By the time of the coronation of Charles the Fifth, or at least within the generation which could remember his coronation, the greater part of Italy had been massed into a few states, which, as compared with the earlier state of things, were of considerable size. ♦Monaco♦ A few smaller principalities and lordships still kept their place, of which one of the smallest, that of Monaco in the extreme south-west, has lived on to our own time. ♦San Marino♦ So has the small commonwealth of San Marino, surrounded, first by the dominions of the Popes and now by the modern kingdom. But such states as these were mere survivals. ♦Dominion of Venice on the mainland, 1406-1797.♦ In the north-east, Venice kept her power on the mainland untouched, from the recovery of her dominions after the league of Cambray down to her final fall. ♦She loses her outlying Italian possessions, 1530.♦ By the treaty of Bologna she lost Ravenna; she lost too the towns of Brindisi and Monopoli which she had gained during the wars of Naples; but her continuous dominion, both properly Venetian and Lombard, remained. ♦Duchy of Milan:
Spanish, 1540-1706;
Austrian, 1706-1796.♦ The duchy of Milan to the west of her was held in succession by the two branches of the House of Austria, first the Spanish and then the German. ♦Advance of Savoy towards Milan.♦ But the duchy, as an Austrian possession, was being constantly cut short towards the west by the growing power of Savoy. For a while the Milanese and Savoyard states were conterminous only during a small part of their frontier. ♦Montferrat.♦ The marquisate of Montferrat, as long as it remained a separate principality, lay between the southern parts of the two states. On the failure of the old line of marquesses, Montferrat was disputed between the Dukes of Savoy and Mantua. ♦United to Mantua 1536, but claimed by Savoy, 1613-1631.♦ Adjudged to Mantua, and raised into a duchy by Imperial authority, it was still claimed, and partly conquered by, Savoy. ♦Mantua forfeited to the Empire, and Montferrat joined to Savoy, 1708-1713.♦ At last, by one of the last exercises of Imperial authority in Italy, the duchy of Mantua itself was held to be forfeited to the Empire; that is, it became an Austrian possession. At the same time the Imperial authority confirmed Montferrat to Savoy. The Austrian dominions in Italy were thus extended to the south-east by the accession of the Mantuan territory; but the whole western frontier of the Milanese now lay open to Savoyard advance. ♦First dismemberment of Milan in favour of Savoy, 1713.♦ The same treaties which confirmed Montferrat to Savoy and Milan to Austria also dismembered Milan in favour of Savoy. A corner of the duchy to the south-west, Alessandria and the neighbouring districts, were now given to Savoy; the Peace of Vienna further cut off Novara to the north and Tortona to the south. ♦Further cessions, 1738.♦ The next peace, that of Aix-la-Chapelle, gave up all west of the Ticino, which river became a permanent frontier.
♦Parma and Piacenza given to the Spanish Bourbons, 1731-1749.♦
Among the other states, the duchy of Parma and Piacenza was, on the extinction of the house of Farnese, handed over to princes of the Spanish branch of the Bourbons. ♦Ferrara confiscated to the Popes, 1598.♦ Modena and Ferrara remained united, till Ferrara was annexed as an escheated fief to the dominions of its spiritual overlord. ♦1718.♦ But the house of Este still reigned over Modena with Reggio and Mirandola, while its dominions were extended to the sea by the addition of Massa and other small possessions between Lucca and Genoa. ♦1771-1803.♦ The duchy in the end passed by female succession to the House of Austria. ♦Corsica ceded to France, 1768.♦ Genoa and Lucca remained aristocratic commonwealths; but Genoa lost its island possession of Corsica, which passed to France. ♦Extinction of the Medici, 1737.
Francis of Lorraine Grand Duke of Tuscany.♦ The Grand Duchy of Tuscany remained in the house of Medici, till it was assigned to Duke Francis of Lorraine, afterwards the Emperor Francis the First, and after that it remained in the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. ♦Urbino annexed by the Popes, 1631.♦ The States of the Church, after the annexation of Ferrara, were in the next century further enlarged by the annexation of the duchy of Urbino.
♦1530-1797.
Comparatively little geographical change.♦
Thus, except on the frontier of Piedmont and Milan, the whole time from Charles the Fifth to the French Revolution was, within the old kingdom of Italy, much less remarkable for changes in the geographical frontiers of the several states than for the way in which they are passed to and fro from one master to another. ♦Kingdom of the Two Sicilies♦ This is yet more remarkable, if we look to the southern part of the peninsula, and to the two great islands which in modern geography we have learned to look on as attached to Italy. ♦The Norman kingdom of Sicily.♦ The Norman kingdom which, by steps which will be told elsewhere, grew up to the south of the Imperial Kingdom of Italy, has hardly ever changed its boundaries, except by the various separations and unions of the insular and the continental kingdom. ♦Benevento.♦ Even the outlying papal possession of Benevento after each war went back to its ecclesiastical master. But the shiftings, divisions, and reunions of the Two Sicilies and of the island of Sardinia have been endless. ♦Charles of Anjou, 1265.♦ The Sicilian kingdom of the Norman and Swabian kings, containing both the island and the provinces on the mainland, passed unchanged to Charles of Anjou. ♦Revolt of the island of Sicily, 1282.
The two kingdoms.♦ The revolt of the island split the kingdom into two, one insular, one continental, each of which called itself the Kingdom of Sicily, though the continental realm was more commonly known as the Kingdom of Naples. The wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries caused endless changes of dynasty in the continental kingdom, but no changes of frontier. ♦Union of Aragon, Sardinia, and continental Sicily under Alfonso, 1442.♦ Under the famous Alfonso in the fifteenth century, Aragon, Sardinia, and the continental Sicily were three kingdoms under one sovereign, while the insular Sicily was ruled by another branch of the same house. ♦Aragonese kings of the island, 1296-1442. 1458-1701.♦ Then continental Sicily passed to an illegitimate branch of the House of Aragon, while Sardinia and insular Sicily were held by the legitimate branch. ♦Wars beginning with Charles the Eighth, 1494-1528.
Spanish, 1556-1701.♦ The French invasion under Charles the Eighth and the long wars that followed, the conquests, the restorations, the schemes of division, all ended in the union of both the Sicilian kingdoms, now known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, along with Sardinia, as part of the great Spanish monarchy. ♦1554-1555.♦ A momentary separation of the insular kingdom, in order to give the husband of Mary of England royal rank while his father yet reigned, is important only as the first formal use of the title of King of Naples. ♦Sardinia and Naples Austrian.
Duke of Savoy king of Sicily, 1713.♦ In the division of the Spanish monarchy, Sardinia and Naples fell to the lot of the Austrian House, while Sicily was given to the Duke of Savoy, who thus gained substantial kingly rank. ♦Exchange of Sicily and Sardinia, 1718.♦ Presently the kings of the two island kingdoms made an exchange; Sardinia passed to Savoy, and the Emperor Charles the Sixth ruled, like Frederick the Second and Charles the Fifth, over both Sicilies. ♦The Spanish Bourbons, 1735-1806. 1817-1860.♦ Lastly, the kingdom was handed over from an Austrian to a new Spanish master, the first of the line of Neapolitan Bourbons. Thus, at the end of the last century, the Two Sicilies formed a distinct and united kingdom, while Sardinia formed the outlying realm of the Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont. His kingdom was of far less value than his principality or his duchy. ♦Use of the name Sardinia.♦ But, as Sardinia gave their common sovereign his highest title, the Sardinian name often came in common speech to be extended to the continental dominions of its king.
♦Time of the Revolution, 1797-1814.♦
This period, a period of change, but of comparatively slight geographical change, was followed by a time when, in Italy as in Germany, boundaries were changed, new names were invented or forgotten names revived, when old land-marks were rooted up, and thrones were set up and cast down, with a speed which baffles the chronicler. The first strictly geographical change which was wrought in Italy by the revolutionary wars was a characteristic one. ♦Cispadane Republic, 1796.♦ A Cispadane Republic, the first of a number of momentary commonwealths bearing names dug up from the recesses of bygone times, took in the duchy of Modena and the Papal Legations of Romagna. Without exactly following the same boundaries, it answered roughly to the old Exarchate. ♦Transpadane Republic, 1797.♦ Then the French victories over Austria caused the Austrian duchies of Milan and Mantua to become a Transpadane Republic. ♦Treaty of Campo Formio, 1797. Cisalpine Republic.♦ Then Venice was wiped out at Campo Formio, and her Lombard possessions were joined together with the two newly made commonwealths, to form a Cisalpine Republic. But the same treaty wrought another change which was more distinctly geographical. ♦Venice surrendered to Austria.♦ Venice and the eastern part of her possessions on the mainland, the old Venetia, the Lombard Austria, was now handed over to the modern state which bore the latter name. This change may be looked on as distinctly cutting short the boundaries of Italy. The duchy of Milan in Austrian hands had been an outlying part of the Austrian dominions; but Venetia marches on the older territory of the Austrian house, and was thus more completely severed from Italy. The whole north of the Hadriatic coast thus became Austrian in the modern sense. One Italian commonwealth—for Venice had long counted as Italian—was thus wiped out, and handed over to a foreign king. But elsewhere, at this stage of revolutionary progress, the fashion ran in favour of the creation of local commonwealths. ♦Ligurian Republic, 1797.
Parthenopæan Republic.
Tiberine Republic, 1798-1801.♦ The dominions of Genoa became a Ligurian Republic; Naples became a Parthenopæan Republic; Rome herself exchanged for a moment the memories of kings, consuls, emperors, and pontiffs to become the head of a Tiberine Republic. ♦Piedmont joined to France, 1798-1800.♦ Piedmont was overwhelmed; the greater part was incorporated with France. Some small parts were added to the neighbouring republics, and the king of Sardinia withdrew to his island kingdom. Amid this crowd of new-fangled states and new-fangled names, ancient San Marino still lived on.
Thus far revolutionary Italy followed the example of revolutionary France, and the new states were all at least nominal commonwealths. In the next stage, when France came under the rule of a single man, above all when that single ruler took on him the Imperial title, the tide turned in favour of monarchy. In Rome and Naples it had already turned so in another way. ♦Restoration of the Pope and the King of the Two Sicilies, 1801.♦ By help of the Czar and the Sultan, the new republics vanished, and the old rulers, Pope and King, came back again. And now France herself began to create kingdoms instead of commonwealths. ♦Kingdom of Etruria, 1801-1808.♦ Parma was annexed to France, and its Duke was sent to rule in Tuscany by the title of King of Etruria. Presently Italy herself gave her name to a kingdom. ♦Kingdom of Italy, 1805-1814.♦ The Cisalpine republic, further enlarged by Venice and the other territory ceded to Austria at Campo Formio, enlarged also by the Valtellina and the former bishopric of Trent at one end and by the march of Ancona at the other, became the Kingdom of Italy. ♦Buonaparte king of Italy.♦ Its King, the first since Charles the Fifth who had worn the Italian crown, was no other than the new ruler of France, the self-styled ‘Emperor.’ But, in Buonaparte’s later distributions of Italian territory, it was not his Italian kingdom, but his French ‘empire’ whose frontiers were extended. ♦Annexation of Liguria, 1805;
of Etruria, 1808.
Grand duchy of Lucca.♦ The Ligurian Republic was annexed; so before long was the new kingdom of Etruria; Lucca meanwhile was made into a grand duchy for the conqueror’s sister. ♦Incorporation of Rome and France, 1809.♦ Lastly, Rome itself, with what was left of the papal dominions, was also incorporated with the French dominion. The work alike of Cæsar and of Charles was wiped out from the Eternal City. The Empire of the Gauls, which Civilis had dreamed of more than seventeen centuries before, had come at last.
The fate of the remainder of the peninsula had been already sealed before Rome became French. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies fell asunder. The Bourbon king kept his island, as the Savoyard king kept his. ♦Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, 1806. 1809. Stati degli Presidi.♦ The continental kingdom passed, as a Kingdom of Naples, first to Joseph Buonaparte, and then to Joachim Murat. ♦Benevento.♦ But the outlying Tuscan possessions of the Sicilian crown had already passed to France, and Benevento, the outlying papal possession in the heart of the kingdom, became a separate principality.
♦Italy under French dominion.♦