it himself. The magistrates in vain represented to him that he was the guest of the nation, and not its master; that the gates had been opened to him as a mark of respect, not from any fear; that the Florentines were far from feeling themselves conquered, whilst the palaces of Florence were occupied not only by the citizens but by the soldiers of the republic. Charles still insisted on disgraceful conditions, which his secretary read as his ultimatum. Piero Capponi suddenly snatched the paper from the secretary’s hand, and tearing it, exclaimed, “Well, if it be thus, sound your trumpets, and we will ring our bells!” This energetic movement daunted the French; Charles declared himself content with the subsidy offered by the republic, and engaged on his part to restore as soon as he had accomplished the conquest of Naples, or signed peace, or even consented to a long truce, all the fortresses which had been delivered to him by Medici. Charles after this convention departed from Florence, by the road to Siena, on the 28th of November. The Neapolitan army evacuated Romagna, the patrimony of St. Peter, and Rome, in succession, as he advanced. He entered Rome on the 31st of December, without fighting a blow.[d]

Some very interesting details of the king’s entry into Rome and his reception there by the pope have been preserved to us in a diary kept by one John Burchard, “master of ceremonies of the chapel of Pope Alexander VI.” A few extracts from this diary are here given:

Charles VIII in Rome: A Contemporary Account

From the diary of John Burchard, master of ceremonies of the chapel of Pope Alexander VI (1494-1495). “Book of notes collected by me, John Burchard of Strasburg, protonotary of the apostolic see, etc.”

The 19th and 21st, 22nd and 23rd of December the troops of the king of France made excursions as far as San Lazaro and across the meadows which surround the castle of St. Angelo. They had even formed the plan of seizing Rome by treachery at night in one direction, while the Colonna would enter from another with the aid of a thousand Frenchmen who were to come down the river from the environs of Ostia; but a high wind so disturbed their intentions that they could not put them into execution. They wished, in truth, to enter the city by the Porto San Paolo, fire, pillage it, and commit a thousand other atrocities, and the author of the project was, they say, Cardinal Gurck, who himself would have come to the gate of the city, had not the fierce storm compelled him to go back.

This same cardinal was one of the principal abettors of the king of France’s march upon Rome. He had, in fact, decided the inhabitants of Aquapendente and other lands of the church to grant passage to the king of France, by vaunting the liberality and affability of that prince and of the French in general; he assured them that the French would take nothing without paying for it, not even a fowl, an egg, or the slightest thing, affirming also that our holy father had promised the king he would let him cross the estates of the church. By such discourse and similar he induced the people to let the king of France and his troops in, contrary to the pope’s express wish. And to prove to the German officials who were in the city that he was looking after their interests, he wrote an open letter which he caused to be distributed among the most prominent of them in the city:

To our brothers and friends the prelates and other dignitaries of the German nation and the estates of the Most Illustrious Archduke Philip: residents of this city:

We call on God who sounds all hearts and loins to witness that we have made every effort with the Most Christian King, as well in the name of our Sovereign Pontiff and in our own, to induce friendship and good feeling between the Pope and the King; nevertheless we have not as yet been able to succeed; we do not know to whom to attribute the fault, but it certainly is not to the King of France who has no other desires than to conduct himself as a submissive son towards the Sovereign Pontiff and the Holy See according to the example of his predecessors. Doubtless the principal obstacle to this arrangement comes from the gravity of our offences towards God, and if he does not let Himself be appeased by the prayers of pious souls, this alliance and the consequent peace between Christian princes cannot take place. In any case as it is to be feared that the troops of the Most Christian King and his allies will in a few days invade the city, if the enemies, which the King has in Rome, oppose the ratification of the above mentioned agreement. I have used my influence with the Prince that his troops may cause no harm to foreigners, to whatever nation they may belong, residing for the moment in Rome, at least unless they are found in arms against his Majesty. In consequence, the King wishes and directs that all subjects of the Most Serene King of the Romans, and the Most Illustrious Prince, Archduke of Austria, be not treated by his troops with less respect than his own subjects and all the Roman citizens. To this effect he has sent me to my Lord Count of Montpensier, his relative and lieutenant-general, to let him know on the part of the King that he must take measures to prevent the troops from committing any outrage or annoyance upon the above mentioned residents of Rome and especially upon the Most Reverend Cardinals, foreigners of all nations, Roman citizens, and finally the subjects of the Emperor and the Archduke.

I have wished to make known to you this determination that in case (from which God preserve us) of the King’s troops entering Rome in arms, you would be informed of his Most Christian Majesty’s good intentions; if you would protect the more easily your persons and your property, I advise you in case of tumult, to take refuge, with the permission of the Lord Secretary, the Cardinal of Lyons, in my palace; I am writing at the moment to the said Secretary to ask that he be pleased to give you this shelter; indeed I have not forgotten that God created me out of nothing, that He raised me to the dignity and responsibilities of the Cardinalate, at the prayers of the King of the Romans and the electors of the Empire. This is why, as long as I shall live, I shall force myself, through gratitude, to render service to the Emperor, the Archduke Philip, and all their subjects with the same devotion as if I were born in their states. Adieu, dearly beloved brethren. Pray God to hear our desires which are for universal peace among all Christians and universal war against the Turks.

Your friend and brother,

CARDINAL GURCK.

Formello, 23rd December.

December 25th, feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, the most reverend cardinal Mont-Real, who was to say high mass, was appointed by the holy father, on receipt of what had been learned of the king of France’s intentions concerning his entry into Rome, to go to that prince and beg him to send one of his men who would consult with the pope as to the manner in which he would make his entry. The morning of the same day our holy father the pope before going to his chapel called all the cardinals, with the exception of the cardinal of Alessandria who was to say mass, together in the hall known as Papagallo, and announced the arrival of the king of France, in the presence of the duke of Calabria.

On Friday the 26th of the same month, our holy father betook himself to the large chapel of the palace where he received the king’s ambassadors who, to the number of three, had been sent the night previous. They were: the grand marshal of the realm, Messire Jean de Gannay first president of the parliament of Paris, and one other--all laymen. I caused them to be placed--the grand marshal on the steps of the pontifical throne, in front and above the senator; the two others on the bench of the lay ambassadors, where were seated two ambassadors from the king of Naples, who, refusing to recognise the new-comers on pretext that they knew nothing of their characters as ambassadors, got up and left the place; but on the information I gave them by special order of the pope that they were ambassadors of the king of France, they came back to their bench and yielded the point. The king’s envoys were accompanied by a large number of Frenchmen, several of whom, forgetting all decorum, tried to place themselves close to the prelates and even in their seats. I was obliged to make them get out and assign them more suitable positions. Whereupon the pope called me to him and said in great irritation that I was compromising his interests, that the French must be let place themselves where they wished; I replied to his holiness, who thus let himself be carried away a little, that his wish being known to me I would let them place themselves where they wished without making any observation.

Wednesday December 31st, at early morning, I set out on horseback by order of our holy father the pope to meet the king of France, to inform him of the order of his reception according to the ceremonial, to learn his wishes and execute all that his majesty would prescribe for me: I was accompanied by the reverend father in Jesus Christ, the lord Bartolommeo, bishop of Nepi, the pope’s secretary; by Lord Jerome Porcario, auditor of the Rote, by the dean Coronato de Planca; and by Marius Milorius, Christopher Buzolus, chancellor of Rome, and Jacob de Sinibaldis--Roman citizens. At Galera, two miles from the city, we met the most reverend cardinals of San Pietro in Vincoli, Gurck and Savelli, to whom I made homage without descending from my horse. A short time after we came upon the king to whom we made our respectful salutations, but still remained on horseback on account of the mud and the bad weather.

[Sidenote: [1494-1495 A.D.]]

The bishop of Nepi having explained to the king what the holy father charged him with saying touching the prince’s reception, on my side I made known to his majesty the object of our errand. The king replied that he desired to enter Rome without pomp; he then listened to Lord Jerome Porcario who spoke on behalf of his Roman colleagues, placing the citizens and all they possessed at the king’s disposition. The king made a short reply without explaining what he was going to do about the offer Porcario had just made him. The Romans withdrew. On the king’s invitation I accompanied him for the space of about four miles; he questioned me on the ceremonial, the pope, and the cardinals, of Valentino’s (Cesare Borgia) rank and position, plying his questions so that I could scarce answer one satisfactorily. In the outskirts of Burghetto two Venetian ambassadors presented themselves before the king; they were soon followed by the most reverend cardinal Ascagni, who, without descending from his mule, uncovered himself before the king; the prince did the same to the cardinal; both then resumed their headgear, and the most reverend cardinal Ascagni rode on the king’s left hand and accompanied him over the Milvian bridge and as far as the palace of St. Mark, ordinary residence of the most reverend cardinal of Benevento. We arrived there towards the second hour of the night, over roads deep with mud. From the palace of the most reverend cardinal of Lisbon, close to the church of San Laurentio, to the palace of St. Mark the whole route was lighted up with fires, torches, and candles, and from nearly all the houses came shouts of “Francia! Francia! Columna! Columna! Vincula! Vincula!”

This same day before the king’s entry into Rome, the keys of all the city gates were delivered into the hands of the grand marshal of the king of France, according to the command of that prince and with the pope’s consent. The French said in fact, and indeed it was quite true, that on a former occasion the keys had been similarly turned over to the duke of Calabria during his visit to Rome, and that the king of France should have the same rights. The following days, all the most reverend cardinals residing in Rome visited the king of France in turn, according to custom, except the cardinals of Naples and of Orsini, who, lodged in the apostolic palace in apartments which the holy father had assigned them, did not leave the palace and make this visit. Before his entry I had informed the king on the way that, in receiving the cardinals’ visits, he should himself go forward to meet them, conduct them to the door on leaving, give them his hand, and I instructed him in other similar customs. But he acted entirely differently. He neither went forward to meet them nor conducted them to the door; the members of his suite did not pay the respects expected of them. The nearest courtyard to the king’s apartments in the palazzo San Marco was strewn with straw and not even cleaned; candles were fastened to the doors and chimney places--in fact, one would have thought himself in a pig pen.

Saturday, January 3rd, the partisans of the Colonna and the French wrecked the residences of the most reverend cardinal of Naples’ nephew, of Jacob de Comititibus’ son, and of Lord Bartolommeo de Lucca, valet-de-chambre of our holy father the pope. The French, that they might lodge themselves in their own fashion, forced an entrance into the houses from all sides, threw out even beasts and movables, burned the woodwork, and ate and drank their fill without paying for anything, all of which caused great talk among the people. In consequence of this, the king of France caused an order to be published all over the city forbidding the entering of houses by force under penalty of death. Monday, January 5th, pontifical vespers were said in the great chapel of the palace and in the pope’s presence. Before his holiness left the Papagallo chamber several Frenchmen were admitted to kiss his foot.

Sunday, January 11th, it was agreed between our holy father the pope and Philip de Bresse, the king of France’s uncle, that his holiness would deliver for six months the sultan Djem, brother of the Grand Turk, to the king of France, who would at once pay twenty thousand ducats to the pope and would pledge himself, under the security of the Florentine and Venetian merchants, to return the same sultan Djem to the pope immediately the six months had expired; the king of France could receive the crown of Naples without prejudice to the right of any others; and that the cardinals of San Pietro in Vincoli, Gurck, Savelli, and Colonna would be safe from all reproach.

Sunday, January 18th, the holy father sent for me by one of the pages and told me that the next day a public consistory would be held to receive the king of France. According to the wishes of his holiness, I arranged that the president of the parliament of Paris should say a few words in the king’s name, a speech in which his majesty would recognise his holiness the pope as the true vicar and successor of St. Peter. The holy father further made known to me his intention of saying mass pontifically and publicly in the basilica of St. Peter on the following Tuesday, the feast of St. Sebastian, in honour of the king, asking me what place the prince should occupy and which mass to celebrate. He counted, in fact, on saying the mass of the Holy Ghost, the office of which he knew best. I replied to his holiness that the mass to celebrate was that of St. Sebastian; and as for the king he would occupy a special seat placed in front of the cardinals’ bench, between that bench and the chair of the cardinal of Naples, who would assist. As a matter of fact, it was not the cardinal’s duty to fulfil that function on this day; but there was no objection to his doing so, as it was the custom to assist his holiness on all days when he was not familiar with the office. While we were conversing, the king of France arrived at the pontifical palace; the pope, informed of his coming, went to meet him at the palace entrance. The pope wore a white camail, a rich stole, and white cap, a costume scarcely suitable under the circumstances. His majesty came to settle definitely with the pope the articles of agreement already concluded and signed, upon which a difference had already risen between them concerning the securities to be given by the king for the return of the Turk at the end of six months.

The agreement stated, in effect, that the king would furnish several nobles and prelates of his realm of the pope’s choosing, for security; the president claimed that this clause must be limited to ten persons only, while the pope demanded thirty or forty. The discussion on this point was prolonged for three or four hours; finally the pope entered an apartment in which two papal chairs had been placed, followed by the king, whom he made sit in one of these chairs, after which he seated himself in the other, on the king’s right. On the pope’s side were the cardinals of St. Anastasia and St. Alessandria. On the king’s side, the most reverend cardinals of St. Denis and St. Malo, the two papal secretaries, the datary, and several others.

The articles of agreement were read and agreed to. Two notaries were called in--namely, the noble Stephen de Harnia for the pope, and the noble Oliver Yvan, clerk of Mans, for the king. These wrote out the treaty in French for his majesty, and in Latin for his holiness.

Monday, January 19th, the great hall of the apostolic palace was arranged in the usual manner for the public consistory, at which the reception of the king of France and the ceremony of obedience were to take place.

The king placed himself on the left of the sovereign pontiff, and I motioned him to pronounce the formula of obedience. He said that he was going to do it immediately; but at that moment the president of the parliament of Paris advanced to the pope’s feet and, kneeling, explained that the king had come in person to take the oath of obedience; but before doing so he wished to obtain three favours from his holiness, according to the customary privilege of vassals before the oath or homage of their obedience. He asked the confirmation of the rights granted to him the most Christian king, the queen his spouse, to the dauphin his son, and to all the others included in the book whose title he mentioned; next, the investiture of the kingdom of Naples for himself; and, finally, the annulling of the clause concerning the security to guarantee the return of the Grand Turk’s brother to the pope--an article agreed to the day before with the others. The pope replied that he willingly confirmed the privileges which were the subject of the first demand, as they had been established by custom; but as for the investiture of the kingdom of Naples, since that was an affair in which another was interested, it could not be decided until after mature deliberation and consultation with the cardinals, among whom he would make every effort that his majesty should receive the satisfaction he desired; and as regards Djem--the Grand Turk’s brother--he desired to agree unanimously with the king and the sacred college, hoping that there would be no point of difference between them concerning that article. After receiving this reply the king, who was standing on the pope’s left, pronounced the following words:

“Holy father, I have come to make obedience and reverence to your holiness in the manner that my predecessors the kings of France have done.”

After which the president, of whom we have spoken and who remained on his knees, got up and, standing before his holiness, enlarged in these words upon what the king had just said:

“Most holy father, there is an ancient custom among Christian princes, especially the most Christian kings, to testify through their ambassadors to their veneration for the holy see and for the popes whom the Almighty has put at the head of the church; but the king here present, having formed the design of visiting the tomb of the holy apostles, has come in person to perform this duty. Thus he recognises you, holy father, as the head of all the faithful, as the true vicar of Jesus Christ and as the legitimate successor of the holy apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, willingly granting you that filial obedience which the kings of France, his predecessors, were accustomed to profess to the popes. This is why the king offers himself and all dependent on him to the service of your holiness and of the holy see.”

Tuesday, January 27th, the sultan Djem, brother of the Grand Turk, was taken from the castle of St. Angelo to the palace of St. Mark and delivered into the hands of the king of France.

Wednesday, January 28th, the king of France and his people, all in arms, visited the pope, with whom the king of France remained alone for some time. He then withdrew, and was escorted by the pope as far as the gallery leading to the main apartments, where the king knelt and uncovered. The pope likewise bared his head in order to embrace him; the king pretended to wish to kiss the pope’s feet, but he would not allow it. The king departed and mounted the horse that was waiting for him at the entrance of the private garden, where he waited some time for Cardinal Valentino who was going with him to Naples; finally the latter, after taking leave of the pope, came to the place where the king was waiting, mounted his mule in cardinal’s robes, and presented the king with six superb horses. The king then started with Cardinal Valentino on his left; the other cardinals, whose escort the king did not wish for, retired. The king made straight for Marino, where he arrived during the course of the day. The cardinals of San Pietro in Vincoli, Savelli, and Colonna, and the auditor of the chamber also left Rome with the king. During the evening Cardinal Gurck followed the king. The Grand Turk’s brother had already left for Marino.[f]

Charles goes to Naples

The first resistance which Charles encountered was on the frontiers of the kingdom of Naples; and having there taken by assault two small towns, he massacred the inhabitants. This instance of ferocity struck Alfonso II with such terror, that he abdicated the crown in favour of his son, Ferdinand II, and retired with his treasure into Sicily. Ferdinand occupied Capua with his whole army, intending to defend the passage of the Volturno. He left that city to appease a sedition which had broken out at Naples; Capua, during his absence, was given up through fear to the French, and he was himself forced, on the 21st of February, to embark for Ischia. All the barons, his vassals, all the provincial cities, sent deputations to Charles; and the whole kingdom of Naples was conquered without a single battle in its defence. The powers of the north of Italy regarded these important conquests with a jealous eye; they, moreover, were already disgusted by the insolence of the French, who had begun to conduct themselves as masters throughout the whole peninsula. The duke of Orleans, who had been left by Charles at Asti, already declared his pretensions to the duchy of Milan, as heir to his grandmother, Valentina Visconti. Lodovico Sforza, upon this, contracted alliances with the Venetians, the pope, the king of Spain, and the emperor Maximilian, for maintaining the independence of Italy; and the duke of Milan and the Venetians assembled near Parma a powerful army, under the command of the marquis of Mantua.

[Sidenote: [1495-1496 A.D.]]

Charles VIII had passed three months at Naples in feasts and tournaments, while his lieutenants were subduing and disorganising the provinces. The news of what was passing in northern Italy determined him on returning to France with the half of his army. He departed from Naples, on the 20th of May, 1495, and passed peaceably through Rome, whilst the pope shut himself up in the castle of St. Angelo. From Siena he went to Pisa, and thence to Pontremoli, where he entered the Apennines. Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua, awaited him at Fornovo, on the other side of that chain of mountains. Charles passed the Taro, with the hope of avoiding him; but was attacked on its borders by the Italians, on the 6th of July. He was at the time in full march; the divisions of his army were scattered, and at some distance from each other. For some time his danger was imminent; but the impetuosity of the French, and the obstinate valour of the Swiss, repaired the fault of their general. A great number of the Italian men-at-arms were thrown in the charges of the French cavalry, many others were brought down by the Swiss halberds, and all were instantly put to death by the servants of the army. Gonzaga left thirty-five hundred dead on the field, and Charles continued his retreat. On his arrival at Asti, he entered into treaty with Lodovico Sforza, for the deliverance of the duke of Orleans, whom Sforza besieged at Novara. He disbanded twenty thousand Swiss, who were brought to him from the mountains, but to whose hands he would not venture to confide himself. On the 22nd of October, 1495, he repassed the Alps, after having ravaged all Italy with the violence and rapidity of a hurricane. He had left his relative, Gilbert de Montpensier, viceroy at Naples, with the half of his army; but the people, already wearied with his yoke, recalled Ferdinand II. The French, after many battles, successively lost their conquests, and were at length forced to capitulate at Aversa (Atella), on the 23rd of July, 1496.

The invasion of the French not only spread terror from one extremity of Italy to the other, but changed the whole policy of that country, by rendering it dependent upon that of the transalpine nations. While Charles VIII pretended to be the legitimate heir of the kingdom of Naples, the duke of Orleans, who succeeded him under the name of Louis XII, called himself heir to the duchy of Milan. Maximilian, ambitious as he was inconsistent, claimed in the states of Italy prerogatives to which no emperor had pretended since the death of Frederick II in 1250. The Swiss had learned, at the same time, that at the foot of their mountains there lay rich and feeble cities which they might pillage, and a delicious climate, which offered all the enjoyments of life; they saw neighbouring monarchs ready to pay them for exercising there their brigandage. Finally, Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of Aragon and Castile, announced their intention of defending the bastard branch of the house of Aragon, which reigned at Naples. But, already masters of Sicily, they purposed passing the strait and were secretly in treaty with Charles VIII, to divide with him the spoils of the relative whom they pretended to defend. Amidst these different pretensions and intrigues, in which Italian interests had no longer any share, the spirit of liberty revived in Tuscany once more, but only to exhaust itself in a new struggle between the Florentines and Pisans. The French garrisons which Charles had left in Pisa and Librafratta, instead of delivering them to the Florentines, according to his order, had given them up to the Pisans themselves on the 1st of January, 1496. The allies, who had fought Charles at Fornovo, reproached the Florentines with their attachment to that monarch, and took part against them with the Pisans. Lodovico Sforza, and the Venetians, sent reinforcements to the latter, and the emperor Maximilian himself brought them aid. Thus, the only Italians who had at heart the honour and independence of Italy exhausted themselves in unequal struggles and in fruitless attempts.[d]

FLORENTINE AFFAIRS; SAVONAROLA

[Sidenote: [1494-1498 A.D.]]

The Florentine Republic was the only friendly power that Charles had left in Italy; a friendship, though false, in every way important and almost indispensable to France in the prosecution of her Italian conquests, but equally so to Florence as her widest and richest field of commerce. Yet so far from trying to conciliate the latter, that monarch not only broke his oath and retained her fairest possessions, but left his wildest soldiers to protect her revolted subjects; his Gascon infantry, when unchecked by the royal presence, and imbued with all the Pisan hatred of Florence, carried on their warlike operations in a spirit of barbarity as yet unknown to the Italians. Among other excesses they fancied that the Florentines swallowed their gold and jewels before every encounter in order to preserve something if taken prisoners; wherefore all their suspected captives were killed and ripped open to make a thorough search for those embowelled treasures: for such cruelty, however, they paid full dearly when made prisoners at Ponte di Sacco, in despite of every effort of the Florentine commissaries.[e]

At the moment when Florence expelled the Medici, that republic was bandied between three different parties. The first was that of the enthusiasts, directed by Girolamo Savonarola; who promised the miraculous protection of the Divinity for the reform of the church and the establishment of liberty. These demanded a democratic constitution--they were called the Piagnoni. The second consisted of men who had shared power with the Medici, but who had separated from them; who wished to possess alone the powers and profits of government, and who endeavoured to amuse the people by dissipations and pleasures, in order to establish at their ease an aristocracy--these were called the Arabiati. The third party was composed of men who remained faithful to the Medici, but not daring to declare themselves, lived in retirement--they were called Bigi. These three parties were so equally balanced in the balia named by the parliament, on the 2nd of December, 1494, that it soon became impossible to carry on the government. Girolamo Savonarola took advantage of this state of affairs to urge that the people had never delegated their power to a balia which did not abuse the trust. “The people,” he said, “would do much better to reserve this power to themselves, and exercise it by a council, into which all the citizens should be admitted.” His proposition was agreed to: more than eighteen hundred Florentines furnished proof that either they, their fathers, or their grandfathers had sat in the magistracy; they were consequently acknowledged citizens, and admitted to sit in the general council. This council was declared sovereign, on the 1st of July, 1495; it was invested with the election of magistrates, hitherto chosen by lot, and a general amnesty was proclaimed, to bury in oblivion all the ancient dissensions of the Florentine Republic.

So important a modification of the constitution seemed to promise this republic a happier futurity. The friar Savonarola, who had exercised such influence in the council, evinced at the same time an ardent love of mankind, deep respect for the rights of all, great sensibility, and an elevated mind. Though a zealous reformer of the church, and in this respect a precursor of Luther, who was destined to begin his mission twenty years later, he did not quit the pale of orthodoxy; he did not assume the right of examining doctrine; he limited his efforts to the restoration of discipline, the reformation of the morals of the clergy, and the recall of priests, as well as other citizens, to the practice of the Gospel precepts: but his zeal was mixed with enthusiasm; he believed himself under the immediate inspiration of providence; he took his own impulses for prophetic revelations, by which he directed the politics of his disciples, the Piagnoni. He had predicted to the Florentines the coming of the French into Italy; he had represented to them Charles VIII as an instrument by which the Divinity designed to chastise the crimes of the nation; he had counselled them to remain faithful to their alliance with that king, the instrument of providence, even though his conduct, especially in reference to the affairs of Pisa, had been highly culpable.

This alliance however ranged the Florentines among the enemies of Pope Alexander VI, one of the founders of the league which had driven the French out of Italy; he accused them of being traitors to the church and to their country for their attachment to a foreign prince. Alexander, equally offended by the projects of reform and by the politics of Savonarola, denounced him to the church as a heretic, and interdicted him from preaching. The monk at first obeyed, and procured the appointment of his friend and disciple the Dominican friar, Buonvicino of Pescia, as his successor in the church of St. Mark; but on Christmas Day, 1497, he declared from the pulpit that God had revealed to him that he ought not to submit to a corrupt tribunal; he then openly took the sacrament with the monks of St. Mark, and afterwards continued to preach. In the course of his sermons, he more than once held up to reprobation the scandalous conduct of the pope, whom the public voice accused of every vice and every crime to be expected in a libertine so depraved--a man so ambitious, perfidious, and cruel--a monarch and a priest intoxicated with absolute power.

In the meantime, the rivalry encouraged by the court of Rome between the religious orders soon procured the pope champions eager to combat Savonarola: he was a Dominican--the general of the Augustines, that order whence Martin Luther was soon to issue. Friar Mariano di Ghinazzano signalised himself by his zeal in opposing Savonarola. He presented to the pope Friar Francis of Apulia, of the order of minor Observantines, who was sent to Florence to preach against the Florentine monk, in the church of Santa Croce. This preacher declared to his audience that he knew Savonarola pretended to support his doctrine by a miracle. “For me,” said he, “I am a sinner; I have not the presumption to perform miracles; nevertheless, let a fire be lighted, and I am ready to enter it with him. I am certain of perishing, but Christian charity teaches me not to withhold my life, if, in sacrificing it, I might precipitate into hell a heresiarch, who has already drawn into it so many souls.”

This strange proposition was rejected by Savonarola; but his friend and disciple, Friar Domenico Buonvicino, eagerly accepted it. Francis of Apulia declared that he would risk his life against Savonarola only. Meanwhile, a crowd of monks, of the Dominican and Franciscan orders, rivalled each other in their offers to prove by the ordeal of fire, on one side the truth, on the other the falsehood, of the new doctrine. Enthusiasm spread beyond the two convents; many priests and seculars, and even women and children, more especially on the side of Savonarola, earnestly requested to be admitted to the proof. The pope warmly testified his gratitude to the Franciscans for their devotion. The signoria of Florence consented that two monks only should devote themselves for their respective orders, and directed the pile to be prepared. The whole population of the town and country, to which a signal miracle was promised, received the announcement with transports of joy.

On the 7th of April, 1498, a scaffold, dreadful to look on, was erected in the public square of Florence: two piles of large pieces of wood, mixed with fagots and broom, which should quickly take fire, extended each eighty feet long, four feet thick, and five feet high; they were separated by a narrow space of two feet, to serve as a passage by which the two priests were to enter, and pass the whole length of the piles during the fire. Every window was full; every roof was covered with spectators; almost the whole population of the republic was collected round the place. The portico called the Loggia de’ Lanzi, divided in two by a partition, was assigned to the two orders of monks. The Dominicans arrived at their station chanting canticles, and bearing the holy sacrament. The Franciscans immediately declared that they would not permit the host to be carried amidst flames. They insisted that the friar Buonvicino should enter the fire, as their own champion was prepared to do, without this divine safeguard. The Dominicans answered, that they would not separate themselves from their God at the moment when they implored his aid. The dispute upon this point grew warm. Several hours passed away. The multitude, which had waited long, and begun to feel hunger and thirst, lost patience; a deluge of rain suddenly fell upon the city, and descended in torrents from the roofs of the houses--all present were drenched. The piles were so wet that they could no longer be lighted; and the crowd, disappointed of a miracle so impatiently looked for, separated, with the notion of having been unworthily trifled with. Savonarola lost all his credit; he was henceforth rather looked on as an impostor. Next day his convent was besieged by the Arabiati, eager to profit by the inconstancy of the multitude; he was arrested, with his two friends, Domenico Buonvicino and Silvestro Marruffi, and led to prison. The Piagnoni, his partisans, were exposed to every outrage from the populace--two of them were killed; their rivals and old enemies exciting the general ferment for their destruction. Even in the signoria the majority was against them, and yielded to the pressing demands of the pope. The three imprisoned monks were subjected to a criminal prosecution. Alexander VI despatched judges from Rome, with orders to condemn the accused to death. Conformably with the laws of the church, the trial opened with the torture. Savonarola was too weak and nervous to support it: he avowed in his agony all that was imputed to him; and, with his two disciples, was condemned to death. The three monks were burned alive, on the 23rd of May, 1498, in the same square where, six weeks before, a pile had been raised to prepare them a triumph.

THE FRENCH IN MILAN

[Sidenote: [1498-1499 A.D.]]

The expedition of Charles VIII against Naples had directed towards Italy the attention of all the western powers. The transalpine nations had learned that they were strong enough to act as masters, and if they pleased as robbers, in this the richest and most civilised country of the earth. All the powers on the confines henceforth aspired to subject some part of Italy to their dominion. They coveted their share of tribute from a land so fruitful of impost, from those cities in which industry employed such numbers, and accumulated so much capital. Cupidity put arms in their hands, and smothered every generous feeling. The commanders were rapacious; the soldiers thought only of pillage. They regarded the Italians as a race abandoned to their extortions, and vied with each other in the barbarous methods which they invented for extorting money from the vanquished, until at last they completely destroyed the prosperity which had provoked their envy.

Charles VIII died at Amboise, on the 7th of April, 1498, the day destined at Florence for the trial by fire of the doctrine of Savonarola. Louis XII, who succeeded that monarch, claimed, as grandson of Valentina Visconti, to be the legitimate heir to the duchy of Milan, although, according to the law acknowledged by all Italy, and confirmed by the imperial investure granted to the father of Valentina, females were excluded from all share in the succession. This monarch, at his coronation, took with the title of king of France those of duke of Milan and king of Naples and Jerusalem. It was to the duchy of Milan that he seemed particularly attached, apparently as having been the object of his ambition before he came to the throne. He preserved during his whole reign, as if he were simply duke of Milan, a feudal respect for the emperor as lord paramount, which was as fatal to France as to Italy.

After having thus announced to the world his pretensions to the duchy of Milan, Louis hastened to secure his possession of it by arms. He easily separated his antagonist, Lodovico Sforza, from all his allies. The emperor Maximilian had married the niece of Lodovico, to whom he had granted the investure of his duchy; but Maximilian forgot, with extreme levity, his promises and alliances. A new ambition, a supposed offence, even a whim, sufficed to make him abandon his most matured projects. The Swiss had just then excited his resentment; and to attack them the more effectually, he signed with Louis XII a truce, in which Lodovico Sforza was not included, and was therefore abandoned to his enemy. The Venetians were interested still more than the emperor in defending Lodovico, but were incensed against him; they accused him of having deceived them, as well in the war against Charles VIII as in that for the defence of Pisa. They suspected him of having suggested to Maximilian the claims which he had just made on all their conquests in Lombardy, as having previously appertained to the empire. They were obliged, moreover, to reserve all their resources to resist the most formidable of their enemies. Bajazet II had just declared war against them. Bands of robbers continually descended from the mountains of Turkish Albania to lay waste Venetian Dalmatia. The Turkish pashas offered their support to every traitor who attempted to take from the Venetians any of their stations in the Levant. Corfu very nearly fell into the hands of the Turks; at length hostilities openly began. The Turks attacked Zara; all the Venetian merchants established at Constantinople were put into irons, and Scander Pasha, sanjak of Bosnia, passed the Isonzo on the 29th of September, 1499, with seven thousand Turkish cavalry. He ravaged all the rich country which extends from that river to the Tagliamento, at the extremity of the Adriatic, and spread terror up to the lagunes which surround Venice. Invaded by an enemy so formidable, against whom they were destined to support, for seven years, a relentless war, the Venetians would not expose themselves to the danger of maintaining another war against the French. On the 15th of April, 1499, they signed, at Blois, with Louis, a treaty, by which they contracted an alliance against Lodovico Sforza and abandoned the conquest of the Milanese to the king of France, reserving to themselves Cremona and the Ghiara d’Adda.

[Sidenote: [1499-1500 A.D.]]

Lodovico Sforza found no allies in any other part of Italy. Since the execution of Savonarola at Florence, the faction of the Arabiati had succeeded that of the Piagnoni in the administration, without changing its policy. The republic continued to guard against the intrigues of the Medici, who entered into an alliance with every enemy of their country, in order to bring it back under their yoke. Florence continued her efforts to subdue Pisa; but, fearing to excite the jealousy of the kings of France and Spain, did not assemble for that purpose either a numerous army or a great train of artillery. She contented herself with ravaging the Pisan territory every year, in order to reduce that city by famine. Even these expeditions were suspended when those powerful monarchs found it convenient to make a show of peace. The cities of Siena, Lucca, and Genoa, actuated by their jealousy of Florence, sent succour to Pisa. Pope Alexander VI, who had been always the enemy of Charles VIII, now entered into an alliance with Louis XII; but on condition that Cesare Borgia, son of Alexander, should be made duke of Valentinois in France and of Romagna in Italy--the French king assisting him against the petty princes, feudatories of the holy see, who were masters of that province. The king of Naples, Frederick, who had succeeded his nephew Ferdinand on the 7th of September, 1496, was well aware that he should, in his turn, be attacked by France; but although he merited, by his talents and virtues, the confidence of his subjects, he had great difficulty in re-establishing some order in his kingdom, which was ruined by war, and had neither an army nor an exchequer to succour his natural ally, the duke of Milan.

A powerful French army, commanded by the sires De Ligny and D’Aubigny, passed the Alps in the month of August, 1499. On the 13th of that month they attacked and took by assault the two petty fortresses of Arazzo and Annone, on the borders of the Tanaro; putting the garrisons, and almost all the inhabitants, to the sword. This ferocious proceeding spread terror among the troops of Lodovico Sforza. His army, the command of which he had given to Galeazzo San Severino, dispersed; and the duke, not venturing to remain at Milan, sought for himself, his children, and his treasure refuge in Germany, with the emperor Maximilian. Louis XII, who arrived afterwards in Italy, made his entry into the forsaken capital of Lodovico on the 2nd of October. The trembling people, wishing to conciliate their new master, saluted him with the title of duke of Milan, and expressed their joy in receiving him as their sovereign. The rest of Lombardy also submitted without resistance; and Genoa, which had placed itself under the protection of the duke of Milan, passed over to that of the king of France.

Louis returned to Lyons before the end of the year; the fugitive hopes which he had excited already gave way to hatred. The insolence of the French, their violation of all national institutions, their contempt of Italian manners, the accumulation of taxes, and the irregularities in the administration rendered their yoke insupportable. Lodovico Sforza was informed of the general ferment, and of the desire of his subjects for his return. He was on the Swiss frontier, with a considerable treasure; a brave but disorderly crowd of young men, ready to serve anyone for pay, joined him. In a few days five hundred cavalry and eight thousand infantry assembled under his banner; and, in the month of February, 1500, he entered Lombardy at their head. Como, Milan, Parma, and Pavia immediately opened their gates to him: he next besieged Novara, which capitulated. Louis, meanwhile, displayed great activity in suppressing the rebellion: his general, Louis de la Trémouille, arrived before Novara, in the beginning of April, with an army in which were reckoned ten thousand Swiss. The men of that nation in the two hostile camps, opposed to each other for hire, hesitated, parleyed, and finally took a resolution more fatal to their honour than a battle between fellow-countrymen could have been. Those within Novara not only consented to withdraw themselves, but to give up to the French the Italian men-at-arms with whom they were incorporated, and who were immediately put to the sword or drowned in the river. They permitted La Trémouille to arrest in their ranks Lodovico Sforza and the two brothers San Severino, who attempted to escape in disguise. They received from the French the wages thus basely won, and afterwards, rendered reckless by the sense of their infamy, they in their retreat seized Bellinzona, which they ever after retained. Thus, even the weakest of the neighbours of Italy would have their share in her conquest. Lodovico Sforza was conducted into France, and there condemned to a severe captivity, which, ten years afterwards, ended with his life. The Milanese remained subject to the king of France from this period to the month of June, 1512.

The facility with which Louis had conquered the duchy of Milan must have led him to expect that he should not meet with much more resistance from the kingdom of Naples. Frederick also, sensible of this, demanded peace; and, to obtain it, offered to hold his kingdom in fief, as tributary to France. He reckoned, however, on the support of Ferdinand the Catholic, his kinsman and neighbour, who had promised him powerful aid and had given him a pledge of the future by sending into Sicily his best general, Gonsalvo de Cordova, with sixty vessels and eight thousand chosen infantry. But Ferdinand had previously proposed to Louis a secret understanding to divide between them the spoils of the unhappy Frederick. While the French entered on the north to conquer the kingdom of Naples, he proposed that the Spaniards should enter on the south to defend it; and that, on meeting, they, instead of giving battle, should shake hands on the partition of the kingdom--each remaining master of one-half. This was the basis of the Treaty of Granada, signed on the 11th of November, 1500. In the summer of 1501 the perfidious compact was executed by the two greatest monarchs of Europe.

THE FRENCH AND SPANIARDS IN NAPLES

[Sidenote: [1500-1504 A.D.]]

The French army arrived at Rome on the 25th of June, at the same time that the army of Gonsalvo de Cordova landed in Calabria. The former, from the moment they passed the frontier, treated the Neapolitans as rebels, and hanged the soldiers who surrendered to them. Arrived before Capua, they entered that city while the magistrates were signing the capitulation, and massacred seven thousand of the inhabitants. The treachery of Ferdinand inspired the unhappy Frederick with still more aversion than the ferocity of the French. Having retired to the island of Ischia, he surrendered to Louis, and was sent to France, where he died, in a captivity by no means rigorous, three years afterwards. The Spaniards and French advanced towards each other, without encountering any resistance. They met on the limits which the treaty of Granada had respectively assigned to them; but the moment the conquest was terminated, jealousy appeared. The duke de Nemours and Gonsalvo de Cordova disputed upon the division of the kingdom; each claimed for his master some province not named in the treaty.

Hostilities at last began between them on the 19th of June, 1502, at Atripalda. Louis, while the negotiation was pending, delayed sending reinforcements to his general. After a struggle, not without glory, and in which La Palisse and Bayard first distinguished themselves, D’Aubigny was defeated at Seminara on the 21st of April, and Nemours at Cerignola on the 28th of the same month, 1503. The French army was entirely destroyed, and the kingdom of Naples lost to Louis XII. Louis had sent off, during the same campaign, a more powerful army than the first, to recover it; but, on arriving near Rome, news was received of the death of Alexander VI, which took place on the 18th of August, 1503. The cardinal D’Amboise, prime minister of Louis, detained the army there to support his intrigues in the conclave: when it renewed its march, in the month of October, the rainy season had commenced. Gonsalvo de Cordova had taken his position on the Garigliano, the passage of which he defended, amidst inundated plains, with a constancy and patience characteristic of the Spanish infantry. During more than two months the French suffered or perished in the marshes: a pestilential malady carried off the flower of the army, and damped the courage and confidence of the remainder. Gonsalvo, having at last passed the river himself, on the 27th of December, attacked and completely destroyed the French army. On the 1st of January, 1504, Gaeta surrendered to him; and the whole kingdom of Naples was now, like Sicily, but a Spanish possession.

Thus the greater part of Italy had already fallen under the yoke of the nations which the Italians denominated barbarian. The French were masters of the Milanese and of the whole of Liguria; the Spaniards of the Two Sicilies; even the Swiss had made some small conquests along the Lago Maggiore; and this was the moment in which Louis XII called the Germans also into Italy. On the 22nd of September of the same year in which he lost Gaeta, his last hold in the kingdom of Naples, he signed the Treaty of Blois, by which he divided with Maximilian the republic of Venice, as he had divided with Ferdinand the kingdom of Naples. Experience ought to have taught him that Maximilian, like Ferdinand, would reserve for himself the conquests made in common. The future ought to have alarmed him; for Charles, the grandson and heir of Maximilian of Austria, and of Ferdinand of Aragon, of Mary of Burgundy, and of Isabella of Castile, was already born. It was foreseen that he would unite under his sceptre the greatest monarchies in Europe; and Louis, instead of guarding against his future greatness, had promised to give him his daughter in marriage. It was the thoughtlessness of Maximilian, and not the prudence of Louis, that delayed during four years the execution of the Treaty of Blois.

NORTHERN ITALY

[Sidenote: [1500-1509 A.D.]]

During this interval, Genoa--which had never ceased to consider herself a republic, although the signoria had been conferred first on Ludovico Sforza, and next on Louis XII, as duke of Milan--learned from experience that a foreign monarch was incapable of comprehending either her laws or liberty. According to the capitulation, one-half of the magistrates of Genoa should be noble, the other half plebeian. They were to be chosen by the suffrages of their fellow-citizens; they were to retain the government of the whole of Liguria and the administration of their own finances, with the reservation of a fixed sum payable yearly to the king of France. But the French could never comprehend that nobles were on an equality with villeins; that a king was bound by conditions imposed by his subjects; or that money could be refused to him who had force. All the capitulations of Genoa were successively violated; while the Genoese nobles ranged themselves on the side of a king against their country: they were known to carry insolently about them a dagger, on which was inscribed “Chastise villeins”; so impatient were they to separate themselves from the people, even by meanness and assassination. That people could not support the double yoke of a foreign master and of nobles who betrayed their country. On the 7th of February, 1507, they revolted, drove out the French, proclaimed the republic, and named a new doge; but time failed them to organise their defence. On the 3rd of April Louis advanced from Grenoble with a powerful army. He soon arrived before Genoa: the newly raised militia, unable to withstand veteran troops, were defeated. Louis entered Genoa on the 29th of April; and immediately sent the doge and the greater number of the generous citizens, who had signalised themselves in the defence of their country, to the scaffold.

Independent Italy now comprised only the states of the church, Tuscany, and the republic of Venice; and even these provinces were pressed by the transalpine nations on every side. The Spaniards and French alternately spread terror through Tuscany and the states of the church; the Germans and Turks held in awe the territories of Venice. The states of the church were at the same time a prey to the intrigues of the detestable Alexander, and his son Cesare Borgia. More murders, more assassinations, more glaring acts of perfidy were committed within a short space, than during the annals of the most depraved monarchies. Cesare Borgia, whom his father created duke of Romagna in 1501, had previously despoiled and put to death the petty princes who reigned at Pesaro, Rimini, Forlì, and Faenza. He had, in like manner, possessed himself of Piombino in Tuscany, the duchy of Urbino, and the little principalities of Camerino and Sinigaglia. He had caused to be strangled in this last city, on the 31st of December, 1502, four tyrants of the states of the church, who followed the trade of condottieri. These princes had served in his pay, and, alarmed by his intrigues, had taken arms against him; but, seduced by his artifices, they placed themselves voluntarily in his power. Cesare Borgia had made himself master of Città di Castello, and of Perugia; and was menacing Bologna, Siena, and Florence, when, on the 18th of August, 1503, he and his father drank, by mistake, a poison which they had prepared for one of their guests. His father died of it, and Borgia himself was in extreme danger. In thirteen months he lost all his sovereignties, the fruits of so many crimes. Attacked in turn by Pope Julius II, who had succeeded his father, and by Gonsalvo de Cordova, he was at last sent into Spain, where he died in battle, more honourably than he deserved.

In Tuscany, the republic of Florence found itself surrounded with enemies. The Medici, continuing exiles, had entered into alliances with all the tyrants in the pontifical states: they took part in every plot against their country; at the same time, they sought the friendship of the king of France, who was more disposed to favour a prince than a republic. Piero de’ Medici had accompanied the army sent, in 1508, against the kingdom of Naples, and lost his life at the defeat of the Garigliano. His death did not deliver Florence from the apprehension which he had inspired. His brothers Giovanni and Giuliano carried on their intrigues against their country. The war with Pisa, too, which still lasted, exhausted the finances of Florence. The Pisans had lost their commerce and manufactures; they saw their harvests, each year, destroyed by the Florentines: but they opposed to all these disasters a constancy and courage not to be subdued. The French, Germans, and Spaniards in turn sent them succour; not from taking any interest in their cause, but with the view of profiting by the struggle which they protracted. Lucca and Siena also, jealous of the Florentines, secretly assisted the Pisans; but only so far as they could do it without compromising themselves with neighbours whom they feared. Lucca fell, by degrees, into the hands of a narrow oligarchy. Siena suffered itself to be enslaved by Pandolfo Petrucci, a citizen, whom it had named captain of the guard, and who commanded obedience, without departing from the manners and habits of republican equality.

In the new position of Italy, continually menaced by absolute princes, whose deliberations were secret, and who united perfidy with force, the Florentines became sensible that their government could not act with the requisite discretion and secrecy, while it continued to be changed every two months. Their allies even complained that no secret could be confided to them, without becoming known, at the same time, to the whole republic. They accordingly judged it necessary to place at the head of the state a single magistrate, who should be present at every council, and who should be the depositary of every communication requiring secrecy. This chief, who was to retain the name of gonfalonier, was elected, like the doge of Venice, for life; he was to be lodged in the palace, and to have a salary of 100 florins a month. The law which created a gonfalonier for life was voted on the 16th of August, 1502; but it was not till the 22nd of September following that the grand council chose Pietro Soderini to fill that office. He was a man universally respected; of mature age, without ambition, without children; and the republic never had reason to repent its choice. The republic, at the same time, introduced the authority of a single man into the administration, and suppressed it in the tribunals. A law of the 15th of April, 1502, abolished the offices of podesta and of captain of justice, and supplied their places by the ruota; a tribunal composed of five judges, of whom four must agree in passing sentence: each, in his turn, was to be president of the tribunal for six months. This rotation caused the name of ruota to be given to the supreme courts of law at Rome and Florence.

The most important service expected from Soderini was that of subjecting Pisa anew to the Florentine Republic: he did not accomplish this until 1509. That city had long been reduced to the last extremity: the inhabitants, thinned by war and famine, had no longer any hope of holding out; but Louis XII and Ferdinand of Aragon announced to the Florentines that they must be paid for the conquest which Florence was on the point of making. Pisa had been defended by them since 1507, but only to prevent its surrendering before the amount demanded was agreed on: it was at length fixed at 100,000 florins to be paid to the king of France, and 50,000 to the king of Aragon. This treaty was signed on the 13th of March; and on the 8th of June, 1509, Pisa, which had cruelly suffered from famine, opened its gates to the Florentine army: the occupying army was preceded by convoys of provisions, which the soldiers themselves distributed to the citizens. The signoria of Florence abolished all the confiscations pronounced against the Pisans since the year 1494; they restored to them all their property and privileges. They tried, in every way, to conciliate and attach that proud people; but nothing could overcome their deep resentment, and their regret for the loss of their independence. Almost every family, which had preserved any fortune, emigrated; and the population, already so reduced by war, was still further diminished after the peace.

The republic of Venice was condemned, by the war which it had to support against the Turkish Empire, from 1499 to 1503, to make no effort for maintaining the independence of Italy against France and Aragon. It had solicited the aid of all Christendom, as if for a holy war, against Bajazet II; and, in fact, alternately received assistance from the kings of France, Aragon, and Portugal, and from the pope: but these aids, limited to short services on great occasions, were of little real efficacy. They aggravated the misery of the Greeks among whom the war was carried on, caused little injury to the Turks, and were of but little service to the Venetians. The Mussulmans had made progress in naval discipline; the Venetian fleet could no longer cope with theirs; and Antonio Grimani, its commander, till then considered the most fortunate of the citizens of Venice, already father of a cardinal, and destined, long after, to be the doge of the republic, was, on his return to his country, loaded with irons. Lepanto, Pylos, Modon, and Coron, were successively conquered from the Venetians by the Turks; the former were glad at last to accept a peace negotiated by Andrea Gritti, one of their fellow-citizens, a captive at Constantinople. By this peace they renounced all title to the places which they had lost in the Peloponnesus, and restored to Bajazet the island of Santa Maura, which they had, on their side, conquered from the Turks. This peace was signed in the month of November, 1503.

[Sidenote: [1441-1509 A.D.]]

The period in which the republic of Venice was delivered from the terror of the Turks was also that of the death of Alexander VI, and of the ruin of his son, Cesare Borgia. The opportunity appeared to the signoria favourable for extending its possessions in Romagna. That province had been long the object of its ambition. Venice had acquired by treachery, on the 24th of February, 1441, the principality of Ravenna, governed for 166 years by the house of Polenta. In 1463, it had purchased Cervia, with its salt marshes, from Malatesta IV, one of the princes of Rimini; upon the death of Cesare Borgia, it took possession of Faenza, the principality of Manfredi; of Rimini, the principality of Malatesta; and of several fortresses. Imola and Forlì, governed by the Alidosi and the Ordelaffi, alone remained to be subdued, in order to make Venice mistress of the whole of Romagna. The Venetians offered the pope the same submission, the same annual tribute, for which those petty princes were acknowledged pontifical vicars. But Julius II, who had succeeded Borgia, although violent and irascible, had a strong sense of his duty as a pontiff and as an Italian. He was determined on preserving the states of the church intact for his successors. He rejected all nepotism, all aggrandisement of his family; and would have accused himself of unpardonable weakness, if he suffered others to usurp what he refused to give his family. He haughtily exacted the restitution of all that the Venetians possessed in the states of the church; and as he could not obtain it from them, he consented to receive it from the hands of Louis and Maximilian, who combined to despoil the republic. He, however, communicated to the Venetians the projects formed against them, and it was not till they appeared resolved to restore him nothing, that he concluded his compact with their enemies.

THE LEAGUE OF CAMBRAY

[Sidenote: [1504-1509 A.D.]]

The league against Venice, signed at Cambray, on the 10th of December, 1508, by Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian, and the cardinal d’Amboise, prime minister of Louis, was only the completion of the secret Treaty of Blois, of the 22nd of September, 1504. No offence had been given, to justify this perfidious compact. Maximilian, who detested Louis, had the same year endeavoured to attack him in the Milanese; but the Venetians refused him a passage; and after three months’ hostilities, the treaty between the emperor and the republic was renewed, on the 7th of June, 1508. Louis XII, whom the Venetians defended, and Maximilian, with whom they were reconciled, had no other complaint against them than that they had no king, and that their subjects thus excited the envy of those who had. The two monarchs agreed to divide between them all the Terra Firma of the Venetians, to abandon to Ferdinand all their fortresses in Apulia, to the pope the lordships in Romagna, to the houses of Este and Gonzaga the small districts near the Po; and thus to give all an interest in the destruction of the only state sufficiently strong to maintain the independence of Italy.

France was the first to declare war against the republic of Venice, in the month of January, 1509. Hostilities commenced on the 15th of April; on the 27th of the same month the pope excommunicated the doge and the republic. The Venetians had assembled an army of forty-two thousand men, under the command of the impetuous Bartolommeo d’Alviano and the cautious Pitigliano. The disagreement between these two chiefs, both able generals, caused the loss of the battle of Agnadello, fought on the 14th of May, 1509, with the French, who did not exceed thirty thousand. Half only, or less, of the Venetian army was engaged; but that part fought heroically, and perished without falling back one step. After this discomfiture, Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, and Cremona hastily surrendered to the conquerors, who planted their banners on the border of Ghiara d’Adda, the limits assigned by the treaty of partition. Louis signalised this rapid conquest by atrocious cruelties; he caused the Venetian governors of Caravaggio and of Peschiera to be hanged, and the garrison and inhabitants to be put to the sword; he ruined, by enormous ransoms, all the Venetian nobles who fell into his hands; seeking to vindicate to himself his unjust attack by the hatred which he studied to excite.

The French suspended their operations from the 31st of May; but the emperor, the pope, the duke of Ferrara, the marquis of Mantua, and Ferdinand of Aragon profited by the disasters of the republic to invade its provinces on all sides at once. The senate, in the impossibility of making head against so many enemies, took the generous resolution of releasing all its subjects from their oath of fidelity, and permitting them to treat with the enemy, since it was no longer in its power to defend them. In letting them feel the weight of a foreign yoke, the senate knew that it only rendered more dear the paternal authority of the republic; and, in fact, those citizens who had eagerly opened their gates to the French, Germans, and Spaniards, soon contrasted, in despair, their tyranny with the just and equal power which they had not had the courage to defend. The Germans, above all, no sooner entered the Venetian cities, than they plunged into the most brutal debauchery; offending public decency, and exercising their cruelty and rapacity on all those who came within their reach. Notwithstanding this, the native nobles joined them. They were eager to substitute monarchy for republican equality and freedom, but their insolence only aggravated the hatred which the Germans inspired. The army of the republic had taken refuge at Mestre, on the borders of the Lagune, when suddenly the citizen evinced a courage which the soldier no longer possessed. Treviso, in the month of June, and Padua on the 17th of July, drove out the imperialists; and the banners of St. Mark, which had hitherto constantly retreated, began once again to advance.

The war of the league of Cambray showed the Italians, for the first time, what formidable forces the transalpine nations could bring against them. Maximilian arrived to besiege Padua in the month of September, 1509. He had in his army, Germans, Swiss, French, Spaniards, Savoyards; troops of the pope, of the marquis of Mantua, and of the duke of Modena; in all more than one hundred thousand men, with one hundred pieces of cannon. He was, notwithstanding, obliged to raise the siege, on the 3rd of October, after many encounters, supported on each side with equal valour. But these barbarians, who came to dispute with the Italians the sovereignty of their country, did not need success to prove their ferocity. After having taken from the poor peasant, or captive, all that he possessed, they put him to the torture to discover hidden treasure, or to extort ransom from the compassion of friends. In this abuse of brute force, the Germans showed themselves the most savage, the Spaniards the most coldly ferocious. Both were more odious than the French; although the last mentioned had bands called flayers (écorcheurs), formed in the English wars, and long trained to grind the people.

[Sidenote: [1509-1511 A.D.]]

Pope Julius II soon began to hate his accomplices in the league of Cambray. Violent and irascible, he had often shown in his fits of passion that he could be as cruel as the worst of them. But he had the soul of an Italian. He could not brook the humiliation of his country, and its being enslaved by those whom he called barbarians. Having recovered the cities of Romagna, the subject of his quarrel with the Venetians, he began to make advances to them. At the end of the first campaign, he entered into negotiations; and on the 21st of February, 1510, granted them absolution. He was aware that he could never drive the barbarians out of Italy but by arming them against each other; and as the French were those whom he most feared, he had recourse to the Germans. It was necessary to begin with reconciling the Venetians to the emperor; but Maximilian, always ready to undertake everything, and incapable of bringing anything to a conclusion, would not relax in a single article of what he called his rights. As emperor, he considered himself monarch of all Italy; and although he was always stopped on its frontier, he refused to renounce the smallest part of what he purposed conquering. He asserted that the whole Venetian territory had been usurped from the empire; and before granting peace to the republic, demanded almost its annihilation.

It was with the aid of the Swiss that the pope designed to liberate Italy. He admired the valour and piety of that warlike people; he saw, with pleasure, that cupidity had become their ruling passion. The Italians, who needed the defence of the Swiss, were rich enough to pay them; and a wise policy conspired for once with avarice; for the Swiss republics could not be safe if liberty were not re-established in Italy. Louis XII, by his prejudice in favour of nobility, had offended those proud mountaineers, whom, even in his own army, he considered only as revolted peasants. Julius II employed the bishop of Sion, whom he afterwards made cardinal, to irritate them still more against France. In the course of the summer of 1510, the French, according to the plan which Julius had formed, were attacked in the Milanese by the Swiss, in Genoa by the Genoese emigrants, at Modena by the pontifical troops, and at Verona by the Venetians; but, notwithstanding the profound secrecy in which the pope enveloped his negotiations and intrigues, he could not succeed, as he had hoped, in surprising the French everywhere at the same time. The four attacks were made successively, and repulsed. The sire de Chaumont, lieutenant of Louis in Lombardy, determined to avenge himself by besieging the pope in Bologna, in the month of October. Julius feigned a desire to purchase peace at any price; but, while negotiating, he caused troops to advance; and, on finding himself the stronger, suddenly changed his language, used threats, and made Chaumont retire. When Chaumont had placed his troops in winter quarters, the pope, during the greatest severity of the season, attacked the small state of Mirandola, which had put itself under the protection of France, and entered its capital by a breach, on the 20th of January, 1511.

[Sidenote: [1511-1512 A.D.]]

The pope’s troops, commanded by the duke of Urbino, experienced in the following campaign a signal defeat at Casalecchio, on the 21st of May, 1511. It was called “the day of the ass-drivers,” because the French knights returned driving asses before them loaded with booty. The loss of Bologna followed; but Julius II was not discouraged. His legates laboured, throughout Europe, to raise enemies against France. They at last accomplished a league, which was signed on the 5th of October, and which was called “holy,” because it was headed by the pope. It comprehended the kings of Spain and England, the Swiss, and the Venetians. Louis XII, to oppose an ecclesiastical authority to that of the pontiffs, convoked, in concert with Maximilian, whom he continued to consider his ally, an œcumenical council. A few cardinals, who had separated from the pope, clothed it with their authority; and Florence dared not refuse to the two greatest monarchs of Europe the city of Pisa for its place of meeting, although the whole population beheld with dread this commencement of a new schism.[d]

The combined forces were to be placed under the command of Raymond de Cardona, viceroy of Naples, a person of polished and engaging address, but without the resolution or experience requisite to military success. The rough old pope sarcastically nicknamed him “Lady Cardona.” It was an appointment that would certainly never have been made by Queen Isabella. Indeed, the favour shown this nobleman on this and other occasions was so much beyond his deserts as to raise a suspicion in many that he was more nearly allied by blood to Ferdinand than was usually imagined.

THE BATTLE OF RAVENNA

[Sidenote: [1512 A.D.]]

Early in 1512, France, by great exertions and without a single confederate out of Italy, save the false and fluctuating emperor, got an army into the field superior to that of the allies in point of numbers, and still more so in the character of its commander. This was Gaston de Foix, duke of Nemours and brother of the queen of Aragon. Though a boy in years--for he was but twenty-two--he was ripe in understanding, and possessed consummate military talents. He introduced a severer discipline into his army, and an entirely new system of tactics. He looked forward to his results with stern indifference to the means by which they were to be effected. He disregarded the difficulties of the roads and the inclemency of the season, which had hitherto put a check on military operations. Through the midst of frightful morasses, or in the depth of winter snows, he performed his marches with a celerity unknown in the warfare of that age. In less than a fortnight after leaving Milan he relieved Bologna (February 5th), then besieged by the allies, made a countermarch on Brescia, defeated a detachment by the way, and the whole Venetian army under its walls, and, on the same day with the last event, succeeded in carrying the place by storm. After a few weeks’ dissipation of the carnival, he again put himself in motion, and, descending on Ravenna, succeeded in bringing the allied army to a decisive action under its walls. Ferdinand, well understanding the peculiar characters of the French and of the Spanish soldier, had cautioned his general to adopt the Fabian policy of Gonsalvo, and avoid a close encounter as long as possible.

This battle, fought with the greatest numbers, was also the most murderous which had stained the fair soil of Italy for a century (April 11th, 1512). No less than eighteen or twenty thousand, according to authentic accounts, fell in it, comprehending the best blood of France and Italy. The viceroy Cardona went off somewhat too early for his reputation. But the Spanish infantry, under the count Pedro Navarro, behaved in a style worthy of the school of Gonsalvo. During the early part of the day, they lay on the ground, in a position which sheltered them from the deadly artillery of Este, then the best mounted and best served of any in Europe. When at length, as the tide of battle was going against them, they were brought into the field, Navarro led them at once against a deep column of lansquenets who, armed with the long German pike, were bearing down all before them. The Spaniards received the shock of this formidable weapon on the mailed panoply with which their bodies were covered, and, dexterously gliding into the hostile ranks, contrived with their short swords to do such execution on the enemy, unprotected except by corselets in front, and incapable of availing themselves of their long weapon, that they were thrown into confusion and totally discomfited. It was repeating the experiment more than once made during these wars, but never on so great a scale, and it fully establishes the superiority of the Spanish arms.

The Italian infantry, which had fallen back before the lansquenets, now rallied under cover of the Spanish charge; until at length the overwhelming clouds of French gendarmerie headed by Ives d’Alègre, who lost his own life in the mêlée, compelled the allies to give ground. The retreat of the Spaniards, however, was conducted with admirable order, and they preserved their ranks unbroken, as they repeatedly turned to drive back the tide of pursuit. At this crisis, Gaston de Foix, flushed with success, was so exasperated by the sight of this valiant corps going off in so cool and orderly a manner from the field, that he made a desperate charge at the head of his chivalry, in hopes of breaking it. Unfortunately, his wounded horse fell under him. It was in vain his followers called out, “It is our viceroy, the brother of your queen!” The words had no charm for a Spanish ear, and he was despatched with a multitude of wounds. He received fourteen or fifteen in the face; “good proof,” says Bayard’s secretary and biographer, called the loyal serviteur,[j] “that the gentle prince had never turned his back.”

There are few instances in history, if indeed there be any, of so brief and at the same time so brilliant a military career as that of Gaston de Foix; and it well entitled him to the epithet his countrymen gave him of “the thunderbolt of Italy.” He had not merely given extraordinary promise, but in the course of a very few months had achieved such results as might well make the greatest powers of the peninsula tremble for their possessions. His precocious military talents, the early age at which he assumed the command of armies, as well as many peculiarities of his discipline and tactics, suggest some resemblance to the beginning of Napoleon’s career.

Unhappily, his brilliant fame is sullied by a recklessness of human life, the more odious in one too young to be steeled by familiarity with the iron trade to which he was devoted. It may be fair, however, to charge this on the age rather than on the individual, for surely never was there one characterised by greater brutality and more unsparing ferocity in its wars. So little had the progress of civilisation done for humanity. It is not until a recent period that a more generous spirit has operated; that a fellow-creature has been understood not to forfeit his rights as a man because he is an enemy; that conventional laws have been established, tending greatly to mitigate the evils of a condition which, with every alleviation, is one of unspeakable misery; and that those who hold the destinies of nations in their hands have been made to feel that there is less true glory, and far less profit, to be derived from war than from the wise prevention of it.

The defeat at Ravenna struck a panic into the confederates. The stout heart of Julius II faltered, and it required all the assurances of the Spanish and Venetian ministers to keep him staunch to his purpose. King Ferdinand issued orders to the great captain to hold himself in readiness for taking the command of forces to be instantly raised for Naples. There could be no better proof of the royal consternation.

The victory of Ravenna, however, was more fatal to the French than to their foes. The uninterrupted successes of a commander are so far unfortunate, that they incline his followers, by the brilliant illusion they throw around his name, to rely less on their own resources than on him whom they have hitherto found invincible; and thus subject their own destiny to all the casualties which attach to the fortunes of a single individual. The death of Gaston de Foix seemed to dissolve the only bond which held the French together. The officers became divided, the soldiers disheartened, and, with the loss of their young hero, lost all interest in the service.[g]

The ministers of Louis thought they might, after the battle of Ravenna, safely dismiss a part of their army; but Maximilian, betraying all his engagements, abandoned the French to their enemies. Without consenting to make peace with Venice, he gave passage through his territory to twenty thousand Swiss, who were to join the Venetian army, in order to attack the French. He, at the same time, recalled all the Germans who had enlisted under the banner of France. Ferdinand of Aragon and Henry VIII of England almost simultaneously attacked Louis, who, to defend himself, was obliged to recall his troops from Italy. In the beginning of June, they evacuated the Milanese; of which the Swiss took possession, in the name of Massimiliano Sforza, son of Lodovico il Moro (the Moor). On the 29th of the same month, a revolution drove the French out of Genoa; and the republic and a new doge were again proclaimed. The possessions of France were soon reduced to a few small fortresses in that Italy which the French thought they had subdued. But the Italians did not recover their liberty by the defeat of only one of their oppressors. From the yoke of France, they passed under that of the Swiss, the Spaniards, and the Germans; and the last they endured always seemed the most galling. To add to their humiliation, the victory of the Holy League enslaved the last and only republic truly free in Italy.

Florence was connected with France by a treaty concluded in concert with Ferdinand the Catholic. The republic continued to observe it scrupulously, even after Ferdinand had disengaged himself from it. Florence had fulfilled towards all the belligerent powers the duties of good neighbourhood and neutrality, and had given offence to none; but the league, which had just driven the French out of Italy, was already divided in interest, and undecided on the plan which it should pursue. It was agreed only on one point, that of obtaining money. The Swiss lived at discretion in Lombardy, and levied in it the most ruinous contributions: the Spaniards of Raymond de Cardona insisted also on having a province abandoned to their inexorable avidity; Tuscany was rich and not warlike. The victorious powers who had assembled in congress at Mantua proposed to the Florentines to buy themselves off with a contribution; but the Medici, who presented themselves at this congress, asked to be restored to their country, asserting that they could extract much more money by force, for the use of the Holy League, than a republican government could obtain from the people by gentler means. Raymond de Cardona readily believed them, and in the month of August, 1512, accompanied them across the Apennines, with five thousand Spanish infantry as inaccessible to pity as to fear. Raymond sent forward to tell the Florentines that, if they would preserve their liberty, they must recall the Medici, displace the gonfalonier Soderini, and pay the Spanish army 40,000 florins. He arrived at the same time before the small town of Prato, which shut its gates against him; it was well fortified, but defended only by the ordinanza, or country militia. On the 30th of August, the Spaniards made a breach in the wall, which these peasants basely abandoned. The city was taken by assault; the militia, which would have incurred less danger in fighting valiantly, were put to the sword; five thousand citizens were afterwards massacred, and others, divided among the victors, were put to lingering tortures, either to force them to discover where they had concealed their treasure, or to oblige their kinsmen to ransom them out of pity; the Spaniards having already pillaged all they could discover in holy as well as profane places.

The terror caused at Florence, by the news of the massacre of Prato, produced next day a revolution. A company of young nobles, belonging to the most illustrious families, who, under the title of Society of the Garden Ruccellai, were noted for their love of the arts, of luxury and pleasure, took possession, on the 31st of August, of the public palace; they favoured the escape of Soderini, and sent to tell Raymond de Cardona that they were ready to accept the conditions which he offered. But all treaties with tyrants are deceptions. Giuliano de’ Medici, the third son of Lorenzo, whose character was gentle and conciliatory, entered Florence on the 2nd of September, and consented to leave many of the liberties of the republic untouched. His brother, the cardinal Giovanni, afterwards Leo X, who did not enter till the 14th of the same month, forced the signoria to call a parliament on the 16th. In this pretended assembly of the sovereign people, few were admitted except strangers and soldiers: all the laws enacted since the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 were abolished. A balia, composed only of the creatures of that family, was invested with the sovereignty of the republic. This balia showed itself abjectly subservient to the cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, his brother Giuliano, and their nephew Lorenzo, who now returned to Florence after eighteen years of exile, during which they had lost every republican habit, and all sympathy with their fellow-citizens. None of them had legitimate children; but they brought back with them three bastards,--Giulio, afterwards Clement VII, Ippolito, and Alessandro,--who had all a fatal influence on the destiny of their country. Their fortune, formerly colossal, was dissipated in their long exile; and their first care, on returning to Florence, was to raise money for themselves, as well as for the Spaniards, who had re-established their tyranny.

[Sidenote: [1512-1513 A.D.]]

The three destructive wars--viz., that of the French and Swiss in the Milanese, that of the French and Spaniards in the kingdom of Naples, that of the French, Spaniards, Germans, and Swiss, in the states of Venice--robbed Italy of her independence. The country to which Europe was indebted for its progress in every art and science, which had imparted to other nations the medical science of Salerno, the jurisprudence of Bologna, the theology of Rome, the philosophy, poetry, and fine arts of Florence, the tactics and strategy of the Bracceschi and Sforzeschi schools, the commerce and banks of the Lombards, the process of irrigation, the scientific cultivation both of hills and plains--that country now belonged no more to its own inhabitants! The struggle between the transalpine nations continued, with no other object than that of determining to which of them Italy should belong; and bequeathed nothing to that nation but long-enduring, hopeless agonies. Julius II in vain congratulated himself on having expelled the French, who had first imposed a foreign yoke on Italy; he vowed in vain that he would never rest till he had also driven out all the barbarians; but he deceived himself in his calculations: he did not drive out the barbarians, he only made them give way to other barbarians; and the new-comers were ever the most oppressive and cruel. However, this project of national liberation, which the pope alone could still entertain in Italy with any prospect of success, was soon abandoned. Eight months after the expulsion of the French from the Milanese, and five months after the re-establishment of the Medici at Florence, Julius II, on the 21st of February, 1513, sank under an inflammatory disease. On the 11th of March, Giovanni de’ Medici succeeded him, under the name of Leo X--eleven months after the latter had been made prisoner by the French at the battle of Ravenna, and six months after the Spanish arms had given him the sovereignty of his country, Florence.

THE AGE OF LEO X

It has been the singular good fortune of Leo X to have his name associated with the most brilliant epoch of letters and the arts since their revival. He has thus shared the glory of all the poets, philosophers, artists, men of learning and science, his contemporaries. He has been held up to posterity as one who formed and raised to eminence men who were in fact his elders, and who had attained celebrity before the epoch of his power. His merit consisted in showering his liberality on those whose works and whose fame had already deserved it. His reign, on the other hand, which lasted nine years, was marked by fearful calamities, which hastened the destruction of those arts and sciences to which alone the age of Leo owes its splendour. The misfortunes which he drew down on his successor was still more dreadful. The pope was himself a man of pleasure, easy, careless, prodigal; who expended in sumptuous feasts the immense treasures accumulated by his predecessors. He had the taste to adorn his palace with the finest works of antiquity, and the sense to enjoy the society of philosophers and poets; but he had never the elevation of soul to comprehend his duties, or to consult his conscience. His indecent conversation and licentious conduct scandalised the church; his prodigality led him to encourage the shameful traffic in indulgences, which gave rise to the schism of Luther; his thoughtlessness and indifference to human suffering made him light up wars the most ruinous, and which he was utterly unable to carry on; he never thought of securing the independence of Italy, or of expelling the barbarians: it was simply for the aggrandisement of his family that he contracted or abandoned alliances with the transalpine nations: he succeeded, indeed, in procuring that his brother Giuliano should be named duke of Nemours, and he created his nephew duke of Urbino; but he endeavoured also to erect for the former a new state, composed of the districts of Parma, Piacenza, Reggio, and Modena; for the latter, another, consisting of the several petty principalities which still maintained themselves in the states of the church. His tortuous policy to accomplish the first object, his perfidy and cruelty to attain the second, deserved to be much more severely branded by historians.

The sovereign pontiff and the republic of Venice were the only powers in Italy which still preserved some shadow of independence. Julius II had succeeded in uniting Romagna, the Marches, the patrimony and campagna of Rome, to the holy see. Amongst all the vassals of the church, he had spared only his own nephew, Gian Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino. On the defeat of the French, he further seized Parma and Piacenza, which he detached from the Milanese, without having the remotest title to their possession, as he also took Modena from the duke of Ferrara, whom he detested. Leo X found the holy see in possession of all these states, and was at the same time himself all-powerful at Florence. Even the moment of his elevation to the pontificate was marked by an event which showed that every vestige of liberty had disappeared from that republic. The partisans of the Medici pretended to have discovered at Florence a conspiracy, of which they produced no other proofs than some imprudent speeches, and some wishes uttered for liberty. The most illustrious citizens were, nevertheless, arrested; and Macchiavelli, with several others, was put to the torture. Pietro Boscoli and Agostino Capponi were beheaded; and those who were called their accomplices exiled. The two republics of Siena and Lucca were in a state of trembling subjection to the pontiff; so that all central Italy, peopled with about four million inhabitants, was dependent on him: but the court of Rome, since it had ceased to respect the ancient municipal liberties, never extended its authority over a new province without ruining its population and resources. Law and order seemed incompatible with the government of priests: the laws gave way to intrigue and favour; commerce gave way to monopoly. Justice deserted the tribunals, foresight the councils, and valour the armies. It was proverbially said that the arms of the church had no edge. The great name of pope still moved Europe at a distance, but it brought no real force to the allies whom he adopted.

[Sidenote: [1513-1515 A.D.]]

The republic of Venice, with a smaller territory, and a far less numerous population, was in reality much more powerful than the church. Venetian subjects, if they did not enjoy liberty, had at least a government which maintained justice, order, and the law; their material prosperity was judiciously protected. They in return were contented, and proved themselves devotedly attached to their government; but the wars raised by the league of Cambray overwhelmed that republic with calamity. The city of Venice, secure amidst the waters, alone escaped the invasion of the barbarians; though, even there, the richest quarters had been laid waste by an accidental fire. The country and the provincial towns experienced in turn the ferocity of the French, Swiss, Germans, and Spaniards. Three centuries and a half had elapsed since this same Veronese march, the cradle of the Lombard League, had repelled the invasion of Frederick Barbarossa. But while the world boasted a continual progress, since that period, in civilisation,--while philosophy and justice had better defined the rights of men,--while the arts, literature, and poetry had quickened the feelings, and rendered man more susceptible of painful impressions,--war was made with a ferocity at which men in an age of the darkest barbarism would have blushed. The massacre of all the inhabitants of a town taken by assault, the execution of whole garrisons which had surrendered at discretion, the giving up of prisoners to the conquering soldiers in order to be tortured into the confession of hidden treasure, became the common practice of war in the armies of Louis XII, Ferdinand, and Maximilian. Kings were haughty in proportion to their power; they considered themselves at so much the greater distance above human nature: they were the more offended at all resistance, the more incapable of compassion for sufferings which they did not see or did not comprehend. The misery which they caused presented itself to them more as an abstraction; they regarded masses, not individuals; they justified their cruelties by the name of offended majesty; they quieted remorse by considering themselves, not as men, but as scourges in the hand of God. Centuries have elapsed, and civilisation has not ceased to march forward; the voice of humanity has continued to become more and more powerful; no one now dares to believe himself great enough to be dispensed from humanity; nevertheless, those who would shrink with horror from witnessing the putting to death of an individual do not hesitate to condemn whole nations to execution. The crimes which remain for us to relate do not merit more execration than those of which we are ourselves the witnesses at this day. Kings, in their detestation of freedom, let loose upon unhappy Italy, in the sixteenth century, famine, war, and pestilence; as, from the same motive in a later time, they loosed upon heroic Poland, famine, war, and the cholera.

Louis XII, after having lost the Milanese, through his infatuated ambition to reconquer the small province of the Cremonese, which he had himself ceded to the republic of Venice, felt anew the desire of being reconciled with that republic, his first ally in Italy. The Venetians, who knew that without their money, artillery, and cavalry, the Swiss could never have faced the French, much less have driven them out of Italy, saw that their allies did not appreciate their efforts and sacrifices. Maximilian, who in joining never granted them peace, but only a truce, reasserted his claims on Verona and Vicenza, and would not consent to allow the Venetians any states in terra firma but such as they purchased from him at an enormous price. The pope, to enforce the demands of Maximilian, threatened the Venetians with excommunication; and their danger after victory appeared as great as after defeat. Andrea Gritti, one of their senators,--made prisoner after the battle of Agnadello, and the same who, during his captivity at Constantinople, had signed the peace of his country with the Turks,--again took advantage of his captivity in France to negotiate with Louis. He reconciled the republic with that monarch, who had been the first to attack it; and a treaty of alliance was signed at Blois, on the 24th of March, 1513. This was, however, a source of new calamity to Venice. A French army, commanded by La Trémouille, entered the Milanese, and on its approach the Germans and Spaniards retired. The Swiss, who gloried in having re-established Massimiliano Sforza on the throne of his ancestors, were, however, resolved not to abandon him. They descended from their mountains in numerous bodies, on the 6th of June, 1513; attacked La Trémouille at the Riotta, near Novara; defeated him, and drove him back with all the French forces beyond the Alps. The Spaniards and the soldiers of Leo X next attacked the Venetians without any provocation: they were at peace with the republic, but they invaded its territory in the name of their ally Maximilian. They occupied the Paduan state, the Veronese, and that of Vicenza, from the 13th of June till the end of autumn. It was during this invasion the Spaniards displayed that heartless cruelty which rendered them the horror of Italy; that cupidity which multiplied torture, and which invented sufferings more and more atrocious, to extort gold from their prisoners. The Germans in the next campaign overran the Venetian provinces; and, notwithstanding the savage cruelties and numerous crimes of which the country had just been the theatre, yet the German commander found means to signalise himself by his ferocity.

The Battle of Marignano; Last Years of Leo

Francis I succeeded Louis XII on the 1st of January, 1515; on the 27th of June he renewed his predecessor’s treaty of alliance with Venice; and on the 15th of August entered the plains of Lombardy, by the marquisate of Saluzzo, with a powerful army. He met but little resistance in the provinces south of the Po; but the Swiss meanwhile arrived in great force to defend Massimiliano Sforza, whom, since they had reseated him on the throne, they regarded as their vassal. Francis in vain endeavoured to negotiate with them: they would not listen to the voice of their commanders; democracy had passed from their landsgemeinde into their armies, popular orators roused their passions; and on the 13th of September they impetuously left Milan to attack Francis I at Marignano (Melegnano). Deep ditches lined with soldiers bordered the causeway by which they advanced; their commanders wished by some manœuvre to get clear of them, or make the enemy change his position; but the Swiss, despising all the arts of war, expected to command success by mere intrepidity and bodily strength.[d]

As soon as Francis I became aware that the Swiss were marching against him he made vigorous preparations to receive them. The duchy of Milan, which with prudent negotiation he hoped to obtain, could only be gained by a complete victory.

His army was drawn up on three lines on the road leading from Marignano to Milan; the advance-guard, commanded by the high constable of Bourbon, encamped in the village of San Giuliano, a short distance below San Donato; the main body of the army, the command of which the king had reserved for himself, was at Santa Brigitta, within bowshot of the high constable; the rear-guard, placed under the command of the duke of Alençon, was at about the same distance from the king’s main body. The army, thus disposed in echelons, held the highway of Milan on its left, and protecting its right by the river Lambro, occupied a territory covered with trenches and intersected with small irrigation canals, which would guard it from the sudden attacks of the Swiss infantry, and also sometimes be inconvenient for the deploying and the charges of its own cavalry, wherein lay a principal portion of its strength.

Francis I hastily made his arrangements to face the danger, and withstand the shock of an encounter with the Swiss army. As he himself said in the animated description of the battle he sent to his mother, the regent, he “placed his German foot-soldiers in order.” He had formed two corps of them, each nine thousand strong, and placed them on the sides of the avenue by which the Swiss were advancing, besides the picked corps of six thousand lansquenets of the Black Companies. The Gascon archers and the French adventurers, under Pedro Navarro, occupied, not far from there, a very strong position near the heavy artillery, which was ably led by the seneschal of Armagnac.

The Swiss then came up. They had made the distance between Milan and the French camp without stopping. “It is not possible,” says the king, “to advance with greater fury or more boldly.” The discharge of the artillery forced them to take shelter for a moment in a hollow. Then, with levelled pikes, they fell upon the French army. The high constable of Bourbon, and Marshal de la Palice at the head of the men-at-arms of the advance-guard, charged, but were not able to break through them. Thrown back themselves upon their infantry, they were pursued by the Swiss, who attacked the lansquenets with fury and put them to rout. The day was declining, and the battle, begun late (between four and five o’clock), was assuming the same appearance as at Navarre. The largest company of Swiss, having driven back the men-at-arms and overthrown the lansquenets, was marching upon the guns to seize them, turn them against the French army, and thus complete her defeat.

But there were braver hearts and more resolute spirits amongst those commanding at Marignano than at Navarre. Francis I, armed cap-à-pie, mounted on a great charger whose caparison was covered in fleur-de-lis and his initial, F, crowned, had flung himself in this victorious moment before the Swiss at the head of two hundred men-at-arms, as well as eight hundred horsemen. After having valiantly charged one of their companies and forced them to throw down their pikes, he had attacked a large company which he was not able to overcome but compelled to retreat. Then, proceeding in the direction of his threatened artillery, he there rallied five or six thousand lansquenets, and more than three thousand men-at-arms, with whom he made a firm stand against the largest detachment of the Swiss, who were not able to seize and remove the pieces of cannon as they intended. The better to impede these Swiss, Francis I discharged a charge of artillery upon them, which dislodged them and obliged them to return to a trench they had crossed and there take shelter.

The high constable, on his side, having rallied a large company of men-at-arms and the majority of the infantry, had attacked five or six thousand Swiss with much vigour, and had driven them back to their own places. Night fell whilst both sides were fighting thus--the Swiss without succeeding in carrying the French camps, the French unable to completely repulse the attacks of the Swiss. They continued fighting with pertinacity and no little confusion for several hours by the dim light of the moon, still veiled by the clouds of dust. The hostile troops had some difficulty in recognising each other in this vast and confused struggle. Towards eleven o’clock at night, the moonlight having failed them, darkness prevented their continuing this desperate conflict. The Swiss had had the advantage at the commencement of the battle, as they had broken through the French lines, but things had been less favourable to them at the finish, as they had been partly driven back to their own. In spite of their efforts, having attacked that day without vanquishing, they awaited the morrow to recommence the battle.

Both sides passed the night under arms in the position occupied at the cessation of action owing to the darkness, and not far from each other. Francis I, after many charges, had returned to the artillery, who, firing opportunely upon the Swiss battalions, had several times broken through them, and were shortly to prove to be of even more powerful assistance. Showing the foresight of a general after showing the intrepidity of a soldier, he caused Duprat, the chancellor, who had followed him on this campaign, to write three most important letters, which were confided to trusty messengers. The first was addressed to the Venetian general, Bartolommeo d’Alviano, whom he enjoined to set out immediately, and to come from Lodi with his customary promptitude, so as to join the forces he commanded to those of Francis on the following day. The second exhorted Louis d’Ars, who occupied Pavia, to carefully guard his stronghold which might, in case of disaster, serve as a point of retreat. In the third he warned Lautrec of the attack of the Swiss, and advised him not to remit or allow to be taken the money he carried about him, in execution of the violated treaty of Gallarate. These precautions taken, he “spent the rest of the night,” so he wrote after the battle, “in the saddle, his lance in hand, and his helmet on his head,” and only rested for a few moments, leaning on a gun-carriage.

An hour before dawn he prepared everything for the coming battle. He took up a position slightly in the rear, and more favourable than the one he had occupied the preceding day. Instead of leaving his army drawn up in three lines, he placed his men abreast in only one line. Remaining in the centre of his battle array, he called upon the high constable of Bourbon to form his right wing with the advance-guard, and his brother-in-law, the duke of Alençon, to form his left wing with the rear-guard. The guns, well placed and defended, were by well-directed firing, to harass the enemy on their march, and could only be approached by them with difficulty. It was in this order that Francis I awaited the attack of the Swiss.

The leaders of the allies had held a council of war during the night, to consult as to the next day’s battle and how to render it more decisive. At daybreak they closed up their huge battalions and set out somewhat ponderously. They seemed at first to be proceeding in a body towards the centre of the French army, but some discharges of artillery which pierced their ranks caused them to retreat in the direction of the positions they had occupied during the night. There they formed into three detachments which marched on the main body and the two wings of the French. The first detachment, supported by the six small guns of the Swiss, advanced towards Francis I, whose steadfast attitude and powerful artillery kept it at a certain distance. Whilst this detachment of eight hundred men faced and attacked the king, the two other detachments of about equal strength had flung themselves upon the two wings commanded by the high constable and the duke of Alençon, hoping to scatter them, so as to then surround, and thus easily overcome, the main body of the army. Whether the Swiss had less confidence than the day before, or whether they were met with even more courage and steadfastness, they saw their enemies facing their pikes as they had never done yet. The high constable with his lansquenets and men-at-arms, and Pedro Navarro with the Gascon archers and the adventurers, resisted the detachment attacking the right wing, and, after a sharp struggle, drove it back. In the left wing the duke of Alençon was at first less fortunate. Whilst the king stopped the advance of the central column of the Swiss, and the high constable victoriously drove back the left one, the right column had turned and assailed the forces of the duke of Alençon, which had been scattered and had retreated in confusion. In spite of the terror of the fugitives, who had precipitately fled from the field of battle, and were spreading along the road to Pavia the news of the victory of the Swiss, the conflict remained at this point.

D’Aubigny and Aymar de Prie, having rallied the troops, did their utmost to repair the disaster of the duke of Alençon, and bravely charged the enemy. They were struggling with them when Bartolommeo d’Alviano, who had started early from Lodi, arrived about ten o’clock from that side of the battle-field. At the head of his armed men and his light cavalry, he at once fell upon the Swiss with the cry of “Saint Mark!” This unexpected attack disconcerted them. They feared the whole Venetian army would be upon them, and they retreated. Closely pursued, they fell back towards the centre, where the allies’ battalions, placed opposite Francis I, had not been able to make any progress. They discharged and received cannon-shots during several hours, possibly awaiting the victorious issue of the two attacks of the right and left wings to attempt more securely to break through the main body of the army. They made one last and vigorous effort. A company of five thousand men were told off, and marched with the resolution of despair as far as the French lines. But, taken obliquely by the artillery, charged by Francis I and his men-at-arms, attacked with hatchets and pikes by the valiant lansquenets of the Black Company, stationed in the centre with the king, pierced by the arrows of the Gascon archers, who had hastened from the right side where they had gained the mastery, the Swiss company was cut to pieces and none escaped.

[Sidenote: [1515-1516 A.D.]]

The king, with a decisive movement, then bore down with his cavalry upon the other confederates, who abandoned their position and their guns. The Swiss, driven back or vanquished on every side, gave the signal for retreat, and retired from the battle-field, leaving from seven to eight thousand dead. Carrying their wounded, they retook the Milan road in fairly good order and without pursuit, and entered that town with a haughty demeanour, and not as a defeated army. They were beaten, nevertheless, for they had just lost at Marignano that prestige, which, since Sempach, Granson, and Morat, and as late as at Novara, had made them invincible.[h]

This horrible butchery, however, hastened the conclusion of the wars which arose from the league of Cambray. The Swiss were not sufficiently powerful to maintain their sway in Lombardy; eight of their cantons, on the 7th of November, signed, at Geneva, a treaty of peace with Francis I, who compensated with considerable sums of money all the claims which they consented to abandon. On the 29th of November the other cantons acceded to this pacification, which took the name of “Paix perpétuelle,” and France recovered the right of raising such infantry as she needed among the Swiss. Raymond de Cardona, alarmed at the retreat of the Swiss, evacuated Lombardy with the Spanish troops. The French recovered possession of the whole duchy of Milan. Massimiliano Sforza abdicated the sovereignty for a revenue of 30,000 crowns secured to him in France. Leo X, ranging himself on the side of the victors, signed, at Viterbo, on the 13th of October, a treaty, by which he restored Parma and Piacenza to the French.

In a conference held with Francis at Bologna, between the 10th and 15th of the following December, Leo induced that monarch to sacrifice the liberties of the Gallican church by the concordat, to renounce the protection he had hitherto extended to the Florentines and to the duke of Urbino, although the former had always remained faithful to France. The pope seized the states of the duke of Urbino, and conferred them on his nephew, Lorenzo II de’ Medici. Amidst these transactions, Ferdinand the Catholic died, on the 15th of January, 1516, and his grandson Charles succeeded to his Spanish kingdoms. On the 13th of August following, Charles signed, at Noyon, a treaty, by which Francis ceded to him all his right to the kingdom of Naples as the dower of a newborn daughter, whom he promised to Charles in marriage. From that time Maximilian remained singly at war with the republic of Venice and with France. During the campaign of 1516, his German army continued to commit the most enormous crimes in the Veronese march; but Maximilian had never money enough to carry on the war without the subsidies of his allies; remaining alone, he could no longer hope to be successful. On the 14th of December he consented to accede to the treaty of Noyon; he evacuated Verona, which he had till then occupied, and the Venetians were once more put by the French in possession of all the states of which the league of Cambray had proposed the partition: but their wealth was annihilated, their population reduced to one-half, their constitution itself shaken, and they were never after in a state to make those efforts for the defence of the independence of Italy, which might have been expected from them before this devastating war.

[Sidenote: [1516-1519 A.D.]]

Had Italy been allowed to repose after so many disasters, she might still have recovered her strength and population; and when the struggle should have recommenced with the transalpine nations, she would have been found prepared for battle; but the heartless levity and ambition of Leo did not give her time. While the family of the Medici was becoming extinct around him, he dreamed only of investing it with new dignities; he refused the Florentines permission to re-establish their republic, and offered his alliance to whatever foreign monarch would aid him in founding on its ruins a principality for the bastard Medici. His third brother Giuliano, duke of Nemours, whom he had at first charged with the government of Florence, died on the 17th of March, 1516. Lorenzo II, son of his eldest brother Piero, whom he had made duke of Urbino, and whom he sent to command at Florence after Giuliano, rendered himself odious there by his pride and by his contemptible incapacity--he too died only three years afterwards, on the 28th of April, 1519. Leo supplied his place by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VII. This prelate was the natural son of the first Giuliano killed in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478. He was considered the most able of the pope’s ministers, and the most moderate of his lieutenants. Giuliano II had also left an illegitimate son, Ippolito, afterwards cardinal; and Lorenzo II had a legitimate daughter, Catherine, afterwards queen of France, and an illegitimate son, Alexander, destined to be the future tyrant of Florence. Leo, whether desirous of establishing these descendants, or carried away by the restlessness and levity of his character, sighed only for war.

[Sidenote: [1519-1522 A.D.]]

The emperor Maximilian died on the 19th of January, 1519, leaving his hereditary states of Austria to his grandson Charles, already sovereign of all Spain, of the Two Sicilies, of the Low Countries, and of the county of Burgundy. Charles and Francis both presented themselves as candidates for the imperial crown; the electors gave it to the former, on the 28th of June, 1519; he was from that period named Charles V. Italy, indeed the whole of Europe, was endangered by the immeasurable growth of this young monarch’s power. The states of the church, over which he domineered by means of his kingdom of the Two Sicilies, could not hope to preserve any independence but through an alliance with France. Leo at first thought so, and signed the preliminary articles of a league with Francis; but, suddenly changing sides, he invited Charles V to join him in driving the French out of Italy. A secret treaty was signed between him and the emperor, on the 8th of May, 1521. By this the duchy of Milan was to be restored to Francesco Sforza, the second son of Louis the Moor. Parma, Piacenza, and Ferrara were to be united to the holy see: a duchy in the kingdom of Naples was to be secured to the bastard Alessandro de’ Medici. The pope united his army to that of the emperor in the kingdom of Naples; the command of it was given jointly to Prospero Colonna and the marquis Pescara: war was declared on the 1st of August, and the imperial and pontifical troops entered Milan on the 19th of November: but in the midst of the joy of this first success, Leo X died unexpectedly, on the 1st of December, 1521.

SUCCESSORS OF LEO; FRANCIS I AND CHARLES V

Death opportunely delivered Leo from the dangers and anxieties into which he had thoughtlessly precipitated himself. His finances were exhausted; his prodigality had deprived him of every resource; and he had no means of carrying on a war which he had only just begun. He left his successors in a state of distress which was unjustly attributed to them, and which rendered them odious to the people; for the war into which he had plunged them, without any reasonable motive, was the most disastrous of all those which had yet afflicted unhappy Italy. There remained no power truly Italian that could take any part in it for her defence. Venice was so exhausted by the war of the league of Cambray that she was forced to limit her efforts to the maintenance of her neutrality, and was hardly powerful enough to make even her neutral position respected. Florence remained subject to the cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. The republics of Siena and Lucca were tremblingly prepared to obey the strongest: all the rest depended on the transalpine power; for an unexpected election, on the 9th of January, 1522, had given a Flemish successor to Leo X, under the name of Adrian VI. This person had been the preceptor of Charles V, and had never seen Italy, where he was regarded as a barbarian. The kingdom of Naples was governed and plundered by the Spaniards. After the French had lost the duchy of Milan, Francesco Sforza, who had been brought back by the imperialists, possessed only the name of sovereign. He had never been for a moment independent; he had never been able to protect his subjects from the tyranny of the Spanish and German soldiers, who were his guards. Finally, the marquis de Montferrat and the duke of Savoy had allowed the French to become masters in their states, and had no power to refuse them passage to ravage oppressed Italy anew.

[Sidenote: [1522-1525 A.D.]]

The marshal Lautrec, whom Francis I had charged to defend the Milanese, and who still occupied the greater part of the territory, was forced by the Swiss, who formed the sinews of his army, to attack the imperialists on the 29th of April, 1522, at Bicocca. Prospero Colonna had taken up a strong position about three or four miles from Milan, on the road to Monza: he valued himself on making a defensive war--on being successful without giving battle. The Swiss attacked him in front, throwing themselves, without listening to the voice of their commander, into a hollow way which covered him, and where they perished, without the possibility of resistance. After having performed prodigies of valour, the remainder were repulsed with dreadful loss. In spite of the remonstrances of Lautrec, they immediately departed for their mountains; and he for his court, to justify himself. Lescuns, his successor in the command, suffered the imperialists to surprise and pillage Lodi; and was at last forced to capitulate at Cremona on the 6th of May, and evacuate the rest of Lombardy. Genoa was not comprehended in the capitulation, and remained still in possession of the French; but, on the 20th of May, that city was also surprised by the Spaniards, and pillaged with all the ferocity which signalised that nation. It was one of the largest depots of commerce in the West, and the ruin of so opulent a town shook the fortune of every merchant in Europe. The general of Charles then, judging Lombardy too much exhausted to support his armies, led them to live at discretion in the provinces of his ally, the pope. They raised among the states still calling themselves independent enormous subsidies to pay the soldiers, for which purpose Charles never sent money. The plague, breaking out at the same time at Rome and Florence, added to the calamities of Italy so much the more that Adrian VI abolished, as pagan superstition or acts of revolt against providence, all the sanitary measures of police which had been invented to stop the spread of contagion. The pope died on the 14th of September, 1523; and the Romans, who held him in horror, crowned his physician with laurel, as the saviour of his country.

The death of Adrian, however, saved no one. The cardinal Giulio de’ Medici was chosen his successor, on the 18th of November, under the name of Clement VII. This man had passed for an able minister under his cousin Leo X, because prosperity still endured, and the pontifical treasury was not exhausted; but when he had to struggle with a distress which he, however, had not caused, his ignorance in finance and administration, his sordid avarice, his pusillanimity, his imprudence, his sudden and ill-considered resolutions, his long indecisions, made him alike odious and contemptible. He was not strong enough to resist the tide of adversity. He found himself, without money and without soldiers, engaged in a war without an object; he was incapable of commanding, and nowhere found obedience.

The French were not disposed to abandon their title to Lombardy, the possession of which they had just lost. Before the end of the campaign, Francis sent thither another army, commanded by his favourite, the admiral Bonnivet. This admiral entered Italy by Piedmont; passed the Ticino on the 14th of September, 1523; and marched on Milan. But Prospero Colonna, who had chosen, among the great men of antiquity, Fabius Cunctator for his model, was admirable in the art of stopping an army, of fatiguing it by slight checks, and at last forcing it to retreat without giving battle. Bonnivet, who maintained himself on the borders of Lombardy, was forced, in the month of May following, to open himself a passage to France by Ivrea and Mont St. Bernard. The chevalier Bayard was killed while protecting the retreat of Bonnivet, in the rear-guard. The imperialists had been joined, the preceding year, by a deserter of high importance, the constable Bourbon, one of the first princes of the blood in France, who was accompanied by many nobles. Charles V put him, jointly with Pescara, at the head of his army, and sent him into Provence in the month of July; but, after having besieged Marseilles, he was soon constrained to retreat. Francis I, who had assembled a powerful army, again entered Lombardy, and made himself master of Milan: he next laid siege to Pavia, on the 28th of October. Some time was necessary for the imperialists to reassemble their army, which the campaign of Provence had disorganised. At length it approached Pavia, which had resisted through the whole winter. The king of France was pressed by all his captains to raise the siege, and to march against the enemy; but he refused, declaring that it would be a compromise of the royal dignity, and foolishly remained within his lines. He was attacked by Pescara on the 24th of February, 1525; and, after a murderous battle, made prisoner.

For several months, while Francis I was besieging Pavia, he appeared the strongest power in Italy; and the pope and the Venetians, alarmed at his proximity, had treated with him anew, and pledged themselves to remain neutral. The imperial generals, after their victory, declared that these treaties with the French were offences against their master, for which they should demand satisfaction. Always without money, and pressed by the avidity of their soldiers, they sought only to discover offenders, as a pretence to raise contributions, and to let their troops live at free quarters. The pope and the Venetians were at first disposed to join in a league for resisting these exactions; and they offered Louise of Savoy, regent of France, their aid to set her son Francis at liberty. But Clement VII had not sufficient courage to join this league; he preferred returning again to the alliance of the emperor and the duke of Milan, for which he paid a considerable sum. As soon as the imperial generals had received the money, they refused to execute the treaty which they had made with him, and the pope was obliged to go back to the Venetians and Louise of Savoy.

Meanwhile Girolamo Morone, chancellor of the duke of Milan, an old man regarded as the most able politician of his time, made overtures, which revived the hope of arming all Italy for her independence. Francesco Sforza found himself treated by the Germans and Spaniards with the greatest indignity in his own palace: his subjects were exposed to every kind of insult from an unbridled soldiery; and when he endeavoured to protect them, the officers took pleasure in making him witness aggravations of injustice and outrage. The man, however, who made the German yoke press most severely on him was the marquis Pescara, an Italian, but descended from the Catalonian house of Avalos, established in the kingdom of Naples for more than a century. He manifested a sort of vanity in associating himself with the Spaniards: he commanded their infantry; he adopted the manners as well as pride of that nation. Morone, nevertheless, did not despair of awakening his patriotism, by exciting his ambition. The kingdom of Naples, which had flourished under the bastard branch of the house of Aragon when the family of Avalos first entered it, had sunk, since it had been united to Spain, into a state of the most grievous oppression. Morone determined on offering Pescara the crown of Naples, if he would join his efforts to those of all the other Italians, for the deliverance of his country. Success depended on him: he could distribute the imperial troops, which he commanded, in such a manner as that they could oppose no resistance. The duke of Milan had been warned that Charles V intended taking his duchy from him to confer it on his brother Ferdinand of Austria. The kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan were ready to pass over from the emperor’s party to that of France, provided the French king would renounce all his claims to both, acknowledge Pescara king of Naples, Francesco Sforza duke of Milan; and restore to Italy her independence, after having delivered her from her enemies.

[Sidenote: [1525-1526 A.D.]]

This negotiation was at first successful; each of the governments to which the proposition of concurring in the independence of Italy was addressed, seemed to agree to it. France renounced all pretensions to Lombardy and the Two Sicilies; Switzerland promised to protect, on its side, the land of ancient liberty, and to furnish it with soldiers; Henry VIII of England promised money; Pescara coveted the crown, and Sforza was impatient to throw off a yoke which had become insupportable to him; but, unhappily, the negotiation was intrusted to too many cabinets, all jealous, perfidious, and eager to obtain advantages for themselves by sacrificing their allies. Clement was desirous of obtaining from the emperor a more advantageous treaty, by threatening him with France; the queen regent of France endeavoured to engage Charles to relax his rigour towards her son, by threatening him with Italy; Pescara, reserving the choice of either betraying his master or his allies, as should prove most profitable to him, had warned Charles that he was engaged in a plot which he would reveal as soon as he had every clew to it. The duchess of Alençon, sister of Francis, sent by her mother to negotiate at Madrid, spoke still more clearly. She offered Charles to abandon Italy, the project respecting which she disclosed, provided the emperor, in restoring her brother to liberty, would renounce his purpose of making him purchase it at the price of one of the provinces of France. Pescara, finding that his court knew more than he had told, determined on adopting the part of provocative agent instead of rebel; he had only to choose between them. On the 14th of October, 1525, he invited Morone to a last conference in the castle of Novara. After having made him explain all his projects anew, while Spanish officers hid behind the arras heard them, he caused him to be arrested, seized all the fortresses in the state of Milan, and laid siege to the castle, in which the duke had shut himself up. He denounced to the emperor as traitors the pope, and all the other Italians his accomplices; but while he played this odious part, he was attacked by a slow disease, of which he died on the 30th of November, 1525, at the age of thirty-six, abhorred by all Italy.

Charles, abusing the advantages which he had obtained, imposed on Francis the treaty of Madrid, signed on the 14th of January, 1526; by which the latter abandoned Italy and the duchy of Burgundy. He was set at liberty on the 18th of March following; and almost immediately declared to the Italians that he did not regard himself bound by a treaty extorted from him by force. On the 22nd of May, he joined a league for the liberty of Italy with Clement VII, the Venetians, and Francesco Sforza, but still did not abandon the policy of his mother: instead of thinking in earnest of restoring Italian independence, and thus securing the equilibrium of Europe, he had only one purpose--that of alarming Charles with the Italians; and was ready to sacrifice them as soon as the emperor should abandon Burgundy. At the same time, his supineness, love of pleasure, distrust of his fortune, and repugnance to violate the Treaty of Madrid, hindered him from fulfilling any of the engagements which he had contracted towards the Italians; he sent them neither money, French cavalry, nor Swiss forces. Charles, on the other hand, sent no supplies to pay his armies to Antonio de Leyva, the constable Bourbon, and Hugo de Monçada, their commanders. These troops were therefore obliged to live at free quarters, and the oppression of the whole country was still more dreadful than it had ever yet been.

[Sidenote: [1526-1527 A.D.]]

The defection of the duke of Milan, in particular, gave a pretence to Antonio de Leyva to treat the wretched Milanese with redoubled rigour, as if they could be responsible for what Leyva called the treachery of their master. The Spanish army was quartered on the citizens of Milan; and there was not a soldier who did not make his host a prisoner, keeping him bound at the foot of the bed, or in the cellar, for the purpose of having him daily at hand, to force him, by blows or fresh torture, to satisfy some new caprice. As soon as one wretched person died under his sufferings, or broke his bonds and ended his sufferings by voluntary death, either precipitating himself through a window or into a well, the Spaniard passed into another house to recommence on its proprietor the same torture.

The Venetians and the pope had united their forces, under the command of the duke of Urbino, who, exaggerating the tactics of Prospero Colonna, was ambitious of no other success in war than that of avoiding battle. He announced to the senate of Venice that he would not approach Milan till the French and Swiss, whose support he had been promised, joined him. His inaction, while witnessing so many horrors, reduced the Italians to despair. Sforza, who had been nine months blockaded in the castle of Milan, and who always hoped to be delivered by the duke of Urbino, whose colours were in sight, supported the last extremity of hunger before he surrendered to the Spaniards, on the 24th of July, 1526. The pope, meanwhile, was far from suspecting himself in any danger; but his personal enemy, Pompeo Colonna, took advantage of the name of the imperial party to raise in the papal state eight thousand armed peasants, with whom, on the 20th of September, he surprised the Vatican, pillaged the palace, as well as the temple of St. Peter, and constrained the pope to abjure the alliance of France and Venice. About the same time, George of Frundsberg, a German condottiere, entered Lombardy with thirteen thousand adventurers, whom he had engaged to follow him, and serve the emperor without pay, contenting themselves with the pillage of that unhappy country.

The constable Bourbon, to whom Charles had given chief command of his forces in Italy, determined to take advantage of this new army, and unite it to that for which at Milan he had now no further occasion; but it was not without great difficulty that he could persuade the Spaniards to quit that city where they enjoyed the savage pleasure of inflicting torture on their hosts. At length, however, he succeeded in leading them to Pavia. On the 30th of January, 1527, he joined Frundsberg, who died soon after of apoplexy. Bourbon now remained alone charged with the command of this formidable army, already exceeding twenty-five thousand men, and continually joined on its route by disbanded soldiers and brigands intent on pillage. The constable had neither money, equipments, nor artillery, and very few cavalry; every town shut its gates on his approach, and he was often on the point of wanting provisions. He took the road of southern Italy, and entered Tuscany, still uncertain whether he should pillage Florence or Rome. The marquis of Saluzzo, with a small army, retreated before him; the duke of Urbino followed in his rear, but always keeping out of reach of battle. At last, Bourbon took the road to Rome, by the valley of the Tiber. On the 5th of May, 1527, he arrived before the capital of Christendom. Clement had on the 15th of March signed a truce with the viceroy of Naples and dismissed his troops. On the approach of Bourbon the walls of Rome were again mounted with engines of war.[d]

CAPTURE AND SACK OF ROME

[Sidenote: [1527 A.D.]]

Bourbon encamped in the fields near Rome on the 5th of May and with military insolence sent a trumpeter to the pope to ask for passage through the city, that he might lead his army into the kingdom of Naples. The next day at daybreak he attacked Borgo on the side of the mountain and the church of Santo Spirito, resolved to conquer or die (for indeed no other hope was left him) and a fierce battle was begun. Fortune favoured him in approaching, for a thick fog arose before day which enabled him more securely to establish his army in the place where the battle commenced. From the first Bourbon fought desperately at the head of his troops, not only because he had no refuge if the victory failed him but also because it appeared to him that the German infantry proceeded coldly to the assault. The assault was but begun when he was wounded by an arquebuse and fell dead.[b] The fall of Bourbon was due to Benvenuto Cellini, if we may accept the statements of that somewhat egotistical autobiographer. Cellini was participating in the defence of Rome and has left us a vivid account of many of its incidents. He tells us that he had gone with one Alexander del Bene to the walls of Campo Santo, and that finding the enemy irresistible they had determined to return with the utmost speed, but that before doing so he was determined to perform some manly action.[a] “Having taken aim with my piece,” he says, “where I saw the thickest crowd of the enemy, I fixed my eye on a person who seemed to be lifted up by the rest: but the misty weather prevented me from distinguishing whether he was on horseback or on foot. Then turning suddenly about to Alexander and Cecchino, I bade them fire off their pieces, and showed them how to escape every shot of the besiegers. Having accordingly fired twice for the enemy’s once, I softly approached the walls, and perceived that there was an extraordinary confusion among the assailants, occasioned by our having shot the duke of Bourbon: he was, as I understood afterwards, that chief personage whom I saw raised by the rest.”[c] The fall of Bourbon, far from cooling the ardour of his soldiers did but increase it, and after fighting furiously for two hours they entered Borgo at last, assisted by the weakness of the defences and the faint resistance of the enemy.

As it is always difficult to carry an assault without cannon, the besiegers lost about a thousand men. As soon as the imperial army had forced an entrance, everyone took to flight, and many made for the castle, leaving the suburbs at the mercy of the conquerors. The pope, who awaited the event in the Vatican, when he heard that the enemy was in the city, immediately fled to the castle with many cardinals. Here he considered whether he should stay where he was, or if he might escape through Rome with the light cavalry of his guard and reach a place of safety.

News was brought him by Berard de Padone, of the imperial army, of the death of Bourbon and that the troops, full of consternation at their loss, were disposed to come to terms. The pope sent an envoy to their chiefs and unfortunately gave up the idea of flight, while he and his captains had never been so irresolute in taking measures for their own defence as they were on this occasion. The Spaniards, finding no attempt was made to defend the Trastevere, entered it at noon without any resistance. They had no difficulty in entering Rome by the Ponte Sisto at five o’clock the same evening. Here, as is usual in such cases, everything was in confusion, and all the court and citizens had taken to flight except those who trusted in the name of their party, and certain cardinals who were known for their adherence to Cesare, and therefore thought themselves safer than the rest. Then the soldiers sacked the city on every side without distinction of friend or foe.

It is impossible to estimate the extent of the spoil because of the accumulation of riches, and rare and precious things belonging to the courtiers and merchants, and of the quality and number of the prisoners for whom heavy ransoms were paid. But worst of all, the soldiers, especially the Germans, who were rendered cruel and insolent by their hatred for the Roman church, seized several prelates and having dressed them in their pontifical robes and the insignia of their office, mounted them on asses and led them with scorn and derision through the streets of Rome.

Four thousand men or thereabout perished in the battle or in the fury of pillage. The palaces of the cardinals were all sacked (including that of Cardinal Colonna, who was not with the army) excepting those palaces in which the merchants had taken refuge with their personal effects and those of many others, and which were spared from pillage upon payment of large sums of money. Many who had thus compounded with the Spaniards were pillaged by the Germans or obliged to compound with them also. The marchioness of Mantua paid 50,000 ducats to save her palace, this sum being furnished by the merchants who had taken refuge there; it was rumoured that 10,000 went to her son Don Ferrand. The cardinal of Siena, who had inherited his adherence to the emperor from his ancestors, was taken prisoner by the Germans, who sacked his palace though he had compounded for it with the Spaniards. They led him bareheaded through Borgo with many blows, and he only escaped from their hands by payment of 5,000 ducats. The cardinals of Minerva and Ponzetto met with a similar misfortune; they were taken prisoner by the Germans and paid their ransom, but they were first led through Rome in a vile procession. The Spanish and German prelates, who did not expect insult from their compatriots, were taken prisoner and treated as cruelly as the rest.

On every side arose the cries and lamentations of Roman ladies and nuns dragged off by bands of soldiers to satisfy their lust. Everywhere arose the wails of those who were being horribly tortured to force them to pay ransom, and reveal where their property was concealed. All the holy things, the sacrament, and relics of saints, of which the churches were full, lay scattered on the ground stripped of their ornaments and further outraged by the barbarous Germans. Whatever escaped the soldiers (which was everything of little value) was pillaged by the peasants of the lands of Colonna who arrived later; but Cardinal Colonna who arrived next day saved many ladies who had taken refuge in his palace. It was said that the spoil in money, gold, silver, and precious stones amounted to 1,000,000 ducats, and that the ransoms amounted to a much higher sum.

While the imperial army was taking Rome, Count Guido at the head of the light cavalry and eight hundred arquebusiers appeared on the Ponte de Salara, expecting to enter the city that evening; for in spite of the letter of the bishop of Verona he had continued on his way, not wishing to lose the glory of having helped to save the capital. But being informed of what had occurred, he resolved to withdraw to Orticoli where he rejoined the rest of his troops. As it is human nature to judge mildly and favourably of one’s own actions and to look with the utmost severity on the actions of others, there were some who greatly blamed the count for having missed so good an opportunity; for the imperial troops all intent on pillage, ransacking the houses, seeking hidden treasures, taking prisoners and removing their booty to a safe place, were scattered about the city in disorder, heedless of their banners and of the commands of their captains. Therefore many believed that if Count Guido had promptly led his men into Rome and marched upon the castle, which was not besieged nor guarded by any from without, he might not only have liberated the pope but also have achieved a more glorious success. The enemy was so intent on plunder that it would have been difficult to assemble a large number upon any sudden alarm. This was most certainly proved a few days later when by command of the captains, or upon some alarm, the call to arms was sounded and not a soldier rallied to his banner. However, men often persuade themselves that if a certain act had been done or omitted, certain results would have followed; whereas if the matter had been put to the proof, experience would often show them their mistake.[b]

[Sidenote: [1527-1528 A.D.]]

The capital of Christendom was thus abandoned to a pillage unparalleled in the most calamitous period--that of the first triumph of barbarism over civilisation: neither Alaric the Goth nor Genseric the Vandal had treated it with like ferocity. This dreadful state of crime and agony lasted not merely days, but was prolonged for more than nine months: it was not till the 17th of February, 1528, that the prince of Orange, one of the French lords who had accompanied Bourbon in his rebellion, finally withdrew from Rome all of this army that vice and disease had spared. The Germans, indeed, after the first few days, had sheathed their swords, to plunge into drunkenness and the most brutal debauchery; but the Spaniards, up to the last hour of their stay in Rome, indefatigable in their cold-blooded cruelty, continued to invent fresh torture to extort new ransoms from all who fell into their hands; even the plague, the consequence of so much suffering, moral and physical, which broke out amidst all these horrors, did not make the rapacious Spaniard loose his prey.

The struggle between the Italians, feebly seconded by the French, and the generals of Charles V, was prolonged yet more than two years after the sack of Rome; but it only added to the desolation of Italy, and destroyed alike in all the Italian provinces the last remains of prosperity. On the 18th of August, 1527, Henry VIII of England and Francis I contracted the Treaty of Amiens, for the deliverance, as the two sovereigns announced, of the pope. A powerful French army, commanded by Lautrec, entered Italy in the same month, by the province of Alessandria. They surprised Pavia on the 1st of October, and during eight days barbarously pillaged that great city, under pretence of avenging the defeat of their king under its walls. After this success, Lautrec, instead of completing the conquest of Lombardy, directed his march towards the south; renewed the alliance of France with the duke of Ferrara, to whose son was given in marriage a daughter of Louis XII, sister of the queen of France. He secured the friendship of the Florentine Republic, which, on the 17th of the preceding May, had taken advantage of the distress and captivity of the pope to recover its liberty and to re-establish its government in the same form in which it stood in 1512. The pope, learning that Lautrec had arrived at Orvieto, escaped from the castle of St. Angelo on the 9th of December, and took refuge in the French camp. The Spaniard Alarcon had detained him captive, with thirteen cardinals, during six months, in that fortress; and, though the plague had broken out there, he did not relax in his severity. After having received 400,000 ducats for his ransom, instead of releasing him, as he had engaged to the next day, it is probable that he suffered him to escape, lest his own soldiers should arrest him in order to extort a second ransom.

Lautrec passed the Tronto to enter the Abruzzi with his powerful army on the 10th of February, 1528. The banditti whom Charles V called his soldiers, whom he never paid, and who showed no disposition to obedience, were cantoned at Milan, Rome, and the principal cities in Italy: they divided their time between debauchery and the infliction of torture on their hosts; their officers were unable to induce them to leave the towns and advance towards the enemy. The people, in the excess of suffering, met every change with eagerness, and received Lautrec as a deliverer. He would probably have obtained complete success, if Francis had not just at this moment withheld the monthly advance of money which he had promised. That monarch, identifying his pride of royalty with prodigality, exhausted his finances in pleasures and entertainments; his want of economy drew on him all his disasters.

Lautrec, on his side, although he had many qualities of a good general, was harsh, proud, and obstinate: he piqued himself on doing always the opposite of what he was counselled. Disregarding the national peculiarities of the French, he attempted in war to discipline them in slow and regular movements. He lost valuable time in Apulia, where he took and sacked Melfi, on the 23rd of March, with a barbarity worthy of his adversaries, the Spaniards: he did not arrive till the 1st of May before Naples. The prince of Orange had just entered that city with the army which had sacked Rome, but of which the greater part had been carried off by a dreadful mortality, the consequence and punishment of its vices and crimes. Instead of vigorously attacking them, Lautrec, in spite of the warm remonstrances of his officers, persisted in reducing Naples by blockade; thus exposing his army to the influence of a destructive climate. The imperial fleet was destroyed, on the 28th of May, in the gulf of Salerno, by Filippino Doria, who was in the pay of France. The inhabitants of Naples experienced the most cruel privations, and sickness soon made great havoc amongst them: but a malady not less fatal broke out at the same time in the French camp. The soldiers, under a burning sun, surrounded with putrid water, condemned to every kind of privation, harassed by the light cavalry of the enemy, infinitely superior to theirs, sank, one after the other, under pestilential fevers. In the middle of June, the French reckoned in their camp twenty-five thousand men; by the 2nd of August there did not remain four thousand fit for service. At this period all the springs were dry, and the troops began to suffer from hunger and thirst. Lautrec, ill as he was, had till then supported the army by his courage and invincible obstinacy; but, worn out at last, he expired in the night of the 15th of August: almost all the other officers died in like manner. The marquis of Saluzzo, on whom the command of the army devolved, felt the necessity of a retreat, but knew not how to secure it in presence of such a superior force. He tried to escape from the imperialists, by taking advantage of a tremendous storm, in the night of the 29th of August; but was soon pursued, and overtaken at Aversa, where, on the 30th, he was forced to capitulate. The magazines and hospitals at Capua were, at the same time, given up to the Spaniards. The prisoners and the sick were crowded together in the stables of the Magdalen, where contagion acquired new force. The Spaniards foresaw it, and watched with indifference the agony and death of all; for nearly all of that brilliant army perished--a few invalids only ever returning to France.

[Sidenote: [1528-1529 A.D.]]

During the same campaign another French army, conducted by François de Bourbon, count of St. Pol, had entered Lombardy, at the moment when Henry, duke of Brunswick, led thither a German army. Henry, finding nothing more to pillage, announced that his mission was to punish a rebellious nation, and put to the sword all the inhabitants of the villages through which he passed. Milan was at once a prey to famine and the plague, aggravated by the cupidity and cold-blooded ferocity of Leyva, who still commanded the Spanish garrison. Leyva seized all the provisions brought in from the country; and, to profit by the general misery, resold them at an enormous price. Genoa had remained subject to the French, and was little less oppressed; none of its republican institutions was any longer respected: but a great admiral still rendered it illustrious. Andrea Doria had collected a fleet, on board of which he summoned all the enterprising spirits of Liguria: his nephew Filippino, who had just gained a victory over the imperialists, was his lieutenant. The Dorias demanded the restoration of liberty to their country as the price of their services: unable to obtain it from the French, they passed over to the imperialists. Assured by the promises of Charles, they presented themselves, on the 12th of September, before Genoa, excited their countrymen to revolt, and constrained the French to evacuate the town: they made themselves masters of Savona on the 21st of October, and a few days afterwards of Castelletto. Doria then proclaimed the republic, and re-established once more the freedom of Genoa, at the moment when all freedom was near its end in Italy. The winter passed in suffering and inaction. The following year, Antonio de Leyva surprised the count de St. Pol at Landriano, on the 21st of June, 1529, and made him prisoner, with all the principal officers of the French army. The rest dispersed or returned to France. This was the last military incident in this dreadful war.

Peace was ardently desired on all sides; negotiations were actively carried on, but every potentate sought to deceive his ally in order to obtain better conditions from his adversary. Margaret of Austria, the sister of the emperor’s father, and Louise of Savoy, the mother of the king of France, met at Cambray; and, in conference to which no witnesses were admitted, arranged what was called “le traité des dames.” Clement VII had at the same time a nuncio at Barcelona, who negotiated with the emperor. The latter was impatient to arrange the affairs of Italy, in order to pass into Germany. Not only had Suleiman invaded Austria, and, on the 13th of September, arrived under the walls of Vienna, but the reformation of Luther excited in all the north of Germany a continually increasing ferment. On the 20th of June, 1529, Charles signed at Barcelona a treaty of perpetual alliance with the pope: by it he engaged to sacrifice the republic of Florence to the pope’s vengeance, and to place in the service of Clement, in order to accomplish it, all the brigands who had previously devastated Italy. Florence was to be given in sovereignty to the bastard Alessandro de’ Medici, who was to marry an illegitimate daughter of Charles V. On the 5th of August following, Louise and Margaret signed the Treaty of Cambray, by which France abandoned, without reserve, all its Italian allies to the caprices of Charles; who, on his side, renounced Burgundy, and restored to Francis his two sons, who had been retained as hostages.

Charles arrived at Genoa, on board the fleet of Andrea Doria, on the 12th of August. The pope awaited him at Bologna, into which he made his entry on the 5th of November. He summoned thither all the princes of Italy, or their deputies, and treated them with more moderation than might have been expected after the shameful abandonment of them by France. As he knew the health of Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, to be in a declining state, which promised but few years of life, he granted him the restitution of his duchy for the sum of 900,000 ducats, which Sforza was to pay at different terms: they had not all fallen due when that prince died, on the 24th of October, 1535, without issue, and his estates escheated to the emperor. On the 23rd of December, 1529, Charles granted peace to the Venetians; who restored him only some places in Apulia, and gave up Ravenna and Cervia to the pope. On the 20th of March, Alfonso d’Este also signed a treaty, by which he referred his differences with the pope to the arbitration of the emperor. Charles did not pronounce on them till the following year. He conferred on Alfonso the possession of Modena, Reggio, and Rubiera, as fiefs of the empire; and he made the pope give him the investiture of Ferrara. On the 25th of March, 1530, a diploma of the emperor raised the marquisate of Mantua to a duchy, in favour of Federigo de Gonzaga. The duke of Savoy and the marquis of Montferrat, till then protected by France, arrived at Bologna, to place themselves under the protection of the emperor. The duke of Urbino was recommended to him by the Venetians, and obtained some promises of favour. The republics of Genoa, Siena, and Lucca had permission to vegetate under the imperial protection; and Charles, having received from the pope, at Bologna, on the 22nd of February and 24th of March, the two crowns of Lombardy and of the empire, departed in the beginning of April for Germany, in order to escape witnessing the odious service in which he consented that his troops should be employed against Florence.

THE FALL OF FLORENCE

[Sidenote: [1527-1530 A.D.]]

The Florentines who, from 1512, had been victims of all the faults of Leo X and Clement VII, who had been drawn into all the oscillations of their policy, and called upon to make prodigious sacrifices of money for projects with which they had not even been made acquainted, were taught under these popes to detest the yoke of the Medici. When the constable of Bourbon approached their walls in his march to Rome, on the 26th of April, 1527, they were on the point of recovering their liberty; the cardinal De Cortona, who commanded for the pope at Florence, had distributed arms among the citizens for their defence, and they determined to employ them for their liberation; but the terror which this army of brigands inspired did the cardinal the service of repressing insurrection. When, however, they heard soon after of the taking of Rome, and of the captivity of the pope, all the most notable citizens presented themselves in their civic dress to the cardinal De Cortona; declared firmly, but with calmness, that they were henceforth free; and compelled him, with the two bastard Medici whom he brought up, to quit the city. It was on the 17th of May, 1527, that the lieutenant of Clement obeyed; and the constitution, such as it existed in 1512, with its grand council, was restored without change, except that the office of gonfalonier was declared annual. The first person invested with this charge was Niccolo Capponi, a man enthusiastic in religion, and moderate in politics; he was the son of Pietro Capponi, who had braved Charles VIII. In 1529, he was succeeded by Baldassare Carducci, whose character was more energetic, and opinions more democratic. Carducci was succeeded, in 1530, by Raffaelle Girolami, who witnessed the end of the republic.

Florence, during the whole period of its glory and power, had neglected the arts of war; it reckoned for its defence on the adventurers whom its wealth could summon from all parts to its service; and set but little value on a courage which men, without any other virtue, were so eager to sell to the highest bidder. Since the transalpine nations had begun to subdue Italy to their tyranny, these hireling arms sufficed no longer for the public safety. Statesmen began to see the necessity of giving the republic a protection within itself. Macchiavelli, who died on the 22nd of June, 1527, six weeks after the restoration of the popular government, had been long engaged in persuading his fellow citizens of the necessity of awakening a military spirit in the people; it was he who caused the country militia, named l’ordinanza, to be formed into regiments. A body of mercenaries, organised by Giovanni de’ Medici, a distant kinsman of the popes, served at the time as a military school for the Tuscans, among whom alone the corps had been raised; it acquired a high reputation under the name of bande nere. No infantry equalled it in courage and intelligence. Five thousand of these warriors served under Lautrec in the kingdom of Naples, where they almost all perished. When, towards the year 1528, the Florentines perceived that their situation became more and more critical, they formed, among those who enjoyed the greatest privileges in their country, two bodies of militia, which displayed the utmost valour for its defence. The first, consisting of three hundred young men of noble families, undertook the guard of the palace, and the support of the constitution; the second, of four thousand soldiers drawn only from among families having a right to sit in the council general, were called the civic militia; both soon found opportunities of proving that generosity and patriotism suffice to create, in a very short period, the best soldiers. The illustrious Michelangelo was charged to superintend the fortifications of Florence; they were completed in the month of April, 1529. Lastly, the ten commissioners of war chose for the command of the city Malatesta Baglioni of Perugia, who was recommended to them as much for his hatred of the Medici, who had unjustly put his father to death, as for his reputation for valour and military talent.

Clement VII sent against Florence, his native state, that very prince of Orange, the successor of Bourbon, who had made him prisoner at Rome; and with him that very army of robbers which had overwhelmed the holy see, and its subjects, with misery and every outrage. This army entered Tuscany in the month of September, 1529, and took possession of Cortona, Arezzo, and all the upper Val d’Arno. On the 14th of October the prince of Orange encamped in the plain of Ripoli, at the foot of the walls of Florence; and, towards the end of December, Ferdinando di Gonzaga led on the right bank of the Arno another imperial army, composed of twenty thousand Spaniards and Germans, which occupied without resistance Pistoia and Prato. Notwithstanding the immense superiority of their forces, the imperialists did not attempt to make a breach in the walls of Florence; they resolved to make themselves masters of the city by a blockade. The Florentines, on the contrary, animated by preachers who inherited the zeal of Savonarola, and who united liberty with religion as an object of their worship, were eager for battle; they made frequent attacks on the whole line of their enemies, led in turns by Malatesta Baglioni and Stefano Colonna. They made nightly sallies, covered with white shirts to distinguish each other in the dark, and successively surprised the posts of the imperialists; but the slight advantages thus obtained could not disguise the growing danger of the republic. France had abandoned them to their enemies; there remained not one ally either in Italy or the rest of Europe; while the army of the pope and emperor comprehended all the survivors of those soldiers who had so long been the terror of Italy by their courage and ferocity, and whose warlike ardour was now redoubled by the hope of the approaching pillage of the richest city in the West.

The Florentines had one solitary chance of deliverance. Francesco Ferrucci, one of their citizens, who had learned the art of war in the bande nere, and joined to a mind full of resources an unconquerable intrepidity and an ardent patriotism, was not shut up within the walls of Florence; he had been named commissary-general, with unlimited power over all that remained without the capital. Ferrucci was at first engaged in conveying provisions from Empoli to Florence; he afterwards took Volterra from the imperialists, and, having formed a small army, proposed to the signoria to seduce all the adventurers and brigands from the imperial army, by promising them another pillage of the pontifical court, and succeeding in that, to march at their head on Rome, frighten Clement, and force him to grant peace to their country. The signoria rejected this plan as too daring. Ferrucci then formed a second, which was little less bold. He departed from Volterra, made the tour of Tuscany, which the imperial troops traversed in every direction, collected at Livorno, Pisa, the Val di Nievole, and in the mountains of Pistoia, every soldier, every man of courage, still devoted to the republic; and, after having thus increased his army, he intended to fall on the imperial camp before Florence and force the prince of Orange, who began to feel the want of money, to raise the siege. Ferrucci, with an intrepidity equal to his skill, led his little troop, from the 14th of July to the 2nd of August, 1530, through numerous bodies of imperialists, who preceded, followed, and surrounded him on all sides, as far as Gavinana, four miles from San Marcello, in the mountains of Pistoia. He entered that village about midday, on the 2nd of August, with three thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry. The prince of Orange at the same time entered by another gate, with a part of the army which besieged Florence. The different corps, which had on every side harassed Ferrucci in his march, poured in upon him from all quarters; the battle instantly began, and was fought with relentless fury within the walls of Gavinana. Philibert de Châlons, prince of Orange, in whom that house became extinct, was killed by a double shot, and his corps put to flight, but other bands of imperialists successively arrived, and continually renewed the attack on a small force exhausted with fatigue; two thousand Florentines were already stretched on the field of battle, when Ferrucci, pierced with several mortal wounds, was borne bleeding to the presence of his personal enemy, Fabrizio Maramaldi, a Calabrese, who commanded the light cavalry of the emperor. The Calabrese stabbed him several times in his rage, while Ferrucci calmly said, “Thou wouldst kill a dead man!” The republic perished with him.

[Sidenote: [1530-1531 A.D.]]

When news of the disaster at Gavinana reached Florence, the consternation was extreme. Baglioni, who for some days had been in treaty with the prince of Orange, and who was accused of having given him notice of the project of Ferrucci, declared that a longer resistance was impossible, and that he was determined to save an imprudent city, which seemed bent upon its own ruin. On the 8th of August he opened the bastion, in which he was stationed, to an imperial captain, and planted his artillery so as to command the town. The citizens in consternation abandoned the defence of the walls to employ themselves in concealing their valuable effects in the churches; and the signoria acquainted Ferdinando di Gonzaga, who had succeeded the prince of Orange in the command of the army, that they were ready to capitulate. The terms granted on the 12th of August, 1530, were less rigorous than the Florentines might have apprehended. They were to pay a gratuity of 80,000 crowns to the army which besieged them, and to recall the Medici. In return, a complete amnesty was to be granted to all who had acted against that family, the pope, or the emperor. But Clement had no intention to observe any of the engagements contracted in his name. On the 20th of August, he caused the parliament, in the name of the sovereign people, to create a balia, which was to execute the vengeance of which he would not himself take the responsibility; he subjected to the torture, and afterwards punished with exile or death, by means of this balia, all the patriots who had signalised themselves by their zeal for liberty. In the first month 150 illustrious citizens were banished; before the end of the year there were more than one thousand sufferers; every Florentine family, even among those most devoted to the Medici, had some one member among the proscribed.

Alessandro, the bastard Medici, whom Clement had appointed chief of the Florentine Republic in preference to his cousin Ippolito, did not return to his country till the 5th of July, 1531; he was the bearer of a rescript from the emperor, which gave Florence a constitution nearly monarchial; but, so far from confining himself within the limits traced, Alessandro oppressed the people with the most grievous tyranny. Cruelty, debauchery, and extortion marked him for public hatred. On the 10th of August, 1535, he caused to be poisoned his cousin, the cardinal Ippolito, who undertook the defence of his fellow countrymen against him. He at last, on the 6th of January, 1537, was himself assassinated by his kinsman and companion in licentiousness, Lorenzino de’ Medici.

[Sidenote: [1531-1737 A.D.]]

But the death of Alessandro did not restore freedom to his country. The agents of his tyranny, the most able but also the most odious of whom was the historian Guicciardini, needed a prince for their protector. They made choice of Cosmo de’ Medici, a young man of nineteen, descended in the fourth generation from Lorenzo, the brother of the former Cosmo. On the 9th of January, 1537, they proclaimed him duke of Florence, hoping to guide him henceforth at their pleasure; but they were deceived. This man, false, cool-blooded, and ferocious, who had all the vices of Filippo II, and who shrank from no crime, soon got rid of his counsellors, as well as of his adversaries. Cosmo I, in 1569, obtained from the pope, Pius V, the title of grand duke of Tuscany, a title that the emperor would not then acknowledge, though he afterwards, in 1575, granted it to the son of Cosmo. Seven grand dukes of that family reigned successively at Florence. The last, Gian Gastone, died on the 9th of July, 1737.[d]

Right had disappeared, cries Quinet, leaving an immense gap--in fact a gulf which opened under the nation’s feet and into which she went head foremost, almost dragging her conquerors after her. To understand these times we must remember that there had been no real conquest because no national resistance. No one in the fifteenth century had really defended the sovereignty of Italy. When Europe presented herself she entered as into a vacant heritage, devoid of humanity. Italy did not defend herself, because practically non-existent. She had not been able to pull herself together. Never has such a thing been seen on the earth: a great people invaded, and this invasion finding no obstacle. The foreigners who entered, by the always open breach of the papacy, came with precaution. They sounded the land, thinking to find a people, and only found an illusion. Reassured, they came on restrainedly. Europe overflowed the empty places.

In her last moments Italy made profession of worshipping only strength, crying with Macchiavelli, “Woe to the conquered!” She reserved for her defeat none of those life doctrines which nourish even corpses and prevent their crumbling to powder. Her theories were only for the victorious. Now that she was conquered she was taken in her own trap, and could not well revive because she had pronounced her own death sentence.

Evil had arrived at such a pitch that two things were equally necessary: Luther’s reform to break Catholicism; the chastisement of Italy to restore that which threatened to disappear--the human conscience. Each town was smitten by the arms proper to her. Venice fell slowly but noiselessly, like a body drowned by the doges in the lagunes. There were other cities which languished as if they had been poisoned. As for Florence, who had gained so many subjects, she perished, put up and sold at auction like poisoners bought and sold for the pleasure of choking them.

In reality, the papacy had the honour of aiming the two decisive blows. Julius II, in the league of Cambray, crushed Venice. Clement VII, in league with Charles V, crushed Florence. These two vital centres once destroyed, all was lost.[i]

[Sidenote: [1494-1530 A.D.]]

The evil destiny of Italy was accomplished. Charles VIII, when he first invaded that country, opened its gates to all the transalpine nations: from that period Italy was ravaged, during thirty-six years, by Germans, French, Spaniards, Swiss, and even Turks. They inflicted on her calamities beyond example in history; calamities so much the more keenly felt, as the sufferers were more civilised, and the authors more barbarous. The French invasion ended in giving to the greatest enemies of France the dominion of that country, so rich, so industrious, and of which the possession was sought ardently by all. Never would the house of Austria have achieved the conquest of Italy, if Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I had not previously destroyed the wealth and military organisation of the nation; if they had not themselves introduced the Spaniards into the kingdom of Naples, and the Germans into the states of Venice; forgetting that both must soon after be subject to Charles V. The independence of Italy would have been beneficial to France; the rapacious and improvident policy which made France seek subjects where it should only have sought allies, was the origin of a long train of disasters to the French.

A period of three centuries of weakness, humiliation, and suffering, in Italy, began in the year 1530; from that time she was always oppressed by foreigners, and enervated and corrupted by her masters. These last reproached her with the vices of which they were themselves the authors. After having reduced her to the impossibility of resisting, they accused her of cowardice when she submitted, and of rebellion when she made efforts to vindicate herself. The Italians, during this long period of slavery, were agitated with the desire of becoming once more a nation: as, however, they had lost the direction of their own affairs, they ceased to have any history which could be called theirs; their misfortunes have become but episodes in the histories of other nations.[d]

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