CHAPTER XXIX
ITALY AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL (1527-1563)
We have now come to the beginning of long centuries of national degradation, and one has a general sense of passing from a glorious garden into a series of gas-lit drawing-rooms, somewhat over-decorated, where naughty princes amuse themselves with bagatelles. We must glance at the political degradation first.
The struggle between the Barbarians of France and Spain for mastery in Italy, of which we spoke in the last political chapter, was practically decided by the battle of Pavia (1525), in which the French king lost all but life and honour. France was most reluctant to acquiesce in defeat, and from time to time marched her troops across the Alps into unfortunate Piedmont, sometimes of her own notion, and sometimes at the invitation of an Italian state; but the Spanish grip was too strong to be shaken off. From this time on Italian politics were determined by the pleasure of foreign kings. Two treaties between France and Spain, that of Cambrai (1529) and that of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559), embodied the results of their bargains and their wars. The sum and substance of them was a practical abandonment by France of her Italian claims, and the map of Italy was drawn to suit Spain.
Milan was governed by Spanish governors, Naples and Sicily by Spanish viceroys. The business of a Spanish viceroy, then as always, was to raise money. Taxes were oppressive. It was said that in Sicily the royal officials nibbled, in Naples they ate, and in Milan they devoured. In addition to regular taxes, special imposts were laid on various occasions,—when a new king succeeded to the throne, when a royal heir was born, when war was waged against the Lutherans in Germany or the pirates in Africa. In the south, where the people were less intelligent and laborious, oppressive taxation and unwise government caused a gradual increase of ignorance and poverty, and left as a legacy to the present day the conditions from which spring the Mafia of Sicily and the Camorra of Naples.
In Florence the sagacious Cosimo I (1537-74) ruled with prudence and severity. He understood that his position depended on his fidelity to Spain and the Papacy, and acted accordingly. He married a Spanish lady, Eleanora of Toledo, daughter to the viceroy of Naples, took up his ducal residence first in the Palazzo Vecchio, where there are many remembrances of his duchess, and afterwards in the great palace, begun by Luca Pitti, across the Arno. He reduced Siena, once Florence's dangerous rival, to subjection, and crushed out the last traces of republican sentiment in his duchy. He employed Vasari to design the Uffizi, completed the edifice that holds the Laurentian library, and led as magnificent a life as a due regard for his purse would allow. In short, he was what one would expect an unrefined member of the Casa Medici to be; and when one recollects that his grandmother was a Sforza of Milan, all expectations based on heredity are amply satisfied. Cosimo I left a long line of descendants to sit upon his grand-ducal throne. Their marble effigies at the head of the stairway in the Uffizi tell their story. The brutal Sforza vigour and the elegant Medicean astuteness could not save them from sharing in the general degeneracy that spread like a blight over all Italy. However, one must remember that they did collect the finest picture gallery in the world and housed it in the Uffizi and Pitti palaces.
North of Tuscany the petty duchies of Ferrara, Urbino, Modena, Parma, and Mantua formed a little ducal coterie, very characteristic of the next two centuries. The Papacy indeed swallowed up Ferrara (1598) and Urbino (1631), but the House of Este of Ferrara moved on to Modena, and remained there till Napoleon's time. In Parma, Pope Paul III (1534-50), our old acquaintance Alexander Farnese, a careful father as well as a lucky brother, established his son as duke. This son was bad, and believed to be worse, so the nobles of Parma murdered him; but his descendants made good their title, and the little duchy of Parma, with its palace, its custom-house, its barracks, and its pictures, stepped forth as one of the petty states of the peninsula, and endured till the Union of Italy. Genoa and Lucca were permitted to remain republics.
Up in the northwest we get our first definite notions of Savoy. This duchy, built up piecemeal, was a composite state, which included a good deal of Piedmont, and portions of what are now France and Switzerland, and, unfortunately, lay directly in the way of the French armies on their marches into Italy. During the wars of Francis I and Charles V, the Duke of Savoy hopefully attempted to maintain neutrality, and, in consequence, lost all. France deemed it more convenient to own her line of march, and annexed Savoy; and for twenty years Piedmont was both camping-ground and battleground for the contending nations. It looked as if Savoy would be blotted from the map of Europe; but Duke Emanuele Filiberto (1553-80), Iron Head, an accomplished soldier, had the sense to take the winning side. He served in the Spanish army, and, in the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, as his share secured the restoration of his duchy. That portion of this duke's policy which concerns us especially is that he gave Piedmont precedence over his French and Swiss provinces, established the seat of government at Turin, put the university there and brought men of letters and science, substituted Italian for Latin in public documents, and proclaimed himself an Italian prince and Savoy an Italian state. He gave Savoy the general character which it has always retained. He checked the priests, built up the army, reformed the law, converted the old feudal dominion into an absolute autocracy, and started his dukedom on the course which ultimately enabled it to play its great part in the liberation of Italy in the nineteenth century. Emanuele Filiberto is reputed one of Italy's national heroes.