The immediate cause of these evils was the disputed succession to the crown of Naples, which we have formerly seen convulsing Italy, and which it will require a brief digression and the annexed [table] to explain. The Norman knights who in the eleventh century visited Lower Italy in a crusade against the Saracens, soon contrived to make that country their own. One of them, Robert Guiscard, by his valour and talents acquired a supremacy in which he was succeeded by his nephew Roger, who had by similar means made himself master of Sicily. In 1130, the latter procured from Innocent II. the investiture of a kingdom nearly equal in extent to that of the Two Sicilies in our day, which, during next century, passed by marriage into the line of the Hohenstaufen emperors of Germany. But the same incurable jealousies, which gave rise to the Guelphic and Ghibelline parties, made the popes look with little favour on their new neighbours, who however maintained their ground for three generations, notwithstanding repeated offers of a competing investiture, by successive pontiffs, to various English and French princes. The crown, thus sent a-begging, was at length accepted by Charles Count of Anjou and Provence, seventh son of Louis VIII. of France, who, in 1266, defeated and slew Manfred, the last monarch of the Hohenstaufen line, and assuming the title of Charles I., founded the first Angevine dynasty. But in consequence of the brutal behaviour of his soldiery, he lost Sicily in a revolt, during which there occurred, in 1282, the massacre of the French, known as the Sicilian vespers. On this opening, Alfonso III. of Aragon put in a claim through his mother, a daughter of Manfred, and having established himself as King of Sicily, that title continued in his successors, and was ultimately reunited to the crown of Naples. The first house of Anjou, however, maintained themselves upon the throne of Naples for about one hundred and seventy years, notwithstanding the testamentary disposition of the maligned and unfortunate Queen Joanna I., who, in 1382, bequeathed that kingdom and the county of Provence to Louis I., second son of John II. of Anjou.
This will had been dictated by dislike of her second cousin and adopted heir Charles Count of Durazzo, but it did not prevent him, his son Ladislaus, and his daughter the beautiful and dissolute Joanna II., from establishing a de facto right to their heritage. Meanwhile Louis I., Louis II., and Louis III., their rivals of the second Angevine line, as it was called, persisted in styling themselves kings of Naples as well as of Jerusalem, and having patched up their defective title, by obtaining a recognition of their claims and investitures from several popes, they each invaded their titular kingdom. The first Angevine dynasty being about to close by the childless death of Joanna II., she was persuaded to terminate the struggle by settling her crown upon the second Angevine race, which at her death in 1435, was represented by Rénier, usually called René le Bon. The fatality of a disputed succession, with its attendant miseries, was however still in store for unhappy Naples. Joanna II. had already in 1421 adopted as her heir Alfonso V., King of Aragon and Sicily, who was likewise representative of whatever claims might have been transmitted from the old Norman dynasty, being in fact similar to those upon which his family had acquired Sicily before 1300. Eugene IV., at the same time, still further complicated this confusion, by interposing his right as over-lord, alleging that the investiture had, by failure of the reigning dynasty, lapsed to the Holy See.
After ineffectually attempting by an invasion to vindicate his title against his rival of Aragon, René retired to his little state of Provence, to dedicate his life to literature and the arts, but especially to those chivalrous lyrics which, casting the halo of poetic romance around the troubadours and their times, have wreathed his brows with laurels far more enduring than the crown of Naples could have conferred. Yet he and his nephew Charles continued titular kings, until the latter, dying without surviving male issue in 1481, left all his property, and therewith his claims upon Lower Italy, to Louis XI. of France, his third cousin and nearest male heir, upon whose death in 1483, these passed to Charles VIII. Alfonso V., having repulsed the good René, had no further serious disturbance in his possession of Naples and Sicily, now once more united; but he being succeeded in these by a natural son Ferdinand I., his Spanish crown going to his brother John II., the already defective title of the house of Aragon to their Italian dominions on terra firma was thereby further weakened, at a moment when they exchanged the competition of a petty and unwarlike prince for that of the powerful and ambitious monarch of France.
Such was the political position of Naples; that of Milan must now claim our attention. Giovanni Galeazzo had succeeded to the dukedom, upon the assassination of his debauched father Galeazzo Maria, in 1476. Being then but seven years old, his mother, a princess of Savoy, managed the government during four years, until the intrigues of his uncle Ludovico supplanted her, and possessed himself virtually of the sovereignty, though exercising it in the name of his nephew. He married him at the age of twenty to Isabella, daughter of Alfonso heir-apparent of Naples, but availing himself of his feeble character maintained his own position, even after the Duke had attained to manhood. He was generally known by the surname of Il Moro, from using as his device the mulberry, which, being the last tree to hazard its buds, and the first to mature its fruit, was the received emblem of discretion and cautious policy. Ludovico il Moro may thus be rendered Louis the Discreet, an epithet little in keeping with his character, at once rash and restless, wavering and weak. Accordingly, in pursuing his designs of unprincipled ambition, this unscrupulous usurper most signally overreached himself, and, as we shall in due time see, brought utter ruin upon his own person and house.
Venice, now at the summit of her pride and power, is thus finely apostrophised by Politian;—
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"Sole Queen of Italy! of regal Rome The beauteous rival, ruling earth and sea, Sovereigns would fain thy citizens become. Ausonia's honoured light! 'tis but in thee, Unquenched by barbarous hosts, our freedom glows; 'Tis to thy beams our sun a brighter radiance owes."[239] |
As yet she was the mart of the known world, for a commerce with the enterprise of Columbus and the daring of De Gama were on the eve of directing into new channels and rival ports. Her navy scarcely knew a competitor on the seas. Her eastern possessions not only gave security to her trade, but placed her foremost in defence of Christendom against the Infidel, a post of natural glory and influence which it is now difficult fully to appreciate. But these honourable and substantial advantages sufficed her not. It was her ever cherished but fatal ambition to swell her mainland possessions by every means of arms or diplomacy. Although her citizens had no turn for military exploits, although the gloomy genius of her government found no sympathy among her terra firma subjects, she pursued the ruinous policy of intermingling in every combination, co-operating in every war, which could add to her territories. At the moment of Charles's invasion, she had gained her object of becoming one of the five great Italian powers. How she lost it at the hands of his successor, and how, in defending a pre-eminence she never should have desired, she impaired the true sources of her superiority, will, in course of events, come under our view.
In Florence Lorenzo de' Medici, to whose bright name history has done justice, at the expense perhaps of some coeval stars in the Italian hemisphere, had died a few months before Innocent VIII. He was happy in living during a breathing time of comparative tranquillity, which he had been not uninstrumental in preserving, and which it was perhaps his good fortune not to survive. He had lived long enough to gain an imperishable fame, and passed from life just before the golden age, of which he was the signal ornament, began to be dimmed by influences which he and his family were instrumental in promoting. Our admiration of the assiduous and enlightened encouragement bestowed by him, and by his son Leo X., upon letters and art, ought not to blind us to the melancholy truths that the theoretical paganism of Lorenzo, the practical worldliness of Leo, and the disastrous blundering of Clement VII., have left upon the religion, the nationality, and the public spirit of Italy, effects which counterbalance that vast impulse to genius which the two first had the power to create, without the judgment and virtue to direct. Lorenzo the Magnificent was succeeded in his authority by his eldest son Pietro; but as that was founded exclusively upon personal claims, and unsupported either by official or hereditary dignities, it quickly passed from his feeble hands. It was the folly of this Pietro that supplied a train to the smouldering elements which we have endeavoured in this digression to analyse, and which, had his father been spared, might have been welded into a compact aggregate calculated to withstand barbarian aggression, instead of, as we shall now see, bursting into a simultaneous and destructive conflagration.[240]
Charles VIII. of France had attained his twenty-third year. It has been well remarked of him that few monarchs have played so active a part with fewer personal qualifications for success or distinction. The hideous deformity of his body seems to have been equalled by the defects of his character. Impetuous and fickle, ignorant and wilful, he was alike devoid of judgment and of perseverance. The wars of the Neapolitan succession, that had during much of the preceding century harassed Lower Italy, were not forgotten, and the latent claims of the Angevine dynasty became serious grounds for fresh anxiety, when vested in the youthful monarch of a powerful ultra-montane nation. Ludovico Sforza, situated nearest to the quarter whence the storm threatened, was the first to take alarm, and for once his selfish policy tended to a great and beneficial object. He proposed a general defensive alliance of the Italian states against all foreign invasion. But his counsels flowed from a tainted source. The King of Naples had already interposed to emancipate his grand-daughter's husband from the unduly prolonged regency of Ludovico, who soon perceived that his usurped authority must be relinquished ere his overtures would be listened to in that quarter. Yet the stake was worth an effort, and the new Pope's elevation suggested a fit opportunity for the attempt, since it attracted to Rome many embassies of congratulation which, when thus congregated, might conveniently arrange the terms of a league. As a preliminary, the Regent of Milan proposed that the various ambassadors should give moral weight to their union, by entering the capital of Christendom on the same day, in one imposing procession. This idea was approved by most of the parties, but Pietro de' Medici, conceiving that his personal vanity would be more effectively gratified by exhibiting the superior magnificence of his retinue in a separate display, resolved to thwart by indirect means a proposition to which he could offer no reasonable objection. He, therefore, induced Ferdinand to interpose some obstacles of etiquette, which marred by miserable jealousies the intended unanimity of the demonstration. Ludovico, having ascertained the origin of this intrigue, saw in it a separation from the common cause by the two powers whose interests were the most at variance with his own. The Medici were formidable neighbours, as wielding the preponderating power of Florence, while with the King of Naples the seeds of a domestic quarrel were already rife.