Such in brief, concludes Lafuente, was the famous naval battle of Lepanto, the most famous ever recorded in the annals of nations, for the number of ships, the exertions and valour of the combatants, for the complete destruction of a fleet as formidable as was the Ottoman fleet. The janissaries were no longer invincible; the Sublime Porte was to lose its supremacy in the Mediterranean.[j]
THE GENERAL CONDITION OF ITALY
[1569-1585 A.D.]
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John,” Pius V could cry in his enthusiasm over the victory of Lepanto. But besides this victory there was little to arouse enthusiasm in Italy; scandals and baseness prevailed everywhere. The Medici offered the worst examples of this. Dreadful rumours circulated on the sudden and close deaths of Cosmo’s two sons. It was confidently said that one, Giovanni, had in a fit of jealousy during a hunting party assassinated his brother Garcias, and that Cosmo had slain the fratricide some days later in the arms of his mother. The third, Francesco, although married to the archduchess Johanna, publicly contracted a liaison which seemed to give rise every day to fresh scandals, and Cosmo in the recesses of his palace indulged in stormy passions made worse by a sombre melancholy. All this did not hinder Pope Pius V, in 1569, from conferring on Cosmo, by what right is not known, the title of grand duke. This act showed to what depths the Italian princes had sunk. The other small sovereigns, whose lives were also not the most exemplary, showed themselves very jealous. The dukes of Ferrara and Savoy protested at the courts of Madrid and Vienna, and aspired to guard the right of precedence, which the pope had also just changed. At least they would be of the first rank among slaves. The right of precedence, such as it was in the general servitude, remained the object of the princes’ feverish rivalry. To maintain this their wise men used a good deal of heraldic and feudal science. Their ambassadors fought at the courts of Madrid and Vienna.
Loss of liberty was not compensated for by material prosperity. This was clearly shown during the reigns of Gregory XIII at Rome and Francesco I at Florence.
Gregory XIII, although of less deep piety than his predecessor, was carried along in his spiritual government by the vigorous impulse given by Pius V. He founded an international college at Rome, and accomplished a work truly European by the reform of the calendar in 1582. His attempts to regulate economic conditions were not so successful. Francesco de’ Medici, more docile still than his father to the Spanish yoke, obtained by concessions in 1576, from the emperor and the Spanish king, that recognition of his grand-ducal title which Cosmo had refused, with the right of precedence over the other dukes. With less reverence than ever he established Bianca Capello in his palace, she losing nothing of his affection for having given him a child by another father; she even became his wife after the death of the archduchess. Quite a Spanish prince, he separated himself entirely from the people. After the fashion of Philip II he only lived in the midst of courtesans and favourites, who began to form a nobility in a state which was formerly largely democratic. But through his negligence all the elements of order and prosperity in Tuscany were lost. The city of Leghorn alone slightly developed, thanks to the commercial privileges he granted her, but the rest of the country became deserted compared to what it had been under Cosmo I. Pisa, from twenty-two thousand inhabitants, fell to eight thousand; and in 1575 a conspiracy was necessary to overthrow that voluptuous tyrant who had no thought for the morrow.
In the Milanese, where the governors respected the débris of ancient liberties, there was still some activity. Milanese arms and embroideries were sought after, woollen-weavers were very busy in Como and the capital. The work of canalisation went on. Milan passed as Italy’s most populous city and had 150,000 inhabitants. But at Naples the exigencies and venality of the administration exhausted all sources of prosperity. Whilst rich families in Lombardy, the Marignani, the Sforza, the Serboni, the Borromei, and the Trivulzi, displayed a princely luxuriousness, the Neapolitan nobility, quickly ruined by court life, retired to their châteaux and lived by oppressing the peasants. Even the townsfolk, crushed by taxation, and above all by the caprice of viceroys, were ruined. The miserable tax-payers, after all their furniture had been sold, were even driven to strip off their roofs and sell the material. Towns fell into decay. Localities formerly very flourishing, like Giovinazzo in Apulia, completely disappeared. A whole province was desolated; Calabria was now only crossed by caravans.
SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice