The conspirators had failed, and foreign enemies had failed, to overthrow the Medici, and their failure necessarily strengthened the dynasty against which these strenuous |Constitutional changes in 1480.| attacks had been directed. In 1480 Lorenzo was able to carry through vital changes in the constitution which for the rest of his life secured his authority against serious attack. It is noteworthy that no use was made of the parliament, as on previous occasions, when revolutionary decrees had to be enacted. The proposals were made by the signoria and carried in the ordinary way through the three councils. A constituent body of thirty was nominated by the signory. These were to appoint a ‘greater council’ of two hundred and ten members, afterwards enlarged to two hundred and fifty-eight, who were to act as a temporary balia, having power to legislate and to control the filling of the bags with the names of suitable candidates for office. In order to secure a wide distribution of influence, no family, except two specially named, was to have more than three members on the council. By a far more important provision the thirty were to nominate another forty, and with them were to constitute a permanent Council or Senate, known as the Seventy. The Seventy held office for life, and filled vacancies by co-optation. From among them were to be chosen the two important executive committees—the Otto di Pratica, who took the place of the occasional committees of eight or ten whom it had been usual to appoint in time of war, and the Otto di Balia, who superintended the police of the city. The institution of the Seventy did not abolish any of the old magistracies and councils; these still continued as a means of rewarding supporters and flattering men’s love of importance. But it placed side by side with them what Florence had not for a long time possessed, a permanent machinery of government, and thus supplied the stability, the want of which had been the chief cause which raised the Medici to their anomalous and ill-defined position in the state. It was inevitable that the Seventy, with its two standing committees, should gradually draw into its hands the real power which could never be effectually employed by officials who changed every two months.
The troubles of the last three years had taught Lorenzo a lesson which he never forgot. The prompt punishment which followed his youthful errors in statecraft had been |Lorenzo’s later years.| an invaluable training to him. For the next twelve years the internal history of Florence is absolutely uneventful, a fact which is itself the best evidence of the capacity of its ruler. Freed from the fear of domestic opposition, Lorenzo could concentrate his attention on external affairs, and he became the foremost statesman in Italy. Reverting to the sound traditions which his grandfather had handed down, he maintained an alliance with Naples on the one side, and with Milan on the other, and was thus enabled to check the aggressive tendencies of Venice and the papacy, and at the same time to avert the danger of foreign intervention. In the war of Ferrara (1482-84) he was an active member of the coalition which saved the house of Este from annihilation, though he was chagrined that the interested defection of Ludovico Sforza enabled Venice not only to escape well-deserved punishment, but also to retain the polesina of Rovigo. In 1485 a more serious difficulty arose when the Neapolitan rebels, backed up by Innocent VIII., endeavoured to revive the Angevin claims. Florence had no love for the house of Aragon, and was closely connected by many ties with France. Fortunately, the appeal was made to Réné of Lorraine instead of to Charles VIII., and so Lorenzo could support the cause of Ferrante without any overt breach of the French alliance. And while engaged in these questions of high policy, Lorenzo never lost sight of the immediate interests of Florence. He took advantage of party feuds in Siena to procure the restoration of most of the territories which had been ceded in 1480. And he not only recovered Sarzana from Genoa, but he added to it the neighbouring fortresses of Pietrasanta and Sarzanella, thus giving to Florence a strong frontier on the ridge of the Apennines, which, if properly garrisoned, would have enabled the republic to check the invasion of Charles VIII.
In Lorenzo’s last years a new and momentous political problem was created by the growing alienation between Naples and Milan. Ludovico Sforza could not carry out his designs upon his nephew’s duchy without incurring |Importance of Lorenzo’s death.| the hostility of Ferrante and Alfonso; and upon Florence, as the middle state of the league, devolved the responsibility of mediating between her two allies. It was a task which required all Lorenzo’s tact, experience, and patience, and it may be doubted whether even he could have ultimately succeeded in averting a collision. It is just possible, however, that consummate prudence on the part of Florence might have prevented French intervention in Italy, and in that case the whole course of European history might have been altered. But in 1492, when the fate of Italy was trembling in the balance, Lorenzo died; and his death at this critical moment must be ranked with those other events—the discovery of America, the conquest of Granada, and the election of Alexander VI.—which make 1492 one of the most memorable years in the history of Europe.
Enough has been said of the Florentine constitution to show that the power of the Medici did not rest upon very solid foundations. They had no military force |Recklessness of Piero de’ Medici.| behind them; none of the ordinary securities on which a despotism must rely for its permanence. They ruled, partly because they supplied an element of stability, which the civic constitution notoriously lacked, partly because they maintained the credit and the influence of the state in Italy and in Europe, but mainly because they had managed to conciliate the interests and the allegiance of a majority of the citizens. But if the Florentines once felt that their own interests and the security of the republic were endangered by the ascendency of the Medici, that ascendency must inevitably fall. And this was precisely the impression which Piero, Lorenzo’s eldest son, set himself to produce. Discarding all pretence of civic equality, he indulged in the airs and pretensions of a prince born in the purple. And while his haughtiness disgusted the mass of the citizens, he made no effort to retain the support of the prominent families with whom his father had lived on familiar terms. But his most fatal blunder was in foreign relations. His mother was an Orsini, and his wife was an Orsini, and under the influence of his foreign relatives he abandoned the mediating position of Lorenzo, and allied himself unconditionally with the rulers of Naples. This action had a double result. It completed the exasperation of the Florentines, who had never loved the Neapolitan alliance even when their trust in the wisdom of Cosimo or Lorenzo had convinced them that it was to their interest to adhere to it. And it drove Ludovico Sforza into that desperate appeal to France which was the immediate cause of Charles VIII.’s invasion. When the French came, Piero showed himself to be pusillanimous as well as incompetent. He took no steps to hold the defensible passes of the Apennines against the invaders; and when they had reached Pisa, he sought to disarm their hostility by a more ruinous surrender than the most extreme supporter of a French alliance would have advocated. The patience of the citizens was exhausted; and Piero’s flight was followed by the expulsion of his family and the restoration for a few troubled years of republican independence in Florence.
CHAPTER XV
BURGUNDIANS AND ARMAGNACS IN FRANCE, 1380-1435
Minority of Charles VI.—The princes of the lilies—Risings in Paris—Intervention in Flanders—Battle of Roosebek and death of Philip van Artevelde—Rule of the Marmousets—Insanity of Charles VI.—Rivalry for the government—Philip the Bold of Burgundy—Louis of Orleans—John the Fearless—Murder of Orleans—Outbreak of civil war—The Cabochiens in Paris—Victory of the Armagnacs in 1413—Henry V. invades France—Battle of Agincourt—Armagnacs retain their ascendency in France—English successes in Normandy—Burgundians seize Paris—Murder of John the Fearless—Treaty of Troyes—War in Northern France—Deaths of Henry V. and Charles VI.—John of Bedford and Charles VII.—Divided allegiance of France—Humphrey of Gloucester and Jacqueline of Hainault—Quarrels at the court of Charles VII.—Philip the Good acquires territories in the Netherlands—Siege of Orleans—Successes of Jeanne Darc—Her capture and death—Character of the War—Quarrel of Bedford and Burgundy—Treaty of Arras and death of Bedford.
The death of Charles V. in 1380 ushered in one of the most disastrous periods in the history of France. The young |Minority of Charles VI.| Charles VI. was only eleven years of age, and the government fell into the hands of his uncles, the dukes of Anjou, Berri, and Burgundy, and their brother-in-law, the duke of Bourbon. These men represented the new class of royal nobles, or princes of the lilies, and it was soon evident that their interests were those of their caste, and not those of the monarchy with which they were connected by blood. Their conduct was characterised by the same selfish love of independence as had been displayed by the older feudal nobles, whose lands had fallen to them by inheritance, marriage, or royal grant. It was a momentous fact for France that the power of the crown was wielded just at this time by men who desired not to advance that power, but merely to abuse it for their own profit and that of their fellow-nobles. Everywhere feudalism was fighting a final and desperate struggle to maintain itself against the |Feudalism and its opponents.| forces which were destined to effect its overthrow. In Germany the Swabian towns were engaged in war with the nobles, and the Swiss were preparing for the struggle in which they won their great victory of Sempach. In England social discontent was encouraged and organised by the teaching of Lollard priests, and the year 1381 witnessed the famous upheaval which is usually associated with the picturesque episode of the Kentish leader, Wat Tyler. In Flanders the citizens of Ghent were heading a rebellion against their count, Lewis de Mâle; and though the latter succeeded in detaching Bruges from the league of towns, he found the militia of Ghent more than a match for his feudal levies, and was compelled to appeal for assistance to his suzerain, the French king. It is important to remember that these movements were connected by more than the accident of occurring at the same time. News travelled more rapidly in the fourteenth century than it had done in earlier times, and a consciousness of common class interests was beginning to unite men of different countries, as common religious interests united them two centuries later. Events in Germany and England, and still more events in Flanders, influenced opinion and action in France. The burghers of Paris and other towns had not forgotten their temporary triumphs in 1356 and 1357, and in 1380 the general unrest in western Europe gave them a new stimulus to action just at a time when the change of government made their grievances more intolerable.
Even under Charles V. the burden of taxation had excited indignant murmuring, and on his deathbed the |Risings in Paris.| wise king had promised that the recent imposts on the sale of commodities should be abolished. But Charles’s brothers needed money for their own purposes; and the eldest, Louis of Anjou, was so greedy, that he stole the crown jewels and the treasure which Charles had amassed for his son. An order was issued that the taxes should be collected in spite of the promised relief. Paris rose in revolt, and an ordinance was extorted from the terrified regents that all taxes imposed since the reign of Philip IV. should be withdrawn. Peace was purchased for a year by this concession; but at the beginning of 1382, while the regents were engaged in suppressing a rising in Rouen, an attempt was again made to collect the tax on sales. The mob rose in arms, and their most common weapon gave them the name of Maillotins, or the hammerers. The streets were barricaded, and again the government yielded. In May 1382 an amnesty was promised to the rebels, who showed their gratitude by a civic gift of a hundred thousand francs.
This treaty was the last act of the duke of Anjou, who had hitherto been the guiding spirit in the regency. His one aim had been to collect funds for an expedition to Italy, and in this year he set out for Naples to enforce his claim against Charles of Durazzo (see p. [154]). His departure left the chief power in the hands of Philip of Burgundy, who had bought off his elder and incapable brother, the duke of Berri, by handing over to him the wealthy province of Languedoc. Hitherto the French Government had refused to give any assistance to the count of Flanders, who was reduced to great straits by a victory of the Gantois outside |Intervention in Flanders.| the walls of Bruges (May 2, 1382). Philip van Artevelde, the son of Jacob van Artevelde, was now more powerful than his father had ever been. He was not only supreme in Ghent, but he claimed to be ruwaert or regent of the whole of Flanders. After his victory he proceeded to lay siege to Oudenarde, the last stronghold of the court and the Flemish nobles. If the town were allowed to fall, the triumph of the burghers would be complete. There was sufficient evidence of intercourse between Ghent and Paris to excite the misgivings of a French ruler, and, moreover, the duke of Burgundy had a strong personal interest of his own in the matter. He was the son-in-law, and his wife was the heiress of Lewis de Mâle. It was imperative that he should strike a blow on behalf of an authority that might before long be his own, and the French nobles were eager to suppress a civic revolt which set such a bad example to their own vassals. A large feudal force was collected to advance to the relief of Oudenarde, and the young king himself, who was keenly interested in military affairs, accompanied the army in person. Filled with the confidence inspired by their recent victory, the Flemings |Battle of Roosebek.| quitted their strong position and advanced to attack a stronger and better-armed force than their own. On the field of Roosebek they were enveloped by the converging wings of the French army, and were almost annihilated. The corpse of Philip van Artevelde was found at the bottom of a heap of the slain. A prompt advance must have resulted in the capture of Ghent, but the French were satisfied with their success, and soon afterwards withdrew. The chief sufferers were not the defeated Flemings, but the Maillotins of Paris. The victorious army was irresistible on its return. Most of the leaders of the recent rebellion suffered death. The gates of the city were thrown down, and its municipal liberties were abolished.
With the suppression of the bourgeoisie all opposition to the regents seemed to be at an end. But in 1388 occurred a dramatic revolution which is a strange parallel to contemporary events in England. Charles VI. declared himself to be of age, dismissed his uncles to |Rule of the Marmousets.| their estates, and intrusted the Government to men who had been trained in the service of his father. For the next four years these Marmousets or parvenus, as the nobles scornfully called them, ruled with equal capacity and moderation. Suddenly, in 1392, came another extraordinary change in the course of events. One of the ablest of the royal ministers was the Constable, Olivier de Clisson, a follower and fellow-countryman of Bertrand du Guesclin. An attempt was made to assassinate him in the streets of Paris, and the would-be murderers sought refuge with the duke of Brittany, who had a quarrel of his own with the Constable. Charles VI. was furious, and led an army towards Brittany to exact vengeance. But his health was already |Insanity of Charles VI.| undermined by precocious debauchery and the premature possession of power. On the journey he became so violently insane that he had to be kept in forcible restraint. He lived for thirty years after this, but never recovered the complete control of his faculties, though he had intervals of comparative lucidity. As a rule he was worst in the hot weather of summer and autumn, and recovered to some extent in the colder months of winter and early spring. It would probably have been better for France if his insanity had been complete and permanent, as in that case it would have been necessary to make regular provision for the regency. As it was, the government was still carried on in the king’s name; but it was notorious that even when he was at his best he had lost all strength of will, and was the obedient slave of whoever had control of his person at the time. These conditions led to that struggle for the exercise of power which brought such innumerable woes to France in the next half century.