ITALIAN WARS.—CONDITION OF ITALY.—FRENCH AND SPANISH ARMIES ON THE GARIGLIANO.
1503.
Melancholy State of Italy.—Great Preparations of Louis.—Gonsalvo
Repulsed before Gaeta.—Armies on the Garigliano.—Bloody Passage of the
Bridge.—Anxious Expectation of Italy.—Critical Situation of the
Spaniards.—Gonsalvo's Resolution.—Heroism of Paredes and Bayard.
We must now turn our eyes towards Italy, where the sounds of war, which had lately died away, were again heard in wilder dissonance than ever. Our attention, hitherto, has been too exclusively directed to mere military manoeuvres to allow us to dwell much on the condition of this unhappy land. The dreary progress of our story, over fields of blood and battle, might naturally dispose the imagination to lay the scene of action in some rude and savage age; an age, at best, of feudal heroism, when the energies of the soul could be roused only by the fierce din of war.
Far otherwise, however; the tents of the hostile armies were now pitched in the bosom of the most lovely and cultivated regions on the globe; inhabited by a people who had carried the various arts of policy and social life to a degree of excellence elsewhere unknown; whose natural resources had been augmented by all the appliances of ingenuity and industry; whose cities were crowded with magnificent and costly works of public utility; into whose ports every wind that blew wafted the rich freights of distant climes; whose thousand hills were covered to their very tops with the golden labors of the husbandman; and whose intellectual development showed itself, not only in a liberal scholarship far outstripping that of their contemporaries, but in works of imagination, and of elegant art more particularly, which rivalled the best days of antiquity. The period before us, indeed, the commencement of the sixteenth century, was that of their meridian splendor, when Italian genius, breaking through the cloud which had temporarily obscured its early dawn, shone out in full effulgence; for we are now touching on the age of Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Michael Angelo,—the golden age of Leo the Tenth.
It is impossible, even at this distance of time, to contemplate without feelings of sadness the fate of such a country, thus suddenly converted into an arena for the bloody exhibitions of the gladiators of Europe; to behold her trodden under foot by the very nations on whom she had freely poured the light of civilization; to see the fierce soldiery of Europe, from the Danube to the Tagus, sweeping like an army of locusts over her fields, defiling her pleasant places, and raising the shout of battle, or of brutal triumph under the shadow of those monuments of genius, which have been the delight and despair of succeeding ages. It was the old story of the Goths and Vandals acted over again. Those more refined arts of the cabinet, on which the Italians were accustomed to rely, much more than on the sword, in their disputes with one another, were of no avail against these rude invaders, whose strong arm easily broke through the subtile webs of policy which entangled the movements of less formidable adversaries. It was the triumph of brute force over civilization,—one of the most humiliating lessons by which Providence has seen fit to rebuke the pride of human intellect. [1]
The fate of Italy inculcates a most important lesson. With all this outward show of prosperity, her political institutions had gradually lost the vital principle, which could alone give them stability or real value. The forms of freedom, indeed, in most instances, had sunk under the usurpation of some aspiring chief. Everywhere patriotism was lost in the most intense selfishness. Moral principle was at as low an ebb in private, as in public life. The hands, which shed their liberal patronage over genius and learning, were too often red with blood. The courtly precincts, which seemed the favorite haunt of the Muses, were too often the Epicurean sty of brutish sensuality; while the head of the church itself, whose station, exalted over that of every worldly potentate, should have raised him at least above their grosser vices, was sunk in the foulest corruptions that debase poor human nature. Was it surprising, then, that the tree, thus cankered at heart, with all the goodly show of blossoms on its branches, should have fallen before the blast, which now descended in such pitiless fury from the mountains?
Had there been an invigorating national feeling, any common principle of coalition among the Italian states; had they, in short, been true to themselves, they possessed abundant resources in their wealth, talent, and superior science, to have shielded their soil from violation. Unfortunately, while the other European states had been augmenting their strength incalculably by the consolidation of their scattered fragments into one whole, those of Italy, in the absence of some great central point round which to rally, had grown more and more confirmed in their original disunion. Thus, without concert in action, and destitute of the vivifying impulse of patriotic sentiment, they were delivered up to be the spoil and mockery of nations, whom in their proud language they still despised as barbarians; an impressive example of the impotence of human genius, and of the instability of human institutions, however excellent in themselves, when unsustained by public and private virtue. [2]
The great powers, who had now entered the lists, created entirely new interests in Italy, which broke up the old political combinations. The conquest of Milan enabled France to assume a decided control over the affairs of the country. Her recent reverses in Naples, however, had greatly loosened this authority; although Florence and other neighboring states, which lay under her colossal shadow, still remained true to her. Venice, with her usual crafty policy, kept aloof, maintaining a position of neutrality between the belligerents, each of whom made the most pressing efforts to secure so formidable an 'ally. She had, however, long since entertained a deep distrust of her French neighbor; and, although she would enter into no public engagements, she gave the Spanish minister every assurance of her friendly disposition towards his government. [3] She intimated this still more unequivocally, by the supplies she had allowed her citizens to carry into Barleta during the late campaign, and by other indirect aid of a similar nature during the present; for all which she was one day to be called to a heavy reckoning by her enemies.
The disposition of the papal court towards the French monarch was still less favorable; and it took no pains to conceal this after his reverses in Naples. Soon after the defeat of Cerignola, it entered into correspondence with Gonsalvo de Cordova; and, although Alexander the Sixth refused to break openly with France, and sign a treaty with the Spanish sovereigns, he pledged himself to do so, on the reduction of Gaeta. In the mean time, he freely allowed the Great Captain to raise such levies as he could in Rome, before the very eyes of the French ambassador. So little had the immense concessions of Louis, including those of principle and honor, availed to secure the fidelity of this treacherous ally. [4]