Not less prosperous than the silk manufactures were the corders and beaters of wool, also united into associations. They gave a great impulse to traffic and navigation. The beginnings of our civilization were born of industrial arts. The marines artisans, and tradesmen formed the only army of the Republic when it made war on feudatories and compelled them to swear allegiance to the commune. These brave plebeians—to-day operatives, to-morrow soldiers, not more masters of the shuttle and the oar than of the sword, tempestuous in character but fervent in faith—created in Genoa fruitful industries and immense social power; and though in the fury of faction they sometimes shed blood in the streets of Genoa, they atoned it by giving her, through formidable fleets, the dominion of the seas.
Guglielmo Embriaco, the hero of the first crusade, is the representative of this Genoese thrift and courage. Our armies were nothing more than associations. Such companies subdued the Euxine. The Giustiniani captured Scio, Samos, and other islands, and divided their gains pro rata per man in proportion to the expense which each had borne; the Cattaneo at Phocis, the Gattilusio at Mytilene, and the Zaccaria in Negroponte. Elis and Achaia adopted the same rule. It rarely happened that one who was not inscribed in a trade and to the commune obtained any position as a master-workman. The very nobleman who was a Ghibeline outside the walls became a Guelph when he established his residence in the city; and though from his castles in the passes of the Apennines he might have once plotted to invade us, he had no sooner recorded himself as a citizen than he counted it an honour to guide our fleets and overthrow our enemies. There was at one time a law which forbade the nobles to command even a ship; and many great nobles enrolled themselves with the people to open the path to naval and military authority.
The mark of these Guelph institutions on the people of Genoa was deep and enduring. The Genoese of our day are living proof of their lasting influence. Labour and banking produced immense wealth. The Genoese became the bankers of Europe. In the year 1200 they drew the first bill of exchange.[40] It was drawn on Palermo. They diffused the Arabic system of notation. In 1148 they created, for the conquest of Tortosa, the first public debts which they afterwards consolidated, appropriating the city and port customs to pay the interest. They founded the Bank of St. George, on whose model those of England and Holland were constructed, and they planted colonies everywhere. Along the inhospitable coasts of the Caspian and Aral, in Turchestan and Thibet, the pilgrim was safe in person and property who declared, “I am a Genoese.”
We return from this digression to the thread of our narrative. The long wars had lessened the gains of our trades-people; even the silk operatives were by the want of markets reduced to extremities. In that year, too, food was dear throughout Italy; and the merchants who held grain kept it back from sale in order to raise the price. Gianluigi, wishing to provide for the pressing wants of so many operatives, called to him Sebastiano Granara, consul of the weavers, obtained a list of the most distressed families, and sent them sums of money with a request to keep secret the name of the donor, and to inform him whenever they were again in urgent need.
He frequently requested the artisans and mechanics who were natives of his lands (they were more than two hundred) to come to him in Vialata, where he opened to them his granaries, and otherwise succoured them. By such acts of generosity he acquired the favour of the people, who were ready, as a proverb has it, “to carry water for him in their ears,” and to defend his person at their own peril.
Having by such practices obtained the sympathy of the new nobles and the humble classes who lived by their daily labour, the count began to provide the arms and soldiers which he should need, and, with great tact, availed himself in the exigency of the discords among the neighbouring governments.
Pierluigi Farnese, after having obtained from Paul III. the investiture of Parma and Piacenza, soon found that he had not sufficient forces to maintain his power in these provinces. Gerolamo Pallavicini, marquis of Cortemaggiore, and others of that family to whom the duke had prohibited the trade in salt, raised an armed rebellion. The Rossi, Sanseverino, Pusterla of Milan, and other feudatories, were supporting the insurrection. It was also encouraged by Giovanni del Verme, lord of the Romagna, a personal enemy of the duke, and by Beatrice Trivulzio, who being incensed against Paul III. for conceding the port of the Po in Piacenza to Michelangelo Bonaroti, excavated a new harbour, and deprived the divine architect of his reward.
The duke collected an army, and, as soon as he felt able to contest the field, demanded from some of his enemies the restitution of his dominions in their possession, claiming that these lands and feuds had been ceded to them by his predecessors to the prejudice of the ducal rights. The Pallavicini, who were particularly included in this demand, made such preparations as were possible to secure their own rights and repel all the duke’s attempts at aggression.
The estates of the Pallavicini and Fieschi were separated only by a little stream; and the count seeing a war cloud on the horizon, so near to his own fields, visited his feuds in the summer of 1546, under pretence of watching over his property. He spent some time at Lavagna, Montobbio, and Pontremoli. Here he collected his dependents, formed them into companies, and held musters and reviews. He would have gone farther, if the emperor, fearing that the Pallavicini dispute with Pierluigi would excite a general Italian war, and so distract his attention from his campaign against the Smacalda league in Germany, had not sent peremptory orders to Don Ferrante Gonzaga, who had succeeded to Marquis Vasto in the government of Milan, to pacify the quarrel, threatening the whole weight of the imperial displeasure against any who should refuse his mediation.
The duke was induced to lay down his arms by the shrewd Pontiff, who did not wish an open rupture with Cæsar, and Count Fieschi was chosen by Farnese as arbiter of the rival claims. These two—Farnese and Fieschi—had been on intimate terms some years before, at the time when the former came to Genoa, (1542), in company with Annibal Caro and Appollonio Filareto, his secretaries, to pay homage to the emperor and to ask a congress in the name of the Pope—the congress which took place in Busseto.