The commencement of the war in Piedmont was marked by a torrent of misfortune, which might have overwhelmed a prince of less fortitude than Victor Amadeus with sudden despair. Although he was joined by a Spanish army at the opening of hostilities, the French, who commanded the gates of Italy by the possession of Pinerolo had already assembled in force in Piedmont. They were led by Catinat, who deserves to be mentioned among the most accomplished and scientific captains of his own or of any age; and the superior abilities of this great commander triumphed over the military talents of the young duke. At the battle of Staffarda (1690) in the first campaign, the allies were totally defeated; and great part both of Savoy and Piedmont was almost immediately afterwards reduced by the conquerors. Victor Amadeus was however undismayed; he continued the war with energy and skill; and the support of his allies and his own activity had the effect of balancing the fortune of the contest. Penetrating into France, in 1692, he was even enabled to retaliate upon his enemies by this diversion, for the ravage of his dominions; and although Catinat, in the fourth campaign, inflicted at Marsaglia upon the Piedmontese, Austrian, and Spanish armies, under the duke in person and the famous prince Eugene, a yet more calamitous and memorable defeat than that at Staffarda, the allies speedily recovered from the disaster.
But it comes not within our purpose to repeat the often-told tale of military operations, which belong to the general history of Europe. After six years of incessant warfare, Victor Amadeus was still in an attitude to render his neutrality an important object for France to gain, and one which he had himself every reason to desire. So that it could be attained with advantage to himself, he was little scrupulous in abandoning his allies; and the conditions which he extorted from Louis XIV had all the results of victory. By the separate peace concluded between France and Savoy at Turin, Louis XIV abandoned the possession of Pinerolo and restored all his conquests in Savoy and Piedmont; but the most material stipulation of the treaty was the neutrality of all Italy, to which the contracting parties equally bound themselves to oblige all other powers to accede. To enforce this article, Victor Amadeus did not hesitate to join his arms to those of France against his former allies; and the entrance of his forces, in conjunction with the army of Catinat, into the Milanese territories, immediately compelled the emperor and the king of Spain to consent to a suspension of arms in the peninsula.
A Musketeer of the Early Seventeenth Century
The allies of Victor Amadeus might justly reproach him with a desertion of their cause, and perhaps even with the aggravation of perfidy; but he deserved the gratitude of Italy, if not for his selfish policy, at least for its fruits. In closing the gates of his own frontiers, he had skilfully provided also for the repose of the peninsula and its evacuation by the French. All Italy regarded him as a liberator; the security of his own dominions was effected, and his power and consequence were prodigiously augmented. Thus, by establishing the independence of his states, he prepared the claim of his house to the assumption of the royal title among the powers of Europe, to which he elevated it in the beginning of the new century.
The increasing power of the sovereigns of Piedmont was a foreboding of evil for the only republic of the Middle Ages which had partially escaped the storms of despotism in that quarter of Italy; and Genoa had already gained, during the seventeenth century, sufficient experience of the dangers of her vicinity to the princes of the house of Savoy. In the Grison war, between France and the house of Austria, the republic was involved by her dependence upon Spain; and the share which she took in the contest enabled the duke of Savoy, then in alliance with France, to draw down the weight of the French arms upon her. Besides being actuated by the usual rapacity of his ambition, with the hope of annexing the Genoese territory to his states, Charles Emmanuel I had several causes of offence against the republic. Her rulers had before given assistance to the Spaniards against him; they had attempted to control him in the purchase of the fief of Zucarel from the family of Carretto; and the populace of Genoa had insulted him by defacing his portrait in their city during the excesses of a riot. He therefore pointed out Genoa to his allies for an easy and important conquest; and while he overran the Ligurian country, a French army of thirty thousand men under the constable de Lesdiguières advanced to the siege of the republican capital. Though the Genoese were unprovided against this sudden attack, they were animated by the brave spirit, and the eloquence of one of their fellow-citizens, a member of the illustrious house of Doria, to oppose a firm resistance to the besiegers; and their gallant defence of the city was converted into a triumph, at the moment when they were reduced to extremity. A powerful Spanish armament, equipped with unusual vigour, arrived to their succour from Naples and Milan; the French were compelled to raise the siege; and the peace, which shortly followed these hostilities, served only to cover the duke of Savoy with the disgrace of merited failure in his designs against the existence of the republic.
[1624-1628 A.D.]
The secret hostility which Charles Emmanuel cherished against Genoa menaced her, a few years later, with more imminent perils; since the revengeful spirit of the duke was associated with the discontent of a large party in the republic. We have formerly noticed the constitution of the sovereign oligarchy of Genoa, and its tendency, by the extinction of some noble houses, and the reduction of numbers in others, to narrow the circle of political rights. The surviving body, meanwhile, were sparing in the use of the law, which authorised them to admit ten new families annually to a share in their privileges of sovereignty. The senate either began to elude it altogether, or applied it only to childless or aged individuals. Thus, before the middle of the seventeenth century, the number of persons whose names appeared in the libro d’oro—the golden volume of privileged nobility—had dwindled to about seven hundred. A law was then passed, by which the whole of these exclusive proprietors of the rights of citizenship thenceforth took their seats in the great council, on reaching the age of manhood, instead of entering it by rotation, as had formerly been the practice, when the republic was represented by a more comprehensive aristocracy.
While the arrogance and the individual importance of the members of the oligarchy were increased in proportion to this diminution in their numbers, another class, that of the unprivileged aristocracy of birth and wealth, had multiplied in the state. Many ancient houses, possessors of rural fiefs in Liguria, and invested with titles of nobility, had been originally omitted in the roll of citizenship; many other families of newer pretensions had since acquired riches and distinction by commercial industry, and accidents of fortune; and the union of all these constituted an order, which rivalled the oligarchy in the usual sources of pride, and far outweighed them in numbers. Affected superiority and contempt on the one hand, and mortification and envy on the other, produced reciprocal hatred between these branches of the Genoese aristocracy; and their divisions inspired the duke of Savoy with the hope of plunging the state into an anarchy, by which he might profit.