CHAPTER XXIV
THE NEW DAWN

In every part of the Western world we see the leading nations settling down at the beginning of the sixteenth century within boundaries nearly the same as those which define them at the beginning of the twentieth. And for the most part those boundaries remain, in spite of the upheaval caused by the Great War.

There is, however, one notable exception, namely Italy. The very idea of a united Italy does not seem to have been in men's minds until later. The country which we now know by that name was then, as we have seen, divided between five principal States, Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal State, and Naples with Sicily.

Government in the rich and powerful cities was constantly changing hands. In Rome itself, where the situation was made more difficult and complicated than anywhere else, because of the Pope and his claim to governing power, the changes were bewildering. The power of the aristocracy was much broken in the middle of the fourteenth century when Rienzi, "Last of the Tribunes," led the democracy. Rienzi was the friend of Petrarch, and Bulwer Lytton has made him the hero of an exciting novel. But the Pope returned to Rome from Avignon in 1367, and though there were for a while rival Popes in Avignon and in Rome, yet by the end of the century the republican government of Rome had been overthrown and the Pope had gained supremacy.

He never really lost it. At one moment in the fifteenth century the forces of the King of Naples took and sacked Rome itself. At another the Pope had to flee before his own barons. But he soon came back. One of his successors only saved himself from these same barons, or their descendants, by the aid of Naples. Nevertheless by the end of the century, which is the date of the end of the present story, the power of the nobles had received what really was its death blow. In Florence and in Rome their chiefs were simultaneously massacred. The Papal power was finally established.

Venice, as we have seen, was for a while by far the strongest and the most wealthy of the Italian States. But now the new naval power in the Mediterranean, the power of the Turks, was limiting and diminishing her strength, and shortly before the end of the fifteenth century two Portuguese navigators made a discovery of which the effect was to limit and diminish her wealth. If you will look at the map of the world you will see how far the Continent of Africa extends southwards, and you must understand that at the time about which our story is telling us now, no one knew how far southward this Continent stretched. Hitherto no navigator had come to its southern end. Many had gone sailing, sailing, south, but still that land was always there, on their left hand, on the eastern side, until these Portuguese navigators, Bartolomeo Diaz and Vasco da Gama, sailed yet further than any before them, came to the southern end of the great Continent, and found an open sea over which they might sail eastward. They had rounded what afterwards was named the Cape of Good Hope.

And what difference did that make to Venice? It made this difference—that whereas she had been the gate from the East, the port by which the riches and products of the East came into the Western world, this discovery that man could go sailing eastward, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, meant the opening of a new door through which those rich products could be brought to Western Europe. And it was a more convenient way of bringing them, because it did not require all the old long overland travel, perhaps from India through Asia Minor, and then the putting of the merchandise on shipboard to be carried to Venice, and then again the unshipping at Venice and the overland carriage again. This overland route was one way. Another was by way of ports on the Red Sea and thence across the Isthmus of Suez to the Mediterranean. Instead of all this complicated business, there might now be the one shipping in some port, say of India, and the unshipping, perhaps in Lisbon.

India and America

Thus the East was opened to the West, and almost at the same moment a new and further West was opened with the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (after whom that great land is sometimes called Columbia) and by that Vespucci, whose baptismal name was Amerigo, after whom it is more commonly called.