Unhappily, his brilliant fame is sullied by a recklessness of human life, the more odious in one too young to be steeled by familiarity with the iron trade to which he was devoted. It may be fair, however, to charge this on the age rather than on the individual, for surely never was there one characterised by greater brutality and more unsparing ferocity in its wars. So little had the progress of civilisation done for humanity. It is not until a recent period that a more generous spirit has operated; that a fellow-creature has been understood not to forfeit his rights as a man because he is an enemy; that conventional laws have been established, tending greatly to mitigate the evils of a condition which, with every alleviation, is one of unspeakable misery; and that those who hold the destinies of nations in their hands have been made to feel that there is less true glory, and far less profit, to be derived from war than from the wise prevention of it.
The defeat at Ravenna struck a panic into the confederates. The stout heart of Julius II faltered, and it required all the assurances of the Spanish and Venetian ministers to keep him staunch to his purpose. King Ferdinand issued orders to the great captain to hold himself in readiness for taking the command of forces to be instantly raised for Naples. There could be no better proof of the royal consternation.
The victory of Ravenna, however, was more fatal to the French than to their foes. The uninterrupted successes of a commander are so far unfortunate, that they incline his followers, by the brilliant illusion they throw around his name, to rely less on their own resources than on him whom they have hitherto found invincible; and thus subject their own destiny to all the casualties which attach to the fortunes of a single individual. The death of Gaston de Foix seemed to dissolve the only bond which held the French together. The officers became divided, the soldiers disheartened, and, with the loss of their young hero, lost all interest in the service.[g]
The ministers of Louis thought they might, after the battle of Ravenna, safely dismiss a part of their army; but Maximilian, betraying all his engagements, abandoned the French to their enemies. Without consenting to make peace with Venice, he gave passage through his territory to twenty thousand Swiss, who were to join the Venetian army, in order to attack the French. He, at the same time, recalled all the Germans who had enlisted under the banner of France. Ferdinand of Aragon and Henry VIII of England almost simultaneously attacked Louis, who, to defend himself, was obliged to recall his troops from Italy. In the beginning of June, they evacuated the Milanese; of which the Swiss took possession, in the name of Massimiliano Sforza, son of Lodovico il Moro (the Moor). On the 29th of the same month, a revolution drove the French out of Genoa; and the republic and a new doge were again proclaimed. The possessions of France were soon reduced to a few small fortresses in that Italy which the French thought they had subdued. But the Italians did not recover their liberty by the defeat of only one of their oppressors. From the yoke of France, they passed under that of the Swiss, the Spaniards, and the Germans; and the last they endured always seemed the most galling. To add to their humiliation, the victory of the Holy League enslaved the last and only republic truly free in Italy.
Florence was connected with France by a treaty concluded in concert with Ferdinand the Catholic. The republic continued to observe it scrupulously, even after Ferdinand had disengaged himself from it. Florence had fulfilled towards all the belligerent powers the duties of good neighbourhood and neutrality, and had given offence to none; but the league, which had just driven the French out of Italy, was already divided in interest, and undecided on the plan which it should pursue. It was agreed only on one point, that of obtaining money. The Swiss lived at discretion in Lombardy, and levied in it the most ruinous contributions: the Spaniards of Raymond de Cardona insisted also on having a province abandoned to their inexorable avidity; Tuscany was rich and not warlike. The victorious powers who had assembled in congress at Mantua proposed to the Florentines to buy themselves off with a contribution; but the Medici, who presented themselves at this congress, asked to be restored to their country, asserting that they could extract much more money by force, for the use of the Holy League, than a republican government could obtain from the people by gentler means. Raymond de Cardona readily believed them, and in the month of August, 1512, accompanied them across the Apennines, with five thousand Spanish infantry as inaccessible to pity as to fear. Raymond sent forward to tell the Florentines that, if they would preserve their liberty, they must recall the Medici, displace the gonfalonier Soderini, and pay the Spanish army 40,000 florins. He arrived at the same time before the small town of Prato, which shut its gates against him; it was well fortified, but defended only by the ordinanza, or country militia. On the 30th of August, the Spaniards made a breach in the wall, which these peasants basely abandoned. The city was taken by assault; the militia, which would have incurred less danger in fighting valiantly, were put to the sword; five thousand citizens were afterwards massacred, and others, divided among the victors, were put to lingering tortures, either to force them to discover where they had concealed their treasure, or to oblige their kinsmen to ransom them out of pity; the Spaniards having already pillaged all they could discover in holy as well as profane places.
The terror caused at Florence, by the news of the massacre of Prato, produced next day a revolution. A company of young nobles, belonging to the most illustrious families, who, under the title of Society of the Garden Ruccellai, were noted for their love of the arts, of luxury and pleasure, took possession, on the 31st of August, of the public palace; they favoured the escape of Soderini, and sent to tell Raymond de Cardona that they were ready to accept the conditions which he offered. But all treaties with tyrants are deceptions. Giuliano de’ Medici, the third son of Lorenzo, whose character was gentle and conciliatory, entered Florence on the 2nd of September, and consented to leave many of the liberties of the republic untouched. His brother, the cardinal Giovanni, afterwards Leo X, who did not enter till the 14th of the same month, forced the signoria to call a parliament on the 16th. In this pretended assembly of the sovereign people, few were admitted except strangers and soldiers: all the laws enacted since the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 were abolished. A balia, composed only of the creatures of that family, was invested with the sovereignty of the republic. This balia showed itself abjectly subservient to the cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, his brother Giuliano, and their nephew Lorenzo, who now returned to Florence after eighteen years of exile, during which they had lost every republican habit, and all sympathy with their fellow-citizens. None of them had legitimate children; but they brought back with them three bastards,—Giulio, afterwards Clement VII, Ippolito, and Alessandro,—who had all a fatal influence on the destiny of their country. Their fortune, formerly colossal, was dissipated in their long exile; and their first care, on returning to Florence, was to raise money for themselves, as well as for the Spaniards, who had re-established their tyranny.
[1512-1513 A.D.]
The three destructive wars—viz., that of the French and Swiss in the Milanese, that of the French and Spaniards in the kingdom of Naples, that of the French, Spaniards, Germans, and Swiss, in the states of Venice—robbed Italy of her independence. The country to which Europe was indebted for its progress in every art and science, which had imparted to other nations the medical science of Salerno, the jurisprudence of Bologna, the theology of Rome, the philosophy, poetry, and fine arts of Florence, the tactics and strategy of the Bracceschi and Sforzeschi schools, the commerce and banks of the Lombards, the process of irrigation, the scientific cultivation both of hills and plains—that country now belonged no more to its own inhabitants! The struggle between the transalpine nations continued, with no other object than that of determining to which of them Italy should belong; and bequeathed nothing to that nation but long-enduring, hopeless agonies. Julius II in vain congratulated himself on having expelled the French, who had first imposed a foreign yoke on Italy; he vowed in vain that he would never rest till he had also driven out all the barbarians; but he deceived himself in his calculations: he did not drive out the barbarians, he only made them give way to other barbarians; and the new-comers were ever the most oppressive and cruel. However, this project of national liberation, which the pope alone could still entertain in Italy with any prospect of success, was soon abandoned. Eight months after the expulsion of the French from the Milanese, and five months after the re-establishment of the Medici at Florence, Julius II, on the 21st of February, 1513, sank under an inflammatory disease. On the 11th of March, Giovanni de’ Medici succeeded him, under the name of Leo X—eleven months after the latter had been made prisoner by the French at the battle of Ravenna, and six months after the Spanish arms had given him the sovereignty of his country, Florence.