XV. THE BEGINNING OF THE AGE OF SLAVERY
From 1530 to 1796, that is, for a period of nearly three centuries, the Italians had no history of their own. Their annals are filled with records of dynastic changes and redistributions of territory, consequent upon treaties signed by foreign powers, in the settlement of quarrels which nowise concerned the people. Italy only too often became the theatre of desolating and distracting wars. But these wars were fought for the most part by alien armies; the points at issue were decided beyond the Alps; the gains accrued to royal families whose names were unpronounceable by southern tongues. That the Italians had created modern civilisation for Europe availed them nothing. Italy, intellectually first among the peoples, was now politically and practically last; and nothing to her historian is more heart-rending than to watch the gradual extinction of her spirit in this age of slavery.--J. A. SYMONDS.[b]
[Sidenote: [1530-1600 A.D.]]
The first circumstance, after the fall of Florence, which interrupted the ignominious repose of Italy, was the renewal of hostilities between Francis I and the emperor. During the expedition of Charles V against Tunis, the French monarch availed himself of the distraction of the imperial strength to commence his offensive operations. His troops broke into the territories of the duke of Savoy, against whom he had some causes of dissatisfaction, and easily wrested all Savoy, and the greater part of Piedmont, from that feeble prince; while the imperialists took possession of the remainder of his states, under pretence of defending them. Meanwhile the death of Francesco Sforza, who left no posterity, revived the long wars for the possession of the Milanese state. On the one hand, Francis I, alleging that he had only ceded that duchy to Sforza and his descendants, insisted that his rights returned to him in full force by the decease of that prince without issue; on the other, Charles V anticipated his designs by seizing the duchy as a lapsed fief of the empire. Francis I, after some hollow negotiations with his crafty rival, once more staked the decision of his pretensions on a trial of arms. Lombardy became again the theatre of furious contests between the French and the imperialists; but the usual fortunes of Francis still pursued him; and although his troops inflicted a sanguinary defeat on their opponents in the battle of Cerisole, the fruits of their victory were lost by the necessity, under which the French monarch was placed, of turning his strength to the defence of the northern frontiers of his own kingdom. The peace of Crespy, in 1544, left Charles in possession of Lombardy; and though Francis still retained part of the dominions of the duke of Savoy, the despotic authority of his rival over Italy remained unshaken.
[Sidenote: [1535-1554 A.D.]]
The tranquillity restored to the peninsula by the peace of Crespy was not materially disturbed for several years. This period was indeed signalised by the abortive conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa, and earlier by the separation of Parma and Piacenza from the papal dominions, and their erection into a sovereign duchy. These territories, which originally formed part of the Milanese states, had first been annexed to the holy see by the conquests of Julius II; they had frequently changed masters in the subsequent convulsions of Italy; and their possession had finally been confirmed to the papacy by the consent of Francesco Sforza. By the subserviency of the sacred college, the reigning pontiff, Paul III, of the family of Farnese, was suffered to detach these valuable dependencies from the holy see, and to bestow them upon his son with the ducal dignity. But neither the trifling change which was wrought in the divisions of Lombardy by the creation of the duchy of Parma and Piacenza, nor the dangerous conspiracy of Fiesco, affected the general aspect and the quietude of Italy.
Shortly after the death of Pope Paul III, however, the determination of the emperor to spoil his family obliged Ottavio Farnese, the reigning duke of Parma, to throw himself into the arms of Henry II, the new monarch of France; and thus a new war was kindled in Lombardy and Piedmont, in which the French appeared, as the defenders of Ottavio, against the forces of Charles V and of the new pope, Julius III (1551). The war of Parma produced no memorable event, until it was extended into Tuscany by the revolt of Siena against the grievous oppression of the Spanish garrison, which the people had themselves introduced to curb the tyranny of the aristocratical faction of their republic. After expelling their Spanish masters, the Sienese invited the aid of the French for the maintenance of their liberties against the emperor (1552).[c]
THE SIEGE AND FALL OF SIENA
[Sidenote: [1554 A.D.]]
Cosmo I, duke of Florence, had promised to remain neutral in the war lighted up anew between the French and the imperialists; he nevertheless, on the 27th of January, 1554, attacked, without any declaration of war, the Sienese, whose city he hoped to take by surprise. Having failed in this attack, he gave the command to the ferocious Medecino, marquis of Marignano, who undertook to reduce it by famine. The first act of Marignano was to massacre without mercy all the women, children, aged, and sick, whom the Sienese, beginning to feel the want of provisions, had sent out of the town; every peasant discovered carrying provisions into Siena was immediately hung before its gates. The villages and fortresses of the Sienese, for the most part, attempted to remain faithful to the republic; but in all those which held out until the cannon was planted against their walls, the inhabitants were inhumanly put to death.[d]
To oppose Marignano, and the formidable army which he assembled, the king of France made choice of Pietro Strozzi, a Florentine nobleman, who had resided long in France as an exile, and who had risen by his merit to high reputation as well as command in the army. He was the son of Filippo Strozzi, who, in the year 1537, had concurred with such ardour in the attempt to expel the family of Medici out of Florence, in order to re-establish the ancient republican form of government, and who had perished in the undertaking. The son inherited the implacable aversion of the Medici, as well as the same enthusiastic zeal for the liberty of Florence which had animated his father, whose death he was impatient to revenge. Henry flattered himself that his army would make rapid progress under a general whose zeal to promote his interest was roused and seconded by such powerful passions; especially as he had allotted him, for the scene of action, his native country, in which he had many powerful partisans, ready to facilitate all his operations.
But how specious soever the motives might appear which induced Henry to make this choice, it proved fatal to the interests of France in Italy. Cosmo, as soon as he heard that the mortal enemy of his family was appointed to take the command in Tuscany, concluded that the king of France aimed at something more than the protection of the Sienese, and saw the necessity of making extraordinary efforts not merely to reduce Siena, but to save himself from destruction. At the same time the cardinal of Ferrara, who had the entire direction of the French affairs in Italy, considered Strozzi as a formidable rival in power, and, in order to prevent his acquiring any increase of authority from success, he was extremely remiss in supplying him either with money to pay his troops, or with provisions to support them. Strozzi himself, blinded by his resentment against the Medici, pushed on his operations with the impetuosity of revenge, rather than with the caution and prudence becoming a great general.
At first, however, he attacked several towns in the territory of Florence with such vigour as obliged Medecino, in order to check his progress, to withdraw the greater part of his army from Siena, which he had invested before Strozzi’s arrival in Italy. As Cosmo sustained the whole burden of military operations, the expense of which must soon have exhausted his revenues; as neither the viceroy of Naples nor governor of Milan was in condition to afford him any effectual aid; and as the troops which Medecino had left in the camp before Siena could attempt nothing against it during his absence, it was Strozzi’s business to have protracted the war, and to have transferred the seat of it into the territories of Florence; but the hope of ruining his enemy by one decisive blow precipitated him into a general engagement, not far from Marciano. The armies were nearly equal in number; but a body of Italian cavalry, in which Strozzi placed great confidence, having fled without making any resistance, either through the treachery or the cowardice of the officers who commanded it, his infantry remained exposed to the attacks of all Medecino’s troops. Encouraged, however, by Strozzi’s presence and example, who, after receiving a dangerous wound in endeavouring to rally the cavalry, placed himself at the head of the infantry, and manifested an admirable presence of mind, as well as extraordinary valour, they stood their ground with great firmness, and repulsed such of the enemy as ventured to approach them. But those gallant troops being surrounded at last on every side, and torn in pieces by a battery of cannon which Medecino brought to bear upon them, the Florentine cavalry broke in on their flanks, and a general rout ensued. Strozzi, faint with the loss of blood, and deeply affected with the fatal consequences of his own rashness, found the utmost difficulty in making his escape with a handful of men.
Medecino returned immediately to the siege of Siena with his victorious forces, and as Strozzi could not, after the greatest efforts of activity, collect so many men as to form the appearance of a regular army, he had leisure to carry on his approaches against the town without molestation. But the Sienese, instead of sinking into despair upon this cruel disappointment of their only hope of obtaining relief, prepared to defend themselves to the utmost extremity, with that undaunted fortitude which the love of liberty alone can inspire. This generous resolution was warmly seconded by Montluc, who commanded the French garrison in the town. The active and enterprising courage which he had displayed on many occasions had procured him this command; and as he had ambition which aspired to the highest military dignities, without any pretensions to attain them but what he could derive from merit, he determined to distinguish his defence of Siena by extraordinary efforts of valour and perseverance. For this purpose, he repaired and strengthened the fortifications with unwearied industry; he trained the citizens to the use of arms, and accustomed them to go through the fatigues and dangers of service in common with the soldiers; and as the enemy were extremely strict in guarding all the avenues to the city, he husbanded the provisions in the magazines with the most parsimonious economy, and prevailed on the soldiers, as well as the citizens, to restrict themselves to a very moderate daily allowance for their subsistence. Medecino, though his army was not numerous enough to storm the town by open force, ventured twice to assault it by surprise; but he was received each time with so much spirit, and repulsed with such loss, as discouraged him from repeating the attempt, and left him no hopes of reducing the town but by famine.
[Sidenote: [1554-1556 A.D.]]
With this view he fortified his camp with great care, occupied all the posts of strength round the place, and having cut off the besieged from any communication with the adjacent country, he waited patiently until necessity should compel them to open their gates. But their enthusiastic zeal for liberty made the citizens despise the distresses occasioned by the scarcity of provisions, and supported them long under all the miseries of famine: Montluc, by his example and exhortations, taught his soldiers to vie with them in patience and abstinence; and it was not until they had withstood a siege of ten months, until they had eaten up all the horses, dogs, and other animals in the place, and were reduced almost to their last morsel of bread, that they proposed a capitulation (1555). Even then they demanded honourable terms; and as Cosmo, though no stranger to the extremity of their condition, was afraid that despair might prompt them to venture upon some wild enterprise, he immediately granted them conditions more favourable than they could have expected.
The capitulation was made in the emperor’s name, who engaged to take the republic of Siena under the protection of the empire; he promised to maintain the ancient liberties of the city, to allow the magistrates the full exercise of their former authority, to secure the citizens in the undisturbed possession of their privileges and property; he granted an ample and unlimited pardon to all who had borne arms against him; he reserved to himself the right of placing a garrison in the town, but engaged not to rebuild the citadel without the consent of the citizens. Montluc and his French garrison were allowed to march out with all the honours of war.
Medecino observed the articles of capitulation, as far as depended on him, with great exactness. No violence or insult whatever was offered to the inhabitants, and the French garrison was treated with all the respect due to their spirit and bravery. But many of the citizens suspecting, from the extraordinary facility with which they had obtained such favourable conditions, that the emperor, as well as Cosmo, would take the first opportunity of violating them, and disdaining to possess a precarious liberty, which depended on the will of another, abandoned the place of their nativity, and accompanied the French to Montalcino, Porto Ercole, and other small towns in the territory of the republic. They established in Montalcino the same model of government to which they had been accustomed at Siena, and appointing magistrates with the same titles and jurisdiction, solaced themselves with this image of their ancient liberty.[e]
[Sidenote: [1556-1557 A.D.]]
The Spaniards retained possession of Siena for two years, and did not surrender it to the duke of Florence until the 19th of July, 1557. After the subjugation of Siena, there remained in Italy only three republics, Lucca, Genoa, and Venice, unless it may be permitted to reckon San Marino, a free village, situated on the summit of a mountain of Romagna, which has alike escaped both usurpation and history until our own time.[d]
In the same year that witnessed the fall of Siena (1565), Charles V began putting into execution his intention to abdicate the various crowns of his vast dominions.
AN ITALIAN ESTIMATE OF THE ABDICATION OF CHARLES V
It has never been doubted that the ambition of Charles V was great and insatiable, and that this alone was his dominant passion. It was therefore a greater marvel that he should voluntarily despoil himself of all authority and dignity. But a close examination of the question will show that his action had its origin in that very ambition. After thirty years of continual warfare, journeys, negotiations, and perils, he realised that he was no happier than before, and perhaps higher motives prompted him to think upon the vanity and frailty of human greatness; or satiety and weariness having disgusted him with kingship and power, he thought to win the praise of men by other means, and to seek tranquillity and repose in private life.
But it is most probable that after his reverses in Germany Charles recognised the impossibility of attaining to that absolute monarchy which he longed for, and experienced in himself that change of feeling to which the human heart is naturally inclined; and that the excessive longing for sovereignty over the whole world was succeeded by total lethargy and a longing for quiet and inaction, more especially as he was suffering from ill health and was beginning to feel the weight of years. The care which he had taken to accustom Prince Philip, his only son, to the cares of government, sending him to Italy and investing him with the duchy of Milan in 1540, might lead one to believe that he had long since conceived and matured the design of renouncing his authority before he died; and that he would have done so much sooner if matters had been in such a state that he could have withdrawn with dignity, and without laying himself open to a charge of weakness.
In the meanwhile Henry II, no more resolved to keep peace with Charles V than firmly persuaded that this was the sincere desire of the latter, had leagued himself with the German princes, the enemies of the emperor, and hostilities were begun on both sides without any formal declaration of war. Thus while the French attacked Toul, Verdun, and Metz in Lower Germany, the German allies, whose chief leaders were Maurice, duke and elector of Saxony, Duke Albert of Mecklenburg, and Albert of Brandenburg, markgraf of Kulmbach and Bayreuth, showed such spirit in their encounter with the imperial army in the direction of the Tyrol that the emperor himself, surprised at Innsbruck, withdrew hastily into Dalmatia to the lands of his brother Ferdinand, leaving all his baggage as spoil to the enemy. This fresh blow further confirmed him in his resolution to withdraw from the world. After the flight from Innsbruck it was observed that he suffered from a melancholy humour, and in Villach in Carinthia shut himself in his room for several days, giving no audiences and despatching no business. Having recruited his army he marched towards Flanders, where he vainly attempted to besiege Metz, which was occupied by the king of France. Still further saddened by this proof of his altered fortune, he almost entirely abandoned the administration of his dominions, partly to Prince Philip and partly to his favourite the bishop of Arras, and his sister the widowed queen of Hungary.
[Sidenote: [1555-1556 A.D.]]
In order to evade the cares of government, which had now become distasteful to him, he reduced himself to a private house in Brussels, where, says Segin,[g] “he took great interest in clock-making, delighting in such machinery and in talking with the workmen and watching their work.” He began the formal abdication of his crown by making over the kingdom of Naples to his son (1554). Julius III approved this abdication, and received in the name of King Philip the homage paid to him by the kings of Naples as feudatories of the holy see. Thus the states of Milan and Naples changed their ruler somewhat earlier than Spain. But this separation of the kingdom of Naples and duchy of Milan from Spain, to which they were justly united, the former because of the ancient right of the king of Aragon, and the latter because of the will of Charles, who bestowed it upon the heir presumptive of the throne of Spain, was only temporary, for the next year (1555) Charles further bestowed the Low Countries upon his son, and a little later (1556) the kingdom of Spain and the dominions of the new world.[f]
RENEWED HOSTILITIES; THE TREATY OF CATEAU-CAMBRÉSIS
At the time of the abdication of Charles V the flames of war which had raged in Europe with such intense violence during the greater part of his long reign seemed already expiring in their embers. But they were rekindled in Italy, almost immediately after the accession of Philip II, by the fierce passions of Paul IV, a rash and violent pontiff. In his indignation at the opposition which Charles V had raised against his election, and moreover to gratify the ambition of his family, Paul IV had already instigated Henry II of France to join him in a league to ruin the imperial power in Italy; and he now, in concert with the French monarch, directed against Philip II the hostile measures which he had prepared against his father.
Philip II, that most odious of tyrants, whose atrocious cruelty and imbecile superstition may divide the judgment between execration and contempt, shrank with horror from the impiety of combating the pontiff, whom he had regarded as the vicegerent of God upon earth. He therefore vainly exhausted every resource of negotiation, before he was reconciled by the opinion of the Spanish ecclesiastics, whom he anxiously consulted, to the lawfulness of engaging in such a contest. At length he was prevailed upon to suffer the duke of Alva to lead the veteran Spanish bands from the kingdom of Naples into the papal territories. The advance of Alva to the gates of Rome, however, struck consternation into the sacred college; and the haughty and obstinate pontiff was compelled by the terror of his cardinals to conclude a truce with the Spanish general, which he immediately broke on learning the approach of a superior French army under the duke de Guise (1556).
[Sidenote: [1556-1557 A.D.]]
This celebrated captain of France, to whom the project was confided of conquering the kingdom of Naples from the Spaniards, was, however, able to accomplish nothing in Italy which accorded with his past and subsequent fame. Crossing the Alps at the head of twenty thousand men, he penetrated, without meeting any resistance, through Lombardy and Tuscany to the ecclesiastical capital. If he could effect the reduction of the kingdom of Naples, it was imagined that the Spanish provinces in northern Italy must fall of themselves; and having, therefore, left the Milanese duchy unassailed behind him, he passed on from Rome to the banks of the Garigliano, where he found Alva posted with an inferior force to oppose him. The wily caution of the Spanish general and the patient valour of his troops disconcerted the impetuosity of the French and the military skill of their gallant leader: and disease had already begun to make fearful havoc in the ranks of the invaders, when Guise was recalled, by the victory of the Spaniards at St. Quentin, to defend the frontiers of France.[c]
The confusion at Rome was great. But the pope, though considerably grieved, gave no external sign of being disturbed or alarmed. “The ambassador of France has just assured me,” wrote the bishop of Anglone on the 25th of August, 1557, “that the pope felt greatly the constable’s defeat, and is troubled; yet in spite of his affliction he does not say cease, but that his courage is greater than ever, and, from what he sees and believes, his holiness is more than ever disposed to continue the friendly relations, as he well knows he cannot bear the cost alone and has need of the king’s aid.” Nevertheless, Paul IV could not be unmindful that he was left alone to face the victorious enemy, bolder in their pretensions, as they knew themselves superior to their adversary.
The pope therefore took the resolution of checking the victorious march of the duke of Alva, and saving Rome by coming to terms. Cardinal Caraffa attempted through the medium of Alessandro Placidi to negotiate with the Spanish viceroy, but the conditions imposed were too onerous to be accepted by the pontifical court. Cosmo intervened in favour of the latter, being anxious for peace, and a peace was signed upon most honourable terms for the pope, who through the sagacity of Silvestro Aldobrandini recovered all he had lost, and was enabled to confirm the sentences against the rebellious vassals, while King Philip promised to send a solemn embassy to him, asking grace and pardon.
[Sidenote: [1557-1558 A.D.]]
But in a secret article of the treaty (an article which the pope ignored), the duchy of Paliano, the apparent cause of the war, remained in the hands of the Spanish. The duke of Alva had therefore to repair to Rome, and, though much against his will, was forced to bow before the pontiff and ask pardon for having made war on the church. The pope, who could hardly believe that he was free from a war into which he had been dragged without foreseeing all the consequences, received him with great benignity and sent the rosa benedetta to his wife the vice-queen. The duke of Ferrara was not included in the peace, but Cosmo prevailed upon Philip to receive him into favour, which was to the great advantage of the duke, who was now on friendly terms with the Venetians, having taken part in the fight between the pope and Spain without the republic’s consent, and who saw himself threatened by Duke Ottavio Farnese, anxious to enlarge his dominions at the expense of the house of Este; while his people, exhausted by a disastrous war, ardently longed for peace.
De Guise left Rome on the same day as the duke of Alva entered the town; he proceeded in all haste to France, where his arrival was eagerly looked for, and was appointed lieutenant-general with full powers. At the head of the French army he entered the field, though the season was far advanced. While feigning to bear down on the frontier of Flanders, he suddenly turned and fell upon Calais, the last place which the English held in France--an important dominion, as it secured them an easy and safe passage into the heart of the country. In eight days De Guise took possession of the place; a success due not so much to valour as to his usual foresight, he having seized the moment when the fort was left denuded of its garrison. This victory avenged St. Quentin and partly smoothed the way to a general peace.
First a truce was spoken of, then a general disarming, then a disbanding of foreign troops; but ultimately the two powers appointed their plenipotentiaries, who on the 12th of October, 1558, assembled at Cercamps, to formulate their proposals. Negotiations were long and difficult, especially respecting the question of the possession of Calais, being suspended on the 17th of November, 1558, on account of the death of Mary Tudor, queen of England; they were resumed at Cateau-Cambrésis in the following year, and finally peace was signed between England and France in the first place, between France and Spain in the second. The conditions were as follows: France restored Marienburg, Thionville, Damvillers, Montmédy, in exchange for St. Quentin, Ham, Catalet, and Thérouanne; she kept Calais and restored without compensation Bovigny and Bouillon to the bishop of Liège, while Philip kept Hesdin. In Italy the French evacuated Montferrat, Milan, Corsica, Montalcino, Siena, Piedmont, excepting the forts of Turin, Chieri, Pinerolo, Chivasso, Villanova d’Asti, which she held in pledge, and which by the Treaty of Fossano, signed by the cardinal of Lorraine in the name of the king of France, were restored to Emmanuel Philibert in exchange for the forts of Savigliano and Perosa.
[Sidenote: [1558-1565 A.D.]]
The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis left Savoy, Bresse, and Bugey free, but not so the duchy of Saluzzo, which held by France was occupied by Henry IV and definitely abandoned to Piedmont in 1601, in exchange for Bresse and Bugey. The restitution of the forts of Piedmont on the part of France put the seal on the separation of this power from northern Italy. Two marriages were arranged to make the peace binding, one between Philip II, left a widower a short time previously, and Elizabeth of Valois, eldest daughter of Henry, and the other between Margaret, sister of the latter, and the duke of Savoy.
The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, completed fifty years later by that of Vervins, was the fundamental treaty of Europe until the Treaty of Westphalia. Few diplomatic acts have had such lasting results. The convention of the 2nd of April, 1559, answered the momentary needs of Europe; defined the limits of the possessions of every nation; broke the power of the house of Habsburg, which inclined to universal monarchy; lessened the authority of Philip II in Italy and the Low Countries, and compelled the said monarch to keep within the limits of the Iberian peninsula; and assured liberty to the rest of Europe, so recently threatened by the omnipotence of Charles V.[h]
But in its consequences to Italy, this famous treaty was particularly important. To detach the duke of Parma from the French interest during the late war, Philip had already restored to him the part of his states which Charles V had formerly seized: to confirm the fidelity of Cosmo I, afterwards grand duke of Tuscany, he had assigned Siena to the sceptre of the Medici, and retained only in Tuscany the small maritime district which was destined to form a Spanish province, under the title of lo stato degli presidi--the state of the garrisons. The general pacification confirmed these cessions of Philip; it also restored to the house of Savoy the greater part of its possessions, which the French and Spanish kings engaged to evacuate; and it left the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan under the recognised sovereignty of Spain.
Thus the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis may be considered to have finally regulated the limit and the existence of these Italian principalities and provinces which, under despotic government, whether native or foreign, had embraced almost the whole surface of the peninsula; and it left only the shadow of republican freedom to Venice, Genoa, Lucca, and--if it be worth naming--to the petty community of San Marino in the ecclesiastical states. But this same pacification is yet more remarkable, as the era from which Italy ceased to be the theatre of contention between the monarchs of Spain and Germany and France, in their struggle for the mastery of continental Europe. Other regions were now to be scathed by their ambition, and other countries were to succeed to that inheritance of warfare and all its calamities, of which Italy had reaped, and was yet to reap, only the bitterest fruits.[c]
A new phase now began for Italy; she no longer resisted servitude but became resigned, nay hastened to it. That same brilliant genius that had strayed in the slippery paths of the Renaissance expiated its pagan scepticism in the rigours of penitence and sometimes in the weaknesses of superstition.
Pius IV set the example of resignation. Entirely occupied in embellishing Rome, he had built the Porta Pia, opened up the via Montecavallo; protected the coasts against barbaric pirates by the Borgo, Ancona, and Cività-Vecchia fortifications, and had no other object than peace in his relations with foreign powers. Solicited by the Savoy ambassador to help his master in recovering Geneva, now turned Protestant, “What are we coming to,” he said to him, “that such propositions should be made to me? I desire above all things peace.” He was convinced that the holy see could not long maintain itself without help from the princes, and above all made much of those who reigned over Italy. He thought once of conferring the title of king on Cosmo, or at least of making him archduke. He refused nothing to his vassal Philip II for the kingdom of Naples, and allowed him to oppose the formality of the exequatur to his own decrees. Still less did he combat the measures which the king took in Milan to restrain the privileges left by Charles V to the senate and the last communal liberties.
[Sidenote: [1563-1572 A.D.]]
The holy see, it is true, gained spiritually what she lost temporally. In the last sessions of the Council of Trent, which she had the glory of reopening in 1563, Pope Pius IV, by politic concessions made to the prince, strengthened the religious reforms which it had seemed possible might be seized from him. By ceasing to invoke his right over crowned heads he obtained one thing--there was no more talk of reforming the church by reforming the head of it. The council, instead of putting itself above him, bowed before his authority. Not only was tradition maintained, and dogma in all its rigour, but the power of the holy see in all of its Catholicity was raised and extended. The pope remained sole judge of the changes to be worked in discipline, was infallible in matters of faith, supreme interpreter of canons, uncontested head of bishops, and Rome could console herself for the definite loss of a part of Europe by seeing her power doubled in the Catholic nations of the south who rallied religiously round her.
The lay sovereigns of Italy had not this compensation. Cosmo de’ Medici could freely restrain by terror his subjects of Florence and Siena, who still feared him. He could fortify Grossetto, Leghorn; found the order of the cavaliers of St. Stephen against pirates; construct galleys, hollow out canals, irrigate and try to repeople and make the Maremma healthy; but in seizing the little town of Foligliano from Niccolo Orsini he roused the discontent of the sovereigns, and did not appease them save by accepting the hand of the archduchess Johanna, an Austrian princess, for his son. The duke of Savoy, Emmanuel Philibert, who had given a victory to Philip II over the king of France at St. Quentin, recovered, through favour of the troubles in France, all his Piedmontese towns. But neither from the king of Spain nor the pope did he obtain the help he needed to reduce Geneva.
Under Pope Pius V (1566) the work of Catholic restoration and weakening of the peninsula was finished. This holy but inflexible old man, admired by the people for his always bare head, long white beard, and countenance beaming with piety, got the Roman Inquisition admitted into all the Italian states, and severely watched over faith and customs. Bishops were bound to keep in residence, monks and nuns forced to strict seclusion. The Collegium Germanicum, founded by the Jesuits, became a forcing house for priests for Italy and Germany. Abuses had partly disappeared; scandals diminished in Rome. Cardinals eminent for their piety gave tone to the Roman court--among these the politic Gallio di Como, the administrator Salviati, San Severino, the man of the Inquisition, and Madruzzi, surnamed the Cato of the sacred college. Tiepolo, the Venetian ambassador, a little later rendered the Holy City this witness: “Rome strives to conquer the disrepute into which she had fallen; she has now become more Christian in her customs and manner of living.” In Lombardy, the archbishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo, a worthy emulator of Pius V, did not content himself with reforming the churches and clergy, the monks and nuns. He restrained public amusement, watched over the regularity of marriages and the general conduct of the laity: his zeal even led him beyond the limit of his powers. He aspired to lend his religious decrees the aid of military force, and the governor of Milan bowed to the ascendency of a zeal free from all political ambition.
This reform, quite ecclesiastical and for discipline, had not, unfortunately, anything practical or strong. Worship was re-established without reformation of men’s characters. The faith was strengthened without correction of manners. Minds were dominated without souls being uplifted. One great action stands out during this epoch. Pius V determined a league against the Turks and among the Italian and Spanish states. Under the leadership of Don John, the vassals of Venice, Genoa, Tuscany, Naples, and the church states carried a glorious victory at Lepanto (1571).[i] So great and so glorious was this victory, that we must give it more than passing notice. As one of the great decisive battles between the Orient and the Occident, it had really world-historical significance. We shall adopt the enthusiastic narrative of the Spanish historian Lafuente.[a]
A SPANISH ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO
[Sidenote: [1571 A.D.]]
The Turkish fleet in Lepanto had been reinforced with ships, victuals, artillery, and soldiers drawn from the Morea and Modon, so that it numbered no less than 240 galleys, and a multitude of galiots, foists, and other craft, with 120,000 men, soldiers and rowers. Pertev Pasha and Ali Uluch, as also the viceroy of Alexandria and other Turkish generals, counselled Ali Pasha not to fight or to risk in one battle the loss of the conquests made in Cyprus. But Ali, as commander-in-chief of the fleet, rejected their advice as cowardly. The reason of this was that a famous corsair, disguised as a fisherman, had been able to approach and reconnoitre the Christian galleys, and whether to encourage the Mussulmans, or because he had not seen the whole fleet, had greatly underestimated their numbers, and had assured the pasha of a certain, indeed almost infallible victory.
Don John’s generals, amongst whom were Giovanni Andrea Doria, Ascanio de la Corna, and Sebastian Veniero, also feared engaging in a battle; and some, declaring that it would be rashness, came forward to advise him to retreat. “Gentlemen,” replied the son of Charles V, “it is no longer the hour for advising, but for fighting;” and he continued disposing the order of battle.
Besides his natural valour, his confidence had been heightened by the report he had received that Ali Uluch, the Algerian, had separated from the Turkish fleet. Both commanders were deceived and confident, both counted on the victory, both were equally anxious for battle; it would seem that they were moved by a mysterious force. Don John passed from ship to ship encouraging the Christians. “Brothers,” he cried in sonorous accents to the Spaniards, “we are here to vanquish or die, if God so wishes it. Do not give your arrogant enemy occasion to cry out with haughty impiety, ‘Where is your God?’ Fight with faith in his holy name; killed or victorious, you shall enjoy immortality.” And to the Venetians: “The day has come to avenge insults; you hold in your hands the remedy to your sufferings, wield your swords with courage and anger.” And the fire of his words inflamed the hearts of the combatants with warlike ardour.
Ali Pasha, who was confident of victory, thinking that the whole of the Christian fleet was in sight, when the greater part of it was hidden from him by the Curzolari Islands, was dumfounded, and cursed the corsair who had deceived him, when upon his sailing into the open he discovered its magnitude, saw the multitude of sails and the admirable order in which it was disposed.
Don John also perceived that he had been mistaken in the number of the enemy’s ships, and that it was uncertain whether Ali Uluch had deserted; he fully weighed the danger into which he had run, but remembered who he was, fixed his eyes on a crucifix which he always wore, then raised them to heaven, and placing his trust in God resolved to fight with the presentiment of victory. The wind, which at first had been contrary to the Christians, presently turned against the infidels, rendering the operations of their ships difficult, and being favourable to the Christian fleet, which raised their courage. Among other things Don John caused the beakheads of all the galleys to be cut away, commencing with his own flag-ship, which measure, as afterwards proved, was of great advantage.
Six Venetian galleasses sailed as a vanguard, the left wing formed of sixty galleys was commanded by the provveditore Barbarigo; Giovanni Andrea Doria commanded the right which was composed of nearly an equal number of sail; in the centre division, composed of sixty-three galleys, was the generalissimo Don John of Austria in his flag-ship, having on each side the two generals of Rome and Venice, Colonna and Veniero, and in the rear his lieutenant, Requesens, chief knight commander of Castile. The rear-guard or relief squadron, of thirty-five galleys, was commanded by Don Alvaro de Bazan, marquis of Santa Cruz.
The Turkish fleet, more numerous than the Christian, formed a half moon and was also divided into three bodies. The right, of fifty-five galleys, was commanded by the viceroy of Alexandria, Muhammed Siroko; the left wing, composed of ninety-three, by Ali Uluch of Algiers, and the two pashas, Pertev and Ali, were in the centre with ninety-six sail, with their corresponding relief force or rear-guard. So that each division faced the corresponding division of the enemy, and the standard of the Grand Turk fluttered in front of the holy standard of the league.
The wind had fallen, the waters of the gulf were tranquil, and the sun shone out from a blue and clear sky, as though God wished that no element should disturb the struggle of men, that nature should oppose no obstacle to the battle which was to decide the triumph of the cross or the crescent. If the reflection of the polished arms, the shining shields, and burnished helmets of the Christians dazzled the Mussulmans, the eyes of the allies were wounded by the gilded poop lanterns, the silver and gold inscriptions of the Turkish standards, the stars, the moon, the double-edged scimitars, which shone from the ships of the Ottoman admirals. Nothing could be discerned on the horizon but banners and pendants of varied colours. For a brief space the two fleets surveyed one another in mutual wonder; this impressive silence was broken by a broadside discharged from Ali’s galley, which was answered by another from Don John’s flag-ship.
The first boom of the artillery, which was the signal for battle, was followed instantly by the usual clamour and shouting, with which the Moors commence a fight. The Turkish right wing commanded by the viceroy of Alexandria first engaged with the Christian left, commanded by the provveditore Barbarigo. The Venetians fought unshielded with the furious courage and passion of men fighting the murderers of their compatriots. Doria the Genoese engaged with Ali Uluch the Algerian, who captured the flag-ship of Malta, and put all her defenders to the sword, with the exception of the prior and two other knights, who, covered with wounds, were saved by being counted among the dead.
Ali Pasha and Don John of Austria sought each other with equal hatred, until with a terrible shock their two galleys rushed together, the fire of the artillery and arquebuses from the Spanish ship doing deadly work on the men of the Turkish galley. The action became general, and the contending galleys changed about; the sea was white with the foam of the troubled waves, the smoke of the artillery and arquebuses darkened the sky, turned midday into night, the sparks flying from the swords and shields as they clashed together seemed like lightning flashing from black clouds. Ships were engulfed in the waves, Turks and Christians fell in a muddled heap, clasped together like brothers, with the hatred of enemies, by the side of a sinking ship; greedy flames devoured others; a Turkish ship would be seen flying a Christian flag, and a Spanish galley guided by a Turkish commandant. Swords broken, they fought hand to hand; all was destruction and death, until the sea became reddened with blood. “Never,” says the author of the Memories of Lepanto, “had the Mediterranean witnessed on her bosom, nor shall the world again see, a conflict so obstinate, a butchery so terrible, men so valiant and so enraged.”
With his youthful and untiring arm Don John of Austria wielded his sword unceasingly, his person being ever exposed to danger; youthful also in the battle appeared the veteran Sebastian Veniero; Colonna did justice to his illustrious name; Requesens showed himself a worthy lieutenant of the valiant prince Don John; the prince of Parma proved that the blood of Charles V ran in his veins; the wounds he received did not check Urbino; Figueroa, Zapata, Carillo, every captain of the flag-ship worked like men well used to battle, setting little value on their lives, when the flag-ship was hard pressed, because Ali and Pertev Pasha also fought like heroes with their janissaries.
Don Alvaro de Bazan came to the rescue, as though his galley was moved by lightning, and mowed down Mussulmans, clearing all before him, though balls turned against his shield. Like a whirlwind he moved, nor did his fire slacken though ships were engulfed at his side and captains fell lifeless before him. Ali Uluch held Doria in desperate conflict; the marquis of Santa Cruz, leaving the flag-ship in safety, rushed to his assistance, regained the flag-ship of Malta, relieved the Genoese, and put the Algerian to ignominious flight.
It is impossible to relate the special deeds of prowess of every captain and every soldier in the stupendous struggle, in which the janissaries, who held themselves to be the most valiant warriors of the world, were to learn that there were Christian soldiers more valiant, more audacious, and more daring than they. Nevertheless we cannot omit making special mention of a Spanish soldier who, prostrated with fever on board Giovanni Andrea Doria’s galley, but feeling a more fierce fever burning in his breast, that is to say, the fire of courage and the desire of battle, left his bed and begged the captain to station him at the post of greatest danger. In vain his comrades, in vain the captain himself, tried to convince him that he was more in a condition to be curing his body than exposing it to danger. The soldier insisted, the soldier fought valiantly, the soldier was wounded in the breast and left hand, but yet he would not retreat, for the maxim of this soldier was, that wounds received in battle are stars which guide to the heaven of glory. The stubborn soldier stood firm, and could not be prevailed upon to retire that he might be attended to, until his galley had ceased to battle, the captain Francisco de San Pedro being killed in the fight. The reader will understand why, in the midst of numerous other deeds of prowess, we have singled that of this soldier in particular, for he will have divined that this soldier was no other than Miguel de Cervantes, who, then unknown to the world as a soldier, became afterwards famous as a writer.
But it is now time to draw this furious fight to a close, the result of it being for a time doubtful. The Turks had already suffered a great loss when Pertev Pasha, pressed by Don Juan de Cordova, fell into the sea, and his galley was boarded by Paulo Jordan Urbino, the seraskier being forced to swim to a small boat in which to escape. But the Christians did not set up the cry of victory until they saw Ali Pasha, after the vigorous and stubborn efforts of himself and the three hundred janissaries of his flag-ship, fall on the gangway wounded in the forehead by a ball from one of Don John’s arquebusiers.
Another cut off his head and presented it to the Christian generalissimo, who with noble generosity censured the action with horror, and ordered such trophies to be thrown into the sea; nevertheless he could not prevent the head of the Turkish admiral from being raised and exhibited on the point of a spear. The Christian’s cry of victory resounded through the air, and was carried by the winds to the shore.
The last engagement was between the galleys of Ali Uluch and Giovanni Andrea Doria, but on the approach of Don John, the viceroy of Algiers hastened to effect his escape, with forty vessels saved from the general destruction; and so great was his haste that neither Giovanni Andrea nor Alvaro de Bazan could give chase. Nevertheless well-nigh all his men perished, either drowned in the waves, when jumping in terror to the shore, or killed among the rocks by the Venetians.
In this memorable battle the Turks lost 220 ships; of this number 130 fell into the hands of the Christians, more than 90 were engulfed in the sea, or reduced to ruins by fire, 40 alone escaped; 25,000 Turks fell in battle, 50,000 were taken prisoners; the allies took from them 17 heavy cannon, and 250 of smaller calibre, more than 12,000 Christians, captives of the Mussulmans, employed as rowers, saw their chains broken and precious liberty recovered. The Christian losses were also great, about 8,000 valiant soldiers and sailors were killed, 2,000 of these were Spaniards, 800 of the papal army, and the rest Venetians. Only 15 ships were lost. On the other hand the gilded poop lanterns, the purple banners embroidered in gold and silver, the stars and moon, the pasha’s pennons, were precious trophies which the allies won in the battle.
Such in brief, concludes Lafuente, was the famous naval battle of Lepanto, the most famous ever recorded in the annals of nations, for the number of ships, the exertions and valour of the combatants, for the complete destruction of a fleet as formidable as was the Ottoman fleet. The janissaries were no longer invincible; the Sublime Porte was to lose its supremacy in the Mediterranean.[j]
THE GENERAL CONDITION OF ITALY
[Sidenote: [1569-1585 A.D.]]
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John,” Pius V could cry in his enthusiasm over the victory of Lepanto. But besides this victory there was little to arouse enthusiasm in Italy; scandals and baseness prevailed everywhere. The Medici offered the worst examples of this. Dreadful rumours circulated on the sudden and close deaths of Cosmo’s two sons. It was confidently said that one, Giovanni, had in a fit of jealousy during a hunting party assassinated his brother Garcias, and that Cosmo had slain the fratricide some days later in the arms of his mother. The third, Francesco, although married to the archduchess Johanna, publicly contracted a liaison which seemed to give rise every day to fresh scandals, and Cosmo in the recesses of his palace indulged in stormy passions made worse by a sombre melancholy. All this did not hinder Pope Pius V, in 1569, from conferring on Cosmo, by what right is not known, the title of grand duke. This act showed to what depths the Italian princes had sunk. The other small sovereigns, whose lives were also not the most exemplary, showed themselves very jealous. The dukes of Ferrara and Savoy protested at the courts of Madrid and Vienna, and aspired to guard the right of precedence, which the pope had also just changed. At least they would be of the first rank among slaves. The right of precedence, such as it was in the general servitude, remained the object of the princes’ feverish rivalry. To maintain this their wise men used a good deal of heraldic and feudal science. Their ambassadors fought at the courts of Madrid and Vienna.
Loss of liberty was not compensated for by material prosperity. This was clearly shown during the reigns of Gregory XIII at Rome and Francesco I at Florence.
Gregory XIII, although of less deep piety than his predecessor, was carried along in his spiritual government by the vigorous impulse given by Pius V. He founded an international college at Rome, and accomplished a work truly European by the reform of the calendar in 1582. His attempts to regulate economic conditions were not so successful. Francesco de’ Medici, more docile still than his father to the Spanish yoke, obtained by concessions in 1576, from the emperor and the Spanish king, that recognition of his grand-ducal title which Cosmo had refused, with the right of precedence over the other dukes. With less reverence than ever he established Bianca Capello in his palace, she losing nothing of his affection for having given him a child by another father; she even became his wife after the death of the archduchess. Quite a Spanish prince, he separated himself entirely from the people. After the fashion of Philip II he only lived in the midst of courtesans and favourites, who began to form a nobility in a state which was formerly largely democratic. But through his negligence all the elements of order and prosperity in Tuscany were lost. The city of Leghorn alone slightly developed, thanks to the commercial privileges he granted her, but the rest of the country became deserted compared to what it had been under Cosmo I. Pisa, from twenty-two thousand inhabitants, fell to eight thousand; and in 1575 a conspiracy was necessary to overthrow that voluptuous tyrant who had no thought for the morrow.
In the Milanese, where the governors respected the débris of ancient liberties, there was still some activity. Milanese arms and embroideries were sought after, woollen-weavers were very busy in Como and the capital. The work of canalisation went on. Milan passed as Italy’s most populous city and had 150,000 inhabitants. But at Naples the exigencies and venality of the administration exhausted all sources of prosperity. Whilst rich families in Lombardy, the Marignani, the Sforza, the Serboni, the Borromei, and the Trivulzi, displayed a princely luxuriousness, the Neapolitan nobility, quickly ruined by court life, retired to their châteaux and lived by oppressing the peasants. Even the townsfolk, crushed by taxation, and above all by the caprice of viceroys, were ruined. The miserable tax-payers, after all their furniture had been sold, were even driven to strip off their roofs and sell the material. Towns fell into decay. Localities formerly very flourishing, like Giovinazzo in Apulia, completely disappeared. A whole province was desolated; Calabria was now only crossed by caravans.
In the whole peninsula brigandage was organised, as in great epochs of misery. The discontented, the banished, ruined people, and bad subjects united in bands under bold and adventurous chiefs and wrought sanguinary revenge. The Apennine gorges, the little châteaux there, became the refuge for these outlaws or bandits who replaced the condottieri, and were as a last and wild protestation of national independence. The people, far from despising them, called them the bravi. Grandees, princes, even cardinals often went to these men to seek help needed to execute vengeance or even to satisfy their cupidity. Marco Bernardi of Cosenza in Calabria; Pietro Leonello of Spoleto in the Marches; Alfonso Piccolomini, lord of Montemarciano, and his noble family in the Apennines, became the terror of the peninsula. It needed a real military Spanish expedition to destroy Marco Bernardi and his band. Alfonso Piccolomini seized châteaux and even small towns in the papal states. Pope Gregory XIII augmented his military forces and gave Cardinal Sforza the fullest power to rid the patrimony of St. Peter of this brigandage. Gregory XIII could not, however, disarm Piccolomini but by pardoning him and restoring his goods. Such was the state to which imperial and pontifical restoration had reduced the peninsula towards the end of the sixteenth century. But at the threshold of the seventeenth century two energetic men tried to raise Italy and even put her in the way of profiting by the restoration of France, her natural protector, since she had fallen under the Spanish yoke: these were Sixtus V, sovereign pontiff, and Ferdinand I, grand duke of Tuscany.
POPE SIXTUS V; FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY
[Sidenote: [1585-1590 A.D.]]
Felice Peretti [Sixtus V], one of a poor slave family who had taken refuge at Montalto, had been raised in the rough school of poverty. He had often in his youth guarded the fruit or taken care of swine. Received into a Franciscan convent, he had risen by showing a mixture of theologic erudition and facility in administration, which evidenced a decided mind and firm character. He was sixty-four and somewhat infirm when called to the papacy (1585). This honour seemed to tend to rejuvenescence, a fact which gave rise to a report that the day after his exaltation he had thrown away his crutches. He was the first for some time who understood that the pope, as temporal sovereign, cannot be absorbed exclusively in religious duties without imperilling that same spiritual power, and he undertook first to destroy brigandage and raise the finances of the holy see. From the first day, most energetic measures were taken against the brigands. A price was set on the heads of the leaders; their relatives were rendered responsible and liable for all their misdeeds. The holy father found good all the measures exercised against them. No pity was to be expected from him. “As long as I live,” he said the very day of his coronation, “every criminal shall suffer capital punishment.” At the end of two years, ambassadors congratulated the pope on the safety of the roads in the pontifical domain.
Gregory XIII had, as Sixtus V said, eaten the revenues of three pontiffs: his own, those of his predecessor, and those of his successor. Sixtus V exercised considerable economies in the expenses of the pontifical chamber. He created a number of venal duties, and established monti on the consumption of wine, wood, and even small industries. In a short time he had paid his debts, and could put aside annually a million gold crowns: a reserve destined to pay for great events such as a crusade, a famine, or an invasion of St. Peter’s domain. The ordinary excess of receipts was employed by him in embellishing Rome. Since Sixtus IV had joined the two shores of the Tiber by the bridge which bears his name, the lower part of the town had been entirely rebuilt; beyond the river rose the marvels of the Vatican, the Belvedere, the Loggia, and the palace of the Chigi; beyond these, the Cancellaria of Julius II, the Farnese and Orsini palaces. But the heights of the town were always abandoned; the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the palace of the Conservatori on the Capitoline no longer attracted the inhabitants. Sixtus V, to repeople these beautiful and celebrated heights, conducted greatly needed water there by means of works which rivalled those of the Romans. He caused to flow, sometimes under ground, sometimes in aqueducts, to the Capitoline and Quirinal, that aqua felice which gave in four hours 20,537 cubic metres of water and nourished twenty-seven fountains. He planned a great number of streets, facilitated communication between the higher and the lower towns, and doubled, as it were, the town of Rome.
The former Franciscan monk also caused a reaction against paganism in art; and was happy in celebrating in his works the triumph of the Christian faith. He surmounted with a cross the beautiful obelisk which the architect Fontana had raised with so much trouble and delight on the Piazza di San Pietro. He knocked down the statues of Trajan and Antoninus from the triumphal columns of those emperors to put up St. Peter and St. Paul, and to build his churches and realise his plans destroyed the monuments of antiquity, even the beautiful temple of Severus. He even sacrificed to this Christian vandalism the beautiful tomb of Cæcilia Metella. But before all, this positive mind had always one end in view--public utility; and Rome really rose under his pontificate.
The death of the grand duke of Florence, Francesco, was as favourable to Tuscany as that of Gregory XIII to the church states. Duke Francesco and Cardinal Ferdinand de’ Medici, rarely in accord, were still embroiled after the accession of Pope Sixtus V. In the autumn of 1587, Francesco having fallen ill, Ferdinand came to Florence and there was reconciled with him. But some days after the fever of Francesco grew worse, Bianca Capello herself was attacked by the same illness. The husband and wife whose passion for each other had troubled the court of Tuscany, even of Italy, died within two days of each other, and Cardinal Ferdinand became duke of Florence. A thousand rumours were set afloat to damage him, but the new duke soon stifled them by benefits bestowed. An enlightened man, with practical good sense and resolution, Ferdinand I repaired the miseries caused by the negligence of Francesco. The prosperity of Leghorn was taken in hand; the town of Pisa helped by the opening of a canal which put her in communication with Leghorn at that point where the Genoese were soon to assist at a yearly fair. The course of the Arno received a more advantageous direction; there was much done in the way of draining inundated lands, and the prospect of repeopling the Maremma was reundertaken by increasing the water-supply and damming the overflow of Lake Fucecchio. Ferdinand kept a navy sufficiently considerable to drive the Barbary pirates back to Bona, and tried to reanimate art and letters, which had been the glory of his country and his ancestors.
Pope Sixtus V and Ferdinand were so constituted as to understand each other. Their foreign policy began to betray more independence. Sixtus V pursued as far as Spanish territory the brigands who were sometimes protected by them. Ferdinand sent away all the Spaniards whom Francesco had taken into pay, and confided his fortresses to Italians whom he could trust. Both men had come to a good understanding with the Venetian republic. The pope particularly was fond of that town, which had helped him to destroy the brigands. He often assured her that he would willingly shed his blood for her. They also attached to themselves the Gonzagas of Mantua and Genoa, threatened by Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy, who hoped to obtain everything from Spain by proving himself her most zealous partisan. It was already a scene of resistance. But help must be sought from without. France, preyed upon for twenty-five years by the horrors of a religious war which paralysed all foreign politics, could hardly stand against the efforts and intrigues of Philip II. Ferdinand and Venice favoured as much as they could the restoration of a strong and national power. The republic guessed first what the future would be, and had the courage to recognise Henry IV before all the other states. After her, Ferdinand entered into friendly relations with the new king; and while the duke of Savoy seized from him Barcelonnette and Antibes, he threw himself into the château d’If and put an efficient garrison there.
Sixtus V hesitated. He threatened to break with the republic, for which he had promised to shed his blood. He allowed himself, however, to be persuaded to relent, and even received M. de Luxembourg, the envoy of Henry IV, in private audience. The Spanish ambassador begged, threatened. Sixtus went down before such boldness. Philip II again began to send bandits to the pontifical territory, and intercepted the convoys laden with grain which Ferdinand had caused to come for the provisionment of Tuscany.
Sixtus V went so far as to speak of excommunicating the Catholic king of Spain. This energetic man, however, bent under so great a task, and died the 7th of August, 1590, pursued by the cowardly maledictions of the people, who broke his statues, and decided that that honour should not again be given to living popes.
POPE CLEMENT VIII (1590-1605 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1590-1600 A.D.]]
The death of Sixtus V again agitated the conclave. The Medicean party at last arrived at finding a pope, if not hostile, at least less devoted to Spain--Urban VII. But he died at the end of seven days, and the struggle recommenced. The viceroy of Naples, to finish it, sent brigands. Olivares threatened the cardinals with a siege. Gregory XIV, a pope devoted to Spain, was elected; but only reigned seven months. A third struggle began, more fierce than the preceding ones. The cardinal of San Severino, supported by the Spaniards, failed one day of the papacy by a single vote. “Anxiety,” he himself said, “made me sweat blood.” Cardinal Aldobrandini, the creature of Sixtus V, much less devoted to the Spaniards, was at last elected on January 30th, 1592, and took the name of Clement VIII.
This was a victory for Italy. The abjuration of Henry IV, his entry into Paris in 1594, was another. It was celebrated in the peninsula as a national event. The pope, who up to then had managed the Spanish and only secretly received the ambassadors of Henry IV, no longer resisted the insistences of the grand duke of Florence. In vain the Spanish party left Rome with the cardinals, who led them; in vain the duke of Sessa, Philip II’s ambassador, threw his Abruzzian bandits on church lands. Supported by the Venetians, by the duke of Tuscany, by the emperor himself, to whom the Italians furnished help against the Turks, the pope carried all before him. He declared in solemn ceremony (September 8th, 1595) Henry to be reconciled with the Catholic church, thus re-establishing between the orthodox powers a favourable equilibrium to his own independence and the freeing of Italy. The peninsula, in effect, soon found she had gained a powerful support against Spain. Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio, dying in 1597, had left his heritage to Don Cesare his cousin, in default of a direct heir. Clement VIII claimed, as fief of the holy see, the town of Ferrara, hurled excommunication against Don Cesare, who aspired to all the heritage, and raised a loan to support an army of spiritual thunderbolts.
At first events did not seem to favour the holy see. The court of Spain, who thought it had somewhat against Clement VIII, was ill disposed. The grand duke of Tuscany, brother-in-law to Don Cesare, this time abandoned the pope. Even the Venetian Republic hindered him from recruiting soldiers in Dalmatia. Henry IV forgot what he owed to Venice, to the grand duke, and offered to send an army beyond the mountains to put the pope in possession of Ferrara. Don Cesare, obliged to yield, gave up the town after taking away the archives, the library, and the artillery of his predecessors. He thereafter contented himself with the title of duke of Modena and Reggio. The town of Ferrara lost all its advantages, all its éclat as capital, and soon saw rise in place of the ducal palace and the beautiful belvedere sung by her poets, a citadel which easily kept in awe a town promptly dispeopled.
Philip II, who for thirty years had allowed nothing to be done in Italy without his permission, was obliged to yield this time. He thus signed, before dying, the peace of Vervins, which announced the re-establishment of French power and the decadence of Spain. His successor, Philip III, abandoned even the most faithful of the servitors of his house in Italy--Charles Emmanuel I, duke of Savoy, from whom Henry IV, by the treaty of Lyons, received in 1600 Bugey, Valromey, and Gex, in exchange for the marquisate of Saluzzo.
Italy now turned with full hope towards France. The holy see had nothing but kindness for her. The learned cardinal Baronius repeated, to whoever cared to listen, that the papacy had never received of any nation so much service. “Can it be allowed,” cried the cardinal’s nephew, Aldobrandini, through whose hands all affairs passed, “can it be allowed that the Spanish should command in the house of a stranger in spite of him?” And it was not perhaps without reflection that he put millions in reserve and maintained an army of twelve thousand men. Not having had occasion to meddle with France since the Peace of Lyons, Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy began to understand that it was in Italy, at the expense of Spain, that he must seek aggrandisement. So he entered into intimate relations with Henry IV, so long time his enemy. In waiting for better things, he ended by organising the senate established by his father at Carignan on the model of the French parliaments. He reanimated agriculture and commerce and fortified Turin, an Italian city. He himself wrote a parallel between great men ancient and modern, and began to found the military power of his little state.
Ferdinand of Tuscany, only too happy to see Maria de’ Medici mount the French throne, did not long hold out before Henry IV. He was bold enough to send his admiral Inghirami, at the head of his fleet, to fight the Turks in the Adriatic, even seeking to seize from them the isle of Cyprus. In the north and south of Italy the Milanese and the Neapolitans themselves began to grow restless under the iron yoke of Spain. It was perhaps the time to attempt something. Cardinal Aldobrandini once proposed to Venice a league against Spain. But Cardinal Aldobrandini and Ferdinand were sworn foes. Henry IV, moreover, was not yet firmly enough established in France to act outside it.
There then remained only one alternative for the Neapolitan kingdom--one of those isolated revolts, so extraordinarily foolish, so frequent in the peninsula, which can only be explained by the misery of the people. A Dominican, Tommaso Campanella, a deep thinker if he had not been a still greater dreamer, tore himself from his philosophic elucidations and dreams to call, like a new Savonarola, his compatriots to liberty. He believed in the faith of the Apocalypse that the seventeenth century would be for Italy the signal for a cataclysm wherein would be engulfed the Spanish domination, and he formed the project of founding a kind of universal theocratic republic. He began first by Calabria, his country. Monks, not only Dominicans, but Franciscans and Augustines, drawn away by his eloquence, began to preach the doctrines of this new emissary from God, and blew upon the hardly extinct ashes of Neapolitan frenzy. Even many bishops and a few barons followed the monks. An army, recruited in part by bandits, went out from Calabria. The count of Lemos, viceroy of Naples, soon had the upper hand. The unfortunates who were seized perished in frightful torments. Tommaso Campanella, regarded as insane, was thrown in a dungeon, where he stayed twenty-seven years, and passed from the dream of a universal republic to that of a universal holy empire.
This attempt sufficed to put the Spanish government, already full of distrust, still more on their guard. Philip III, at Rome, roused Cardinal Farnese, head of his faction, against Aldobrandini. The garrisons of Tuscany were strengthened; Fuentes, governor of Milan, assembled sufficient troops to scare the whole peninsula. He would have done more, if the king of Spain, Philip III, and his minister, the duke of Lerma, satisfied with maintaining their domination, had not taken every precaution not to rouse the intervention of Henry IV from beyond the Alps.[i]
Fully to appreciate the character of the times just treated, one must recall the state of contemporary civilisation. We have been brought somewhat in contact with the conditions in Germany, France, and Spain, because these countries were in constant political association with Italy. To complete the picture, it should be recalled that the sixteenth century was the age of Henry VIII and Elizabeth in England; therefore, the time of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon. It was the age also of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin; the time when the spirit of the Reformation was actively battling with the old ecclesiasticism, and when the counter influence of the Inquisition made itself felt everywhere. Italy being relatively uninfluenced by the Reformation was also relatively free from the excesses of the Inquisition. Nevertheless, it furnished just at the close of the century a most striking illustration of inquisitorial power in the persecution, imprisonment, and finally the execution by burning at the stake of the famous philosopher, Giordano Bruno.
But the Italian civilisation of the time presents some more attractive features. The artistic impulses of the Renaissance, at which we have glimpsed in an earlier chapter, could not be blotted out in a single generation; and it must be recalled that Michelangelo lived until the year 1564; so the art movement did not pass its climax before the middle of the century. In the field of literature the activities of the earlier generation were unabated. “Among the numbers of men who had devoted themselves to letters,” says Sismondi,[k] “Italy produced at this glorious epoch, at least thirty poets, whom their contemporaries placed on a level with the first names of antiquity, and whose fame, it was thought, would be commensurate with the existence of the world. But even the names of these illustrious men begin to be forgotten; and their works, buried in the libraries of the learned, are now seldom read.
“The circumstances of their equality in merit has doubtless been an obstacle to the duration of their reputation. Fame does not possess a strong memory. For a long flight, she relieves herself from all unnecessary encumbrances. She rejects, on her departure, and in her course, many who thought themselves accepted by her, and she comes down to late ages, with the lightest possible burthen. Unable to choose between Bembo, Sadoleti, Sanazzaro, Bernardo Accolti, and so many others, she relinquishes them all.”
There is one name, however, that stands out from amidst this company in a secure position. This is the name of Torquato Tasso, the famous author of the Gerusalemme Liberata (“Jerusalem Delivered”), a poem dealing with the First Crusade, which by common consent has high rank among the great epics, and which placed its author in contemporary estimation, as in that of posterity, on an approximate level with Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto. The appearance of Tasso in this epoch is another illustration of that fruitage of literary genius in times of political degeneration to which reference has previously been made.[a]
XVI. A CENTURY OF OBSCURITY
From the fall of Siena on to the nineteenth century Italy can scarcely be said to have existed at all except as a geographical expression. Italians still ruled over certain parts of the land, but they had the vices without the virtues of their nation, and reigned more as the dependents of foreign sovereigns than as independent princes. During the seventeenth, the eighteenth, and the early part of the nineteenth centuries, Italy was made the scene of wars in which her people had no interest, and was divided by treaties which brought her no good.[b]--HUNT.
[Sidenote: [1601-1700 A.D.]]
The general aspect of Italy, during the whole course of the seventeenth century, remained unchanged by any signal revolution. The period which had already elapsed between the extinction of national and civil independence and the opening of the period before us had sufficed to establish the permanency of the several despotic governments of the peninsula, and to regulate the limits of their various states and provinces. If we except some popular commotions in Naples and Sicily, the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor had wholly ceased. Servitude had become the heirloom of the people; and they bowed their necks unresistingly and from habit to the grievous yoke which their fathers had borne before them. Their tyrants, domestic and foreign, revelled or slumbered on their thrones.
The Italian princes of the seventeenth century were more voluptuous and effeminate, but perhaps less ferocious and sanguinary, than the ancient Visconti, the Scala, the Carrara, the Gonzaga. But the condition of their subjects was not the less degraded. Their sceptres had broken every mouldering relic of freedom; and their dynasties, unmolested in their seats, were left (we except that of Savoy) to that quiet and gradual extinction which was insured by the progress of mental and corporeal degeneracy--the hereditary consequences of slothful and bloated intemperance. The seventeenth century, however, saw untroubled to its close the reign of several ducal houses, which were to become extinct in the following age.
[Sidenote: [1600-1627 A.D.]]
Compared with that of the preceding century, the history of Italy at this period may appear less deeply tinged with national crime, and humiliation, and misery; for the expiring throes of political vitality had been followed by the stillness of death. But, as a distinguished writer has well remarked, we should greatly err if, in observing that history is little more than the record of human calamity, we should conclude that the times over which it is silent are necessarily less characterised by misfortune. History can seldom penetrate into the recesses of society, can rarely observe the shipwreck of domestic peace and the destruction of private virtue. The happiness and the wretchedness of families equally escape its cognisance. But we know that, in the country and in the times which now engage our attention, the frightful corruption of manners and morality had sapped the most sacred relations of life. The influence of the Spanish sovereignty over a great part of the peninsula had made way for the introduction of many Castilian prejudices; and these were fatally engrafted on the vices of a people already too prone to licentious gallantry. The merchant-noble of the Italian republics had been taught to see no degradation in commerce; and some of the numerous members of his household were always engaged in pursuits which increased the wealth and consequence of their family.
But the haughty cavalier of Spain viewed the exercise of such plebeian industry with bitter contempt. The Spanish military inundated the peninsula; and the growth of Spanish sentiment was encouraged by the Italian princes. They induced their courtiers to withdraw their capital from commerce, that they might invest it in estates, which descended to their eldest sons, the representatives of their families; and the younger branches of every noble house were condemned to patrician indolence, poverty, and celibacy. It was to recompense these younger sons, thus sacrificed to family pride, and forever debarred from forming matrimonial connections, that the strange and demoralising office of the cicisbeo, or cavaliere servente, was instituted: an office which, under the guise of romantic politeness, and fostered by the dissolute example of the Italian princes and their courts, thinly veiled the universal privilege of adultery.
This pernicious and execrable fashion poisoned the sweet fountain of domestic happiness and confidence at its sources. The wife was no longer the intimate of her husband’s heart, the faithful partner of his joys and cares. The eternal presence of the licensed paramour blasted his peace; and the emotions of paternal love were converted into distracting doubts or baleful indifference. The degraded parent, husband, son, fled from the pollution which reigned within his own dwelling, himself to plunge into a similar vortex of corruption. All the social ties were loosened: need we demand of history if public happiness could reside in that land, where private morality had perished.
GENERAL CONDITIONS
[Sidenote: [1600-1700 A.D.]]
In attempting to bring the unimportant fortunes of Italy during the seventeenth century into a general point of view, we should find considerable and needless difficulty. In the beginning of the century, a quarrel between the popedom and Venice appeared likely to kindle a general war in the peninsula; but the difference was terminated by negotiation (1627).
Twenty years later, the disputed succession of the duchy of Mantua created more lasting troubles, and involved all Lombardy in hostilities; in which the imperialists, the Spaniards, the French, and the troops of Savoy once more mingled on the ancient theatre of so many sanguinary wars and calamitous devastations. But this uninteresting struggle, if not marked by less cruelty and rapine towards the inhabitants of the country, was pursued with less destructive vigour and activity than in the preceding century; nor were the French arms attended by those violent alternations of success and failure which had formerly inflicted such woes upon the peninsula. From the epoch at which Henry IV excluded himself from Italy by the Savoyard treaty, until the ambitious designs of Cardinal Richelieu involved France in the support of the pretensions of the Grisons over the Valtelline country against Spain, the French standards had not been displayed beyond the Alps. But from the moment at which the celebrated minister of Louis XIII engaged in this enterprise, until the Peace of the Pyrenees, the incessant contest of the French and Spanish monarchies, in which the dukes of Savoy and other Italian powers variously embarked, was continually extended to the frontiers of Piedmont and Lombardy.
The arms of the combatants, however, seldom penetrated beyond the northern limits of Italy; and their rivalry, which held such a fatal influence on the peace of other parts of the European continent, can scarcely be said to have materially affected the national affairs of the peninsula. Meanwhile, the few brief and petty internal hostilities which arose and terminated among the Italian princes were of still less general consequence and interest. The subsequent gigantic wars into which Louis XIV, by his insatiable lust of conquest, forced the great powers of Europe, were little felt in Italy until the close of the century--except in the territories of the dukes of Savoy. Thus, altogether, instead of endeavouring to trace the history of Italy during the seventeenth century as one integral and undivided subject, it will be more convenient still to consider the few important events in the contemporary annals of her different provinces as really appertaining, without much connection, to distinct and separate states.
The immediate dominion of the Spanish monarchy over great part of Italy lasted during the whole of the seventeenth century. Naples, Sicily, Milan, and Sardinia were exposed alike to the oppression of the Spanish court, and to the inherent vices of its administration. Its grievous exactions were rendered more ruinous by the injudicious and absurd manner of their infliction; by the private rapacity of the viceroys, and the peculation of their officers. Its despotism was aggravated by all the wantonness of power, and all the contemptuous insolence of pride. But of these four subject states, the last two, Milan and Sardinia, suffered in silence; and except that the Lombard duchy was almost incessantly a prey to warfare and ravages from which the insular kingdom was exempted, a common obscurity and total dearth of all interest equally pervade the annals of both. But the fortunes of the two kingdoms of Naples and Sicily were more remarkable from the violent efforts of the people, ill conducted and unsuccessful though these were, to shake off the intolerable yoke of Spain.
The decline of the Spanish monarchy, which had already commenced in the reign of Philip II, continued rapidly progressive under his successors, the third and fourth Philip, and the feeble Charles II, so the necessities of the Spanish government became more pressing, and its demands more rapacious and exorbitant. Of the revenue of about 6,000,000 gold ducats, which the viceroys extorted from the kingdom, less than 1,500,000 covered the whole public charge, civil and military, of the country; and after all their own embezzlements and those of their subalterns, they sent yearly to Spain more than 4,000,000, no part of which ever returned. Thus was the kingdom perpetually drained of wealth, which nothing but the lavish abundance of nature in that most fertile of regions could in any degree have renovated. But even the luxuriant opulence of Naples could neither satisfy the avarice of the court of Madrid, nor protect the people from misery and want under a government whose impositions increased with the public exhaustion, and were multiplied with equal infatuation and wickedness upon the common necessaries of life. In this manner, duties were established upon flesh, fish, oil, and even upon flour and bread; and the people found themselves crushed under taxation, to pay the debts and to feed the armies of Spain. Their wealth and their youth were alike drawn out of their country, in quarrels altogether foreign to the national interests; in the unfortunate and mismanaged wars in the Spanish court in Lombardy and Catalonia, and in the Low Countries and Germany. Meanwhile, as during the last century, the interior of the kingdom was almost always infested with banditti, rendered daring and reckless of crime by their numbers and the defenceless state of society; and so ill-guarded were the sea coasts that the Turkish pirates made habitual descents during the whole course of the century, ravaged the country, attacked villages and even cities, and carried off the people into slavery.
It cannot excite our surprise that the evils of the Spanish administration filled the Neapolitans with discontent and indignation; we may only wonder that any people could be found abject enough to submit to a government at once so oppressive and feeble. The first decided attempt to throw off the foreign yoke had its origin among an order in which such a spirit might least be anticipated. In the last year of the sixteenth century, Tommaso Campanella, a Dominican friar, had, on account, says Giannone, of his wicked life and the suspicion of infidelity, incurred the rigours of the Roman Inquisition. On his release he laboured, in revenge for the treatment which he had received at Rome, to induce the brethren of his own order, the Augustines, and the Franciscans, to excite a religious and political revolution in Calabria. He acquired among them the same reputation for sanctity and prophetic illumination which Savonarola had gained at Florence a hundred years before. He secretly inveighed against the Spanish tyranny; he declared that he was appointed by the Almighty to overthrow it, and to establish a republic in its place; and he succeeded in enlisting the monastic orders and several bishops of Calabria in the cause. By their exhortations, a multitude of people and banditti of the province were roused to second him, and his design was embraced by great numbers of the provincial barons, whose names the historian declares that he suppresses from regard to their descendants. Campanella relied likewise on the assistance of the Turks in the meditated insurrection. But the secret of so extensive a conspiracy could not be preserved; the government got notice of it before it was ripe for execution; and Campanella and his chief priestly associates, with other conspirators, were adroitly arrested. Many of them were put to death under circumstances of atrocious cruelty; but Campanella himself, in the extremity of his torments, had the consummate address to render his confession so perplexed and incoherent that he was regarded as a madman, and sentenced only to perpetual imprisonment; from which he contrived at length to escape. He fled to France, and peaceably ended his life many years afterwards at Paris.
[Sidenote: [1600-1647 A.D.]]
After the suppression of this conspiracy, Naples was frequently agitated at different intervals by commotions, into which the lower people were driven by misery and want. These partial ebullitions of popular discontent were not, however, marked by any very serious character until the middle of the century, when the tyranny of the viceregal government and the disorders and wretchedness of the kingdom reached their consummation. The Spanish resources of taxation had been exhausted on the ordinary articles of consumption; the poor of the capital and kingdom had been successively compelled to forego the use of meat and bread by heavy duties; and the abundant fruits of their happy climate remained almost their sole means of support. The duke of Arcos, who was then viceroy, could find no other expedient to meet the still craving demands of his court upon a country already drained of its life-blood, than to impose a tax upon this last supply of food; and his measure roused the famishing people to desperation.
An accidental affray in the market of Naples swelled into a general insurrection of the populace of the capital; and an obscure and bold individual from the dregs of the people immediately rose to the head of the insurgents. Tommaso Aniello, better known under the name of Masaniello, a native of Amalfi and servant of a fisherman, had received an affront from the officers of the customs and sought an occasion of gratifying his lurking vengeance. Seizing the moment when the popular exasperation was at its height, he led the rioters to the attack and demolition of the custom-house. The flames of insurrection at once spread with uncontrollable violence; the palace of the viceroy was pillaged; and Arcos himself was driven for refuge to one of the castles of Naples. The infuriated populace murdered many of the nobles, burned the houses of all who were obnoxious to them, and filled the whole capital with flames and blood. Their youthful idol Masaniello, tattered and half naked, with a scaffold for his throne and the sword for his sceptre, commanded everywhere with absolute sway.
The viceroy, terrified into virtue at these excesses, which the long oppression of his court and his own tyranny had provoked, and finding the insurrection spreading through the provinces, consented to all the demands of Masaniello and his followers. By a treaty which he concluded with the insurgents, he solemnly promised the repeal of all the taxes imposed since the time of Charles V, and engaged that no new duties should thenceforth be levied; he guaranteed the ancient and long-violated privileges of parliament; and he bound himself by oath to an act of oblivion. A short interval of calm was thus gained; but the perfidious viceroy employed it only in gratifying the vanity of Masaniello by caresses and entertainments; until, having caused a potion to be administered to him in his wine at a banquet, he succeeded in unsettling his reason. The demagogue then by his extravagances and cruelties lost the affection of the people; and Arcos easily procured his assassination by some of his own followers.
[Sidenote: [1647-1648 A.D.]]
The viceroy had no sooner thus deprived the people of their young leader, whose native talents had rendered him truly formidable, than he immediately showed a determination to break all the articles of his compact. But the people, penetrating his treachery, flew again to arms; and the insurrection burst forth in the capital and provinces with more sanguinary fury than before. Again Arcos dissembled; and again the deluded people had laid down their arms; when, on the appearance of a Spanish fleet before Naples, the citadels and shipping suddenly opened a tremendous cannonade on the city; and at the same moment some thousand Spanish infantry disembarked and commenced a general massacre in the streets. The Neapolitans were confounded and panic-stricken at the aggravated perfidy; but they were a hundred times more numerous than the handful of troops which assailed them. When they recovered from their first consternation, they attacked their enemies in every street; and after a frightful carnage on both sides, the Spaniards were driven either into the fortresses or the sea.
After this conflict, the people, who, since the death of Masaniello, had fallen under the influence of Gennaro Annese, a soldier of mean birth, resolved fiercely and fearlessly to throw off the Spanish yoke altogether. It chanced that Henry, duke of Guise, who by maternal descent from the second line of Anjou had some hereditary pretensions to the Neapolitan crown, was at this juncture at Rome on his private business; and to him the insurgents applied, with the offer of constituting him their captain-general. At the same time they resolved to erect Naples into a republic under his presidency; and the duke, a high-spirited prince, hastened to assume a command which opened so many glorious prospects of ambition. The contest with the Spanish viceroy, his fortresses, and squadron, was then resumed with new bloodshed, and with indecisive results. But though the Neapolitans had hailed the name of a republic with rapture, they were, of all people, by their inconsistency and irresolution, least qualified for such a form of government. In this insurrection, they had for some time professed obedience to the king of Spain, while they were resisting his arms; and even now they wavered, and were divided among themselves. On the one hand, the duke de Guise, outraged by their excesses, and grasping perhaps at the establishment of an arbitrary power in his own person, began to exercise an odious authority, and showed himself intolerant of the influence of Annese: on the other, that leader of the people was irritated at finding himself deprived of all command. In his jealousy of Guise, he basely resolved to betray his countrymen to the Spaniards; and in the temporary absence of the duke, who had left the city with a small force to protect the introduction of some supplies, he opened the gates to the enemy (1648 A.D.). When the Spanish troops re-entered the capital the abject multitude received them with loud acclamations; and the duke of Guise himself, in endeavouring to effect his flight, was made prisoner, and sent to Spain. In one of those gloomy Spanish dungeons he was kept a prisoner and mourned for some years the vanity of his ambition.
[Sidenote: [1648-1674 A.D.]]
Thus, in a few hours, was the Spanish yoke again fixed on the necks of the prostrate Neapolitans; and it was riveted more firmly and grievously than ever. As soon as their submission was secured, almost all the men who had taken a prominent share in the insurrection, and who had been promised pardon, were seized, and under various pretences of their having mediated new troubles, were either publicly or privately executed. The traitor Gennaro Annese himself shared the same fate--a worthy example that neither the faith of oaths, nor the memory of eminent services are securities against the jealousy and vengeance of despotism. That despotism had no longer anything to fear from the degraded people who had returned under its iron sceptre. The miseries of Naples could not increase; but they were not diminished until the death of Charles II and the extinction of the Austrian dynasty of Spain in the last year of the century.
The sister kingdom of Sicily had long shared the lot of Naples, in all the distresses which the tyrannical and impolitic government of Spain could inflict upon the people. The Sicilians were only more fortunate than their continental neighbours, as the inferior wealth and resources of their island rendered them a less inviting prey to the insatiable necessities of Spain, to the drain of her wars, and the rapacity of her ministers. But even in Sicily, which by the excellence of its soil for raising corn seems intended to be the granary of Italy, the Spanish government succeeded in creating artificial dearth and squalid penury; and in the natural seat of abundance, the people were often without bread to eat. Their misery goaded them at length nearly to the commission of the same excesses as those which have just been described at Naples. A few months earlier than the revolt under Masaniello the lower orders rose at Palermo, chose for their leader one Giuseppe d’Alessi, a person of as low condition as the Neapolitan demagogue, and under his orders put their viceroy, the marquis of los Velos, to flight. But this insurrection at Palermo was less serious than that of Naples and, after passing through similar stages, was more easily quelled. The Sicilian viceroy, like Arcos, did not scruple at premeditated violation of the solemnity of oaths. Like him, he swore to grant the people all their demands, and a total amnesty; and yet, after perfidiously obtaining the assassination of the popular leader, he caused the inhabitants to be slaughtered in the streets, their chiefs to be hanged, and the burdens which he had been forced to remove to be laid on again.
This detestable admixture of perfidy and sanguinary violence bent the spirit of the Palermitans to the yoke, and Sicily relapsed into the tameness of suffering for above twenty-seven years; until this tranquillity was broken, during the general war in Europe, which preceded the Treaty of Nimeguen, by a new and more dangerous insurrection. The city of Messina had, until this epoch, in some measure enjoyed a republican constitution and was governed by a senate of its own, under the presidency only of a Spanish lieutenant, with very limited powers. This freedom of the city had insured its prosperity: its population amounted to sixty thousand souls, its commerce flourished, and its wealth rivalled the dreams of avarice. The Neapolitan historian asserts that the privileges of the people had rendered them insolent; but there is more reason to believe that the Spanish government looked with a jealous and unfriendly eye upon a happy independence, which was calculated to fill their other Sicilian subjects with bitter repinings at the gloomy contrast of their own wretched slavery. Several differences with successive viceroys regarding their privileges had inspired the citizens of Messina with discontent; and at length they rose in open rebellion against their Spanish governor, Don Diego de Soria, and expelled him from the city (1674 A.D.). Despairing of defending their rights, without assistance, against the whole power of the Spanish monarchy, they had then recourse to Louis XIV, and tempted him with the offer of the sovereignty of their city, and the eventual union of their whole island with the French dominions. Louis eagerly closed with a proposal, which opened at least an advantageous diversion in his war against Spain. He was proclaimed king of Sicily at Messina, and immediately despatched a small squadron to take possession of the city in his name.
[Sidenote: [1674-1679 A.D.]]
The arrival of his force was succeeded, early in the following year, by that of a formidable French fleet, under the duke de Vivonne; and the Messinese, being encouraged by these succours, rejected all the Spanish offers of indemnity and accommodation. On the other hand, the court of Madrid, being roused to exertion by the danger of losing the whole island, had fitted out a strong armament to secure its preservation and the recovery of Messina; and a Dutch fleet under the famous De Ruyter arrived in the Mediterranean to co-operate with the Spanish forces. The war in Sicily was prosecuted with fury on both sides for nearly four years; and several sanguinary battles were fought off the coast, between the combined fleets and that of France. In all of these the French had the advantage: in one, the gallant De Ruyter fell; and in another, the French, under Vivonne and Duquesne, with inferior force, attacked the Dutch and Spanish squadrons of twenty-seven sail of the line, nineteen galleys, and several fire-ships at anchor, under the guns of Palermo, and gained a complete victory. This success placed Messina in security, and might have enabled both Naples and Sicily to throw off the onerous dominion of Spain. But the spiritless and subjugated people evinced no disposition to rise against their oppressors; and all the efforts of the French eventually failed in extending the authority of their monarch beyond the walls of Messina.
The French king had lost the hope of possessing himself of all Sicily, and was already weary of supporting the Messinese, when the conferences for a general peace were opened at Nimeguen. There, dictating as a conqueror, he might at least have stipulated for the ancient rights of the Messinese, and insisted upon an amnesty for the brave citizens, who, relying on the sacred obligation of protection, had utterly provoked the vengeance of their Spanish governors by placing themselves under his sceptre. But, that his pride might not suffer by a formal evacuation of the city as a condition of the approaching peace, he basely preferred the gratification of this absurd punctilio to the real preservation of honour and the common dictates of humanity. His troops were secretly ordered to abandon Messina before the signature of peace; and so precipitate was the embarkation that the wretched inhabitants, stricken with sudden terror at their impending fate, despairing of pardon from their former governors, and hopeless of successful resistance against them, had only a few hours to choose between exile and anticipated death. Seven thousand of them hurried on board the French fleet, without having time to secure even their money or portable articles, and the French commander, fearing that his vessels would be overcrowded, sailed from the harbour; while two thousand more of the fugitives yet remained on the beach with outstretched arms, in the last agonies of despair, vainly imploring him with piercing cries not to abandon them to their merciless enemies.
The condition of the Messinese who fled for refuge to France, and of those who remained in the city, differed little in the event. Louis XIV, after affording the former an asylum for scarcely more than one short year, inhumanly chased them in the last stage of destitution from his dominions. About five hundred of them, rashly venturing to return to their country, under the faith of Spanish passports, were seized on their arrival at Messina, and either executed or condemned to the galleys. Many others, even of the highest rank, were reduced to beg their bread over Europe, or to congregate in bands, and rob on the highways; and the miserable remnant, plunged into the abyss of desperation, passed into Turkey, and fearfully consummated their wretchedness by the renunciation of their faith. Their brethren, who had not quitted Messina, had meanwhile at first been deluded with the hope of pardon by the Spanish viceroy of Sicily. But the amnesty which he published was revoked by special orders from Madrid; and all, who had been in any way conspicuous in the insurrection, were either put to death or banished. Messina was deprived of all its privileges; the town-house was razed to the ground; and on the spot was erected a galling monument of the degradation of the city--a pyramid surmounted by the statue of the king of Spain, cast with the metal of the great bell which had formerly summoned the people to their free parliaments. The purposes of Spanish tyranny were accomplished: the population of Messina had dwindled from sixty to eleven thousand persons; and the obedience of the city was insured by a desolation from which it has never since risen to its ancient prosperity.
[Sidenote: [1600-1679 A.D.]]
Thus were the annals of Naples and Sicily distinguished only, during the seventeenth century, by paroxysms of popular suffering. The condition of central Italy was more obscure and tranquil; for the maladministration of its rulers did not occasion the same resistance. Yet if the papal government was less decidedly tyrannical and rapacious than that of Spain, the evils, which had become inherent in it during preceding ages, remained undiminished and incurable; and agricultural and commercial industry was permanently banished from the Roman states. Meanwhile the succession of the pontiffs was marked by few circumstances to arrest our attention. To Clement VIII, who reigned at the opening of the century, succeeded in 1604 Leo XI, of the family of Medici, who survived his election only a few weeks; and on his death the cardinal Camillo Borghese was raised to the tiara by the title of Paul V. Filled with extravagant and exploded opinions of the authority of the holy see, Paul V signalised the commencement of his pontificate by the impotent attempt to revive those pretensions of the papal jurisdiction and supremacy over the powers of the earth, which, in the dark ages, had inundated Italy and the empire with blood. He thus involved the papacy in disputes with several of the Catholic governments of Europe, and in a serious difference with Venice in particular. After his merited defeat on this occasion, he cautiously avoided to compromise his authority by the repetition of any similar efforts; and during the remainder of his pontificate of sixteen years, his only cares were to embellish the ecclesiastical capital, and to enrich his nephews with vast estates in the Roman patrimony, which thus became the hereditary possessions of the family of Borghese.
Paul V, on his death in 1621, was succeeded by Gregory XV, whose insignificant pontificate filled only two years; and in 1623 the conclave placed the cardinal Maffeo Barberini in the chair of St. Peter, under the name of Urban VIII. This pope, during a reign of twenty-one years, was wholly under the guidance of his two nephews, the cardinal Antonio and Taddeo Barberini, prefect of Rome. These ambitious relatives were not satisfied with the riches which he heaped upon them; and their project of acquiring for their family the Roman duchies of Castro and Ronciglione, fiefs held of the church by the house of Farnese, involved the papacy in a war with Parma. Odoardo Farnese, the reigning duke of Parma, had contracted immense debts to charitable foundations at Rome, of which he neglected to pay even the interest. He thus afforded Taddeo Barberini, as prefect of that capital, a pretext for summoning him before the apostolic chamber; and on his contemptuous neglect of the citation, the Barberini obtained an order for sequestrating his Roman fiefs. The duke of Parma had recourse to arms for his defence; the pope excommunicated him; and hostilities commenced between him and Taddeo, who acted as general of the church. But this war of the Barberini, as it has been named, the only strictly Italian contest of the century, produced no decisive result. It was invested with a ridiculous character by the cowardice of Taddeo and the papal troops, who, to the number of eighteen thousand, fled before a handful of cavalry under the duke Odoardo. After this disgraceful check, the Barberini were but too happy to obtain a suspension of arms; and the war was shortly terminated by a treaty, which left the combatants in their original state (1644).
Urban VIII, or rather his nephews, had thus failed in gaining possession of the fiefs of Castro and Ronciglione; but the pope had succeeded some years before in securing to the holy see a much more important acquisition, which he did not venture to appropriate to his family. This was the duchy of Urbino, which had remained under the sovereignty of the family of Rovere since the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Julius II had induced the last prince of the line of Montefeltro to adopt his nephew for a successor. The house of Rovere had for 120 years maintained the intellectual splendour of the little court of Urbino, the most polished in Italy; but Urban VIII persuaded the aged duke, Francesco Maria, who had no male heirs, to abdicate his sovereignty in favour of the church. The duchy of Urbino was annexed to the Roman states; and the industry and prosperity for which it had been remarkable under its own princes immediately withered.[c]
GALILEO AND THE CHURCH
[Sidenote: [1610-1632 A.D.]]
During the pontificate of Urban VIII, an interesting controversy between science and theology reached a culmination in the persecution of Italy’s most famous scientist of the century, Galileo. This great experimental philosopher had developed the telescope, and in 1610 made the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter. This discovery, along with others almost equally interesting, was announced in Galileo’s Nuncius Sidereus, published at Venice in 1610.[a]
The title of this work will best convey an idea of the claim it made to public notice: “The Sidereal Messenger, announcing great and very wonderful spectacles, and offering them to the consideration of everyone, but especially of philosophers and astronomers; which have been observed by Galileo Galilei, etc., by the assistance of a perspective glass lately invented by him; namely, in the face of the moon, in innumerable fixed stars in the milky-way, in nebulous stars, but especially in four planets which revolve round Jupiter at different intervals and periods with a wonderful celerity; which, hitherto not known to any one, the author has recently been the first to detect, and has decreed to call the Medicean stars.”
The interest this discovery excited was intense; and men were at this period so little habituated to accommodate their convictions on matters of science to newly observed facts that several of “the paper-philosophers,” as Galileo termed them, appear to have thought they could get rid of these new objects by writing books against them. The effect which the discovery had upon the reception of the Copernican system was immediately very considerable. It showed that the real universe was very different from that which ancient philosophers had imagined, and suggested at once the thought that it contained mechanism more various and more vast than had yet been conjectured. And when the system of the planet Jupiter thus offered to the bodily eye a model or image of the solar system according to the views of Copernicus, it supported the belief of such an arrangement of the planets, by an analogy all but irresistible.
Later in the same year Galileo observed and reported the phases of the planet Venus, thus further corroborating the Copernican doctrine. This doctrine when first promulgated by Copernicus had apparently excited no very great alarm among the theologians of the time. But its assertion and confirmation by Galileo now provoked a storm of controversy, and was visited by severe condemnation. Galileo’s own behaviour appears to have provoked the interference of the ecclesiastical authorities; but there must have been a great change in the temper of the times to make it possible for his adversaries to bring down the sentence of the Inquisition upon opinions which had been so long current without giving any serious offence.
The heliocentric doctrine had for a century been making its way into the minds of thoughtful men, on the general ground of its simplicity and symmetry. Galileo appears to have thought that now, when these original recommendations of the system had been reinforced by his own discoveries and reasonings, it ought to be universally acknowledged as a truth and a reality. And when arguments against the fixity of the sun and the motion of the earth were adduced from the expressions of Scripture, he could not be satisfied without maintaining his favourite opinion to be conformable to Scripture as well as to philosophy; and he was very eager in his attempts to obtain from authority a declaration to this effect. The ecclesiastical authorities were naturally averse to express themselves in favour of a novel opinion, startling to the common mind, and contrary to the most obvious meaning of the words of the Bible; and when they were compelled to pronounce, they decided against Galileo and his doctrines. He was accused before the Inquisition in 1615; but at that period the result was that he was merely recommended to confine himself to the mathematical reasonings upon the system, and to abstain from meddling with the Scripture. Galileo’s zeal for his opinions soon led him again to bring the question under the notice of the pope, and the result was a declaration of the Inquisition that the doctrine of the earth’s motion appeared to be contrary to the sacred Scripture. Galileo was prohibited from defending and teaching this doctrine in any manner, and promised obedience to this injunction. But in 1632 he published his Dialogo delli due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo, Tolemaico e Copernicano;[g] and in this, he defended the heliocentric system by all the strongest arguments which its admirers used. Not only so, but he introduced into this Dialogue a character under the name of Simplicius, in whose mouth was put the defence of all the ancient dogmas, and who was represented as defeated at all points in the discussion; and he prefixed to the Dialogue a notice, To the Discreet Reader, in which, in a vein of transparent irony, he assigned his reasons for the publication. “Some years ago,” he says, “a wholesome edict was promulgated at Rome, which, in order to check the perilous scandals of the present age, imposed silence upon the Pythagorean opinion of the motion of the earth. There were not wanting,” he adds, “persons who rashly asserted that this decree was the result, not of a judicious inquiry, but of a passion ill-informed; and complaints were heard that counsellors, utterly unacquainted with astronomical observations, ought not to be allowed, with their undue prohibitions, to clip the wings of speculative intellects. At the hearing of rash lamentations like these, my zeal could not keep silence.” And he then goes on to say that he wishes, by the publication of his Dialogue, to show that the subject had been fully examined at Rome. The result of this was that Galileo was condemned for his infraction of the injunction laid upon him in 1616; his Dialogue was prohibited; he himself was commanded to abjure on his knees the doctrine which he had taught; and this abjuration he performed.
The ecclesiastical authorities having once declared the doctrine of the earth’s motion to be contrary to Scripture and heretical, long adhered in form to this declaration, and did not allow the Copernican system to be taught in any other way than as an “hypothesis.”[f]
THE SUCCESSORS OF URBAN VIII
[Sidenote: [1632-1660 A.D.]]
Urban VIII was succeeded in 1644 by Innocent X, who revived with more success the pretensions of the holy see to the fiefs of Castro and Ronciglione. The unliquidated debts of the house of Farnese were still the pretext for the seizure of these possessions; but the papal officers were expelled from Castro, and the bishop, whom Innocent had installed in that see, was murdered by order of the minister of Ranuccio II, duke of Parma. The pope was so highly exasperated by these acts, that he directed his whole force against Castro; the Parmesan troops were repulsed in an attempt to succour the place; and when famine had compelled it to surrender, the pope, confounding the innocent inhabitants with the perpetrators of the assassination, caused the city to be razed to its foundations, and a pyramid to be erected on the ruins commemorative of his vengeance. The restitution of these fiefs to the house of Parma was made a condition of the peace of the Pyrenees; but Alexander VII, who succeeded Innocent X in 1656, contrived after many negotiations to obtain permission to hold them in pledge, until Ranuccio II should discharge the debts of his crown. By the failure of the duke to satisfy this engagement, the disputed states remained finally annexed to the popedom.
The pontificate of Alexander VII proved, however, an epoch of grievous humiliation for the pride of the holy see. In 1660, an affray was occasioned at Rome through the privileges, arrogantly claimed by the French ambassadors, of protecting all the quarter of the city near their residence from the usual operations of justice; and Louis XIV determined, in the insolence of his power, to support a pretension which would be intolerable to the meanest court in Europe. He sent the duke of Créqui as his ambassador to Rome, with a numerous and well-armed retinue, to brave the pope in his own capital. Créqui took formal military possession of a certain number of streets near the palace of his embassy, according to the extent over which the right of asylum had been permitted by usage to his predecessors. He placed guards throughout this circuit, as if it had been one of his master’s fortresses; and the papal government, anxious to avoid a rupture with the haughty monarch of France, overlooked the usurpation. But every effort to preserve peace was ineffectual against the resolution which had been taken on the opposite side to provoke some open quarrel. The duke of Créqui’s people made it their occupation to outrage the police of Rome, and to insult the Corsican guard of the pope. Still, even these excesses of the French were tolerated by Alexander, until they rose to such a height that the peaceful citizens dared no longer to pass through the streets by night. At length the Corsican guards were goaded into a fray with the followers of the embassy, which brought matters to the crisis desired by Louis. While the Corsicans were violently irritated by the death of one of their comrades in the broil, they happened to meet the carriage of the duchess of Créqui; they fired upon and killed two of her attendants, and the duke immediately quitted Rome, as if his master had received in his person an unprovoked and mortal affront.
[Sidenote: [1660-1664 A.D.]]
Alexander VII soon found that Louis XIV was resolved to avail himself of the most serious colouring which could be given to this affair. The king expelled the pope’s nuncio from France; he seized upon Avignon and its papal dependencies; and he assembled an army in Provence, which crossed the Alps to take satisfaction in Rome itself. The pope at first showed an inclination to assert the common rights of every crown with becoming spirit; and he endeavoured to engage several Catholic princes to protect the dignity of the holy see. But none of the great powers were in a condition at that juncture to undertake his defence. His own temporal strength was quite unequal to a struggle with France; the spiritual arms of the Vatican had now fallen into contempt; and he had the bitter mortification of being obliged to submit to the terms of accommodation which Louis XIV imperiously dictated. The principal of these were the banishment of all the persons who had taken a part in the insult offered to the train of the French ambassador; the suppression of the Corsican guard; the erection of a column, even in Rome, with a legend to proclaim the injury and its reparation: and, finally, the mission of one of the pope’s own family to Paris to make his apologies. All these humiliating conditions were subscribed to, and rigorously enforced. Cardinal Chigi, the nephew of Alexander VII, was the first ecclesiastic despatched to any monarch, to demand pardon for the holy see.
[Sidenote: [1600-1700 A.D.]]
Alexander VII did not survive this memorable epoch of degradation for the papacy above three years. He was succeeded in 1667 by Clement IX, who wore the triple crown over two years, and was replaced in 1670 by Clement X. The unimportant reign of this pope occupied seven years, and closed in 1676. The pontificate of his successor, Innocent XI, was more remarkable for the renewal of the quarrel respecting the privileges of the French embassy. To terminate the flagrant abuses which these privileges engendered, Innocent published a decree that no foreign minister should thenceforth be accredited at the papal court, until he had expressly renounced every pretension of the kind. This reasonable provision was admitted without opposition by all the Catholic monarchs, except Louis XIV: but he alone refused to recognise its justice; and on the death of the duke d’Estrées, his ambassador at Rome, he sent the marquis de Lavardin to succeed him, and to enforce the maintenance of the old privileges. For this purpose, Lavardin was attended by a body of eight hundred armed men; and the sovereignty of the pope was again insolently braved in his own capital. The guards of Lavardin violently excluded the papal police from all access to the quarter of the city which they occupied; and Innocent at length excommunicated the ambassador. This proceeding would at Paris have excited only ridicule; but in Rome the outraged pride of the court, and the prejudices which still enveloped the ancient throne of papal supremacy and superstition, excluded Lavardin from the pale of society; and he found the solitude in which he was left so irksome that he at last petitioned to be recalled.
The pontificate of Innocent XI terminated in 1689; and it was not until three years after his death that Louis XIV was at length persuaded to desist from the assertion of a pretended right, which could have no other object than to gratify his pride at the expense of multiplying crime and anarchy, in the chosen seat of the religion which he professed. This was the last event in the papal annals of the seventeenth century which deserves to be recorded. We have already found the reigns of several of the popes entirely barren of circumstance; and after that of Innocent XI, we should be altogether at a loss how to bestow a single comment upon the obscure pontificates of his next three successors: of Alexander VIII, who died in 1691; of Innocent XII; and of Clement XI, who was placed in the chair of St. Peter in the last year of the century.
The two contests with the popedom, which the house of Farnese maintained for the possession of the fiefs of Castro and Ronciglione, were almost the only remarkable circumstances in the annals of the duchy of Parma during this century. Ranuccio I, the son of the hero Alessandro Farnese, who wore the ducal crown at its commencement, resembled his father in no quality but mere courage. His long reign was distinguished only for its habitual tyranny and avarice; and for the wanton cruelty with which he caused a great number of his nobility and other subjects to be put to death in 1612, that he might confiscate their property under the charge of a conspiracy, which appears to have had no real existence. He was succeeded in 1622 by his son, Odoard, whose misplaced confidence in his military talents plunged his subjects into many calamities. Vainly imagining that the martial virtues of his grandfather Alessandro were hereditary in his person, he eagerly sought occasion of entering on a career of activity and distinction in the field, for which his egotistical presumption and his excessive corpulence equally disqualified him. By engaging, in 1635, in the war between France and Spain in northern Italy, as the ally of the former power, he exposed his states to cruel ravages; and though, in the subsequent war of the Barberini he was indebted to the misconduct of the papal army for the preservation of his fiefs, that contest did not terminate until he had consumed the resources of his duchy by his prodigality and ignorance.
The death of Odoard, in 1646, relieved his subjects from the apprehension of a continuance of similar evils from his restless temper; and the mild and indolent character of his son Ranuccio II seemed to promise an era of greater tranquillity. But Ranuccio was always governed by unworthy favourites, who oppressed his people; and it was one of these ministers, whose violence, as we have seen, provoked the destruction of Castro, and entailed the loss of its dependencies on the duchy of Parma. The long and feeble reign of Ranuccio II, thus marked only by disgrace, was a fitting prelude to the extinction of the sovereignty and existence of the house of Farnese. Buried in slothful indulgence and lethargy, the members of the ducal family were oppressed with hereditary obesity, which shortened their lives. Ranuccio II himself survived to the year 1694; but he might already anticipate the approaching failure of the male line of his dynasty. Odoard, the eldest of his sons, had died before him of suffocation, the consequence of corpulence; the two others, Don Francesco and Don Vincente, who were destined successively to ascend the throne after him, resembled their brother in their diseased constitutions; and the probability that these princes would die without issue rendered their niece, Elizabeth (Elisabetta) Farnese, daughter of Odoard, sole presumptive heiress of the states of her family.
LESSER PRINCIPALITIES
Of the dukes of Parma, whose reigns filled the seventeenth century, not one deserved either the love of his people or the respect of posterity. The contemporary annals of the princes of Este were graced by more ability and virtue. But the reduction of the dominion of those sovereigns to the narrow limits of the duchies of Modena and Reggio diminished the consequence which their ancestors had enjoyed in Italy during the preceding century, before the seizure of Ferrara by the Roman see. Don Cesare of Este, whose weakness had submitted to this spoliation, reigned until the year 1628. His subjects of Modena forgave him a pusillanimity which had rendered their city the elegant seat of his beneficent reign. His son, Alfonso III, who succeeded him, was stricken with such wondrous affliction for the death of his wife, only a few months after his accession to the ducal crown, that he abdicated his throne, and retired into a Capuchin convent in the Tyrol. On this event, his son Francesco I assumed his sceptre in 1629, and reigned nearly thirty years. Joining in the wars of the times in upper Italy between France and Spain, and alternately espousing their opposite causes, Francesco I acquired the reputation of one of the ablest captains of his age, as he was also one of the best sovereigns. His skilful conduct and policy in these unimportant contests were rewarded by the extension of his territories; and in 1636, the little principality of Correggio (more famous in the annals of art than of war) was annexed to his imperial fiefs. Neither the short reign of his son and successor, Alfonso IV, which commenced in 1658 and ended in 1662, nor that of his grandson, Francesco II, which began with a feeble minority and terminated after a protracted administration of the same character, demand our particular notice; and in 1694, the cardinal Rinaldo, son of the first Francesco, succeeded his nephew, and entered upon a reign which was reserved for signal calamities in the first years of the new century.
In the affairs of Parma and Modena, during the century before us, there is scarcely anything to invite our attention; but the fortunes of Mantua, so obscure in the preceding age, were rendered somewhat remarkable in this by the wars which the disputed succession to its sovereignty occasioned. The reign of Vincente I, who, having succeeded to the ducal crowns of Mantua and Montferrat in 1587, still wore them at the opening of the seventeenth century, and that of his successor Francesco IV, were equally obscure and unimportant. But, on the death of Francesco, in 1612, some troubles arose, from the pretensions which the duke of Savoy advanced anew over the state of Montferrat. It was not until after several years that negotiations terminated the indecisive hostilities which were thus occasioned, and in which Spain interfered directly against the duke of Savoy, while France more indirectly assisted him. By the Treaty of Asti in 1615, and of Madrid in 1617, the duke of Savoy engaged to leave Montferrat to the house of Gonzaga, until the emperor should decide on his claims. The last duke of Mantua, Francesco IV, had left only a daughter: but as Montferrat was a feminine fief, that state descended to her; while her father’s two brothers, Ferdinando and Vincente II, reigned successively over Mantua without leaving issue. On the death of the latter of these two princes, both of whom shortened their days by their infamous debaucheries, the direct male line of the ducal house of Gonzaga became extinct; and the right of succession to the Mantua duchy devolved on a collateral branch, descended from a younger son of the duke Federigo II, who had died in 1540. This part of the family of Gonzaga was established in France, in possession of the first honours of nobility, and was now represented by Charles, duke de Nevers. By sending his son, the duke of Rethel, to Mantua in the last illness of Vincente II, Charles not only secured the succession to that duchy, which he might lawfully claim, but reannexed Montferrat to its diadem. For, on the very same night on which Vincente II expired, the duke of Rethel received the hand of Maria, the daughter of Francesco IV, and heiress of Montferrat; and the right of inheritance to all the states of the ducal line thus centred in the branch of Nevers.
[Sidenote: [1630-1680 A.D.]]
The new ducal house of Gonzaga did not commence its sovereignty over Mantua and Montferrat without violent opposition. The duke of Savoy renewed his claim upon the latter province; and Cesare Gonzaga, duke of Guastalla, the representative of a distant branch of that family, made pretensions to the duchy of Mantua. At the same time the Spanish government thought to take advantage of a disputed succession, for the purpose of annexing the Mantuan to the Milanese states; and the emperor Ferdinand II placed the duke of Nevers under the ban of the empire for having taken possession of its dependent fiefs without waiting for a formal investiture at its hands. The objects of Ferdinand were evidently to revive the imperial jurisdiction in Italy, and to enrich the Spanish dynasty of his family by the acquisition of these states. To promote these combined plans of the house of Austria an imperial army crossed the Alps, and surprised the city of Mantua, which was sacked with merciless ferocity (1630). At the same time the duke of Savoy concluded a treaty with Spain, for the partition of Montferrat; and the new duke of Mantua seemed likely to be dispossessed of the whole of his dominions. But fortunately for him, it was at this juncture that Cardinal Richelieu had entered on his famous design of humbling the power and ambition of both the Spanish and German dynasties of the house of Austria; and a French army, under Louis XIII in person, forcing the pass at Susa, crossed the Alps to support the Gonzagas of Nevers against all their enemies. We pass over the uninteresting details of the general war, which was thus kindled in northern Italy by the Mantuan succession. When Richelieu himself appeared on the theatre of contest, at the head of a formidable French army, all resistance was hopeless; and his success shortly produced an accommodation between the belligerents in the peninsula, by which the emperor was compelled, in the settlement of the matter, to bestow the disputed investiture of Mantua and Montferrat upon Charles of Nevers (1631).
This prince, who thenceforth reigned at Mantua under the title of Carlo I, retained that duchy without further opposition. But in 1635 he was drawn, by the memory of the eminent services which France had rendered him, into an alliance with that power against Spain, in the new war which broke out between the rival dynasties of Bourbon and Austria. Such a connection could serve, however, only to destroy the repose and endanger the safety of his duchies. Neither Carlo I nor his son Carlo II, who succeeded him in 1637, could prevent Montferrat from being perpetually overrun and ravaged by the contending armies of France, Spain, the empire, and Savoy; and the Mantuan dukes abandoned almost every effort to retain the possession of that province until, after being for above twenty years the seat of warfare and desolation, it was at length restored to Carlo II by the general Peace of the Pyrenees.
Carlo II died in 1665; and his son Ferdinando Carlo commenced the long and disgraceful reign with which the sovereignty and race of the Gonzagas were to terminate early in the next century. This prince, more dissolute, more insensible of dishonour, more deeply buried in grovelling vice than almost any of his predecessors, was worthy of being the last of a family which, since its elevation to the tyranny of Mantua, had, during four centuries of sovereignty, relieved its career of blood and debauchery by few examples of true greatness and virtue. To gratify his extravagance, and indulge in his low and vicious excesses, Ferdinando Carlo crushed his people under grievous taxation. To raise fresh supplies, which his exhausted states could no longer afford, he shamelessly in 1680 sold Casale, the capital of Montferrat, to Louis XIV, who immediately occupied the place with twelve thousand men under his general Catinat. The sums which the duke thus raised, either by extortion from his oppressed subjects or from this disgraceful transaction, were dissipated in abandoned pleasures in the carnivals of Venice, among a people who openly evinced their contempt for him, and whose sovereign oligarchy passed a decree forbidding any of their noble body from mingling in his society.
TUSCANY
[Sidenote: [1600-1670 A.D.]]
From the affairs of Mantua, we may pass to those of Tuscany; but the transition is attended with little augmentation of interest. A common dearth of attraction marks the annals of most of the despotisms of Italy; and when Tuscany descended to the rank of a duchy, her pre-eminence of splendour survived only in the past, and her modern story sank into the same ignominious obscurity with that of Parma, and Modena, and Mantua. We are reminded only of the existence of the solitary republic which survived in this quarter of Italy, to wonder how Lucca escaped subjugation to the power whose dominions encircled and hemmed in her narrow territory; and we are permitted to contemplate her ancient republican rivals, Florence, Siena, and Pisa, only as the capital and the provincial cities of the ducal sovereigns of Tuscany. Of these princes of the house of Medici, four reigned successively during the seventeenth century. At its commencement, the ducal crown was worn by Ferdinand I, whose personal vices and political talents have been already noticed. After the failure of his project to throw off the Spanish yoke, his efforts were exclusively devoted to the encouragement of commerce and maritime industry among his subjects; and the enlightened measures to which he was prompted by a thorough knowledge of the science of government, and a keen perception of his own interests, were rewarded with signal success. To attract the trade of the Mediterranean to the shores of Tuscany, he made choice of the castle of Livorno (Leghorn) for the seat of a free port. He improved the natural advantages of its harbour, which had already excited the attention of some of his predecessors, by several grand and useful works; he invested the town which rose on the site with liberal privileges; and from this epoch, Livorno continued to flourish, until it attained the mercantile prosperity and opulence which have rendered it one of the first maritime cities of the peninsula. The skilful policy which Ferdinand I pursued in this and other respects produced a rapid influx of wealth into his states; and before his death, which occurred in 1609, he had amassed immense treasures.
Several of the first princes of the ducal house of Medici seemed to have inherited some portion of that commercial ability by which their merchant ancestors had founded the grandeur of their house; and they profited by the contempt or ignorance which precluded other Italian princes from rivalling them in the cultivation of the same pursuits. Cosmo II, the son and successor of Ferdinand, imitated his example with even more earnest zeal, and with more brilliant success. But on his death, in 1621, the minority of his son Ferdinand II destroyed the transient prosperity of the ducal government. The rich treasury of the two preceding dukes was drained in furnishing troops and subsidies to Spain and Austria; and Ferdinand, who was left under the guardianship of his grandmother and mother, was only released from female tutelage on attaining the age of manhood, to exhibit during his long reign all the enfeebling consequences of such an education. His character was mild, peaceable, and benevolent; and his administration responded to his personal qualities. From this epoch, the political importance of Tuscany entirely ceased; the state was stricken with moral paralysis; and lethargy and indolence became the only characteristics of the government and the people.
Ferdinand II, however, was not destitute of talents; and the enthusiasm with which the grand-duke and his brother promoted the cultivation of science at least protected his inactive reign from the reproach of utter insignificance. But his son, Cosmo III, who ascended his throne in 1670, reigned with a weakness which was relieved by no intellectual tastes. Unhappy and suspicious in his temper, his life was embittered by domestic disagreements with his duchess; fanatical and bigoted, he was constantly surrounded and governed by monks; and at the close of the seventeenth century, Florence, once the throne of literature, the fair and splendid seat of all the arts which can embellish and illumine life, was converted into the temple of gloomy superstition and hypocrisy.
PIEDMONT AND SAVOY
[Sidenote: [1027-1700 A.D.]]
While the other ducal thrones of Italy were thus for the most part filled only by slothful voluptuaries, that of Savoy seemed reserved for a succession of sovereigns, whose fearless activity and political talents constantly placed their characters in brilliant contrast with the indolence and imbecility of their despicable contemporaries.[c] The history of this house shows in a striking manner how the destinies of a nation may depend on the fortunes of a princely family. During eight centuries the princes of Savoy have, in the words of Charles Emmanuel III, “treated Italy as an artichoke to be eaten leaf by leaf.” Their work is now perfected in the freedom of the state.
The descent of Humbert the Whitehanded, the founder of the family, is uncertain, but he was probably a son of Amadeus, the great-grandson of Boson of Provence. In reward for services rendered to Rudolf III of Arles, Humbert obtained from him in 1027 the counties of Savoy and Maurienne, and from the emperor Conrad the Salic, Chablais, and the lower Valais. On his death in 1048 he was succeeded perhaps by his eldest son, Amadeus I, but eventually by his fourth son, Otho, who, by his marriage with Adelaide of Susa, obtained the counties of Turin and the Val d’Aosta, and so acquired a footing in the valley of the Po. Otho was succeeded in 1060 by his son Amadeus II, who maintained a judicious neutrality between his brother-in-law, the emperor Henry IV, and the pope. In reward for his mediation he obtained from the former, after Canossa, the province of Bugey. The accession of his son Humbert II in 1080 brought fresh increase of territory in the valley of the Tarantaise, and in 1091 this prince succeeded to the dignities of his grandmother, Adelaide. Amadeus III came to the throne in 1103, and in 1111 his states were created counties of the empire by Henry V. On his way home from the crusades in 1149 Amadeus died at Nicosia, and was succeeded by his son Humbert III. The prince took the part of the pope against Barbarossa, who ravaged his territories until Humbert’s death in 1188. The guardians of his son Thomas reconciled their ward and the emperor. He received from Henry VI accessions of territory in Vaud, Bugey, and Valais, with the title of imperial vicar in Piedmont and Lombardy. He was followed in 1233 by Amadeus IV. A campaign against the inhabitants of Valais ended in the annexation of their district, and his support of Frederick II against the pope caused the erection of Chablais and Aosta into a duchy.
[Sidenote: [1253-1482 A.D.]]
In 1253 his son Boniface succeeded to his states at the age of nine, but after giving proofs of his valour by defeating the troops of Charles of Anjou before Turin, he was taken prisoner and died of grief (1263).
The Salic law now came into operation for the first time, and Peter, the uncle of Boniface, was called to the throne. This prince, on the marriage of his nieces, Eleanor and Sancha of Provence, with Henry III of England and Richard, earl of Cornwall, had visited England, where he had been created earl of Richmond, and built a palace in London, afterwards called Savoy House. In return he recognised the claims of Richard to the imperial throne, and received from him Kyburg, in the diocese of Lausanne. At his death in 1268 he was succeeded by his brother Philip I, who died in 1285, when their nephew Amadeus V came to the throne. This prince, surnamed the Great, united Baugé and Bresse to his states in right of his wife Sibylla, and later on lower Faucigny and part of Geneva. For his second wife he married Mary of Brabant, sister of the emperor Henry VII, from whom he received the seigniory of Aosta. His life was passed in continual and victorious warfare, and one of his last exploits was to force the Turks to raise the siege of Rhodes. He died in 1323. His son Edward succeeded him, and dying in 1329, was followed by his brother Aymon. This prince died in 1343, when his son Amadeus VI ascended the throne. His reign was, like his grandfather’s, a series of petty wars, from which he came out victorious and with extended territory, until he died of the plague (1383). The promising reign of his son Amadeus VII was cut short by a fall from his horse in 1391. Before his death, however, he had received the allegiance of Barcelonnette, Ventimiglia, Villafranca, and Nice, so gaining access to the Mediterranean.
His son Amadeus VIII now came to the throne, under the guardianship of his grandmother Bona (Bonne) de Bourbon. On attaining his majority he first directed his efforts to strengthening his power in the outlying provinces. The states of Savoy now extended from the Lake of Geneva to the Mediterranean, and from the Saône to the Sesia. Amadeus threw all the weight of his power on the side of the emperor, and Sigismund in 1416 erected the counties of Savoy and Piedmont into duchies. At this time, too, the duke recovered the fief of Piedmont, which had been granted to Philip, prince of Achaia, by Amadeus V. The county of Vercelli afterwards rewarded him for joining the league against the duke of Milan, but in 1434 a plot against his life made him put into execution a plan he had long formed, of retiring to a monastery. He accordingly made his son Louis lieutenant-general of the dukedom, and assumed the habit of the knights of St. Maurice. But he was not destined to find the repose he sought. The prelates assembled at the council of Bâle voted the deposition of Pope Eugenius IV, and elected Amadeus in his place, as Felix V. He abdicated his dukedom definitely, but without much gain in temporal honours, for the schism continued until the death of Eugenius in 1447, shortly after which it was healed by the honourable submission of Felix to Nicholas V. The early years of Louis’ reign were under the guidance of his father, and peace and prosperity blessed his people; but he afterwards made an alliance with the dauphin which brought him into conflict with Charles VII of France, though a lasting reconciliation was soon effected. His son Amadeus IX succeeded in 1465, but, though his virtues led to his beatification, his bodily sufferings made him assign the regency to his wife Yolande, a daughter of Charles VII. He died in 1472, when his son Philibert I succeeded to the throne and to his share in the contests of Yolande with her brother and brothers-in-law. His reign lasted only ten years, when he was succeeded by his brother Charles I. This prince raised for a time by his valour the drooping fortunes of his house, but he died in 1489 at the age of thirty-one, having inherited from his aunt, Charlotte of Lusignan, her pretensions to the titular kingdoms of Cyprus, Jerusalem, and Armenia. He was succeeded by his son Charles II, an infant, who, dying in 1496, was followed by Philip II, brother of Amadeus XI. He died in 1497, leaving Philibert II, who succeeded him, and Charles III, who ascended the throne on his brother’s death in 1504. In spite of himself Charles was drawn into the wars of the period, but the decisive victory of Francis at Marignano gave the duke the opportunity of negotiating the conference at Bologna which led to the conclusion of peace in 1516. Charles was less fortunate in the part he took in the wars between Francis I and Charles V, the brother-in-law of his wife. He tried to maintain a strict neutrality, but his attendance at the emperor’s coronation at Bologna in 1530 was imperative in his double character of kinsman and vassal. The visit was fatal to him, for he was rewarded with the county of Asti, and this so displeased the French king that on the revolt of Geneva to Protestantism in 1532, Francis sent help to the citizens. Berne and Fribourg did likewise, and so expelled the duke from Lausanne and Vaud. Charles now sided definitely with the emperor, and Francis at once raised some imaginary claims to his states. On their rejection the French army marched into Savoy, descended on Piedmont, and seized Turin (1536). Charles V came to the aid of his ally, and invested the city, but was obliged to make peace. France kept Savoy, and the emperor occupied Piedmont, so that only Nice remained to the duke. On the resumption of hostilities in 1541 Piedmont again suffered. In 1544 the Treaty of Crespy restored his states to Charles, but the terms were not carried out, and he died of grief in 1553. His only surviving son, Emmanuel Philibert, succeeded to the rights, but not the domains of his ancestors. On the abdication of Charles V the duke was appointed governor of the Low Countries, and in 1557 the victory of St. Quentin marked him as one of the first generals of his time. Such services could not go unrewarded, and the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis restored him his states, with certain exceptions still to be held by France and Spain. One of the conditions of the treaty also provided for the marriage of the duke with Margaret of France, sister of Henry II. The evacuation of the places held by them was faithfully carried out by the contracting powers, and Emmanuel Philibert occupied himself in strengthening his military and naval forces, until his death in 1580 prevented the execution of his ambitious designs. His son Charles Emmanuel I, called the Great, threw in his lot with Spain, and in 1590 invaded Provence and was received by the citizens of Aix. His intention was doubtless to revive the ancient kingdom of Arles, but his plans were frustrated by the accession of Henry IV to the throne of France.[e]
[Sidenote: [1482-1601 A.D.]]
By his treaty with Henry, in the year 1601, Charles Emmanuel exchanged his Savoyard county of Bresse for the Italian marquisate of Saluzzo. By this arrangement, the duke of Savoy sacrificed a fertile province to acquire a barren and rocky territory; but he excluded the French from an easy access into Piedmont, and strengthened his Italian frontier. By consolidating his states, he gained a considerable advance towards the future independence of his family; and the superiority of his policy over that of Henry IV in this transaction occasioned the remark of a contemporary, that the French king had bargained like a peddler, and the Savoyard duke like a king.
From this epoch, the house of Savoy became almost exclusively an Italian power, and its princes, to use the language of one of their historians, thenceforth viewed the remains of their transmontane possessions only as a nobleman, moving in the splendour of a court, regards the ancient and neglected fief from which he derives his title. Charles Emmanuel found that the improvement effected in the geographical posture of his states immediately increased his importance; and his alliance was courted both by France and Spain. But during the remainder of his long reign, his own restless and overweening ambition, and the natural difficulties of his situation, placed as he was with inferior strength between two mighty rivals, entailed many calamities on his dominions. He made an unsuccessful attempt in 1602 to surprise Geneva by an escalade in the night, and after a disgraceful repulse concluded a peace, which recognised the independence of that republic. Ten years later, he endeavoured, as we have seen, to wrest Montferrat from the house of Gonzaga; but being violently opposed by Spain, and weakly supported by France, he was compelled, after several years of hostilities, to submit his claim to the decision of the emperor--or, in other words, to abandon it altogether. Such checks to his ambition were, however, of little importance, in comparison with the reverses consequent upon the share which he took in the war of the Mantuan succession (1628).
[Sidenote: [1601-1634 A.D.]]
In that contest he was induced, by the hope of partitioning Montferrat with the Spaniards, to unite with them against the new duke of Mantua and the French his supporters; and he suffered heavily in this alliance. When Louis XIII, at the head of a gallant army, forced the strong pass of Susa against the duke and his troops, and overran all Piedmont, Charles Emmanuel was compelled to purchase the deliverance of his states by signing a separate peace, and leaving the fortress of Susa as a pledge in the hands of the conquerors. They insisted further that he should act offensively against his former allies; but Louis XIII and his great minister Richelieu were no sooner recalled into France by the war against the Protestants, than the versatile duke, resenting their tyranny, immediately resumed his league with Spain.
The possession of Susa rendered the French masters of the gates of the Savoyard dominions; and as soon as Richelieu had triumphantly concluded the war against the Huguenots, he returned to the Alps. He was invested by his master with a supreme military command, which disgraced his priestly functions; and he poured the forces of France again into Piedmont. All Savoy was conquered by the French king in person; and above half of Piedmont was seized by his forces under the warlike cardinal. Amidst so many cruel reverses, oppressed by the overwhelming strength of his enemies, and abandoned by his Spanish allies, who made no vigorous efforts to arrest the progress of the French, Charles Emmanuel suddenly breathed his last, after a reign of fifty years (1630).
Victor Amadeus I, his eldest son and successor, was the husband of Christina, daughter of Henry IV of France, and therefore disposed to ally himself with her country. Almost immediately after his accession to the ducal crown, he entered into negotiations with Richelieu, which terminated in a truce. In the following year, the general peace, which concluded the war of the Mantuan succession, was signed at Cherasco (1631). By this treaty, the new duke of Savoy recovered all his dominions except Pinerolo (Pignerol), which he was compelled to cede to the French; who, although Richelieu restored Susa to Victor Amadeus, thus retained possession of the passes of the Alps by Briançon and the valley of Exilles. Victor Amadeus was not inferior to his father either in courage or abilities; but he was not equally restless and intriguing. Submitting to circumstances beyond his control, he endured the ascendency which France had acquired over his states, and the yet more galling pride of Richelieu, with temper and prudence. To the close of his short reign he maintained with good faith a close alliance with Louis XIII, which indeed it was scarcely optional with him to have rejected, and which, in 1634, involved him, as an auxiliary, in a new war undertaken by Richelieu against the house of Austria.
[Sidenote: [1634-1657 A.D.]]
The death of Victor Amadeus in 1637, while this contest was yet raging, was the prelude to still heavier calamities for his house and his subjects than either had known for nearly a century. He left two infant sons, the eldest of whom dying almost immediately after him, the succession devolved upon the other, Charles Emmanuel II, a boy of four years of age. By his testament, Victor Amadeus committed the regency of his states, and the care of his children, to his duchess Christina. The government of that princess was in the outset assailed by the secret machinations of Richelieu, and by the open hostility of the brothers of her late husband. Richelieu designed to imprison the sister, and to despoil the nephew of his own master; and he would have annexed their states to the French monarchy, under the plea that the care of the young prince and the regency of his duchy belonged of right to Louis XIII, as his maternal uncle. When the vigilance of Christina defeated the intention of the cardinal to surprise her at Vercelli, the sister of Louis XIII had still to endure all the despotic influence of her brother’s minister. The conduct of her husband’s relations left her however no alternative but to purchase the aid of the French against them.
Both the brothers of Victor Amadeus, the cardinal Maurice, and Prince Thomas (founder of the branch of Savoy-Carignano), had quarrelled with the late duke, and withdrawn from his court to embrace the party of his enemies; the one entered the service of the emperor, the other that of the king of Spain in the Low Countries. On the death of Victor Amadeus, they returned to Piedmont only to trouble the administration of Christina by themselves laying claim to the regency; and at length, on her resisting their pretensions, they openly asserted them in arms. The two princes were supported by the house of Austria; the duchess-regent was protected by France; and the whole country of Savoy and Piedmont was at once plunged into the aggravated horrors of foreign and civil war. In the first year of this unhappy contest, the capital was delivered into the hands of Prince Thomas by his partisans; and the regent, escaping with difficulty on this surprise into the citadel of Turin, was compelled to consign the defence of that fortress to the French, who treacherously retained the deposit for eighteen years. In like manner, they acquired possession of several important places; the Spaniards on their part became masters of others; and while the regent and her brothers-in-law were contending for the government of Piedmont, they were betrayed by the ill faith and ambition of their respective protectors.
A reconciliation in the ducal family was at length effected by the tardy discovery that mutual injuries could terminate only in common ruin. The two princes deserted the party of Spain, and succeeded in recovering for their house most of the fortresses which they had aided the Spaniards in reducing. The duchess-mother retained the regency; and the princes were gratified with the same appanages by which she had originally offered to purchase their friendship. Still the French remained all powerful in Piedmont; and if death had not interrupted the projects of Richelieu, it is probable that the ducal house of Savoy would have been utterly sacrificed to his skilful and unprincipled policy, and that its dominions would have been permanently annexed to the monarchy of France. Even under the government of his more pacific successor, Mazarin, it was not until the year 1657 that the French garrison was withdrawn from the citadel of Turin; and this act of justice was only extorted from that minister as the price of his niece’s marriage into the ducal family of Savoy. The exhaustion of Spain and the internal troubles of France had totally prevented the active prosecution in northern Italy of the long war between those powers. But the embers of hostility were not wholly extinguished in Piedmont until the Peace of the Pyrenees, by which Charles Emmanuel II recovered all his duchy except Pinerolo and its Alpine passes, and these the French still retained (1659).
[Sidenote: [1657-1692 A.D.]]
The termination of the minority of Charles Emmanuel II, in 1648, had put an end to the intrigues of his uncles. But the duke continued to submit to the ambitious and able control of his mother until her death; and his subsequent reign was in no respect brilliant. His states, however, after the Treaty of the Pyrenees, enjoyed a long interval of repose; and though the early close of his life in 1675 subjected them to another minority, it proved neither turbulent nor calamitous, as his own had done. His son, the celebrated Victor Amadeus II, was only nine years old when he nominally commenced his reign under the regency of his mother. The princess, a daughter of the French house of Nemours, had all the ambition without the talents which had distinguished the duchess Christina. Surrounded by French favourites and by the partisans of that nation, she was wholly subservient to the will of Louis XIV; and Victor Amadeus, on attaining the age of manhood, gave the first indications of the consummate political ability for which he became afterwards so famous, by his decent address in dispossessing his reluctant parent and her faction of all influence in public affairs, without having recourse to actual violence.
The policy of the duke soon excited the suspicion of Louis XIV; and after exhausting all the resources of negotiation and intrigue for some years, to gain him over to his purpose of wresting Milan from the Spaniards, the French monarch resolved to disarm him. But Victor Amadeus penetrated his designs, and anticipated their execution. He was too good a politician, and too sensible of his own weakness, not to discover that, if he consented to open a free passage to Louis XIV through his dominions, and to aid him in effecting the conquest of Lombardy, he should speedily be despoiled in his turn, and reduced to the rank of a vassal of the French crown. He therefore acceded to the league of Augsburg between the empire, England, Spain, and Holland; and his subjects eagerly seconded him in his resolution rather to encounter the dangers of a contest with the gigantic power of France, than to submit without a struggle to the imperious and humiliating demands of Louis.
The commencement of the war in Piedmont was marked by a torrent of misfortune, which might have overwhelmed a prince of less fortitude than Victor Amadeus with sudden despair. Although he was joined by a Spanish army at the opening of hostilities, the French, who commanded the gates of Italy by the possession of Pinerolo had already assembled in force in Piedmont. They were led by Catinat, who deserves to be mentioned among the most accomplished and scientific captains of his own or of any age; and the superior abilities of this great commander triumphed over the military talents of the young duke. At the battle of Staffarda (1690) in the first campaign, the allies were totally defeated; and great part both of Savoy and Piedmont was almost immediately afterwards reduced by the conquerors. Victor Amadeus was however undismayed; he continued the war with energy and skill; and the support of his allies and his own activity had the effect of balancing the fortune of the contest. Penetrating into France, in 1692, he was even enabled to retaliate upon his enemies by this diversion, for the ravage of his dominions; and although Catinat, in the fourth campaign, inflicted at Marsaglia upon the Piedmontese, Austrian, and Spanish armies, under the duke in person and the famous prince Eugene, a yet more calamitous and memorable defeat than that at Staffarda, the allies speedily recovered from the disaster.
But it comes not within our purpose to repeat the often-told tale of military operations, which belong to the general history of Europe. After six years of incessant warfare, Victor Amadeus was still in an attitude to render his neutrality an important object for France to gain, and one which he had himself every reason to desire. So that it could be attained with advantage to himself, he was little scrupulous in abandoning his allies; and the conditions which he extorted from Louis XIV had all the results of victory. By the separate peace concluded between France and Savoy at Turin, Louis XIV abandoned the possession of Pinerolo and restored all his conquests in Savoy and Piedmont; but the most material stipulation of the treaty was the neutrality of all Italy, to which the contracting parties equally bound themselves to oblige all other powers to accede. To enforce this article, Victor Amadeus did not hesitate to join his arms to those of France against his former allies; and the entrance of his forces, in conjunction with the army of Catinat, into the Milanese territories, immediately compelled the emperor and the king of Spain to consent to a suspension of arms in the peninsula.
The allies of Victor Amadeus might justly reproach him with a desertion of their cause, and perhaps even with the aggravation of perfidy; but he deserved the gratitude of Italy, if not for his selfish policy, at least for its fruits. In closing the gates of his own frontiers, he had skilfully provided also for the repose of the peninsula and its evacuation by the French. All Italy regarded him as a liberator; the security of his own dominions was effected, and his power and consequence were prodigiously augmented. Thus, by establishing the independence of his states, he prepared the claim of his house to the assumption of the royal title among the powers of Europe, to which he elevated it in the beginning of the new century.
The increasing power of the sovereigns of Piedmont was a foreboding of evil for the only republic of the Middle Ages which had partially escaped the storms of despotism in that quarter of Italy; and Genoa had already gained, during the seventeenth century, sufficient experience of the dangers of her vicinity to the princes of the house of Savoy. In the Grison war, between France and the house of Austria, the republic was involved by her dependence upon Spain; and the share which she took in the contest enabled the duke of Savoy, then in alliance with France, to draw down the weight of the French arms upon her. Besides being actuated by the usual rapacity of his ambition, with the hope of annexing the Genoese territory to his states, Charles Emmanuel I had several causes of offence against the republic. Her rulers had before given assistance to the Spaniards against him; they had attempted to control him in the purchase of the fief of Zucarel from the family of Carretto; and the populace of Genoa had insulted him by defacing his portrait in their city during the excesses of a riot. He therefore pointed out Genoa to his allies for an easy and important conquest; and while he overran the Ligurian country, a French army of thirty thousand men under the constable de Lesdiguières advanced to the siege of the republican capital. Though the Genoese were unprovided against this sudden attack, they were animated by the brave spirit, and the eloquence of one of their fellow-citizens, a member of the illustrious house of Doria, to oppose a firm resistance to the besiegers; and their gallant defence of the city was converted into a triumph, at the moment when they were reduced to extremity. A powerful Spanish armament, equipped with unusual vigour, arrived to their succour from Naples and Milan; the French were compelled to raise the siege; and the peace, which shortly followed these hostilities, served only to cover the duke of Savoy with the disgrace of merited failure in his designs against the existence of the republic.
[Sidenote: [1624-1628 A.D.]]
The secret hostility which Charles Emmanuel cherished against Genoa menaced her, a few years later, with more imminent perils; since the revengeful spirit of the duke was associated with the discontent of a large party in the republic. We have formerly noticed the constitution of the sovereign oligarchy of Genoa, and its tendency, by the extinction of some noble houses, and the reduction of numbers in others, to narrow the circle of political rights. The surviving body, meanwhile, were sparing in the use of the law, which authorised them to admit ten new families annually to a share in their privileges of sovereignty. The senate either began to elude it altogether, or applied it only to childless or aged individuals. Thus, before the middle of the seventeenth century, the number of persons whose names appeared in the libro d’oro--the golden volume of privileged nobility--had dwindled to about seven hundred. A law was then passed, by which the whole of these exclusive proprietors of the rights of citizenship thenceforth took their seats in the great council, on reaching the age of manhood, instead of entering it by rotation, as had formerly been the practice, when the republic was represented by a more comprehensive aristocracy.
While the arrogance and the individual importance of the members of the oligarchy were increased in proportion to this diminution in their numbers, another class, that of the unprivileged aristocracy of birth and wealth, had multiplied in the state. Many ancient houses, possessors of rural fiefs in Liguria, and invested with titles of nobility, had been originally omitted in the roll of citizenship; many other families of newer pretensions had since acquired riches and distinction by commercial industry, and accidents of fortune; and the union of all these constituted an order, which rivalled the oligarchy in the usual sources of pride, and far outweighed them in numbers. Affected superiority and contempt on the one hand, and mortification and envy on the other, produced reciprocal hatred between these branches of the Genoese aristocracy; and their divisions inspired the duke of Savoy with the hope of plunging the state into an anarchy, by which he might profit.
[Sidenote: [1628-1672 A.D.]]
Pursuing his master’s views, the ambassador of Charles Emmanuel at Genoa selected a wealthy merchant of the unprivileged aristocracy, Giulio Cesare Vachero, for the agitator and leader of a conspiracy to overthrow the oligarchical constitution. Vachero, although engaged in the occupation of commerce, aspired to move in the sphere of nobility. His immense riches, his numerous retinue, his splendid establishment, rivalled the magnificence of the Fregosi, the Adorni, the popolani grandi of other days. He always appeared armed and in martial costume--the characteristics of the gentleman of the times; he was surrounded by bravos; and he unscrupulously employed these desperate men in the atrocious gratification of his pride and his vengeance. He found sufficient occupation for their poniards in the numerous petty affronts, which the privileged nobles delighted to heap on a person of his condition. Vachero was stung to the soul by all the scorn and disdain which the highly born affect for upstart and unwarranted pretensions--by the contemptuous denial of the courtesy of a passing salutation, the supercilious stare, the provoking smile of derision, the taunting innuendo, the jest, the sneer. Every one of these slights or insults offered to himself or his wife was washed out in the blood of the noble offenders (1628).
But all these covert assassinations could not satiate the revengeful spirit nor heal the rankling irritation of Vachero; and he was easily instigated by the arts of the Savoyard ambassador to organise a plot, and to place himself at its head, for the destruction of the oligarchy. He knew that his discontent was shared by all the citizens like himself, whose names had not been admitted into the libro d’oro; and he reckoned on the co-operation of very many of the feudal seigniors of Liguria, whose ancient houses had never been inserted in that register, and who found their consequence eclipsed in the city, by their detested and more fortunate rivals of the oligarchy. He readily induced a numerous party to embrace his design; he secretly increased the force of his retainers and bravos; and he lavished immense sums among the lower people, to secure their fidelity without entrusting them with his plans. The day was already named for the attack of the palace of government: it was determined to overpower the foreign guard; to cast the senators from the windows; to massacre all the individuals embraced in the privileged order; to change the constitution of the republic; and finally, to invest Vachero with the supreme authority of the state, by the title of doge, and under the protection of the duke of Savoy. But at the moment when the conspiracy was ripe for execution, it was betrayed to the government by a retainer of Vachero, who had been appointed to act a subordinate share in it. Vachero himself, and a few other leading personages in the plot, were secured before the alarm was given to the rest, who immediately fled. The guilt of Vachero and his accomplices was clearly established; the proofs against them were even supported by the conduct of the duke of Savoy, who openly avowed himself the protector of their enterprise; and notwithstanding his arrogant threat of revenging their punishment upon the republic, the senate did not hesitate to order their immediate execution.
The insolent menaces of Charles Emmanuel were vain; and the firmness of the Genoese government produced no material consequences. During the distractions which closed his own reign, and which, filling that of his son, extended through the minority of his grandsons, the republic remained undisturbed by the aggressions of the house of Savoy. In this long period of above forty years, the repose of Genoa was disturbed neither by any other foreign hostilities, nor by intestine commotions. A second war, which at length broke out between the republic and the duchy of Savoy, during the reign of Charles Emmanuel II, scarcely merits our notice, for its circumstances and its conclusion were alike insignificant; and during the remainder of the seventeenth century, the Genoese oligarchy were only startled from their dream of pride and security by a single event--the most humiliating, until our own times at least, in the long annals of their republic.
When Louis XIV became master of Casale by purchase from the duke of Mantua, he demanded of the republic of Genoa permission to establish a depot at the port of Savona, for the free supply of salt to the inhabitants of his new city, and the transit of warlike stores and recruits for his garrison. The Genoese government were sufficiently acquainted with the character of the French monarch to anticipate that their compliance with this demand would terminate in his appropriating the port of Savona altogether to himself; and cautiously exerting the option of refusal which they unquestionably possessed, they eluded the application. With equal right and more boldness, they fitted out a few galleys to guard their coasts against any surprise, and to protect their revenue on salt. Louis imperiously required them to disarm this squadron; and then, driven beyond all the limits of endurance, and justly incensed at such an insult upon the independence of the republic, the senate treated the summons with contempt.
But the oligarchy of Genoa had not sufficiently measured the weakness of their state, or the implacable and unbounded pride of the powerful tyrant. A French armament of fourteen sail of the line, with a long train of frigates, galleys, and bomb ketches, suddenly appeared before Genoa, and a furious bombardment of three days, in which fifty thousand shells and carcasses are said to have been thrown into the place, reduced to a heap of ruins half the numerous and magnificent palaces, which had obtained for Genoa the appellation of “the Proud.” The senate were compelled to save the remains of their capital from total destruction by an unqualified submission; and the terms dictated by the arrogance of the French monarch, obliged the doge and four of the principal senators, to repair in their robes of state to Paris, to sue for pardon and to supplicate his clemency. The epithets of glory have often been prostituted on the character of Louis XIV, by those who are easily dazzled with the glare of false splendour; but of all the wholesale outrages upon humanity which disgraced the detestable ambition of that heartless destroyer of his species, this unprovoked assault upon a defenceless people, merely to gratify his insatiable vanity, was--if we except the horrible devastation of the Palatinate--the most barbarous and wanton.
VENICE
[Sidenote: [1600-1685 A.D.]]
While Genoa was either wholly subservient to the influence of Spain, with difficulty repulsing the machinations of the princes of Savoy, or enduring all the insulting arrogance of France, her ancient rival was holding her political course with more pretensions to independence and dignity. Throughout the age before us, Venice seemed roused to the exertion of the few remains of her ancient spirit and strength. Starting with renewed vigour from the languor and obscurity of the preceding century, the republic evinced a proud resolution to maintain her prescriptive rights, and even in some measure aspired to assert the lost independence of Italy. Her efforts in this latter respect, indeed, deserve to be mentioned, rather for the courage which dictated them, than for their results. The relative force of the states of Europe had too essentially changed; the commercial foundations of her own prosperity were too irretrievably ruined to render it possible that she should rear her head again above other powers of the second order, or become the protectress and successful champion of the peninsula. But, in the seventeenth century, the annals of Venice were at least not stained with disgrace. Even her losses, in a protracted and unequal contest with the Turks, were redeemed from shame by many brilliant acts of heroism in her unavailing defence; and the unfortunate issue of one war was balanced by the happier results of a second. But the firmness of the republic was conspicuous, and her success unalloyed.
[Sidenote: [1600-1606 A.D.]]
The first of the struggles, in which Venice was called upon to engage in this century, was produced, soon after its opening, by that violent attempt of Pope Paul V, to which we have before alluded, to revive the monstrous and exploded doctrine of papal jurisdiction and supremacy over the temporal affairs of the world (1605). The Venetians had, even in the dark ages, been remarkable for their freedom from the trammels of superstition, and consistent in repelling the encroachments of ecclesiastical power. Upon no occasion would the senate either permit the publication or execution of any papal decree in their territories, until it had received their previous sanction; or suffer an appeal to the court of Rome from any of their subjects, except by their own authority, and through the ambassador of the republic. The jurisdiction of the Council of Ten was as despotic and final over the Venetian clergy as over all other classes in the state; and while ecclesiastics were rigidly excluded from all interference in political affairs, and from the exercise of any civil functions, the right of the secular tribunals to judge them in every case not purely spiritual was a principle, from which the government never departed either in theory or practice. Of all the extravagant privileges claimed by the Romish church for its militia, the exemption of the ecclesiastical body from taxation (unless as the immediate act of the popes) was the only one recognised by the Venetian government; and, to annul this, immunity was a project which had more than once been entertained.
With a spirit similar to that which retained the clergy under due subjection, universal religious toleration was a steady maxim of the Venetian senate. The public and peaceable worship of the Mussulman, the Jew, the Greek, the Armenian, had always been equally permitted in the republican dominions; and in later times even the Protestant sects had met in the capital and provinces with a like indulgence. The iniquitous principles of the oligarchical administration forbid us from attributing to its conduct in these respects any higher or more enlightened motive than the interested and necessary policy of a commercial state. But it is a striking proof of the ability and stern vigilance of this government, that, notwithstanding its universal toleration and rejection of ecclesiastical control, no pretence was left for the popes to impugn its zealous fidelity to the Romish church; and that, at a time when all Europe was convulsed by the struggle of religious opinions, Venice alone could receive into her corrupted bosom the elements of discord, without shaking the foundations of her established faith or sustaining the slightest shock to her habitual tranquillity.
The fierce temper with which Paul V seated himself on the papal throne, and the systematic determination of the Venetian senate to submit to no ecclesiastical usurpations, could not fail to bring the republic into collision with so rash and violent a pontiff. Accordingly Paul V had scarcely commenced his reign, when he conceived offence at the refusal of the senate to provoke a war with the Turks, by assisting the Hungarians at his command with subsidies against the infidels. His dissatisfaction with the republic was increased by her obstinacy in levying duty upon all merchandise entering the papal ports in the Adriatic--a matter in which, assuredly, religion was in nowise interested; and it reached its height when the senate passed a law, or rather revived an old one, forbidding the further alienation of immovable property in favour of religious foundations; which indeed, even in their states, were already possessed of overgrown wealth.
At this juncture the Council of Ten, acting upon its established principle of subjecting priests to secular jurisdiction, caused two ecclesiastics, a canon of Vicenza, named Sarraceno, and an abbot of Nervesa, to be successively arrested and thrown into prison, to await their trials for offences with which they were charged. Their alleged crimes were of the blackest enormity: rape in one case; assassination, poisonings, and parricide in the other. The pope, as if the rights of the church had been violently outraged by these arrests, summoned the doge and senate to deliver over the two priests to the spiritual arm, on pain of excommunication; and he seized the occasion to demand, under the same penalty, the repeal of the existing regulations against the increase of the ecclesiastical edifices and property. But the doge and senate, positively refusing to retract their measures, treated the papal menaces with contempt; and Paul V then struck them, their capital, and their whole republic with excommunication and interdict (1606).
The Venetian government endured the anathemas, so appalling to the votaries of superstition, with unshaken firmness. In reply to the papal denunciations of the divine wrath against the republic, they successfully published repeated and forcible appeals to the justice of their cause, and to the common-sense of the world. The general sentiment of Catholic Europe responded to their arguments; and their own subjects, filled with indignation at the unprovoked sentence against the state, zealously seconded their spirit. In private the doge had not hesitated to hold out to the papal nuncio an alarming threat that the perseverance of his holiness in violent measures would impel the republic to dissolve her connection altogether with the Roman see; and the open procedure of the senate was scarcely less bold. On pain of death, all parochial ministers and monks in the Venetian states were commanded to pay no regard to the interdict, and to continue to perform the offices of religion as usual. The secular clergy yielded implicit obedience to the decree; and when the Jesuits, Capuchins, and other monastic orders endeavoured to qualify their allegiance, between the pope and the republic, by making a reservation against the performance of mass, they were immediately deprived of their possessions, and expelled from the Venetian territories.
The pope, finding his spiritual weapons ineffectual against the constancy of the Venetians, showed an inclination to have recourse to temporal arms. He levied troops, and endeavoured to engage Philip III of Spain and other princes in the support of his authority. At the same time, both the Spanish monarch and Henry IV of France, the ally of the republic, began to interest themselves in a quarrel which nearly concerned all Catholic powers, and threatened Europe with commotion. In reality, both sovereigns aspired to the honour of being the arbiter of the difference. But the feint of arming to second the pope, by which Philip III hoped to terrify the republic into submitting to his mediation, had only the effect of determining the senate to prefer the interposition of his rival; and Henry IV became the zealous negotiator between the pope and the republic.
[Sidenote: [1606-1615 A.D.]]
Paul IV discovered at length that Spain had no serious resolution to support him by arms, and that, without the application of a force which he could not command, it was vain to expect submission from so inflexible a body as the Venetian oligarchy. He was therefore reduced to the most humiliating compromise of his boasted dignity. Without obtaining a single concession on the point in dispute, he was obliged to revoke his spiritual sentences. The doge and senate could not even receive an absolution; they refused to alter their decree against the alienation of property in favour of the church; and though they consigned the two imprisoned ecclesiastics to the disposal of Henry IV, they accompanied this act with a formal declaration, that was intended only as a voluntary mark of their respect for that monarch their ally, and to be in no degree construed into an abandonment of their right and practice of subjecting their clergy to secular jurisdiction. Even their deference for Henry IV could not prevail over their resentment and suspicion of the banished Jesuits: they peremptorily refused to reinstate that order in its possessions; and it was not until after the middle of the century that the Jesuits obtained admission again into the states of the republic. Thus, with the signal triumph of Venice, terminated a struggle, happily a bloodless one, which was not less remarkable for the firmness of the republic than important for its general effects in crushing the pretensions of papal tyranny. For its issue may assuredly be regarded as having relieved all Roman Catholic states from future dread of excommunication and interdict--and therefore from the danger of spiritual engines, impotent in themselves, and formidable only when unresisted.
With the same unyielding spirit which characterised their resistance to papal and ecclesiastical usurpation, the Venetian senate resolved to tolerate no infringement upon the tyrannical pretension of their own republic to the despotic sovereignty of the Adriatic. Before the contest with Paul V, their state had already been seriously incommoded by the piracies of the Uscochi. This community, originally formed of Christian inhabitants of Dalmatia and Croatia, had been driven, in the sixteenth century, by the perpetual Turkish invasions of their provinces, to the fastness of Clissa, whence they successfully retaliated upon their infidel foes by incursions into the Ottoman territories. At length, overpowered by the Turks, and dispersed from their stronghold, these Uscochi, or refugees, as their name implies in the Dalmatian tongue, were collected by Ferdinand, archduke of Austria (afterwards emperor), and established in the maritime town of Segna to guard that post against the Turks. In their new station, which, on the land side, was protected from access by mountains and forests, while numerous inlets and intricate shallows rendered it difficult of approach from the sea, the Uscochi betook themselves to piracy; and, for above seventy years, their light and swift barks boldly infested the Adriatic with impunity. Their first attacks were directed against the infidels; but irritated by the interference of the Venetians, who, as sovereigns of the Adriatic, found themselves compelled by the complaints and threats of the Porte to punish their freebooting enterprises, they began to extend their depredations to the commerce of the republic.
[Sidenote: [1615-1617 A.D.]]
It was to little purpose that the senate called upon the Austrian government to restrain its lawless subjects; their representations were either eluded altogether, or failed in obtaining any effectual satisfaction. The Uscochi, a fearless and desperate band, recruited by outlaws and men of abandoned lives, became more audacious by the connivance of Austria; and the republic was obliged to maintain a small squadron constantly at sea to protect her commerce against them. At length, after having recourse alternately, for above half a century, to fruitless negotiations with Austria, and insufficient attempts to chastise the pirates, the republic seriously determined to put an end to their vexatious hostilities and increasing insolence. The capture of a Venetian galley and the massacre of its crew in 1615, and an irruption of the Uscochi into Istria, brought affairs to a crisis. The Austrian government, then directed by the archduke Ferdinand of Styria, instead of giving satisfaction for these outrages, demanded the free navigation of the Adriatic for its vessels; and the senate found an appeal to arms the only mode of preserving its efficient sovereignty over the gulf. The Venetian troops made reprisals on the Austrian territory; and an open war commenced between the archduke and the republic.
The contest was soon associated, by the interference of Spain, with the hostilities then carried on between that monarchy and the duke of Savoy in northern Italy respecting Montferrat. For protection against the enmity of the two branches of the house of Austria, Venice united herself with Savoy, and largely subsidised that state. She even sought more distant allies, and a league, offensive and defensive, was signed between her and the seven united provinces. Notwithstanding the difference of religious faith, which, in that age constituted in itself a principle of political hostility, the two republics found a bond of union, stronger than this repulsion, in their common reasons for opposing the Spanish power. They engaged to afford each other a reciprocal assistance in money, vessels, or men, whenever menaced with attack; and in fulfilment of this treaty, a strong body of Dutch troops arrived in the Adriatic. Before the disembarkation of this force, the Venetians had already gained some advantages in the Austrian provinces on the coasts of that sea; and the archduke was induced by the appearance of the Dutch, and his projects in Germany, to open negotiations for a general peace in northern Italy.
The same treaty terminated the wars of the house of Austria respecting Montferrat and the Uscochi. Ferdinand of Austria gave security for the dispersion of the pirates, whom he had protected; and thus the Venetian republic was finally delivered from the vexatious and lawless depredations of those freebooters, who had so long annoyed her commerce and harassed her subjects (1617). It does not appear that the force of this singular race of pirates, who had thus risen into historical notice, ever exceeded a thousand men; but their extraordinary hardihood and ferocity, their incessant enterprise and activity, their inaccessible position, and the connivance of Austria, had rendered them formidable enemies. Their depredations, and the constant expense of petty armaments against them, were estimated to have cost the Venetians in thirty years a loss of more than 20,000,000 gold ducats; and no less a question than the security of the dominion of the republic over the Adriatic was decided by the war against them.
[Sidenote: [1617-1618 A.D.]]
Although Spain and Venice had not been regularly at war, the tyrannical ascendency exercised by the Spanish court over the affairs of Italy, occasioned the Venetians to regard that power with particular apprehension and enmity; and the spirit shown by the senate in the late contest had filled the Spanish government with implacable hatred towards the republic. By her alliances and her whole procedure, Venice had declared against the house of Austria, and betrayed her disposition to curb the alarming and overspreading authority of both its branches in the peninsula. The haughty ministers of Philip III secretly nourished projects of vengeance against the state, which had dared to manifest a systematic hostility to the Spanish dominion; and they are accused, even in apparent peace, of having regarded the republic as an enemy whom it behoved them to destroy. At the epoch of the conclusion of the war relative to Montferrat and the Uscochi, the duke of Osuna was viceroy of Naples, Don Pedro de Toledo, governor of Milan, and the marquis of Bedmar, ambassador at Venice from the court of Madrid. To the hostility entertained against the republic by these three ministers, the two former of whom governed the Italian possessions of Spain with almost regal independence, has usually been attributed the formation, with the connivance of the court of Madrid, of one of the most atrocious and deep-laid conspiracies on record. The real character of this mysterious transaction must ever remain among the unsolved problems of history; for even the circumstances which were partially suffered by the Council of Ten to transpire were so imperfectly explained, and so liable to suspicion from the habitual iniquity of their policy, as to have given rise to a thousand various and contradictory versions of the same events. Of these we shall attempt to collect only such as are scarcely open to doubt.
The Venetians had no reason to hope that the exasperation of the Spanish government, at the part which they had taken in the late war in Italy, would die away with the termination of hostilities; and it appeared to the world a consequence of the enmity of the court of Madrid towards the republic that the duke of Osuna, the viceroy of Naples, continued his warlike equipments in that kingdom with undiminished activity, notwithstanding the signature of peace. The viceroy, indeed, pretended that his naval armaments were designed against the infidels; and when the court of Madrid recalled the royal Spanish fleet from the coasts of Italy, the duke of Osuna sent the Neapolitan squadron to sea under a flag emblazoned with his own family arms. But it was difficult to suppose, either that a viceroy dared to hoist his personal standard unsanctioned by his sovereign and would be suffered to engage in a private war against the Ottoman Empire, or that he would require for that purpose the charts of the Venetian lagunes, and the flat-bottomed vessels fitted for their navigation, which he busily collected. The republic accordingly manifested serious alarm, and sedulously prepared for defence.
Affairs were in this state, when one morning several strangers were found suspended from the gibbets of the square of St. Mark. The public consternation increased when, on the following dawn, other bodies were also found hanging on the same fatal spot--also of strangers. It was at the same time whispered that numerous arrests had filled the dungeons of the Council of Ten with some hundreds of criminals; and there was, too, certain proof that many persons had been privately drowned in the canals of Venice. To these fearful indications that the state had been alarmed by some extraordinary danger, the terrors of which were magnified by their obscurity, were shortly added further rumours that several foreigners serving in the fleet had been poniarded, hanged, or cast into the sea. The city was then filled with the most alarming reports: that a conspiracy of long duration had been discovered; that its object was to massacre the nobility, to destroy the republic, to deliver the whole capital to flames and pillage; that the Spanish ambassador was the mover of the horrible plot. Venice was filled with indignation and terror; yet the impenetrable Council of Ten preserved the most profound silence, neither confirming nor contradicting the general belief. The life of the marquis of Bedmar was violently threatened by the populace: he retired from Venice; the senate received a new ambassador from Spain without any signs of displeasure; and, finally, it was not until five months after the executions that the government commanded solemn thanksgiving to be offered up to the Almighty for the preservation of the state from the dangers which had threatened its existence.
[Sidenote: [1618-1619 A.D.]]
On the extent of these dangers nothing was ever certainly known; but amongst the persons executed the most conspicuous was ascertained to be a French naval captain of high reputation for ability and courage in his vocation, Jacques Pierre, who, after a life passed in enterprises of a doubtful or piratical character, had apparently deserted the service of the viceroy of Naples to embrace that of the republic. This man, and a brother adventurer, one Langlade, who had been employed in the arsenal in the construction of petards and other fireworks, were absent from Venice with the fleet when the other executions took place; and they were suddenly put to death while on this service. Two other French captains named Regnault and Bouslart, with numerous foreigners, principally of the same nation, who had lately been taken into the republican service, were privately tortured and executed in various ways in the capital; and altogether 260 officers and other military adventurers are stated to have perished by the hands of the executioner for their alleged share in the conspiracy. The vengeance or shocking policy of the Council of Ten proceeded yet further; and so careful was that body to bury every trace of this inexplicable affair in the deepest oblivion, that Antoine Jaffier, also a French captain, and other informers, who had revealed the existence of a plot, though at first rewarded, were all in the sequel either known to have met a violent death, or mysteriously disappeared altogether. Of the three Spanish ministers, to whom it has been customary to assign the origin of the conspiracy, the two principal were distinguished by opposite fates. The marquis of Bedmar, after the termination of his embassy, found signal political advancement, and finished by obtaining a cardinal’s hat, by the interest of his court with the holy see. But the duke of Osuna, after being removed from viceroyalty, was disgraced on suspicion of having designed to renounce his allegiance, and to place the crown of Naples on his own head; and he died in prison.
Whether the safety of Venice had really been endangered or not by the machinations of Spain, the measures of that power were observed by the senate with a watchful and jealous eye; and, for many years, the policy of the republic was constantly employed in endeavours to counteract the projects of the house of Austria. In 1619, the Venetians perceived with violent alarm that the court of Madrid, under pretence of protecting the Catholics of the Valtelline against their rulers, the Protestants of the Grison confederation, was labouring to acquire the possession of that valley, which, by connecting the Milanese states with the Tyrol, would cement the dominions of the Spanish and German dynasties of the Austrian family. The establishment of this easy communication was particularly dangerous for the Venetians, because it would envelop their states, from the Lisonzo to the Po, with an unbroken chain of hostile posts, and would intercept all direct intercourse with Savoy and the territories of France. The senate eagerly therefore negotiated the league between these last two powers and their republic, which, in 1623, was followed by the Grison war against the house of Austria. This contest produced little satisfactory fruits for the Venetians; and it did not terminate before the Grisons, though they recovered their sovereignty over the Valtelline, had themselves embraced the party of Spain.
[Sidenote: [1619-1645 A.D.]]
The Grison war had not closed, when Venice was drawn, by her systematic opposition to the Spanish power, into a more important quarrel--that of the Mantuan Succession, in which she of course espoused the cause of the Gonzaga of Nevers. In this struggle the republic, who sent an army of twenty thousand men into the field on her Lombard frontiers, experienced nothing but disgrace; and the senate were but too happy to find their states left, by the Peace of Cherasco in 1631, precisely in the same situation as before the war; while the prince whom they had supported remained seated on the throne of Mantua. This pacification reconciled the republic with the house of Austria, and terminated her share in the Italian wars of the seventeenth century. Her efforts to promote the deliverance of the peninsula from the Spanish power can scarcely be said to have met with success; nor was the rapid decline of that monarchy, which had already commenced, hastened, perhaps, by her hostility. But she had displayed remarkable energy in the policy of her counsels; and the recovery of her own particular independence was at least triumphantly effected. So completely were her pretensions to the sovereignty of the Adriatic maintained that, when in the year 1630, just before the conclusion of the Mantuan War, a princess of the Spanish dynasty wished to pass by sea from Naples to Trieste, to espouse the son of the emperor, the senator refused to allow the Spanish squadron to escort her, as an infringement upon their right of excluding every foreign armament from those waters; but they gallantly offered their own fleet for her service. The Spanish government at first rejected the offer; but the Venetians, says Giannone, boldly declared that, if the Spaniards were resolved to prefer a trial of force to their friendly proposal, the infanta must fight her way to her wedding through fire and smoke. The haughty court of Madrid was compelled to yield; and the Venetian admiral, Antonio Pisani, then gave the princess a convoy in splendid bearing to Trieste with a squadron of light galleys.
Venetian Wars with the Turks
[Sidenote: [1645-1657 A.D.]]
Throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century, the affairs of Venice had little connection with those of the older Italian states; and in tracing the annals of the republic, our attention is wholly diverted to the Eastern theatre of her struggles against the Ottoman power. It was a sudden and overwhelming aggression which first broke the long interval of peace between the Turkish and Venetian governments. Under pretence of taking vengeance upon the knights of Malta, for the capture of some Turkish vessels, the Porte fitted out an enormous expedition; and 348 galleys and other vessels of war, with an immense number of transports, having on board a land-force of fifty thousand men, issued from the Dardanelles with the ostensible design of attacking the stronghold of the order of St. John (1645). But instead of making sail for Malta, the fleet of the sultan steered for the shores of Candia; and unexpectedly, and without any provocation, the Turkish army disembarked on that island. The Venetians, although the senate had conceived some uneasiness on the real destination of the Ottoman expedition, were little prepared for resistance; but they defended themselves against this faithless surprise with remarkable courage, and even with desperation. During a long war of twenty-five years, the most ruinous which they had ever sustained against the infidels, the Venetian senate and all classes of their subjects displayed a zealous energy and a fortitude worthy of the best days of their republic. But the resources of Venice were no longer what they had been in the early ages of her prosperity; and although the empire of the sultans had declined from the meridian of its power, the contest was still too disproportionate between the fanatical and warlike myriads of Turkey and the limited forces of a maritime state. The Venetians, perhaps, could not withdraw from the unequal conflict with honour; but the prudent senate might easily foresee its disastrous result.
The first important operation of the Turkish army in Candia was the siege of Canea, one of the principal cities of the island. Before the end of the first campaign, the assailants had entered that place by capitulation; but so gallant was the defence that, although the garrison was composed only of two or three thousand native militia, twenty thousand Turks are said to have fallen before the walls. Meanwhile, at Venice, all orders had rivalled each other in devotion and pecuniary sacrifices to preserve the most valuable colony of the state; and notwithstanding the apathy of Spain, the disorders of France and the empire, and other causes, which deprived the republic of the efficient support of Christendom against a common enemy, the senate were able to reinforce the garrisons of Candia, and to oppose a powerful fleet to the infidels. The naval force of the republic was still indeed very inferior in numbers to that of the Moslems; but this inferiority was compensated by the advantages of skill and disciplined courage; and throughout the war the offensive operations of the Venetians on the waves strikingly displayed their superiority in maritime science and conduct. For many successive years, the Venetian squadrons assumed and triumphantly maintained their station, during the seasons of active operations, at the mouth of the Dardanelles, and blockaded the straits and the port of Constantinople. The Mussulmans constantly endeavoured with furious perseverance to remove the shame of their confinement by an inferior force; but they were almost always defeated. The naval trophies of Venice were swelled by many brilliant victories, but by five in particular: in 1649 near Smyrna; in 1651 near Paros; in 1655 at the passage of the Dardanelles; and, in the two following years, at the same place. In these encounters, the exploits of the patrician families of Morosini, of Grimani, of Mocenigo emulated the glorious deeds of their illustrious ancestors; and their successes gave temporary possession to the republic of some ports in Dalmatia, and of several islands in the Archipelago.
But, notwithstanding the devotion and courage of the Venetians on their own element, and their desperate resistance in the fortresses of Candia, the war in that island was draining the life-blood of the republic, without affording one rational hope of ultimate success. The vigilance of the Venetian squadrons could not prevent the Turks from feeding their army in Candia with desultory and perpetual reinforcements of janissaries and other troops from the neighbouring shore of the Morea; and whenever tempests, or exhaustion, or the overwhelming strength of the Ottoman armaments compelled the republican fleet to retire into port, the numbers of the invading army were swollen by fresh thousands. The exhaustless stream of the Ottoman population was directed with unceasing flow towards the scene of contest: the Porte was contented to purchase the acquisition of Candia by the sacrifice of hecatombs of human victims. To raise new resources, the Venetian senate were reduced to the humiliating expedient of offering the dignity of admission into their body and the highest offices of state to public sale: to obtain the continued means of succouring Candia, they implored the aid of all the powers of Europe. As the contest became more desperate, their entreaties met with general attention; and almost every Christian state afforded them a few reinforcements. But these were never simultaneous or numerous; and though they arrested the progress of the infidels, they only protracted the calamitous struggle.
[Sidenote: [1648-1669 A.D.]]
In 1648 the Turkish army had penetrated to the walls of Candia, the capital of the island; and for twenty years they kept that city in a continued state of siege. But it was only in the year 1666 that the assaults of the infidels attained their consummation of vigour, by the debarkation of reinforcements which raised their army to seventy thousand men, and on the arrival of Akhmet Kiupergli, the famous Ottoman vizir, to assume in person the direction of their irresistible force. This able commander was opposed by a leader in no respect inferior to him, Francesco Morosini, captain-general of the Venetians; and thenceforth the defence of Candia was signalised by prodigies of desperate valour, which exceed all belief. But we, in these days, are surprised to find that the Turks, in the direction of their approaches, and the employment of an immense battering train, showed a far superior skill to that of the Christians. The details of the siege of Candia belong to the history of the military art; but the general reader will best imagine the obstinacy of the defence from the fact that, in six months, the combatants exchanged thirty-two general assaults and seventeen furious sallies; that above six hundred mines were sprung; and that four thousand Christians and twenty thousand Mussulmans perished in the ditches and trenches of the place.
The most numerous and the last reinforcements received by the Venetians was six thousand French troops, despatched by Louis XIV under the dukes of Beaufort and Navailles. The characteristic rashness of their nation induced these commanders, contrary to the advice of Morosini, to hazard an imprudent sortie, in which they were totally defeated, and the former of these noblemen slain. After this disaster, no entreaty of Morosini could prevent the duke of Navailles from abandoning the defence of the city, with a precipitation as great as that which had provoked the calamity. The French re-embarked; the other auxiliaries followed their example; and Morosini was left with a handful of Venetians among a mass of blackened and untenable ruins. Thus deserted, after a glorious though hopeless resistance which has immortalised his name, Francesco Morosini ventured on his sole responsibility to conclude a treaty of peace with the vizir, which the Venetian senate, notwithstanding their jealousy of such unauthorised acts in their officers, rejoiced to confirm. The whole island of Candia, except two or three ports, was surrendered to the Turks; the republic preserved her other possessions in the Levant; and the war was thus terminated by the event of a siege, in the long course of which the incredible number of 120,000 Turks and 30,000 Christians are declared to have perished (1669).
[Sidenote: [1669-1687 A.D.]]
Notwithstanding the unfortunate issue of this war, the Venetian republic had not come off without honour from an unequal struggle, which had been signalised by ten naval victories and by one of the most stubborn and brilliant defences recorded in history. Although, therefore, a prodigious expenditure of blood and treasure had utterly drained the resources of the republic, her courage was unsubdued, and her pride was even augmented by the events of the contest. The successes of the infidels had inspired less terror than indignant impatience and thirst of revenge; and the senate watched in secret for the first favourable occasion of retaliating upon the Mussulmans. After the Venetian strength had been repaired by fifteen years of uninterrupted repose and prosperous industry, this occasion of vengeance was found, in the war which the Porte had declared against the empire in 1682. An offensive league was signed between the emperor, the king of Poland, the czar of Muscovy, and the Venetians. The principal stipulation of this alliance was that each party should be guaranteed in the possession of its future conquests from the infidels; and the republic immediately fitted out a squadron of twenty-four sail of the line, and about fifty galleys.
There appeared but one man at Venice worthy of the chief command--that Francesco Morosini, who had so gallantly defended Candia, and whom the senate and people had rewarded with the most flagrant ingratitude. A strange and wanton accusation of cowardice was too palpably belied by every event of his public life to be persisted in, even by the envy which his eminent reputation had provoked, and by the malignity that commonly waits upon public services, where they have been unfortunate. But a second and unprovoked charge of malversation had been followed by imprisonment. Still, however, devoting himself to his country’s cause, and forgetting his private injuries, Morosini shamed his enemies by a noble revenge; and, once more at the head of the Venetian armaments, he led them to a brilliant career of victory. The chief force of the Ottoman Empire was diverted to the Austrian War; and the vigorous efforts of the republican armies were feebly or unsuccessfully resisted by the divided strength of the Mussulmans. In the first naval campaign, the mouth of the Adriatic was secured by the reduction of the island of Santa Maura, one of the keys of that sea; and the neighbouring continent of Greece was invaded. In three years more, Morosini consummated his bold design of wresting the whole of the Morea from the infidels. In the course of the operations in that peninsula, the count of Königsmark, a Swedish officer who was entrusted with the command of the Venetian land-forces under the captain-general, inflicted two signal defeats in the field upon the Turkish armies. Modon, Argos, and Napoli di Romania, the capital of the Morea, successfully fell after regular sieges.[c]
The year 1687 was not so propitious for the Venetians; nevertheless Morosini rendered himself master of Lepanto and Corinth. The conquest of the Morea was nearly completed. At this time the senate voted for the great captain a bust in bronze, bearing the inscription: “Francisco Maurocenico Peloponnesiaco adhuc viventi Senatus.” This honour redoubled the ardour of Morosini. After conquering Sparta he turned to Attica, and laying siege to Athens easily took it. It was in this assault on Athens that a shell struck the Parthenon, of which the Turks had made a powder magazine, and reduced that celebrated edifice to ruins. Morosini, who to skill in war and love of country added admiration for the great and beautiful, did his best to save what he could of this venerated relic, and exclaimed: “Oh Athens, protector of Art, to what art thou reduced!” Thus was ancient Greece avenged on ancient barbarism. But different rulers had left too deep furrows on this sacred soil to enable the republic of Venice, already enfeebled, to recall it to life; there reigned the silence of a past which could never be renewed.
[Sidenote: [1687-1695 A.D.]]
In 1688 the Venetian fleet leaving the Gulf of Ægina operated against the island of Negropont (Eubœa), but was unable to take it, not only on account of the resistance offered by the Turks, but because sickness had begun to decimate the ranks, and a band of Germans fighting for the republic were withdrawn. The Venetians were however continually gaining victories in Dalmatia, while the Turks were frequently discomfited in Hungary; so that the latter began to make proposals for peace. The demands of the allies, however, were so exorbitant that the negotiations failed, and the Turks decided to continue the war to the utmost of their power, a decision which was influenced by the turbulent state of Europe. Morosini was not discouraged by this new boldness on the part of the Turks; he had now been raised to the supreme dignity of the dogeship, and wished by some fresh, great deed to prove that the republic had done wisely in reposing complete faith in him. He had in his mind the design of attempting once more the conquest of Negropont; but the forces there being already under other leaders, he decided to take Monembasia, which would make the conquest of the Morea quite complete. But the siege had scarcely begun when Morosini fell ill, and he was obliged to surrender his command to Girolamo Cornaro and return to Venice. The porte brought forward fresh proposals for peace, but they were rejected.
The emperor wished to employ all his forces against the French; he was not disinclined to listen to suggestions for an agreement. Knowing this, the Venetians understood how much it was to their interest to conduct carefully the enterprise which they had in hand, so that if peace should be concluded it might be to their advantage. So Cornaro assailed Monembasia with great ardour until he finally mastered it, after which he attacked the Ottoman fleet and defeated it at Mytilene. After the taking of Vallona, which was dismantled, an illness ended Cornaro’s honoured life. Domenico Mocenigo who succeeded him in his command was very different from his predecessor. An attempt made by him to conquer Candia failed through his cowardice; he was punished by the senate, who deprived him of his command and begged Morosini to place himself once more at the head of the army. Morosini, though well on in years, started at once from Monembasia the 24th of May, 1693. On this occasion, however, he did nothing very remarkable beyond acquiring possession of some islands--among others Salamis; partly because the season was unfavourable, and the Turks were strongly fortified in the Hellenic territory which still remained to them. He died not long after (January 9th, 1694), and was succeeded in his command by Antonio Zeno.
The new commander, while the troops were gaining fresh victories in Dalmatia, took Scio; but he afterwards allowed a favourable opportunity of defeating the Turkish fleet to escape him, and did not even trouble to keep Scio which he had conquered. He was called upon to give an account of his conduct, and thrown into prison where he died before sentence had been pronounced against him. His successor, Alessandro Molin, was more fortunate. It seemed as though the star of Venice was once more declining, and the enemy’s forces again became threatening. The Turks, recovering from the defeats they had sustained, again attempted the reconquest of the Morea. But not only were they unsuccessful in this, but Molin determined to meet them off Scio and there gained over them a signal victory. Equally auspicious for Venice were the years 1696, 1697, 1698, in which last, on September 20th, the purveyor extraordinary, Girolan Dolfin, gained another naval victory by which supremacy of the sea was secured to the republic and the dominion of the Archipelago guaranteed. But already the other great victory of Zenta, within the military boundaries, was gained by Prince Eugene of Savoy on September 11th; and as the Turks lost their grand vizir, seventeen pashas, thirty thousand soldiers dead and three thousand prisoners, the sultan was convinced that the only thing which remained for him to do was to sue once more for peace, the more so as Cornale, who succeeded Molin as commander, had in various encounters defeated the Ottoman army and, closing the passage of the Dardanelles, had several times reduced Constantinople to starvation. The Christian powers were not this time deaf to the request of the sultan. They perceived the necessity of making peace with the East, since the hopes and fears growing out of the war of the Spanish Succession had given rise to contentions of all kinds among the three cabinets.
[Sidenote: [1695-1699 A.D.]]
Through the mediation of England and Holland--after the overcoming of many difficulties brought forward principally by the Venetians, who feared that they might lose in peace what they had gained in war, or that they would not receive from the empire, a rival power, all due regard for their interests--on the 13th of November, 1693, the imperial plenipotentiaries, with those of Poland, Russia, Venice, and the Turks, assembled in congress at Karlowitz, a town on the Danube to the south of Peterwardein.[d]
By the Treaty of Karlowitz, which the republic, in concert with the empire, concluded with the Ottoman Porte, Venice retained all her conquests in the Morea (including Corinth and its isthmus), the islands of Algina and Santa Maura, and some Dalmatian fortresses which she had captured; and she restored Athens and her remaining acquisitions on the Grecian continent (1699).[c]