This prince, who thenceforth reigned at Mantua under the title of Carlo I, retained that duchy without further opposition. But in 1635 he was drawn, by the memory of the eminent services which France had rendered him, into an alliance with that power against Spain, in the new war which broke out between the rival dynasties of Bourbon and Austria. Such a connection could serve, however, only to destroy the repose and endanger the safety of his duchies. Neither Carlo I nor his son Carlo II, who succeeded him in 1637, could prevent Montferrat from being perpetually overrun and ravaged by the contending armies of France, Spain, the empire, and Savoy; and the Mantuan dukes abandoned almost every effort to retain the possession of that province until, after being for above twenty years the seat of warfare and desolation, it was at length restored to Carlo II by the general Peace of the Pyrenees.
Carlo II died in 1665; and his son Ferdinando Carlo commenced the long and disgraceful reign with which the sovereignty and race of the Gonzagas were to terminate early in the next century. This prince, more dissolute, more insensible of dishonour, more deeply buried in grovelling vice than almost any of his predecessors, was worthy of being the last of a family which, since its elevation to the tyranny of Mantua, had, during four centuries of sovereignty, relieved its career of blood and debauchery by few examples of true greatness and virtue. To gratify his extravagance, and indulge in his low and vicious excesses, Ferdinando Carlo crushed his people under grievous taxation. To raise fresh supplies, which his exhausted states could no longer afford, he shamelessly in 1680 sold Casale, the capital of Montferrat, to Louis XIV, who immediately occupied the place with twelve thousand men under his general Catinat. The sums which the duke thus raised, either by extortion from his oppressed subjects or from this disgraceful transaction, were dissipated in abandoned pleasures in the carnivals of Venice, among a people who openly evinced their contempt for him, and whose sovereign oligarchy passed a decree forbidding any of their noble body from mingling in his society.
TUSCANY
[1600-1670 A.D.]
From the affairs of Mantua, we may pass to those of Tuscany; but the transition is attended with little augmentation of interest. A common dearth of attraction marks the annals of most of the despotisms of Italy; and when Tuscany descended to the rank of a duchy, her pre-eminence of splendour survived only in the past, and her modern story sank into the same ignominious obscurity with that of Parma, and Modena, and Mantua. We are reminded only of the existence of the solitary republic which survived in this quarter of Italy, to wonder how Lucca escaped subjugation to the power whose dominions encircled and hemmed in her narrow territory; and we are permitted to contemplate her ancient republican rivals, Florence, Siena, and Pisa, only as the capital and the provincial cities of the ducal sovereigns of Tuscany. Of these princes of the house of Medici, four reigned successively during the seventeenth century. At its commencement, the ducal crown was worn by Ferdinand I, whose personal vices and political talents have been already noticed. After the failure of his project to throw off the Spanish yoke, his efforts were exclusively devoted to the encouragement of commerce and maritime industry among his subjects; and the enlightened measures to which he was prompted by a thorough knowledge of the science of government, and a keen perception of his own interests, were rewarded with signal success. To attract the trade of the Mediterranean to the shores of Tuscany, he made choice of the castle of Livorno (Leghorn) for the seat of a free port. He improved the natural advantages of its harbour, which had already excited the attention of some of his predecessors, by several grand and useful works; he invested the town which rose on the site with liberal privileges; and from this epoch, Livorno continued to flourish, until it attained the mercantile prosperity and opulence which have rendered it one of the first maritime cities of the peninsula. The skilful policy which Ferdinand I pursued in this and other respects produced a rapid influx of wealth into his states; and before his death, which occurred in 1609, he had amassed immense treasures.
Several of the first princes of the ducal house of Medici seemed to have inherited some portion of that commercial ability by which their merchant ancestors had founded the grandeur of their house; and they profited by the contempt or ignorance which precluded other Italian princes from rivalling them in the cultivation of the same pursuits. Cosmo II, the son and successor of Ferdinand, imitated his example with even more earnest zeal, and with more brilliant success. But on his death, in 1621, the minority of his son Ferdinand II destroyed the transient prosperity of the ducal government. The rich treasury of the two preceding dukes was drained in furnishing troops and subsidies to Spain and Austria; and Ferdinand, who was left under the guardianship of his grandmother and mother, was only released from female tutelage on attaining the age of manhood, to exhibit during his long reign all the enfeebling consequences of such an education. His character was mild, peaceable, and benevolent; and his administration responded to his personal qualities. From this epoch, the political importance of Tuscany entirely ceased; the state was stricken with moral paralysis; and lethargy and indolence became the only characteristics of the government and the people.
Ferdinand II, however, was not destitute of talents; and the enthusiasm with which the grand-duke and his brother promoted the cultivation of science at least protected his inactive reign from the reproach of utter insignificance. But his son, Cosmo III, who ascended his throne in 1670, reigned with a weakness which was relieved by no intellectual tastes. Unhappy and suspicious in his temper, his life was embittered by domestic disagreements with his duchess; fanatical and bigoted, he was constantly surrounded and governed by monks; and at the close of the seventeenth century, Florence, once the throne of literature, the fair and splendid seat of all the arts which can embellish and illumine life, was converted into the temple of gloomy superstition and hypocrisy.
PIEDMONT AND SAVOY
[1027-1700 A.D.]
While the other ducal thrones of Italy were thus for the most part filled only by slothful voluptuaries, that of Savoy seemed reserved for a succession of sovereigns, whose fearless activity and political talents constantly placed their characters in brilliant contrast with the indolence and imbecility of their despicable contemporaries.[c] The history of this house shows in a striking manner how the destinies of a nation may depend on the fortunes of a princely family. During eight centuries the princes of Savoy have, in the words of Charles Emmanuel III, “treated Italy as an artichoke to be eaten leaf by leaf.” Their work is now perfected in the freedom of the state.