In the earlier part of the fourteenth century the majority of the mercenary soldiers and their commanders were foreigners; in the later part of the century their place was to a large extent taken by native troops and condottieri. As the smaller communes were gradually deprived of liberty and of an independent political life by the extension of the larger states, the more energetic and |Native Condottieri.| ambitious citizens were only too glad to find an opening for their activity in the career of arms. In 1379 the Company of St. George, into which none but Italians were admitted, was founded by Alberigo da Barbiano, a noble of Romagna. In this company were trained Braccio and Sforza, the founders of the two great schools of Italian commanders in the fifteenth century. That the native troops could be as efficient as the foreigners whom they superseded was proved in 1401, when a German army in the service of the Emperor Rupert was routed by an Italian force which had been hired by the Duke of Milan.
Whatever semblance of unity had been given to Italian history by the continuance of party feuds disappeared altogether in the later part of the fourteenth century, when party allegiance was finally subordinated to the desire of each state for territorial aggrandisement. Chronological arrangement becomes impossible, and all that can be done is to briefly point out the most notable incidents in the history of the greater states. It will be convenient to begin this survey with the south of the peninsula, and to proceed northwards.
The ambition of Robert of Naples had been moderated by the death of his only son in 1328, and though he continued |Naples.| to support the Popes in their quarrel with Lewis the Bavarian, he took very little part in Italian politics in his later years. The subsequent history of Naples turns for the most part upon dynastic rivalry, and demands an accurate knowledge of genealogy.[[9]] Robert himself had succeeded his father in 1309 to the exclusion of the stronger hereditary claim of his nephew, Carobert of Hungary. Carobert died in 1342, leaving two sons, Lewis, king of Hungary and afterwards of Poland, and Andrew. Robert, who died in the following year, had no direct descendants except two granddaughters, Joanna and Maria, the children of Charles of Calabria. In the hope of averting strife with the Hungarian branch Robert, before his death, arranged a marriage between Joanna and her cousin Andrew. |Joanna I. and Andrew.| But this expedient failed to produce the desired result. Joanna claimed the right of succession to her grandfather, and wished to treat her husband as a mere prince-consort. Andrew, however, insisted on the priority of his own claim as the male representative of the eldest line. The quarrel was complicated by the action of two descendants of Robert’s younger brothers, Lewis of Taranto, who was suspected of being Joanna’s lover, and Charles of Durazzo, who had married Maria, the queen’s younger sister. Both were aspirants for the succession, and while Lewis sided with Joanna, Charles encouraged the Hungarian prince to assert his claims. At last, in 1345, Europe was scandalised by the news that Andrew had been murdered. Suspicion rested from the first upon Joanna and Lewis of Taranto, whom she subsequently married, though it is as difficult to furnish absolute proof of their guilt as in the superficially similar case of Mary Stuart and Bothwell. Lewis of Hungary, however, considered himself justified in accusing Joanna of his brother’s murder, and took measures to exact vengeance and, |Lewis of Hungary invades Naples.| at the same time, to assert his own claim. His expedition was delayed for two years by the intrigues of Pope Clement VI., by the struggle in Germany between Lewis the Bavarian and Charles IV., and by the opposition of the Venetians, always quarrelling with Hungary for the possession of Dalmatia. It was not till the end of 1347 that Lewis was able to make his way overland to Naples. Many of the nobles, including Charles of Durazzo, rallied to his cause, and Joanna was forced to fly to Provence. Lewis was crowned king of Naples, and one of his first acts was to put to death Charles of Durazzo, nominally on a charge of complicity in Andrew’s death, but probably because he might prove a dangerous candidate for the throne. The outbreak of the Black Death and difficulties in Hungary compelled Lewis to return northwards, and Joanna seized the opportunity to attempt the recovery of her kingdom. To raise money she sold Avignon to Clement VI., and it remained a papal possession till its annexation to France in 1791. Joanna’s return to Naples was followed by a desultory war with the Hungarian party. Lewis returned to uphold his cause in 1350, but he found it practically impossible to hold a kingdom so distant from Hungary, and in 1351 he agreed to a treaty. The question of Joanna’s guilt was referred to the Pope, and on his decision in her favour Lewis resigned the Neapolitan crown, magnanimously refusing the money compensation which was offered him by the papal award.
For the next thirty years the history of Naples was comparatively uneventful. Joanna married two more husbands |Succession to Joanna I.| after the death of Lewis of Taranto, but had no children to survive her. As she grew old the question of the succession became of pressing importance. Her nearest relative was her niece, Margaret, the daughter of her sister Maria and the Charles of Durazzo who had been put to death in 1348. The latter’s brother, Lewis, had left a son, another Charles of Durazzo, who, in 1370, married his cousin Margaret, and was afterwards treated by Joanna as her heir. But in 1378 the Great Schism in the Papacy began, and the queen and her nephew took opposite sides. Joanna was the first and most ardent supporter of Clement VII., whereas Charles of Durazzo, who had been trained and employed by his kinsman, Lewis of Hungary, espoused the cause of Urban VI. The result was a violent quarrel, and Urban encouraged Charles, in 1381, to take up arms against Joanna instead of waiting for the succession. Determined to disinherit her undutiful kinsman, and, at the same time, to gain the support of France, Joanna offered to |The second House of Anjou.| adopt as her heir Louis of Anjou, brother of Charles V. of France. Louis could trace descent from the Neapolitan house, as his great-grandfather, Charles of Valois, had married a daughter of Charles II. of Naples. The offer was accepted, and from it arose the claim to Naples of the second house of Anjou—a claim which distracted southern Italy for a century, and ultimately passing to the French king, became the pretext for the famous invasion of Charles VIII. in 1494. But for the moment Joanna’s action brought her little good. Before aid could come from France she was taken prisoner by Charles, and died in captivity (May 22, 1382). The successful |Charles III. and Louis I.| prince was crowned as Charles III. of Naples. His rival, Louis of Anjou, seized one of Joanna’s dominions, the county of Provence, which remained in the hands of his descendants. He also led a formidable army to enforce his claim upon Naples, but he was not successful, and died in 1385 without gaining more than the mere title of king.
Charles III. was now firmly established in Naples, but the disturbances in Hungary after the death of Lewis the Great induced him to assert a claim to that kingdom. A momentary success was followed by his assassination (February 24, 1386). Hungary fell into the hands of Sigismund, and civil war broke out in Naples between the supporters of Ladislas, |Ladislas and Louis II.| Charles III.’s son, and Louis II. of Anjou, who inherited the claims of his father. There is no need to trace the details of the struggle, which after many fluctuations of success ended in the victory of Ladislas. For a few years in the next century Ladislas was one of the most influential and active princes of Italy. On his premature death in 1414, the crown of Naples passed to his sister Joanna II., in whom the direct line of the original Angevin house of Naples came to an end.
It would be tedious, and perhaps impossible, to narrate in detail the history of the Papal States during the residence of |Rome and the Papal States.| the Popes at Avignon and the subsequent schism. Under the strongest of the preceding Popes, there had never been any organised central government in the territories which owned their sway. The Popes had been the suzerains rather than the rulers of the States of the Church. Every considerable city was either a republic with its own municipal government, or was subject to a despot who had succeeded in undermining the communal institutions. Even in Rome itself the bishop could exercise little direct authority. Over and over again, the turbulence of the citizens had driven successive Popes to seek a refuge in some smaller town. In fact, the Romans might easily have shaken off papal rule altogether but for two considerations. The Popes drew so much wealth from Latin Christendom that they could afford to levy very light taxes upon their immediate subjects. And the Romans gained enormous indirect profit from the crowds of pilgrims and wealthy suitors who were constantly drawn to the papal court. It is true that this profit was diverted to Avignon in the fourteenth century, but though this was a great grievance to the Romans, it was a reason for demanding the return of the Popes rather than for making the separation permanent. The government of Rome was in theory republican, but nothing survived from the ancient republic except its memory and its disorder. A Senate had been revived in the twelfth century only to prove a complete failure, and the name of Senator had come to be applied to a temporary magistrate, who was sometimes elected by the citizens but more often nominated by the Pope. A central board of thirteen officers, one from each rione or district of the city, was intrusted with the municipal administration, but it had little real authority. Every other commune in Italy had found it necessary to restrict or abolish the privileges of the feudal nobles. But in Rome the Colonnas, the Orsini, and other noble families enjoyed the most lawless independence and treated the citizens with the utmost contempt. The brawls of their retainers filled the streets with disorder, and it was dangerous for the townspeople to resist any outrage either on person or on property. The Popes had rarely been successful in checking the lawlessness of the barons, and now that the Pope was at a distance from Rome all restraint upon their licence seemed to be removed.
It was in these circumstances that a momentary revival of order and liberty was effected by the most extraordinary adventurer of an age that was prolific in adventurers. |Rienzi.| Cola di Rienzi was born of humble parents, though he afterwards tried to gratify his own vanity and to gain the ear of Charles IV. by claiming to be the bastard son of Henry VII. A wrong which he could not venture to avenge excited his bitter hostility against the baronage, while the study of Livy and other classical writers inspired him with regretful admiration for the glories of ancient Rome. He succeeded in attracting notice by his personal beauty and by the rather turgid eloquence which was his chief talent. In 1342 he took the most prominent part in an embassy from the citizens to Clement VI., and though he failed to induce the Pope to return to Rome, which at that time he seems to have regarded as the panacea for the evils of the time, he gained sufficient favour at Avignon to be appointed papal notary. From this time he deliberately set himself to raise the people to open resistance against their oppressors, while he disarmed the suspicions of the nobles by intentional buffoonery and extravagance of conduct. On May 20, 1347, the first blow was struck. Rienzi with a chosen band of conspirators, and accompanied by the papal vicar, who had every interest in weakening the baronage, proceeded to the Capitol, and, amidst the applause of the mob, promulgated the laws of the buono stato. He himself took the title |The ‘good estate.’| of Tribune in order to emphasise his championship of the lower classes. The most important of his laws were for the maintenance of order. Private garrisons and fortified houses were forbidden. Each of the thirteen districts was to maintain an armed force of a hundred infantry and twenty-five horsemen. Every port was provided with a cruiser for the protection of merchandise, and the trade on the Tiber was to be secured by a river police.
The nobles watched the progress of this astonishing revolution with impotent surprise. Stefano Colonna, who was |Rienzi’s triumph and fall.| absent on the eventful day, expressed his scorn of the mob and their leader. But a popular attack on his palace convinced him of his error, and forced him to fly from the city. Within fifteen days the triumph of Rienzi seemed to be complete, when the proudest nobles of Rome submitted and took an oath to support the new constitution. But the suddenness of his success was enough to turn a head which was never of the strongest. The Tribune began to dream of restoring to the Roman Republic its old supremacy. And for a moment even this dream seemed hardly chimerical. Europe was really dazzled by the revival of its ancient capital. Lewis of Hungary and Joanna of Naples submitted their quarrel to Rienzi’s arbitration. Thus encouraged, he set no bounds to his ambition. He called upon the Pope and cardinals to return at once to Rome. He summoned Lewis and Charles, the two claimants to the imperial dignity, to appear before his throne and submit to his tribunal. His arrogance was shown in the pretentious titles which he assumed, and in the gorgeous pomp with which he was accompanied on public and even on private occasions. On August 15, after bathing in the porphyry font in which the Emperor Constantine had been baptized, he was crowned with seven crowns representing the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. His most loyal admirer prophesied disaster when the Tribune ventured on this occasion to blasphemously compare himself with Christ. And Rienzi’s government deteriorated with his personal character. It had at first been liberal and just; it became arbitrary and even treacherous. His personal timidity made him at once harsh and vacillating. The heads of the great families, whom he had invited to a banquet, were seized and condemned to death on a charge of conspiracy. But a sudden terror of the possible consequences of his action caused him to relent, and he released his victims just as they were preparing for execution. His leniency was as ill-timed as his previous severity. The nobles could no longer trust him, and their fear was diminished by the weakness which they despised while they profited by it. They retired from Rome and concerted measures for the overthrow of their enemy. The first attack, which was led by Stefano Colonna, was repulsed almost by accident; but Rienzi, who had shown more cowardice than generalship, disgusted his supporters by his indecent exultation over the bodies of the slain. And there was one fatal ambiguity in Rienzi’s position. He had begun by announcing himself as the ally and champion of the Papacy, and Clement VI. had been willing enough to stand by and watch the destruction of the baronage. But the growing independence and the arrogant pretensions of the Tribune exasperated the Pope. A new legate was despatched to Italy to denounce and excommunicate Rienzi as a heretic. The latter had no longer any support to lean upon. When a new attack was threatened, the people sullenly refused to obey the call to arms. Rienzi had not sufficient courage to risk a final struggle. On December 15 he abdicated and retired in disguise from Rome. His rise to power, his dazzling triumph, and his downfall were all comprised within the brief period of seven months.
For the next few years Rienzi disappeared from view. According to his own account he was concealed in a cave in the |Rienzi in exile.| Apennines, where he associated with some of the wilder members of the sect of the Fraticelli, and probably imbibed some of their tenets. Rome relapsed into anarchy, and men’s minds were distracted from politics by the ravages of the Black Death. The great jubilee held in Rome in 1350 became a kind of thanksgiving service of those whom the plague had spared. It is said that Rienzi himself visited the scene of his exploits without detection among the crowds of pilgrims. But he was destined to reappear in a more public and disastrous manner. In his solitude his courage and his ambition revived, and he meditated new plans for restoring freedom to Rome and to Italy. The allegiance to the Church, which he had professed in 1347, was weakened by the conduct of Clement VI. and by the influence of the Fraticelli, and he resolved in the future to ally himself with the secular rather than with the ecclesiastical power, with the Empire rather than with the Papacy. In August 1351 he appeared in disguise in Prague and demanded an audience of Charles IV. To him he proposed the far-reaching scheme which he had formed during his exile. The Pope and the whole body of clergy were to be deprived of their temporal power; the petty tyrants of Italy were to be driven out; and the emperor was to fix his residence in Rome as the supreme ruler of Christendom. All this was to be accomplished by Rienzi himself at his own cost and trouble. Charles IV. listened with some curiosity to a man whose career had excited such universal interest, but he was the last man to be carried away by such chimerical suggestions. The introduction into the political proposals of some of the religious and communistic ideas of the Fraticelli gave the king a pretext for committing Rienzi to the Archbishop of Prague for correction and instruction. The archbishop communicated with the Pope, and on the demand of Clement VI. Charles agreed to hand Rienzi over to the papal court on condition that his life should be spared. In 1352 Rienzi was conveyed to Avignon and thrust into prison. He owed his life perhaps less to the king’s request than to the opportune death of Clement VI. in this year.
The new Pope, Innocent VI., was more independent of French control than his immediate predecessors. The French king was fully occupied with internal disorders, and with the English war. Thus the Pope was able to give more attention to Italian politics, which were sufficiently pressing. The independence and anarchy of the Papal States constituted a serious problem, but the danger of their subjection to a foreign power was still more serious. In 1350 the important city of Bologna had been seized by the Visconti of Milan, and the progress of this powerful family threatened to absorb the whole of the Romagna. Innocent determined to resist their encroachments, and at the same time to restore the papal authority, and in 1353 he intrusted |Albornoz in Italy.| this double task to Cardinal Albornoz. Albornoz, equally distinguished as a diplomatist and as a military commander, resolved to ally the cause of the Papacy with that of liberty. His programme was to overthrow the tyrants as the enemies both of the people and of the Popes, and to restore municipal self-government under papal protection. His attention was first directed to the city of Rome, which, after many vicissitudes since 1347, had fallen under the influence of a demagogue named Baroncelli. Baroncelli had revived to some extent the schemes of Rienzi, but had declared openly against papal rule. To oppose this new tribune, Albornoz conceived the project of using the influence of Rienzi, whose rule was now |Rienzi’s return and death, 1354.| regretted by the populace that had previously deserted him. The Pope was persuaded to release Rienzi from prison and to send him to Rome, where the effect of his presence was almost magical. The Romans flocked to welcome their former liberator, and he was reinstalled in power with the title of Senator, conferred upon him by the Pope. But his character was not improved by adversity, and his rule was more arbitrary and selfish than it had been before. The execution of the condottiere, Fra Moreale, was an act of ingratitude as well as of treachery. Popular favour was soon alienated from a ruler who could no longer command either affection or respect, and in a mob rising Rienzi was put to death (October 8, 1354). But his return had served the purpose of Albornoz. Rome was preserved to the Papacy, and the cardinal |Recovery of the Papal States.| could proceed in safety with his task of subduing the independent tyrants of Romagna. Central Italy had not yet witnessed the general introduction of mercenaries, and the native populations still fought their own battles. The policy of exciting revolts among the subject citizens was completely successful, and by 1360 almost the whole of Romagna had submitted to the papal legate. His triumph was crowned in this year, when, by skilful use of quarrels among the Visconti princes, he succeeded in recovering Bologna.