The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 09

by Unknown

CHAPTER XIV. THE “LAST DAY OF ITALY”

[1494-1530 A.D.]

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

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

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

[1492-1494 A.D.]

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

An Italian Peasant

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

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

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

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

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