The Evolution of States

by J. M. Robertson

After Lorenzo's death (1492) only the incompetence of his son Piero at the hazardous juncture of the new French invasion under Charles VIII could upset the now hereditary power of the house; but such incompetence at such a crisis was sufficient, Savonarola having now set up a new democratic force, partly analogous to that of Puritanism in the England of a later age. The new party, however, brought no new political science.[621] Republican Florence in its interim of self-government proceeded as of old to make war on indomitable Pisa, with which it could never consent to live on terms of equality. Time after time, vanquished by force and treachery, the Pisans had again cast loose, fighting for independence as fiercely as did their fathers of a previous generation. Savonarola, who had no better light for this problem than was given to the other Florentines of his age, "staked the truth of his inspiration on the recovery of Pisa"; he had not a grain of sympathy for the Pisans, and punished those who had;[622] and though his party had the wisdom to proclaim a general amnesty for Florence (1495), the war against Pisa went on, with the French king insensately admitted as a Florentine ally. Savonarola in his turn fell, on his plain failure to evoke the miraculous aid on the wild promise of which he had so desperately traded; his party of pietists went to pieces; and the upper-class party which succeeded carried on the war, destroying the Pisan harvests every year, till, under the one-man command of Loderini, Florence triumphed (1507), and the staunch sea-city fell once more. Even now the conquering city consented to pay great bribes to the kings of France and Aragon for leave to take her prey. And once more multitudes of Pisans emigrated, refusing to live in subjection, despite all attempts at conciliation.[623]

Slowly the monarchic powers closed in; France, after several campaigns, decisively defeated and captured Lodovico Sforza, lord of Milan, and proceeded by a secret treaty with Spain to partition the kingdom of Naples—a rascals' bargain, which ended in a quarrel and in the destruction of two French armies; Spain remaining master of Naples and the Sicilies, while France held the Milanese and Liguria, including Genoa. For a few years Cesare Borgia flared across the Italian sky, only to fall with his great purposes unfulfilled; and still the foreign powers encroached. France, with Swiss support, proceeded in turn to make war on Venice; and the emperor, the pope, Spain, and the smaller neighbouring despots, joined in the attack. Against these dastardly odds the invincible oligarchy of Venice held out, till Pope Julius, finding his barbarian friends worse than his Italian enemies, changed sides, joined the republic, and after many reverses got together an anti-French league of English, Swiss, and Spanish. Finally the emperor betrayed his French allies, who were once more driven out of Italy, leaving their ally, Florence, to fall into the hands of the Spaniards (1512).

Now came the restoration of the family of Medici, soon followed by the elevation of Giovanni de' Medici to the Papacy as Leo X; whence came yet more wars, enough to paralyse Italy financially had there been no other impoverishing cause. But Leo X, now the chief Italian power, misgoverned in secular affairs as badly as in ecclesiastical; and the wars, so barbarous in themselves, were waged upon dwindling resources. Venice, pressed afresh by Maximilian, made alliance with Louis, who was defeated by the Swiss, as defenders and "lords" of Milan; whereupon the Spanish, papal, and German forces successively ravaged the Venetian territories. Francis I zealously renewed the war, grappled with the Swiss in the desperate battle of Marignano in such sort as to get them to come to terms, and compassed the sovereignty of Milan. On the succession of Charles V to the throne of Spain and the Empire (1519), war between him and Francis set in systematically, and continued under Adrian and Clement VII as under Leo, both combatants feeding on and plundering Italy. The defeat of Francis at Pavia (1525) brought no cessation to the drain; a new league was formed between France, the Papacy, Venice, and Sforza; and soon, besides the regular armies, a guerilla horde of Germans on the imperial side, receiving no pay, was living by the plunder of Lombardy. At length, in 1527, came the sack of Rome by the imperial forces, Germans and Spanish combining for nine miserable months to outdo the brutalities and the horrors of all previous conquests, Christian or heathen. Two years' more fighting "only added to the desolation of Italy, and destroyed alike in all the Italian provinces the last remains of prosperity."[624] When a fresh German army entered Lombardy, in 1529, there was "nothing more to pillage."[625]

The curtain now falls rapidly on every form of "independence" in Italy. Pope Clement VII, freed of his barbarian conquerors, sent them against Florence, which fell in a fashion not unworthy of its great republican tradition, after tasting three final years of its ancient and thrice-forfeited "freedom." With the dying Machiavelli to frame the ordinances of her revived military system, and Michel Angelo to construct her last fortifications, she had in her final effort bound up with her name as a republic two of the greatest Italian names of the age of the Renaissance. Then came the vengeance of the Medicean Pope, Clement VII, the ducal tyranny, and the end of a great period.

The prolonged life of the maritime and commercial-aristocratic republics of Genoa and Venice, interesting as a proof of the defensive powers of communities so placed and so ordered, was no prolongation of Italian civilisation, save in so far as a brilliant art survived at Venice till the close of the sixteenth century. It is sufficient to note that what of artistic and intellectual life Venice and Genoa had was dependent first on Venetian contact with Byzantium, and later on the fecundity of freer Italy. The mere longer duration of Venice was due as much to her unique situation as to her system. On the other hand, it seems substantially true that the Venetian oligarchy did rule its subjects, both at home and on the mainland, with greater wisdom and fairness than was shown by any other Italian power. When Castruccio Castracani drove nine hundred families out of Lucca in 1310, thus destroying some of its chief manufactures, Venice gave the silk-weavers among them a politic encouragement, and so widened her commercial basis.[626] Her rulers, in short, had the common sense of men of business, who knew the value of goodwill. There is thus an unwarrantable extravagance in the verdict of the young Macaulay, that in Venice "aristocracy had destroyed every seed of genius and virtue";[627] and in his outburst: "God forbid that there should ever again exist a powerful and civilised State which, after existing through thirteen hundred eventful years, shall not bequeath to mankind the memory of one great name or one generous action." Such actions are not rife in any history, and in mere civic selfishness of purpose the rulers of Venice were on a par with most others.[628] As citizens, or as a caste, they seem to have been not more but less self-seeking as against the rest of the community, despite their determined exclusiveness, than the same class in other States.[629] Their history does but prove that an astute oligarchy, protectively governing a commercial and industrial State, is not helpful to civilisation in the ratio of its power and stability, and that the higher political wisdom is not the appanage of any class.

When all is said, the whole Italian civilisation of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance represents a clear political gain over that of ancient Hellas in that it had transcended slavery, while failing to attain or to aim at the equality and fraternity which alone realise liberty. Despite, too, all the scandals of the Renaissance in general, and of papal Rome in particular, the life of such a city as Florence was morally quite on a par with that of any northern city.[630] But the later States and civilisations which, while so much more fortunate in their political conditions, are still so far from the moral liberation of their labouring masses—these are not entitled to plume themselves on their comparative success. "The petty done" is still dwarfed by "the undone vast."

What they and we may truly claim is that in the modern State, freed from the primal curse of fratricidal strife between cities and provinces, the totality of "good life," no less than of industrial and commercial life, is far greater than of old, even if signal genius be less common. To contrast the Genoa of to-day with the old City-State is to realise how peace can liberate human effort. The city of Petrarch, Columbus, and Mazzini has no recent citizen of European fame; but since a wealthy son bequeathed to her his huge fortune (1875), she has become the chief port of Italy, passing some forty per cent. of the total trade of the country. The fact that half her imports, in weight, consist of coal, tells of the main economic disadvantage of modern Italy as compared with the chief northern countries; but the modern development of industry is all the more notable. Under a system of general free trade, it might go much further.

The fact remains that modern Italy is no such intellectual beacon-light among the nations as she was in the "old, unhappy, far-off times"; and upon this the historical sentimentalist is prone to moralise. But there is no perceptible reason why the new life, well managed, should not yield new intellectual glories; and the latterday intellectual Renaissance of Italy may one day take its place in the historic retrospect as no less notable than that of the days of strife.

FOOTNOTES:

[598] Burckhardt (as cited, p. 94) agrees with Ranke that, if Italy had escaped subjugation by the Spaniards, she would have fallen into the hands of the Turks.