CHAPTER XXII.
WARS AND POLITICS OF ITALY. 1508-1513.
League of Cambray.—Alarm of Ferdinand.—Holy League.—Battle of Ravenna.
—Death of Gaston de Foix.—Retreat of the French.—The Spaniards
Victorious.
The domestic history of Spain, after Ferdinand's resumption of the regency, contains few remarkable events. Its foreign relations were more important. Those with Africa have been already noticed, and we must now turn to Italy and Navarre.
The possession of Naples necessarily brought Ferdinand within the sphere of Italian politics. He showed little disposition, however, to avail himself of it for the further extension of his conquests. Gonsalvo, indeed, during his administration, meditated various schemes for the overthrow of the French power in Italy, but with a view rather to the preservation than enlargement of his present acquisitions. After the treaty with Louis the Twelfth, even these designs were abandoned, and the Catholic monarch seemed wholly occupied with the internal affairs of his kingdom, and the establishment of his rising empire in Africa. [1]
The craving appetite of Louis the Twelfth, on the other hand, sharpened by the loss of Naples, sought to indemnify itself by more ample acquisitions in the north. As far back as 1504, he had arranged a plan with the emperor, for the partition of the continental possessions of Venice, introducing it into one of those abortive treaties at Blois for the marriage of his daughter. [2] The scheme is said to have been communicated to Ferdinand in the royal interview at Savona. No immediate action followed, and it seems probable that the latter monarch, with his usual circumspection, reserved his decision until he should be more clearly satisfied of the advantages to himself. [3]
At length the projected partition was definitely settled by the celebrated treaty of Cambray, December 10th, 1508, between Louis the Twelfth and the emperor Maximilian, in which the pope, King Ferdinand, and all princes who had any claims for spoliations by the Venetians, were invited to take part. The share of the spoil assigned to the Catholic monarch was the five Neapolitan cities, Trani, Brindisi, Gallipoli, Pulignano, and Otranto, pledged to Venice for considerable sums advanced by her during the late war. [4] The Spanish court, and, not long after, Julius the Second, ratified the treaty, although it was in direct contravention of the avowed purpose of the pontiff to chase the barbarians from Italy. It was his bold policy, however, to make use of them first for the aggrandizement of the church, and then to trust to his augmented strength and more favorable opportunities for eradicating them altogether.
Never was there a project more destitute of principle or sound policy. There was not one of the contracting parties, who was not at that very time in close alliance with the state, the dismemberment of which he was plotting. As a matter of policy, it went to break down the principal barrier, on which each of these powers could rely for keeping in check the overweening ambition of its neighbors, and maintaining the balance of Italy. [5] The alarm of Venice was quieted for a time by assurances from the courts of France and Spain, that the league was solely directed against the Turks, accompanied by the most hypocritical professions of good-will, and amicable offers to the republic. [6]
The preamble of the treaty declares, that, it being the intention of the allies to support the pope in a crusade against the infidel, they first proposed to recover from Venice the territories of which she had despoiled the church and other powers, to the manifest hindrance of these pious designs. The more flagitious the meditated enterprise, the deeper was the veil of hypocrisy thrown over it in this corrupt age. The true reasons for the confederacy are to be found in a speech delivered at the German diet, some time after, by the French minister Hélian. "We," he remarks, after enumerating various enormities of the republic, "we wear no fine purple; feast from no sumptuous services of plate; have no coffers overflowing with gold. We are barbarians. Surely," he continues in another place, "if it is derogatory to princes to act the part of merchants, it is unbecoming in merchants to assume the state of princes." [7] This, then, was the true key to the conspiracy against Venice; envy of her superior wealth and magnificence, hatred engendered by her too arrogant bearing, and lastly the evil eye, with which kings naturally regard the movements of an active, aspiring republic. [8]
To secure the co-operation of Florence, the kings of France and Spain agreed to withdraw their protection from Pisa, for a stipulated sum of money. There is nothing in the whole history of the merchant princes of Venice so mercenary and base, as this bartering away for gold the independence, for which this little republic had been so nobly contending for more than fourteen years. [9]