VII.
All this, however, was carried on in the face of continual and new dangers, threatening the very life of the Republic, and sometimes only to be averted by super-human efforts. Memory instinctively carries us back to the Florence of old with its council and its Consuls, yearly taking the field united and agreed, for the purpose of abasing the nobles and clearing the highways for the march of its trade; and then, having reduced the hostile barons one by one, compelling them to live within the walls, subject to the equal pressure of republican laws;—to the times when the State could only overcome its more powerful neighbours by emancipating the slaves of the soil and granting political privileges to traders hitherto unpossessed of any such rights. On recalling those times, we easily recognise that they contained the germs of future greatness for the Commune that by dint of continual warfare succeeded in augmenting its resources in every direction. Later, however, things were radically changed, owing to many causes, and above all in consequence of the new method of warfare to which we have already alluded and which must now be more fully described.
Down to the fourteenth century republican armies were composed of foot soldiers, lightly equipped with sword, shield, and helmet, and some slight defensive armour for leg or breast. The horse were few in number and never decided the fate of a battle. All barbarian armies had been composed much on the same plan, excepting those of the Huns and Moors, who were almost always mounted, and of the Byzantines, whose cavalry had frequently defeated the Goths. Frederic Barbarossa's Italian campaigns had been chiefly carried on by infantry and withstood by the infantry of our communes, who could then turn all able-bodied citizens into soldiers at a moment's notice. But in the campaigns of Frederic II., Manfred and Charles of Anjou, a new method of war had been imported into Italy from Germany and France. The Florentines had learnt this to their cost at the battle of Montaperti, when their numerous army was routed by the charge of a few German horse. From that moment the issue of all Italian battles began to be decided by heavy cavalry or by men-at-arms. The mounted soldier was clad in steel from head to foot, although not yet, as at the close of the fifteenth century, encased, together with his steed, in such ponderous armour, that, once fallen, neither could rise from the ground without help. Armed with a very long lance, the horseman could overthrow the foot soldier before the latter could approach him with his short sword. Besides, this weapon never served to pierce the armour either of man or horse; and the arrows of the bowmen were equally useless. Accordingly, a few hundred men-at-arms pushed forward like a movable and impregnable fortress into the midst of a host of infantry sufficed to rout it in a very short time. This state of things lasted until the invention of powder and firearms produced a radical change in the condition of the Italian communes. For mounted troops required much training and great expenditure. It was not enough to maintain great arsenals, to create and train a new breed of horses, but every trooper had also to be kept in steady practice, devote his whole time to warfare, and keep two or three squires continuously drilled and employed. These squires carried all the armour and weapons and led the knight's charger, which was only used in battle. Only then, too, were knight and steed in full harness, otherwise both would have been exhausted in the hour of danger. Hence it was impossible for our republics to raise cavalry, seeing that citizens, earning their living by trade and commerce, could not forsake their daily work to acquire the art of war. Therefore, soldiering became a regular trade, and all choosing it for their career speedily began to put a price on their swords. Thus from the closing years of the thirteenth century we begin to find soldiers of various nationalities—Catalans, Burgundians, Germans, and other foreign horse—in the ranks of republican armies, and the number of these mercenaries was continually on the increase.
Gradually, also, tradesmen were obliged to recognise that they had become personally useless in the field. Accordingly, whenever the republics were threatened with attack, they no longer ventured to give battle without hiring some captain with a band of foreign horse. Italian valour rapidly lost its prestige, and "Companies of Adventure"—soon to be the cause of our direst calamities—began to be formed. Later on, it is true that when Alberico da Barbiano, Attendolo Sforza, Braccio da Montone, and others adopted the same career, they rivalled and even surpassed the foreign adventurers, who had now often to yield the palm to Italian courage. Soon, in fact, many came from afar to learn the new art of war under these Italian captains whose skill first reduced it to a science. Nevertheless, few citizens of free states were able to devote their whole life to war. It was the nobles, the exiles, the unemployed—knowing no other trade—and the subjects of petty tyrants who joined the "Companies of Adventure." And whether small bands or large, Italian or foreign, they invariably hastened the ruin of all our communes, and more especially of Florence. The continual wars in which this State was now engaged no longer served to foster the military spirit and energy of its people. Always compelled to rely on the help of foreign mercenaries, it soon lost all confidence in its own resources, the which therefore rapidly declined. A campaign simply implied some financial operation, or the levying of fresh taxes to furnish sufficient capital for the hire of one of the captains of adventure, who always closed with the highest bid. The money found, it was often enough to send it to the State's surest and most powerful ally, who undertook to complete the affair by engaging the captain best able to hire the largest number of men. So the chief thing was to know how to gain friends and excite enemies against the foe, and in this the Florentines always showed masterly skill. But these devices were no proof of military capacity. The most important personages despatched by them to the seat of war were commissioners charged to superintend the general proceedings, the administration of the army, and the political object of the campaign, and although we sometimes find these commissioners suddenly transformed into captains, taking command of the forces and deciding the fate of a battle with singular daring, their functions were always civil and diplomatic rather than military.
It is easy to foresee the final results of this method with regard to the future of the Republic, and the morals of its inhabitants. The stout burghers at the head of the government were engaged in the continual practice of cunning and craft. It was requisite to show adroitness in the council chamber; to thwart the nobles; to remain constantly on the alert to prevent the populace from growing unruly, while persuading it to furnish funds to carry on wars which were indispensable to secure the safety and prosperity of the foreign trade. Hence, still greater subtlety was needed in diplomatic negotiations to avoid being isolated, and to continually maintain the equilibrium of Italian States in the way most advantageous for the Republic. Even actual warfare being now reduced, as we have seen, to a financial operation, had come to be a fresh proof of ingenuity. There were no longer any of those vast sacrifices of citizens' blood and citizens' lives which serve towards the continued regeneration of a people, no longer any deeds of open and generous violence. And at times when the rich burghers were not absorbed in politics, they and all the rest of the citizens were devoted heart and soul to commerce, employing their leisure moments in the study of Tacitus, Virgil, or Homer, kept ready to hand under their counters. But, invariably, it was only the intelligence that was kept always in training, while the nobler faculties remained strangled and atrophied by the constant use of cunning and trickery. This was destined to lead, sooner or later, to the inevitable decay of the Republic's moral and political life, and to the decline of the highest mental culture. If the manner in which wars were planned and conducted caused fatal results, no less fatal were the ulterior consequences of victorious campaigns. For the hired troops once paid off, changed from friends into foes, and instantly sought to sell their services to some other employer. Failing to find one, and therefore receiving no pay, they dispersed in armed bands, ravaging town and country, by a species of military brigandage. Generally, it was found requisite to come to terms with them, and bribe them to keep the peace.
But the most important point to be noted at this juncture is that the conquest of fresh territory, although become an absolute necessity to the Republic, now began to be a serious danger and the source of future calamities. During the Middle Ages the Italian Commune had been a fertile cause of progress; but as its possessions outside the walls began to increase, it proved wholly powerless to convert the free city into what we call a State without working radical changes in its constitution. In fact, even in Florence, the most democratic of our communes, citizens were only to be found within the circuit of the walls. Laws were framed to ameliorate the condition of the territory outside and to abolish serfdom there, but no one contemplated endowing inhabitants of the contado with political rights. The title of citizens always remained, as it were, a privilege only granted to a minority, even of dwellers within the walls, and was never extended to the people at large. Whenever a new city was conquered and subjected to the Republic, it was governed more or less harshly; allowed to retain more or fewer local privileges; sometimes even permitted to retain a republican form of government, subject to the authority of a Podestà, captain, or commissary, and paying the taxes imposed by them; but its inhabitants never enjoyed the freedom of the City, nor were their representatives by any chance admitted to the councils or political offices of Florence. Accordingly, as the State became enlarged by fresh conquests, the cluster of citizens monopolising the government, and already very limited in number, sank to a still smaller minority compared with the ever-increasing population subject to their rule. Similarly to all other republicans of the Middle Ages, the Florentines were altogether unable to conceive the idea of a State governed with a view to the general welfare. On the contrary, the prosperity and grandeur of Florence formed the one object and aim to which every other consideration had to be subservient. Nor had the lower classes and populace, who were always clamouring for increased freedom, any different or wider views on the subject. Their ideas, indeed, being restricted in a narrower circle, were even more prejudiced, as their passions were blinder. Consequently it was considered at that time a greater calamity to be subjugated by a fellow republic than by a monarchy; inasmuch as princes brought their tyranny to bear equally on all alike, and thus, at any rate as regarded politics, the chief majority of the conquered suffered less injury. When Florence, however, by achieving the long-desired conquest of Pisa, at last became mistress of the sea, and witnessed the rapid increase of her commerce, she discovered that the annexation of a great and powerful republic, full of life and strength and possessed of so large a trade, brought her none of the advantages which might have ensued from a union of a freer kind with an equal distribution of political rights. The chief citizens of Pisa and all the wealthier families left the country, preferring to live in Lombardy, France, or even in Sicily under the Aragonese, where at least they enjoyed civil equality, rather than remain in their own city subject to the harsh and tyrannous rule of Florentine shopkeepers. The commerce and industry of Pisa, her navy, her merchant-fleet, all vanished when freedom fell; while her Studio, or university, one of the old glories of Italy, and afterwards reconstituted by the Medici, was done away with, and the city soon reduced to a state of squalid desolation. All conquered cities suffered this fate; those once of the richest and most powerful in the days of their freedom being treated with still greater harshness than the rest.[366] This makes it easy to understand why, when Florence was in danger, all conquered cities in which life was not altogether extinguished invariably seized the opportunity to try to regain their independence, and always preferred a native or foreign tyrant to cowering beneath the yoke of a republic that refused to learn from experience the wisdom of changing its policy. Nor could it have effected such change without radically altering its whole constitution and manner of existence.
Thus, in accumulating riches and power, Florence was only multiplying the causes of her approaching and unavoidable decline. The Commune seemed increasingly incapable of giving birth to the modern State, and accordingly, when its chief support, commerce, began to decay, the strength of the burghers was sapped, and the oppressed multitude, now a formidable majority, speedily looked to monarchical rule for their relief. Thus the Medici were enabled to attain supremacy in the name of freedom, and with the support of people and populace. Thus, likewise, by violence, or fraud, or by both combined, the communes of Italy were all reduced to principalities; and wherever, from exceptional causes, the republican order still lingered on for a while, it was only as a shadow of its former self, and no longer rendering any of the advantages for which it had been originally designed. Populations which had failed to establish equality by means of free institutions, were now forced to learn the lesson of equality beneath the undiscriminating oppression of a despotic prince. Signories formed the necessary link of transition between the mediæval commune and the modern state. For these Signories traced a way towards the just administration and method pursued by the vast kingdoms then in course of formation on the continent of Europe, and which also remained absolute and despotic monarchies until the French revolution effected in town, country, and throughout every class that work of social emancipation which the Italian communes had so admirably initiated, but had never learnt to extend beyond the circuit of their walls.
Florence maintained a prolonged resistance, but finally shared the fate of her fellow republics.
[CHAPTER VII.][367]
THE FAMILY AND THE STATE IN ITALIAN COMMUNES.[368]
I.[369]
IT is certain that no real national history of Italy can be written until the statutes and laws of our communes have been published, studied, and thoroughly investigated by the light not merely of historical but of legal research. The necessity for such investigation was first proclaimed by the learned Savigny, subsequently recognised by many Italian scholars, but has never yet been entirely satisfied. An accurate study of those old laws and statutes would make us acquainted with the public law of the communes, and place before our eyes a clear and exact picture of their political institutions which have been hitherto very imperfectly understood. Moreover, what is certainly of no less importance—it would enlarge our knowledge of our ancient private law, to which many learned authorities, among others Francesco Forti, attribute the origin of modern jurisprudence, and the germs of many jural provisions, afterwards accepted by us as novelties derived from the French Code.
Public and private law have far more affinity than is generally supposed, and each conduces to the plainer and more exact comprehension of the other. Society and the State have both their birth in the family, reacting upon and modifying it in turn. No student therefore who seeks to discover the true key to political institutions developing themselves in a country spontaneously, should neglect the constitution of the family wherein are to be found the earliest beginnings of civil law, with which political law also is more or less connected. Cases, it is true, frequently occur of one people adopting the civil law of another, without altering its own political institutions; while in other instances both are imposed simultaneously by a superior foreign force. This has led many to question the reality of the connection which in fact subsists between them. But these cases have nothing to do with that natural and spontaneous development of law of which we are now speaking. In this development, politics and jurisprudence, the State and the family, are found to be closely interconnected.
In the course of Florentine history we often see political revolutions break out suddenly and apparently without warning; but on closer examination we perceive them to be the result of deep social changes which have been maturing for a long time, and although imperceptible at first, afterwards assuming such proportions as to become suddenly visible to all eyes and productive of political reforms. Thus it happens that private law, which always accompanies social movements and changes with them, not unfrequently enables us to trace the sources and unfold the true tendency and inexorable necessity of revolutions, even before they come to pass. Accordingly, the habitual neglect of this particular study in connection with the history of Italy has proved a serious defect. No one at the present day would venture to write the political history of Rome without giving attention to the Roman jurisprudence. Nevertheless, we have written the history of our republics over and over again, without bestowing a thought on their civil and penal legislation.
It is true that the investigation required presents very great difficulties, inasmuch as our history was subject, during the Middle Ages, to a series of changes, always rapid and always different. The number of our republics is infinite. Every province of Italy, every fragment of Italian territory is divided and subdivided into communes, every one of which has a distinct history, and political institutions which are constantly changing. This perpetual mutation is faithfully reflected in the statutes of the Commune. On the margins of these statutes we find alterations and corrections registered from year to year, and formulated, not unfrequently, after the streets of the city had begun to run with blood. When annotations and corrections reach a certain number, the statutes are drafted anew, and of these re-drafts also many copies are still extant. It was the duty of the officials in charge of the statutes (statutari) to enter from time to time such farther modifications as were afterwards approved of in the Councils of the People. Hence it sometimes happens that on referring to the statutes of a given year, we may find the duties of some chief magistrate of the Republic set forth in their text with the most minute detail, whereas if we look to the notes it will appear that these duties have already been changed. If we next consult the remodelled statute it will be found that the magistracy itself no longer exists. How is it possible, therefore, to give any idea of the political form of a municipality fashioned in such wise? This can only be done by gleaning from the mass of the statutes the history of the constitution through all its successive changes of form. In a word, we must recognise that, instead of being confronted by a system crystallised, fixed and immutable, we are watching a living organism develop under our eyes in obedience to a settled law. This law alone is uniform, and it is this we must endeavour to trace, since it alone can solve the mystery and supply exact ideas. Turning from public law to private legislation, our difficulties rather increase than diminish. For, in perusing this, by no means less important portion of the statutes, we come upon a confused medley of legal systems differing from and often opposed to one another. When we meet with such terms as meta and mundium, wergild and morgengab, dos and tutela, testamentary succession and succession by agreement, we recognise that Longobard law, Roman law, feudal law, and canon law are all present, and perceive that they are blended in constantly varying proportions. These diverse legal systems act and react one upon the other, producing reciprocal changes. Into the Roman law, provisions are constantly filtering which indubitably belong to the Longobard law, while the latter in its turn is profoundly modified ("mutilated and castrated," as Gans expresses it) by the Roman law. How are we to explain this congeries of different laws? Is there any new and original principle that assimilates the heterogeneous elements and constitutes a new law? If so, what is it? This is the knotty problem which Savigny encouraged us to attack, but which we have hitherto failed to unravel. But although the question remains unsolved, its importance is now universally acknowledged; it has been carefully studied, and many treatises, including some of the highest value, have been published on the subject. Accordingly certain observations may at last be offered to the public.
The constitution of the family and its relation with the State are, as it were, the chief centre round which all fresh researches must revolve, and these form the subject of this short and summary essay. As a preliminary step towards the solution of the problem, an accurate investigation is required of the various forms that the family assumed under the various systems of law which succeeded one another in Italy, in order to ascertain how it was that from the combination of those various forms, another and widely different one should have resulted. The first question therefore that presents itself has reference to the condition of the Roman law and the Roman family at the time of the barbarian invasion. As regards the Italian communes, it is only natural that the Roman jurisprudence should strike the deepest and strongest root in their social system, and that the history of our laws should originally find in it their first beginning. Here, however, we are forced to enter on a digression which, although seemingly apart from the point, will presently help us to a clearer understanding of the new society in course of development. With regard to this digression it should also be said that so much learning and research have been directed to the study of Roman law, that we are able to arrive at certain trustworthy conclusions which, by affording evidence of the close connection between the Roman family, and the political society derived from it, will show us what path to take in pursuit of the same connection in the history of Italy.