The accession of Bern completes the number of the eight old cantons; and the league had grown to these dimensions |The eight old Cantons.| in just over sixty years, from 1291 to 1353. But it is obvious that as yet there were little more than the elements of a federation. There was no central government, and no supreme court of justice. The allies stood on various and unequal terms with each other, and some were not connected at all. Bern was not directly allied with Zürich or Luzern, and not allied at all with Glarus and Zug. Glarus and Zug had no connection with each other, and the former had made more submissive terms than any other canton. Moreover, differences in constitution prevented the various members of the league from regarding political questions in the same light. Bern maintained its exclusive aristocracy, Zürich and Luzern had adopted a mixed constitution, while the three original cantons, with Zug and Glarus, were pure democracies, in which every adult male had a share in political power.
If all danger from the Austrian dukes had come to an end in 1353, it is probable that this ill-cemented league would |Continued danger from Austria.| have fallen to pieces. But as long as the Hapsburgs remained great landholders in Swabia, their weaker neighbours were in danger of absorption, and it was this which ultimately hardened the league into a lasting federation. Albert II. was resolute to enforce his interpretation of the treaty of 1352. In 1354 he demanded that Glarus and Zug should renounce their alliance with the other cantons. The league appealed to the Emperor, but Charles IV. was pledged to the policy of discountenancing such associations, and he gave his support to the Hapsburg claims. And Albert had another advantage in the self-seeking policy pursued by Rudolf Brun, who was still supreme in Zürich, and who was quite ready to make terms with Austria if he could thereby strengthen his own position. The influence of Zürich nearly induced the Forest Cantons to accept a treaty which would have involved a surrender of the most vital points at issue, and it was only at the last minute that the apparent treachery was discovered. The result was a coolness between Zürich and the confederates, and the former went so far as to conclude a separate treaty with the Austrian duke. Fortunately Albert II. was too old and worn out to profit by this disunion, and just before his death he concluded a truce for eleven years with the league, leaving matters in statu quo for the time.
Albert the Lame died in 1358 leaving behind him four sons, who were born after he had been married for nineteen years without issue, and when the extinction of the main line of his House seemed imminent. Before his death he made an arrangement that his territories should pass undivided to the joint rule of his four sons. The second son, Frederick, died soon after his father, and the third son, Albert, preferred the study of philosophy to the cares of politics. The two active members of the family were the eldest son, Rudolf, and the youngest, Leopold. |Rudolf IV. in Swabia.| Rudolf married the daughter of Charles IV., quarrelled with his father-in-law about the elevation of the electors, and was only reconciled on being allowed to annex the province of Tyrol (see p. [120]). In his Swabian dominions he showed himself an active and capable ruler. He retained the support of Rudolf Brun, to whom he granted a pension and the title of privy councillor. He bought up the territory of Rapperschwyl, thus thrusting in a wedge between the lake of Zürich and the Forest Cantons. On pretence of aiding the pilgrims to Einsiedeln, he built a magnificent wooden bridge over the lake, which was regarded by contemporaries as one of the wonders of the world. His real object was to get into his hands the control of the chief highway between Italy and Germany. His restless activity would certainly have brought him, sooner or later, into collision with the Swiss, but in the midst of his schemes he died suddenly in 1365, when he was only twenty-six years old.
Of the two surviving brothers, Albert III. and Leopold, the latter had been the confidant of Rudolf’s ambitious schemes, |Leopold II. in Swabia.| and was eager to carry them out. With this object he induced his brother to revive the practice of partition, and to content himself with the duchy of Austria. Leopold received as his share Styria, Carinthia, Tyrol, and the Swabian lands. It was to Swabia that he devoted most of his attention. On every side he purchased territorial and other rights. His aim was that of his great-grandfather: the formation of a strong and united Swabian principality in Hapsburg hands. In the pursuit of such an aim he was inevitably brought into collision with the Swiss.
One of Leopold’s most conspicuous successes was the obtaining from Wenzel, the feeble successor of Charles IV., the office of imperial advocate in Upper and Lower Swabia. He soon found himself involved in grave difficulties. To make head against the Swabian league of towns, the princes and knights were forced to form confederations among themselves. In such a state of things local collisions were frequent, and there seemed the possibility of a great war of |Renewal of war.| classes. The Swiss naturally supported the Swabian League, and Leopold, after a vain struggle to act as arbiter between the hostile forces, found himself forced by Swiss aggression to throw himself on the opposite side. The forces of the neighbouring nobles flocked to his banner at Baden in Aargau, and as the Swabian League failed to send any assistance to the Swiss, Leopold seemed to have good reason to expect a complete and easy victory. But the Swiss, who had defiantly broken the treaty of 1352, were conscious that the struggle was one for liberty or subjection. Rudolf Brun was dead, and Zürich had returned to complete harmony with the confederates. No effort was spared to collect forces, and the |Battle of Sempach, 1386.| Swiss victory at Sempach, July 9, 1386, was even more decisive, if more hardly won, than that of Morgarten. Leopold himself, fighting with reckless ardour to redeem the fortunes of the day, fell upon the field. His death virtually decided the war. It is true that the Swiss had to fight and win another battle at Näfels, before they could force their opponents to terms. But the treaty of 1389 |Treaty of 1389.| was as complete as any Swiss patriot of those days could desire. The sons of Leopold renounced all feudal claims, direct or indirect, over Luzern, Glarus, or Zug. Thus within a hundred years from the formation of the league of 1291, the Swiss had succeeded in obtaining for the whole territory comprised in the extended confederacy that position of dependence upon the Empire alone, which had been the first aim of the Forest Cantons.
CHAPTER VIII
ITALY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, 1313-1402
Guelfs and Ghibellines—Equality of parties leads to foreign intervention—Lewis the Bavarian—John of Bohemia—League against Mastino della Scala—Walter de Brienne in Florence—Rise of mercenaries—Foreign and native Condottieri—Joanna I. of Naples—Succession disputes in Naples—Rome and the Papal States—Career of Rienzi—Cardinal Albornoz recovers the Papal States—Return of the Popes to Rome and outbreak of the Great Schism—Strife of classes and families in Florence—Rising of the Ciompi—Revolution of 1382 and triumph of the oligarchy in Florence—Rivalry of Venice and Genoa—War of Chioggia—The Visconti in Milan—Successes of Gian Galeazzo Visconti—His death.
The death of Henry VII. marks the failure of the last serious effort on the part of a German king to carry out the ideal of |Guelfs and Ghibellines.| Dante’s De Monarchia by establishing an efficient monarchy in Italy. A few years earlier the Papacy, which had done more than any other power to thwart the imperial pretensions, had almost deliberately weakened its authority by transferring its residence to the banks of the Rhône. It seemed as if Italy might for a time be freed from the rivalry of the two claimants to universal rule, whose quarrel had done so much to cause discord and anarchy in the peninsula. But it is one of the numerous anomalies of Italian history that the factions of Guelfs and Ghibellines continue their feuds with the same vigour and animosity as in the days when each had a substantial cause to fight for. Yet beneath these feuds we can trace a growing undercurrent of political interests and of selfish aggrandisement, which gradually led to the absorption of the lesser states by their more powerful neighbours, and ultimately to the formation of the five greater powers whose rivalry fills the history of the next century. The example was set by Venice, |Venetian policy.| whose geographical position removed her from the main current of party strife, while her interests were more strictly defined than those of any other state. In the east she had to maintain and extend her trade and her influence against the rivalry of Genoa; and she had also to face the serious problems raised by the steady decline of the Eastern Empire and the constant aggressions of the Turks. In the west she had not yet acquired any territory on the mainland, but two pressing interests compelled her to keep a watchful eye on the politics of Lombardy. She could not with safety allow any continental power to obtain complete control of the Alpine passes through which Venetian merchandise found its way to the markets of Central Europe. Still less could she neglect the imperative need of securing supplies of food. Built upon the small islands of the lagoons, she could not possibly raise enough produce to feed her citizens, and was necessarily dependent upon importations from eastern Lombardy or Dalmatia. If a hostile power could cut off these supplies, Venice must be speedily starved into surrender. This double interest forced Venice to play a more prominent part in Italian politics than her isolated position seemed to warrant, and in the end impelled her to join in the scramble for territory on the mainland.
With the exception of Venice, all the Italian states were more or less involved in the strife of factions. In the south |Balance of parties.| Robert of Naples, relying upon Papal and French support, still held the Guelf leadership, and still aimed, like his grandfather, at converting this leadership into a kingdom of Italy. But the Angevin power was no longer what it had been in the days of Charles I. The Sicilian Vespers had given Sicily to a hostile dynasty, and the Popes in Avignon were less valuable allies than their predecessors in Rome. In the north lay the main strength of the Ghibelline party. Despots, like Matteo Visconti in Milan and Cangrande della Scala in Verona, were rapidly overthrowing the republican independence of the Lombard cities, and these men had no legal basis for their authority save their appointment as imperial vicars. Between Naples and Lombardy lay the Papal States and Tuscany. In the former, the Popes continued to employ what authority they could wield through their legates on the Guelf and Angevin side. But the decline of their direct authority led to the rise of petty despots in cities which were nominally papal fiefs, and these despots, desiring the maximum of independence for themselves, naturally leaned towards Ghibellinism. In Tuscany there was also a marked division. Florence was the head of a group of communes which retained republican institutions and were ardently Guelf in sympathy. But Pisa, also a republic, was equally resolute on the Ghibelline side.
On the whole the two parties were so evenly matched in strength, that it was difficult for either to resist the temptation of trying to turn the balance in its own favour by |Foreign intervention in Italy.| calling in foreign assistance. It is true that a number of writers, including Sismondi, have represented the Guelfs as the national and the Ghibellines as the anti-national party. But this view involves both a misconception of the mediæval empire, and also the anachronism of assuming a sense of nationality to exist in Italy at a time when no such idea was possible. The only sentiment which could vie with devotion to party was patriotism; but patriotism beyond the bounds of his own city was as unknown to a citizen of Florence or Milan as it was to an Athenian or a Spartan in the days of Greek independence. Robert of Naples was as much a foreigner to a native of Lombardy or Tuscany as Lewis the Bavarian, and the king of France was much more so. As long as party spirit was the strongest force in Italy, we can trace a succession of appeals for foreign intervention: and when party spirit finally gave way to the rivalry of state with state, this intervention grew into conquest and occupation.