Such movements led the Senate to distrust the people more than ever and to deprive them of the right to bear arms. In fact, when Agostino Pinelli was Doge, Italian troops were no longer trusted with the custody of the ducal palace; but the Republic enlisted Swiss, German and Trentine mercenaries. Giocante Della Casa Bianca who had commanded the guard for twenty-five years, gave up his sword to a German adventurer and accepted a subordinate position.
Besides, though the plebeians did not revolt or renew the conspiracies of Fieschi and Cybo, the Senate endeavoured to ruin all those who were pronounced friends of the ancient popular system. Oberto Foglietta having published in Rome, where he resided (1556), two books on the Genoese Republic, in which he exalted the popular citizens over the patricians, declaring that the first had served the country with greater fidelity than the second, the government declared him guilty of felony and punished him with banishment and confiscation of goods. Many years after, Giovanni Andrea Doria, to whom he dedicated his eulogies of illustrious Ligurians, procured the revocation of the sentence. While the Senate banished Foglietta, it praised to the skies the ignoble treatise of Pellegro Grimaldi, who, though a Republican, taught us to beg the favour of princes, and the logic of Lovenzo Capelloni, who, adhering consistently to the party of the victors, declared that the Holy See owed its fame to the house of Borgia.
On the 25th of November, 1560, Andrea Doria died, having lived almost one hundred and one years. The nobles called him the father of his country; but Cosimo, the old, was equally flattered. The plebeians with more sense surnamed Andrea Good Fortune, because except in a very few cases, his plans were always successful. He was the first admiral of his time and conquered everybody but himself; sad proof of which are the misfortunes of Fieschi, Farnese, Cybo and a long list of exalted names. He bore arms against his country, to dissolve, he said, its alliance with France; but the act was equally in his own interest after he had deserted the French service.
If he emancipated us from France, he took away the popular franchises and established the Spanish tyranny. He did not wish the office of Doge; but being the minister of Charles V. in Italy and the lord of the Main, it did not become him to descend to an office of less rank. The magnanimity of his own heart and the temper of his fellow citizens alike forbade him to assume the supreme power of a prince in Genoa. That was probably destined in his mind for Gianettino, and only the Fieschi conspiracy saved us from that fate. If Doria had wielded his sword and shed his blood for Italy as he did for foreign masters, he might perhaps have saved us three centuries of humiliation. Foglietta proposed to him a more generous service; to despoil himself of galleys, giving them or selling them to the Republic—an example which other citizens would imitate—so that Genoa, having fifty ships in her service, could hold French and Spaniards at bay and use the seas for her commerce. Such a course would have given Andrea the glory of Ottaviano Fregoso, who by destroying the forts of the Faro, showed that he loved his country better than his personal dignity and interest. But the Republic saw in her waters a fleet which belonged to her sons, while she lacked ships to protect her coasts from the pirates of Barbary. The splendid scheme of Foglietta came to nothing; Andrea spent his life in keeping the seas open for French and Spaniards and in maintaining foreign powers. He preserved to Genoa the name of independence, but it was a mockery. Though he put on our necks the yoke of Spain, he was great and strong enough to be the only minister and agent of that power.
A great soldier in the service of the enemies of Italy, he stripped the Republic of her popular power, founded an oligarchy on the ruins of liberty and closed the glorious epopee of Genoese conquests in an endless succession of domestic conspiracies and political contentions. Such is our estimate of Andrea. We believe that now that the angry passions which his actions evoked have ceased to glow, the sentence of history should be written with impassable justice. After his death, the Fieschi party again took courage. They attempted to remove the old nobles from power and in 1560 (writes Doge Lercaro) conferences were openly held in many places, especially in the house of Basadonne, so that it was necessary to refer the matter to the Senate. Finally, the nobles of San Pietro, headed by Matteo Senarega, a man of much legal learning and political experience whom the arrogance of Doge Gianotto Lomellini had driven from the secretaryship of state, resolved to renew the Fieschi movement, humble the patricians and destroy the Spanish power. The contest began in the election of Doge, each party wishing to elect one of their own number, and they came to blows. The Porch of St. Luca was supported by its large army of vassals, by the arms of Spain and by the galleys of Prince Giovanni Andrea Doria. The porch of St. Pietro had the support of the populace who hoped to regain their old place in the political system of the Republic. In the midst of the quarrel (1572) Galeazzo Fregoso arrived with two large triremes, and after an enthusiastic reception by the people announced that the king of France would give support to the popular cause.
Scipione Fieschi also repaired two ships in order to support the revolution. But both found an invincible repugnance in the people to a revolution supported by foreign arms, and relinquished the enterprise. The people trusting in their own stout arms, revolted under the leadership of Sebastiano Ceronio, Ambrosio Ceresa and Bartolomeo Montobbio, sons of the people. However, the life and soul of the insurrection was Bartolomeo Coronato, who though noble by birth, patriotically espoused the popular cause. They occupied the city, closed the streets with barricades and shut up the patricians in their houses. These movements lasted for a month, the deputies of the people demanding that the laws of 1547 be abolished and the most worthy of the citizens inscribed in the book of gold. The Doge trembled at the audacious demand and the Senate saw no escape from its perplexity until Giovanni Battista Lercaro entered the hall and said:—“Since you have not been able to save the country from its peril and are ignorant of the art of governing, yield your places to better men. Elevated to your offices by the spirit of faction and personal interest, you are unfit to rule.”
These words of Lercaro, a man of great dignity and a noble of the porch of San Luca, frightened the Senate who promptly declared their willingness to follow his advice. But the plebeians always generous to their own hurt, answered:—“We have not taken arms for political power. We only want the law of Garibetto revoked.” Whereupon the Senate took fresh courage, annulled the odious law, added three hundred families to the nobility, abolished an unpopular excise duty upon wine and raised the daily wages of the weavers three soldi. The populace were satisfied and returned to their daily duties, while the nobles of San Pietro who had feared a popular tempest managed the movement with so much address that they obtained complete control of the state.
But the noblemen of San Luca, as indignant after, as pusillanimous before the peril, refused to recognize the new laws and, abandoning the city, retired first to their castles and afterwards collected at Finale, then in the power of Spain. Here they declared open war against the Republic, and failing to obtain assent to their demands by the mediation of princes and even of the Pope, they invoked foreign arms to desolate the country. A powerful fleet commanded by John of Austria, brother of king Phillip, sailed into our waters. The old nobles, knowing the hatred of our people to Spain, required that the expedition should sail under Ligurian colours; but this did not secure the success of the enterprise. Meanwhile Giovanni Andrea Doria, heir of the political opinions of his Grandfather as well as his riches and rank, stormed the castles of Spezia, Porto Venere, Chiavari, Sestri and Rapallo; and without listening to proposals of peace proceeded to the conquest of the western Riviera, capturing Noli and Pietra.
The nobility, whose remittances from Spain came in very slowly, was reduced to such extremities as to be unable to continue the war. Giacomo Durazzo was Doge. Prospero Fattinanti took his place and a compromise was effected through the ambassadors of the Pope, the emperor and the king of Spain assembled in Casale in 1576. The accord of the two parties of the nobility excluded the people from all political power. The plebeians were enraged at this new betrayal of their cause, and Matteo Senarega who had laboured so hard to promote popular rights, prophesied that the bondage of the plebeians would be eternal. He wrote:—“He who is oppressed by a prince yields to necessity and to destiny, with the consolation that a change of masters may lighten his burdens; but he who sinks under the despotism of a few, assuming the name of a Republic, loses his disgust at the tyranny in the sound of a word and under a sweet delusion wears his chains for ever.”
The old and new nobles now intrigued with such success as to destroy the spirit of popular liberty; and Coronato, whom Lercaro though of the opposite faction praises so highly, lost his head on the scaffold. On the other hand, Prince Giovanni Andrea Doria, who had dyed his sword so often in the blood of his fellow citizens, was called, “Preserver of the liberties of his country.” To this day he holds that rank in history; but our history must be re-written.