Ferdinand was at first inclined to listen, till, convinced by the Pope that Cæsar would only disturb the peace of Italy, he ordered his arrest on May 26, 1504,The end of Cæsar’s career. as the Duke was on the point of sailing for the Romagna. In violation of a safe-conduct given him by Gonzalvo, he was shortly sent to Spain, where he remained a prisoner till November, 1506. Escaping at last, he found refuge with his brother-in-law, now King of Navarre, to die in the succeeding March (1507), in a skirmish with a rebel vassal of the King.
Thus, at the age of thirty-one, ended the career of the man whom Machiavelli in his Prince holds up as a pattern, in all but his ill-fortune, to him who would attempt to form a united kingdom of Italy. No doubt Cæsar had many of the qualities requisite for success. Clever and versatile in conception, rapid and resolute in action, and a master of diplomacy, he had in a high degree the quality of ‘virtù,’ that compound of force and intellect, which we find praised not only by Machiavelli, but by Commines and other writers of the day, as the essential characteristic of the ruler.
We must, alas! allow that private morality is not always the accompaniment of good statesmanship. Although Cæsar was absolutely without scruple in his treatment of the petty princes of the Romagna, it may be questioned whether the independence of these petty principalities was worth preserving. Ruled by despots, no question of political freedom was involved. With a few exceptions, such as that of Urbino, they illustrated the evils without the advantages of the larger tyrannies, and their history is one tangled tale of faction, murder, and intrigue. The country too, it must be confessed, was well governed under him, and his rule was not unpopular. But, when all is said, we cannot believe that a kingdom founded by such cruelty, and maintained by such villany and treachery, can really be a solid one. That Machiavelli, dazzled by the temporary good fortune of Cæsar, should boldly hold him up as a model to be copied, only makes one realise the cynical despair of the Italians as to the possibility of success in their country by any other means, and the depth of degradation to which the people had fallen.[20] Nor, finally, do we believe that the idea of thus founding a temporal dominion of the Papacy was likely to succeed. Had Alexander lived longer, it might, perhaps, have ended in the establishment of another petty kingdom in Italy. But the state would have been founded in the interest of the Borgia, not of the Papacy, and would have only added one more enemy to the advance of the temporal dominion. If the papal authority in the Romagna was to become a reality, it must be based on a firmer foundation than that of papal nepotism. This Julius II. saw. Most of the cities held or threatened by Cæsar fell at once into his hands, with the exception of Rimini, Faenza, and Cesena, which were seized by Venice, to be secured, however, by Julius in the war of the League of Cambray. Meanwhile Perugia and Bologna were gained by Julius in 1506, while the Duchy of Urbino fell to his nephew, Francesco della Rovere, who was adopted by Guidobaldo, its late Duke. These territories were incorporated into the papal dominions; the history of their semi-independent princes came to an end, and Julius II., rather than Alexander, established the papal dominion in the Romagna.
§ 5. The League of Cambray.
The pretext for the invasion of Italy by France and Spain had been the necessity of securing a base of operations for a crusade against the Turk. This had been prevented by the quarrel of the robbers over their spoil. They were now to prove by their attack on Venice—the only power which had seriously attempted to check the Moslem advance—that the idea, even if ever seriously entertained, had been definitely abandoned.
The hostility with which that republic was viewed by the rest of Italy dates from the beginning of the fifteenth century, when she definitely began to aim at establishing a dominion on the Italian mainland.Jealousy against Venice, the result of her advance on the mainland. A quarrel between Milan and the Carrara of Padua enabled her to overthrow that family, to seize Padua, then, step by step, Vicenza and Verona, and to advance to the Adige (1405). In 1427 and 1428, she wrested Brescia and Bergamo from the hands of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, and after his death secured Crema (1454). Meanwhile she had acquired the district of Friuli from the Patriarch of Aquileia (1420), and in 1441 had added Ravenna, hitherto an independent state under the Polentani, to her conquests. In 1484, the peace of Bagnolo, which closed the Ferrarese war, gave her Rovigo and the Polesine. In 1499, she gained Cremona and the Ghiara d’Adda from Louis XII., as the price of her assistance against Ludovico. On the death of Cæsar Borgia, she had occupied Faenza, Rimini, and Cesena; while in Apulia, she held the four towns, Trani, Otranto, Gallipoli, Brindisi, which she had acquired at the date of Charles VIII.’s expedition. Thus, within the space of some hundred years, Venice had completely altered her character. The island city had gained a large territory on the mainland, which stretched to the neighbourhood of Milan, Florence, and the Papal States. The change of policy has usually been attributed to the advance of the Turk, which threatened her possessions in the Ægean Sea, and on the coast of Greece. This no doubt was one of her motives at a later date. But as her first advance on the mainland occurred in 1405, some years before the Turk seriously menaced her, we must look elsewhere for the primary cause. This is to be found in the danger to be apprehended from the growing power of Milan. As long as the plain of Lombardy and the approaches to the Alpine passes were in the hands of petty princes, she could hope to purchase, or to extort, an outlet for her commerce to the north; but, if these were to fall into the hands of the powerful and aggressive Dukes of Milan, they might be closed against her. An alternative route no doubt remained. She might have threaded the Straits of Gibraltar and reached the north of Europe by the Atlantic and the English Channel. But, though of late a Flanders fleet had yearly sailed from Venice, this route was not developed. It could, and probably would, have been closed by Spain. Nor would such a policy have saved her from Milan, which, if she became too powerful, might cut off her food supplies, surround her, and drive her into the sea.
The attempt, then, to form a state in Lombardy appears to have been inevitable; nor was it so selfish as her enemies declared it to be. Her treatment of the cities under her rule was not only infinitely superior to that of Milan, but compared most favourably with that of Florence. She left them as much local autonomy as was compatible with the maintenance of her supremacy; she did not tax them heavily. It was the aim of Venice to secure the affection of her subjects, and their loyalty in the days of her troubles, proved that she had succeeded. With equal injustice the policy of Venice towards the Turk has been denounced as faithless to the cause of Christianity. No doubt, despairing of the aid of Europe, she was anxious to keep on friendly terms with the Turk, and would, if possible, have avoided war; but this policy was forced upon her by the refusal of European states to sink their common jealousies and join heartily in a crusade. Venice, after all, was the only power which seriously attempted to check the advance of the Moslem, and the coalition against her is the best proof of the hollowness of the cry of a crusade on the part of her spoilers. But though the advance on the mainland seems to have been inevitable, and is capable of justification, it was none the less a fatal step. Had it been possible for Venice to conquer Milan, and to have secured the whole of Lombardy before the date of the French invasion, she might some day have become the capital of a united Italy, and the history of the Peninsula might have been a happier one. But for this her resources were not sufficient, nor is it likely that the European powers would have acquiesced. Failing this, her vain attempts to find a strategic frontier only added to her enemies, and earned her the name of the most selfish and grasping of the Italian states; while in her endeavour to protect her commerce by friendly treaties with the Turk, she added to her crimes the charge of treachery towards the cause of Christendom.
The real fault of Venice has not been so often noted by historians. Her interests imperatively demanded that the foreigner should be excluded from Italy.The real faults of Venetian policy. As long as the Peninsula was left to itself, she was strong enough to hold her own; but she was no match for the more powerful kingdoms of the north. Her vacillation at the date of the expedition of Charles VIII. she had in part redressed by forming the League of Venice and driving him from Italy, although her occupation at that date of the Apulian towns eventually earned her the hostility of Ferdinand. The good work was, however, again undone by her foolish alliance with Louis XII. in his war against Milan. By this short-sighted policy she earned with some justice the accusation of territorial greed; irritated Maximilian, who did not relish being excluded from Lombardy; and established on her western frontier the ever-grasping power of France. Thus, by the close of the fifteenth century, Venice had incurred the enmity not only of the petty Italian states, but of the chief powers of Western Europe.
Maximilian desired to recover Friuli; Louis XII. wished to extend the frontiers of the Milanese; Florence feared that Venice might cross the Apennines;European combinations leading to the League of Cambray. Ferdinand was determined to recover the cities in Apulia. Above all, Pope Julius was bent on humbling the proud republic. Her acquisitions in the Romagna interfered with his darling scheme of establishing the papal rule in that district. Between France in Milan, and Spain in Naples, Julius might hope to hold the balance, and to establish the temporal dominion of the Papacy, but Venice, or indeed any strong Italian power, would strenuously oppose it. In this Julius only followed the traditional policy of his predecessors in the papal chair, that of inveterate hostility to the growth of a strong native state in Italy. Moreover, the independent attitude of the republic in matters of church government, illustrated at this moment by her refusal to allow him to nominate to the vacant bishopric of Vicenza, angered the haughty prelate. ‘They wish to treat me as their chaplain,’ he said, ‘let them beware lest I make them humble fishermen as they once were.’
Under these circumstances the sole hope for Venice lay in the mutual jealousies of her enemies. From these she had profited hitherto, but when they ceased her day of reckoning would come. Hence it is necessary to treat in some detail the relations of the European powers at the opening of the sixteenth century.