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THE CONSPIRACY
OF
GIANLUIGI FIESCHI.
Painted by Luca Combiaso—————————Engraved by H. Adlard.
PORTRAIT OF FIESCHI AS S.T GEORGE.
SEE PAGE [195].
SAMPSON LOW, SON & MARSTON, MILTON HOUSE, LUDGATE HILL, 1867
THE CONSPIRACY OF GIANLUIGI FIESCHI,
OR,
GENOA IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
BY
EMANUELE CELESIA.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN,
BY
DAVID H. WHEELER.
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, SON & MARSTON,
MILTON HOUSE, 59, LUDGATE HILL.
1866.
[The Right of Translation is Reserved.]
PREFACE.
It is perhaps matter for just surprise that English literature has been so little enriched during the last quarter of a century by archivic researches in Italy. While these studies have greatly modified the views of Italian historians, it may be safely said that, with few exceptions, English history of Italy remains substantially as it was in 1840. The conspiracy of Gianluigi Fieschi, now presented to the English reading public, is one of those works which strongly mark the progress of historical research in the Italian Peninsula; and though it treats of an episode, that episode is so woven into the great events which surrounded it as to give a vivid picture of the condition of Italy in the sixteenth century. The work has therefore seemed to me to have sufficient historical value to merit translation into our language.
I have been more influenced, however, by a desire to make some of those who read only English acquainted with an Italian author who seems to me entitled to a larger public than his own people. There is no good reason why a greater number of Italian writers should not be favoured with an English dress; and it is probably more the effect of accident than want of merit in Italian writers that their works are much more rare in our tongue than those of French and German authors. The younger historical writers of the time, to which class M. Celesia belongs, have peculiar claims upon our attention, because they are the first truly independent writers of the Peninsula, and their works are the first fruits of liberal institutions and a Free Press. It would be only a first homage to their worth and sincere devotion to liberal principles to translate their best works into our language rather than absorb the substance of them into our own books. This reasoning has induced me to turn aside for a little while from the labour of preparing a history of Genoa to render M. Celesia’s beautiful Italian into an English, which I freely confess to be imperfect in comparison with the original.
The first impression of the general reader may be that this book treats of events so distant in time, and so different in moral scenery, from the political and social conditions in which we live as to afford little or no instruction to us. No history, except that of one’s own country, affords precise forms in which to mould the present; and what are called historical parallels do not really exist, since every series of political events has peculiar elements which make close analogies with any other series impossible. Those who quote events in the history of other times and peoples as containing precise instruction for present national action usually deceive their auditors all the more completely from being deceived themselves. It is only in the abundant matter of general principles that history contains lessons of political wisdom. In this sense the work before the reader is not without valuable instruction. M. Celesia has given us a view of the social and political condition of the masses who have too often been excluded from history because they had been excluded from power in the state.
We see, in fact, some painful scenes of that long tragedy which ended in the disfranchisement of the Italians, in the very period when most other European nations were making the bases of their institutions broader by enlarging the liberties of their peoples; and we see clearly that two vast despotisms—one reposing on a fiction of the continued life of the Roman Empire and the other on a perversion of the principle of Christian Authority—conspiring now together, now against each other, bewildered the intellect and destroyed the political vitality of Italy, gradually reducing her to a mere geographical expression. The people struggled in vain, partly because they struggled blindly, partly because a pernicious error placed them in exceptional conditions by stripping them of a part of their rights avowedly in the interest of humanity at large. So far this struggle was peculiar in form; but at bottom it was a struggle for popular rights, and its disastrous close is here shown to have been due to no fault of the people themselves. It is just here that less than justice has been done to the Italians, and this work well illustrates the stupendous falsehood which slew them.
Our interest in this error might be less if it were dead; but it lives and embarasses the Italians of our own day. We have just been gravely informed by a French statesmen[1] that Rome does not belong to Italy, but to the whole catholic world; and the statement is a key not only to current Italian difficulties but also to the failure of the nation to keep pace with the rest of Europe in the sixteenth century. Then, more than now, other nations conceived themselves to have a mission to preserve institutions which Italy was disposed to condemn and abolish. Then a larger number of Italians than now were bewildered by the legal or historical claim set up for a dead Empire and a Christian Church founded upon force, and in their bewilderment went over to their enemies. But below all this, a brave people struck manful blows for their salvation, and when they fell were suffocated with the terrible doctrine that Italy does not belong to herself. The statement of Count Persigny was and is, in its political significance, when applied to Italian politics, exactly like a declaration that London does not belong to England or Paris to France.
I do not forget that the falsehood has been acted upon as a truth in Italy for some centuries; but political piracy cannot win the moral approval of our times on the plea that it has been practised for a long period. The real effect of the doctrine, whatever be its force from a history made by applying it, is to condemn a whole people to a certain dependence on other nations, to give France, Austria and Spain—or to go back to the sixteenth century, France and the Empire—rights or duties in Italy which must impair the rights of the Italians. A creed which has this fatal element may be pushed to its logical consequence—the assassination of a nation. In the sixteenth century this was done. It was cruel—too cruel to be described—when history accused the fallen of cowardice, incapacity for liberty and superstitious devotion to Rome. From such atrocious slanders, the Italians of the sixteenth century deserve a vindication. M. Celesia has felt this part of his office so warmly that his word may seem those of an advocate rather than of an historian to those who forget the wrongs done to his people in the name of history. But he who fully weighs the injustice against which our author protests will rather wonder at the moderation and critical calmness of the greater part of the book than complain of the glow of honest indignation which lights up some of his periods.
The critical reader will regret that the work is not fortified by more copious references. The truth is that it is not the fashion in Italy to quote authorities, and the citations given were prepared by the author for this edition. I have added a few explanatory foot-notes; but the reader is referred for fuller information regarding events in earlier Genoese history to a forthcoming work on that subject.
D. H. WHEELER.
Genoa, June, 1865.
CONTENTS.
THE COUNTS OF LAVAGNA.
The Valley of Entella and Lavagna—The Origin of the Counts of Fieschi—Their Conflicts with the Commune of Genoa—The Treaty of Peace between the Fieschi and Genoa—Civil Contentions—The Riches and Power of the Counts Fieschi—Innocent IV. and Hadrian V.—Cardinal Gianluigi Fieschi—The Fieschi Bishops and Lords of Vercelli and Biella—Famous Fieschi Warriors—Isabella, wife of Lucchino Visconti—St. Catherine—The Arms of the Family—Liberality and munificence of the Fieschi—Gianluigi II.—Sinibaldo, lord of thirty-three walled castles.
THE ITALIAN STATES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
Leo X., and his false glories—Desperate condition of the Italian states in the sixteenth century—Their aversion to the Austrian power—The Sack of Rome—Wars and Plagues—Charles V. and Francis I.—The Despotism of Christian powers causes Italian peoples to desire the yoke of the Turks—The Papal theocracy renews with the empire the compact of Charlemagne.
ANDREA DORIA AND THE REPUBLIC OF GENOA.
The Nobles and the People—Andrea Doria and his first enterprises—How he abandoned France, and went over to the Emperor—Accusations and opinions with regard to his motives—The laws of the Union destroyed the popular, and created the aristocratic Government—The objects of Doria in contrast with those of the Genoese Government and the Italian Republics—The lieutenants of Andrea and his naval forces—Popular movements arrested by bloody vengeance.
GIANLUIGI FIESCHI.
Maria della Rovere and her children—The natural gifts of Gianluigi—Andrea Doria prevents his marriage with the daughter of Prince Centurione—Gianluigi’s first quarrels with Gianettino Doria—Naval battle of Giralatte and capture of the corsair Torghud Rais—Count Fieschi espouses Eleonora of the Princes of Cybo—The hill of Carignano in the early part of the sixteenth century—Sumptuousness of the Fieschi palace—Gianluigi, Pansa and other distinguished men—Female writers—Eleonora Fieschi and her rhymes.
THE PLOTS OF FIESCHI.
The political ideas of the sixteenth century—The advice of Donato Gianotto to the Italians—Generous aims of Gianluigi Fieschi—His reported plots with Cesare Fregoso disproved—The conspiracy with Pietro Strozzi a fable—Fieschi has secret conferences with Barnaba Adorno, lord of Silvano—Pier Luca Fieschi and his part in the conspiracy of Gianluigi—The Count sends Cagnino Gonzaga to treat with France—The purchase of the Farnesian galleys—Francesco Burlamacchi.
PAUL THIRD.
He aspires to grandeur for his family—His hostility to the emperor and to Doria—He encourages Gianluigi in his designs against the imperial rule in Genoa—Attempts of Cardinal Trivulzio to induce Fieschi to give Genoa to France—France is induced by the count to relinquish her hopes of obtaining Genoa—Verrina and his spirited counsels—Vengeance of Gianluigi against Giovanni Battista della Torre.
PREPARATIONS.
Character of the Fieschi family—Gianluigi acquires the friendship of the silk operatives and other plebeians—The Duke of Piacenza selects the count to arbitrate his differences with the Pallavicini—Secret understandings between the count and the duke—Gianluigi puts his castles in a condition for war—Gianettino Doria, to pave the way to supreme power gives Captain Lercaro an order to kill Fieschi—Industry of Verrina—The decisions of history on the merits of Fieschi should be made in view of the political doctrines of the sixteenth century.
THE SUPPER IN VIALATA.
Bloody propositions attributed to Verrina—The count repulses all treacherous plans—New schemes—The conspirators introduced into the city—Gianluigi pays his respects to Prince Doria—Gianettino removes the suspicions of Giocante and Doria—The supper of Gianluigi—The guests embrace the conspiracy—Eleonora Cybo and her presentiments.
THE NIGHT OF THE SECOND OF JANUARY.
Measures taken by the Count—Occupation of the gate of the Archi and of San Tommaso—Death of Gianettino Doria—Fieschi did not seek the death of prince Doria—Schemes of Paolo Lavagna—Taking of the arsenal—Fall and death of Gianluigi—Flight of Andrea Doria to Masone—The place where Gianluigi was drowned—The several arsenals of Genoa—The death of Count Fieschi deemed a misfortune by the Italians.
COMPROMISES AND PUNISHMENTS.
Gerolamo Fieschi continues the insurrection in his own name—Consultations at the Ducal palace and fighting at San Siro—The news of the death of Gianluigi discourages the insurgents—Paolo Panza carries to Gerolamo the decree of pardon—Verrina and others set sail for France—The African slaves escape with Doria’s galley—Sack of Doria’s galleys—Return of Andrea and his thirst for vengeance—Decree of condemnation—Scipione Fieschi and his petitions to the Senate—Schemes and intrigues of Doria to get possession of the Fieschi estates—Destruction of the palace in Vialata—Traditions and legends.
THE CASTLE OF MONTOBBIO.
Count Gerolamo declines propositions of the government—Intrigue of the imperial party and revolutionary tendencies of the populace—The Republic is induced by Andrea Doria to assault Montobbio—The count’s preparations for defence—Verrina and Assereto assigned to the command of the works—Andrea induces the government to decline negotiations with Fieschi—Agostino Spinola closely invests the castle—Mutiny of the mercenaries of the count—He offers to surrender the castle on condition of security for the lives and property of the beseiged—Opposition of Doria to this stipulation—The treason of his mercenaries compels Fieschi to surrender—Doria, notwithstanding the entreaties of the government, treats the defeated Fieschi with great cruelty—Punishment of the Count of Verrina and other accomplices—Raffaele Sacco and his letters—The castle of Montobbio razed to the foundations.
PIER LUIGI FARNESE.
The ferocity and excesses of Andrea Doria—The benefits which he derived from the fall of the Fieschi—The Farnesi participated in Genoese conspiracies—Schemes of Andrea Doria against the duke of Piacenza—Landi is instigated by Andrea to kill the duke—The assassination of Pierluigi—The assassins and the brief of Paul III.
THE NOBLES AND THE PLEBEIANS.
Intrigues of Figuerroa and the nobility—The law of Garibetto—New efforts of Spain to give Genoa the character of a Duchy—The firmness of the senate and Andrea foils the scheme of Don Filippo—The reception of the Spaniards by Doria and by the people—Sad story of a daughter of the Calvi—Don Bernardino Mendozza and his relations with Prince Doria—Baneful influence of the Spanish occupation.
PRINCE GIULIO CYBO.
The revolt of Naples—Andrea Doria subdues it—Plots of the exiles against his life—Giulio Cybo seizes the feud of Massa and Carrara—His schemes for revolutionizing the Republic—Conference of the Genoese exiles in Venice—Capture of Cybo—Doria labours to have the emperor condemn Giulio to death—Punishment of Cybo and his accomplices—Letter of Paul Spinola to the Genoese government—Scipione Fieschi and his disputes with the Republic—Maria della Rovere—Eleonora Fieschi; her second marriage and death.
SIENA, THE FIESCHI AND SAMPIERO.
Ravages of the Barbary Corsairs—Bartolomeo Magiocco and the Duke of Savoy—The conference of Chioggia—Siege of Siena—Doria assassinates Ottobuono Fieschi—Sampiero di Bastelica and his memorable fight with Spanish knights—Revolts in Corsica—Vannina d’Ornano—The Fieschi faction unites with Sampiero—Ferocity of Stefano Doria—Sampiero is betrayed—Pier Luca Fieschi and his career.
JACOPO BONFADIO.
Bonfadio executed in prison and his body burned—Errors in regard to the year of his death—The causes of his arrest and punishment—He was not guilty of the vices ascribed to him—The true cause of his ruin was his Annals—The pretence for his condemnation was his Protestant opinions.
THE SPANISH DOMINION IN LIGURIA.
The Fieschi at the court of France—Louis XIV. supports their claims—Bad effects of the law of Garibetto—Severe laws against the Plebeians—Death of Andrea Doria—Estimate of his public services—New commotions—Magnanimity of the people—The old nobles make open war on the Republic—Treaty of Casale in 1576—The Spanish power in Italy, particularly in Liguria—Aragonese manners corrupt our people—New taxes and customs—The nobility accepts the fashions, manners and vices of the Spaniards—Change of the character of the Genoese people—Last splendours of Italian genius.
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
CATILINE AND FIESCHI COMPARED.—CATILINE’S AIMS OF A GENEROUS CHARACTER.—FIESCHI SOUGHT TO FREE HIS COUNTRY FROM THE SPANISH YOKE.—HISTORY UNJUST TO THE VANQUISHED.—SOURCES OF THIS HISTORY.—MATERIALS FOR THE FUTURE HISTORIAN OF ITALY.
It would be difficult to find in the history of the sixteenth century a name more fiercely assailed than that of Gianluigi Fieschi. From Bonfadio down to the most recent historians, the Count of Lavagna has received the same treatment at the hands of our writers which the learned vulgar are accustomed to give to Catiline. This levity of judgment is a new proof that history is too high a pursuit for servile minds.
The classic invectives of Cicero and the glittering falsehoods of Sallust, both written with masterly eloquence, and their echo taken up by inferior writers have disfigured the manly form of Sergius, and his cause, supported by the most generous and cultivated Romans, has come down to us described as the base plot of abandoned men.
Catiline could not have been base. He was illustrious by birth, well-known for his talents and powerful on account of his numerous dependants and friends. He stood on the last round of the ladder leading to the consulship and was supported by knights and senators; by Antonius Geta, Lentulus, Cethegus and even by Cæsar who was no stranger to the conspiracy. Crassus favoured him, though he afterwards turned informer against the conspirators. Entire colonies and Municipalities supported him. In upper Spain, Gneus Piso, in Mauritania, Publius Sittius Nucerinus and the legions were his partisans; in fine, he was the head of all the reformers of Italy and Gaul.
I do not excuse his violence, his disorderly life and his vices; though we know of these only through his enemies. But his aims were unquestionably high and noble. Roman liberty was buried in his tomb and not even the dagger of Junius Brutus could recall her to life. I hold it incontestable that the movement, far from being a plot of reckless men, was general and spontaneous towards that freedom which Lucius Sylla had extinguished in blood; a movement for which there was crying urgency in Italy, where crowds of slaves were supplanting the Latin races, and throughout the dominions of the Republic. In vain have cunning rhetoricians taught us to execrate the name of the great Roman, the last of the Tribunes. He has left for history a page written with his own blood which is more lasting than all envy. It shows us one who fell dead on the same ground where he steadfastly fought, displaying in his last hour an heroism which is inconsistent with the crimes coupled with his name.
Cicero himself tells us that the friendship of Catiline had such fascinations that he had barely escaped its influence. It may be true that his pallid face, his fierce eyes and his nervous step, now quick, now slow, terrified the publicans and patricians of Rome; but none can believe that he butchered his own son, immolated victims to the silver eagle of Marius, or handed round in nocturnal conventicles a cup full of foaming blood. Catiline was a bad man because he was vanquished; but Salvator Rosa, the soldier and painter of Masaniello, when he drew Catiline as a stern and magnanimous man did not believe him a low plotter, and the great captain of our century declared that he preferred the part of the great Latin conspirator to that of the versatile Tully.
The character of the Count of Lavagna has been depicted in similar colours by servile writers skilful in inventing calumnies. Catiline and Fieschi had the same ambition and a common aim. The former, in his familiar letters to Lentulus which were published in the Senate, declared that no venal ambition led him to make war. He said that his estates were security for his debts and that the liberality and wealth of Orestilla and his daughter would provide for any deficiency. He averred, he was impelled by wrongs and slanders, that he made the cause of the unfortunate his own, because he was defrauded of the fruit of his labours, and, while he was falsely suspected, was forced to see base men taking his place.
The same is true of Fieschi, whose death, Gianettino Doria had sworn. In Genoa, not less than in Rome, a partisan contest between the nobles and the people had lasted for centuries. Here, after the civil conflagrations, as after the scourgings of Rome by Marius and Sylla, liberty gradually expired. In both Republics, the people were bowed down by the insolence of the great. They were deprived of all share in the government, and corrupt ambition had unbounded sway. In Liguria, Andrea Doria had completed the triumph of the party of the nobles and imperialists and the ruin of popular liberty. Though he forbore to assume a princely title, he was a true king in authority, his nephew aspired to regal honours, and every popular right was trampled down by the Spanish power. According to Bonfadio this subjection was too bitter for the great soul of the Count Lavagna long to endure the humiliation. But his enemies wrote, and by a thousand channels circulated, the most incredible things as parts of his designs:—That he attempted by base intrigues to ruin the Republic, that he aimed to seduce it to servitude to his family or to France, to exterminate the Doria family, to lay bloody and felonious hands on the bank of St. George, to put the city to fire and sack. The decrees and official reports of the Republic do not warrant such statements, and a theory more honourable to him is justified by the gentleness of his character, by the Guelph traditions of his house, by the fact that he prevented the murder of Doria, in his palace, and by the conspiracy itself, the fury of which was directed against the ships of Doria, sparing those of the Republic.
It was necessary for Doria that black designs should be attributed to Fieschi, otherwise his fearful vengeance would have been unjustifiable. The slander was profitable also to the Spanish Cæsar, for it took away from his path a powerful family opposed to the Aragonese power in Italy. And as matter of fact, these idle tales, written in Genoa and diffused in France and Spain, were never believed among us. The greater part of the patricians did not credit them for they were Fieschi’s friends and would have saved him if the overbearing spirit of Doria had not imposed his will upon the senate. Such slanders found no credit with the people, who placed their love upon that philanthropic family and perpetuated its memory in national songs.
Catiline and Fieschi intended to awaken in their native lands the love of expiring liberty, and in that aim they had the support of many nobles and of the people. The pride of Roman patricians could bend to an alliance with the people, but they scorned to share their rights with foreign slaves. The Count of Lavagna grasped the hand of the people, but he refused the alliance of France. This fact testifies for both to the honesty of their designs; for to a traitor all paths are good so they but lead to his end.
Catiline, slandered by Cicero upon the rostrum, fulminates in his turn against his detractor, and though he quits Rome unattended, his exit is imposing and momentous. Fieschi, bending to the necessities of his time, found more quiet and secret paths to his end; and when accused by the minister of Cæsar with seeking to foment a revolution, he confronted Andrea Doria with a frankness which eluded the Admiral’s keen vigilance. From the blood of Catiline sprung the dictatorship of Cæsar; from that of Fieschi, the oligarchic government and the Spanish dominion in Genoa.
Doria, becoming the supporter and partisan of Charles V. and Phillip II. prevented Genoa from entering into the league of the Italian Republics against the Spanish yoke. Genoa, united to the enemies of Florence and Siena in the time of those memorable sieges, allied with the enemies of Naples when that people was rising for liberty, the friend of all the enemies of Italy, dates from that period her unfortunate decline. The movement of Fieschi, if he had accepted the alliance of France, might have averted the catastrophe. The French and Republican league might have extirpated the Spanish power in the Peninsula, and saved Italy from forging her own chains. It might have spared Genoa her struggles with the Barbary states, the revolt of the Corsicans, the decline of her commerce with the East and the most disastrous of all her civil tumults.
The Genoese people struggled long against that fatal alliance, cemented with their blood, which Fieschi strove to break. They left no means untried to dissolve it, using now supplication, now the sword and the scaffold. And for more than two centuries, a half subdued populace never grew weary of pouring its indignant complaints into the ear of the nobility. I have compared Catiline and Fieschi. The resemblance has not escaped historians. But their works and discourses have been reported, and judged by their enemies and by the faction which they strove to displace from power. The name of Count Fieschi waits to be rehabilitated by time which cancels great wrongs, impartially dispenses praise and blame, and gives each man that place in the esteem of posterity which his works merit.
From the earliest times our country was lacerated by two hostile factions. There were annalists and writers who recorded and magnified the exploits of those belonging to their party and silently passed over the praiseworthy actions of their political opponents. Procopius and Iornandes represent the two creeds which in their time were contending for the support of the nation. Anastaius is the biographer of the Popes, as Paul Diacono is of the Longobardic kings. In every province there were Malaspini and Dino Compagni, imperialists, fighting against the Guelph and Republican spirit of the three Villani. From the union of these hostile elements come forth the critical historian of the nation—Macchiavelli. But when the Germanic irruption cut the nerves of the Latin traditions, when Charles V. and Andrea Doria reestablished the foreign power in Italy, the Guelph spirit was silenced, the Journal killed, the Chronicle and official falsehoods so misrepresented events as to render history nearly impossible. John Mark Burigozzo, a Lombard shopkeeper, was the last annalist who recorded the sorrows of the people. Then came classic, courtly and salaried historians—history written by the victors. There is need of great caution in reading the verdict of a history written with the sword. “Woe to the vanquished” in history as on the battle-field. Corrupt ages praise successful crimes, and it is only by great effort that after times emancipate themselves from these servile adulations. There is a coward instinct in man which prompts him to applaud force and despise the fallen. The conscientious historian should enter his free protest against such dishonourable acquiescence in forced verdicts. It is time that history should be relieved from the tyranny of eloquent but mendacious tongues, and many powerful ones should be deposed from ill-gotten thrones. It is time to ask of many who have been called heroes what use they made of their swords and how they served Italy, and to concede—the supreme right of misfortune—a tardy tribute of regret to one who fell victim to a high and generous purpose.
What is the verdict recorded against Fieschi?
Among the writers who were his contemporaries stand foremost, Bonfadio, Campanaceo, Sigonio, Capelloni, Foglietta, Mascardi and Casoni. I do not mention foreigners, first among whom are Tuano and the Cardinal de Retz. I omit, too, the modern writers, since they have all followed with the assiduity of copyists the earlier historians, making no effort to study the public archives or even to criticise the text which they copied. Nevertheless, it is important to give the reader some account of the historians of that epoch; since the first duty of one who attempts to describe past events is to employ criticism in its widest sense, and so to separate the true from the false. Nor can this be done without carefully weighing the credibility of authors who have gone this way before us and taking account of the passions which governed them when they wrote.
The first historian of Fieschi was Bonfadio who was employed by the senate to write the annals of the Republic. He was a witness of the events which he described and on the very night of the rising, he went to the senate in company with Giovanni Battista Grimaldi. Yet we can yield him little faith; since, writing at the command of the government, he could not do less than speak harshly of the government’s enemies. He confesses that he had not in his hands the records of the conspirators’ trial. He ignores many facts, and never names the accomplices of Fieschi, scarcely suspecting that there were any. Having a mania for classic imitation, and borne away by the current of his times, he depicts Gianluigi as a man thirsting for base deeds and for blood; so, that if his immortal pages served to render the memory of Fieschi odious at a time when men had little concern for the honour of the vanquished, they are certainly too careless and too partial to satisfy the future. The unfortunate author, who was truthful in all other matters and failed in this only, because it treated of a plot against the powerful Doria, reaped bitter fruits for his great bias against Fieschi.
Not less unjust was Giuseppe Mario Campanaceo, who added to his history of the conspiracy a comparison between it and that of Catiline. “Both,” he says, “sprung from noble stock. Both were crushed under the ruin they plotted for others. In the one, a fierce look, a sanguinary countenance; in the other, a singular beauty and a virginal candour. The Roman was stained with bloody and licentious deeds; the Genoese bore the fame of goodness of heart and grace of manners. The Roman was verging towards age; the Genoese was in the freshness of his youth, yet he surpassed the conspirator of the Tiber as much in deceitfulness as Catiline excelled him in warlike exploits.”
If on minor points the narration of this writer is more accurate, it still bears the seal of the degraded time in which it was written. Though the author professes to have taken great pains to discover the truth, having spent a long time in Genoa for that purpose, it is very easy to see that he did not escape the contagion of party feeling and of the malevolence of the faction then dominant in Liguria. It is not strange, therefore, that he finds a mean and avaricious spirit in Gianluigi, while he describes Gianettino as an illustrious victim, rather, as the most virtuous knight of all Christendom.
Carlo Sigonio, in his life of Andrea Doria, and, among Genoese writers, Oberto Foglietto have treated the matter with elegance of diction but with unblushing plagiarism.
The same may be said of Lorenzo Capelloni, who described the conspiracy of Fieschi in a report to Charles V. He was too devoted to Cæsar, and to Doria, whose life he wrote, not to imitate the others whom we have mentioned in treating the attempt of Fieschi as a plot of like character with that of Cybo which he also described.
Agostino Mascardi, who was more of a rhetorician than an historian, tells us nothing new. Casoni was less devoted to the Spanish power and therefore more humane towards Fieschi, but he adopted without question the opinion professed by the party in power who never opened the archives of the state for the study of the historian.
We therefore conclude that a prudent and impartial criticism forbids us to give full faith to those who have given to Count Fieschi a dishonourable place in history.
In our opinion two qualifications are essential to the historian:—That he be able to collect the most accurate accounts of the facts, and that party spirit do not cloud the serenity of his mind. The writers whom we have mentioned lack these credentials. In fact, after studying the annals of the sixteenth century, we are satisfied that most of them were ignorant of the true causes of events. Sometimes they knew only a part of the facts; sometimes, acting under the influence of personal or political jealousy, they betrayed the truth by silence, by misrepresentation or by additions of what would serve their own purposes or the wishes of their masters.
The reader must judge whether we have truly balanced the account.
We see, from what has been said, that it was impossible Fieschi should have had truthful historians in the provinces ruled by Charles V. It was not to be expected in Genoa, where the supreme authority of the Dorias compelled even the least servile writers to the most skilful management of conscience and speech.
Neither in Tuscany, where the seeds of the Medicean tyranny were already springing up; not in Lombardy, which was the battle-ground of the two opposing factions; not in the kingdom of Naples tossed like a foot-ball from one master to another, but at the moment in the grasp of Cæsar. Finally, not in Rome where the Spanish government, in its war to the death upon the spirit of civil and religious liberty, found a swift accomplice in the Papal court which employed the zeal and devotion of its inquisitors in consigning to the flames both books and their authors. It is enough that no writer in Italy was permitted to answer the blind devotee of Rome, Baronius.
A few noble spirits arose to tell the truth of the Austro-Spanish power; such as Bandello, Ariosto, Boccalini and Tassoni; nevertheless in the period between Charles V. and the middle of the 17th century no true light of history shone on the Peninsula.
Learned and literary men lived in the courts, then the only dispensers of fame, and writers were more valued for their promptness in serving masters than for their mental acquirements. Even the best writers exhausted their ambition in the chase for courtly favour. It is not true that the protection of princes was useful to letters and arts; it only seduced them from the path of duty. Truth was banished from books because it displeased our masters, and history was sure to be smothered if it contained more than panegyric. Spanish wordiness had corrupted liberal studies and Italians were no longer honestly indignant against the oppressors of their country. They descended from employing their imaginations in intellectual creations to pandering to the senses. Literary entertainments, like falcons and buffoons, served for the sport of courtiers, as an instrument of corruption rather than a stimulant to generous pursuits. Intellect being thus prostrated, Fieschi could find no historian courageous enough to clear away the falsehoods that blackened his fame and constrain his calumniators to an honest confession. Cybo, Farnese, and whoever else, following the footsteps of Fieschi, opposed at the price of their lives Spanish influence, shared the historical misfortune of the Count of Lavagna.
It was necessary, then, to rewrite this history and I resolved to attempt the task. There are subjects (and the conspiracy of Fieschi is one of them) which seen from a distance fill us with apprehension, but when we approach and handle them, the alarm which possessed us generally disappears. I approached my subject with honest boldness and having studied it intimately, I have dared to rebel against the common opinion of the learned. If it were necessary to quote all the authorities for a conviction so opposed to the current of corrupted history the list would be too long. I, therefore appeal to the cultivated who will, I hope, bear me witness that very little within the range of the subject has escaped my notice. I ought, however, to remark that the Archives of Madrid and Paris have furnished me with foreign notices of the revolts of Fieschi and his partisans, and that more perfect information has been obtained from the Archives of Genoa, Florence, Parma, Massa and Carrara, and from some codexes and manuscripts which once belonged to Cardinal Adriano Fieschi (the last of the Savignone branch of the Fieschi family) whose heir, Count Alessandro Negri di S. Front, kindly permitted me to consult them at my pleasure. I render him my most hearty thanks. I have drawn other materials from the writings of the sacred college of Padua in favour of the Republic and the pleadings of the famous jurists who sustained the Fieschi party. Many other notices have been taken from private libraries in Genoa, which are at once so numerous and so difficult of access. Some documents very favourable to the cause of Fieschi were recently published by the erudite Bernardo Brea, but the greater part of them were already familiar to me; for the history which I now send to the press was written several years ago—a proof of which is that many extracts from it were then published in the journals. It is hardly worth while to dwell upon the reasons which kept me from publishing the work: The times were not, and are not, propitious to historic studies; yet I am forced in my own despite to bring my manuscript to light, lest I be accused of treading in the footsteps of a great author who has recently removed many a stain from the name of Fieschi and lashed his detractors with the severest condemnation.[2]
A modest cultivator of peaceful studies, I do not fear that any will suspect me of aiming to destroy the reverence due to a great name; or that I shall receive the sentence pronounced by Richelieu, who, on reading the conspiracy of Fieschi written by Cardinal de Retz in his youth, prophesied that the author would develop a turbulent and revolutionary spirit.
My humble condition and the honesty of my intentions render me safe from similar vacticinations. Though in my opinions upon the conspiracy I depart from the paths beaten by other writers, it is not without adequate reasons. I feel that the religion of truth, has had hitherto too few worshippers, that reverence for the unfortunate great of Italy has been long put under ban, and do not hesitate to say that if what I shall dare to write was not unknown by others it was most certainly concealed. What were the aims of Fieschi? What of Andrea Doria? Whither tended the uprising of the people? Who breathed life into the cause of national independence? To these questions, so far as I know, no one has yet made a sufficient answer; and, indeed, how can one write of Fieschi and Doria without investigating their personal motives, prying into the secrets of their hearts? Our historians, copying each other and compressing the tragedy of a century into a few pages, have given us only the conspiracy and the uprising, that is the least philosophic moment. For us, history begins where the strife ends. The designs which animate the combatants do not die with them, and they expand into the most interesting questions. Let the writer who does not feel the greatness of his mission shun these questions, I prefer that the reader shall not believe me a timorous friend of truth.
If once terror chained men’s souls, if great names could not be discussed, to-day, delivered from the febrile excitements of our predecessors, we may freely praise and blame the men and deeds of three centuries ago.
Nor is this all. A general history of Italy remains to be written, and the materials are scattered in the archives of our communes. Italy will write it when she shall have secured independence and a true national unity. In the meantime, mindful of the saying of Vico that, “we ought to seek for minute notices of facts and their antecedents rather than general causes and events, since by an accurate study of the facts themselves it becomes easy to find the causes and to clear up effects which often seem incredible to us,” I have devoted my utmost strength to removing a portion of that veil which covers the name of Fieschi, happy if I am able in this effort to correct some erroneous opinions and to prepare matter for the future historian of the nation.
[CHAPTER I.]
THE COUNTS OF LAVAGNA.
The Valley of Entella and Lavagna—The Origin of the Counts of Fieschi—Their Conflicts with the Commune of Genoa—The Treaty of Peace between the Fieschi and Genoa—Civil Contentions—The Riches and Power of the Counts Fieschi—Innocent IV. and Hadrian V.—Cardinal Gianluigi Fieschi—The Fieschi Bishops and Lords of Vercelli and Biella—Famous Fieschi Warriors—Isabella, wife of Lucchino Visconti—St. Catherine—The Arms of the Family—Liberality and munificence of the Fieschi—Gianluigi II.—Sinibaldo, lord of thirty-three walled castles.
That portion of Eastern Liguria, where, according to Dante,
“Fra Siestri e Chiavari
S’adima la bella fiumana,”[3]
retains in our day but little resemblance to the ancient seat of the Counts of Lavagna. Instead of forts and castles crowning every gentle elevation, the modern tourist finds a church dedicated to St. Stephen, and his eye wanders over hills, swelling above each other towards the encircling mountains and covered with olive gardens and orchards. The din of arms, the clash of maces and shields, is no longer heard; but instead the ear is saluted with the songs of peaceful burghers whose humble ambition finds content in gathering the fruit of the vines, weaving their nets, and drawing from their famous caves that slate which covers all the roofs of Liguria.
The banks of that stream which our ancestors called Entella, and we moderns Lavagna (from the name of the adjacent commune), have preserved, through the changes of centuries, their wonderful charms. It rises in the humble valley of Fontanabuona, is enriched by numerous tributaries from vales on either hand, and slips quietly into the sea after a course of only twenty-four miles.
Some tell us that in ages which have no authentic history the ancient Libarna was here, and that the name was afterwards corrupted into Lavagna; but our modern geographers do not accept the opinion. It is certain that Lavagna became the seat of a count of that name, who, about the year one thousand of our era, ruled over the contiguous districts of Sestri, Zoagli, Rapallo, Varese, and a great part of Chiavari. From this epoch, for many centuries, the history of the whole region was absorbed in that of the great family who ruled that portion of Liguria. The origin of these Counts is lost in mediaeval darkness. Giustiniani, Prierio, Panza, Sansovino, Betussi, and Ciaccone believe that they came of the stock of the Dukes of Bourgogne or of the Princes of Bavaria, and they affirm that the counts were called Flisci, because they watched over the collection of the imperial taxes. On this point nothing can be said with certainty. For our part, remembering that from the time of Otto the Great four powerful families ruled over all Liguria—that is the Counts of Lavagna and Ventimiglia, and the Marquises of Savona and Malaspina—we are led to believe that the Fieschi, like the Estensi, Pallavicini, Malaspina, and many other powerful houses, had a Longobardic derivation. This belief is supported by the fact that the Counts of Lavagna ruled with Longobardic laws, and drew from that nation, their Christian names as Oberto, Ariberto, Valperto, Rubaldo, Sinibaldo, Tebaldo, and others of like formation, which we find on every page of their family records. The Longobards ruled almost a century and a half in Liguria, and it is probable that many families of that nation founded feuds and took firm root with their estates and castles.
It is certain that the first count of the name clearly mentioned in history was a certain Tedisio, son of Oberto, who ruled the county of Lavagna in 992, and who had previously accompanied King Arduinus through all his campaigns. From him descended, in the right line, Rubaldo, Tedisio II., Rubaldo II., Alberto, and Ruffino. In the will of Ruffino (1177) the name Fieschi occurs for the first time.[4] Then followed Ugone and Tedisio III., brother of Pope Innocent IV. It is not our purpose to speak of their genealogy, but we refer the curious reader to works on that subject.
The Counts of Lavagna, at a very early period, enlarged their jurisdiction by acquiring many surrounding castles and feuds. The growth of their power was so rapid that the Genoese people, in the earliest days of the communal system (1008), found it necessary to put a check on the increasing influence of this family. The Genoese attempted to take possession of the castle of Caloso, the first seat of the Fieschi, and then held by Count San Salvatore. The Fieschi anticipated and foiled the movement by pushing forward their conquests so as to include in their dominions Nei, Panesi, Zerli, and Roccamaggiore. This conflict gave rise to long and indecisive struggles, which did not end until the Genoese army, returning from the Romagna in 1133, marched through Lavagna, dismantled its fortresses, and, to secure the obedience of the Counts, fortified Rivarolo, in the very heart of the country. The Counts rallied from the effects of this staggering blow, and, by dint of extraordinary address and courage, recovered their estates and independence.
When Frederick I. besieged Milan, the Fieschi went to his camp to pay him homage, and the Emperor, by royal decree, dated the 1st of September, 1158, invested Count Rubaldo Fieschi with all the ancient lands and rights of his family.
This patent conferred upon the Counts the following territories and privileges:
The waters of Lavagna and the tolls (pedaggio) for the highways along the sea-shore and the road through the mountains; feudatory rights over the men who held allodial properties in the three plebeian hamlets of Lavagna near the sea, Sestri, and Varese; and finally the wood which has the following boundaries—from the Croce di Lambe to Monte Tomar, thence to the bridge of Varvo, lake Fercia and Selvasola, returning to the point of departure at Croce di Lambe.
The Fieschi were thus rendered independent of the republic, and, about 1170, having made a secret treaty with Obizzo Malaspina and the counts of Da Passano, they invested Rapallo, and put Genoa to such straits that she was forced to ask aid of the marquises of Monferrato, Gavi, and Bosco. The soldiers of the allies under the command of Enrico il Guercio, Marquis of Savona, punished the contumacy and audacity of the Fieschi.
Finally, to compress much into few words, the commune of Genoa, on the 25th of June, 1198, made a treaty with the Counts of Lavagna. The latter bound themselves to content their ambition with the possession of Lavagna, Sestri, and Rivarolo, and the commune conferred many honours and privileges on the counts, especially reaffirming the rights conveyed to the family by the Emperor. The Fieschi further pledged themselves never more to draw sword against the city of Genoa or her allies, the Bishop of Bobbio, and the Lords of Gavi, and to become citizens of Genoa.[5] At the time of this treaty Count Martino was the sole head of the whole family, but after his death they separated into many branches. The principal line retained the name Fieschi; the others were called Scorza, Ravaschieri, Della Torre, Casanova, Secchi, Bianchi, Cogorno, and Pinelli.
It is not our intention to speak further of the junior branches. The treaty with Genoa marks the close of the wars between the commune and the Fieschi, and the beginning of our domestic divisions, which for centuries weakened the republic, and compelled the lover of repose to seek it in voluntary exile. Those who adhered to the empire were called Mascherati, and the opposite faction Rampini, headed by Fieschi. It would be a long work and one outside of our purpose to describe the various changes of fortune through which the Counts of Lavagna passed, tossing up and down in the fury of political strife; but it is noteworthy that they always maintained the character of defenders of popular liberty.
When Galeazzo Sforza was in power, they lived at Rome in exile, and their castles were occupied by ducal garrisons; but after the death (1476) of this tyrant, they rushed to arms, assailed the ducal palace in Genoa, and forced Giovanni Pallavicini, governor under Sforza, to take refuge in the fortress of Castelletto. Having made themselves masters of the city, far from assuming supreme powers, they immediately summoned the great parliament of the citizens who elected eight captains of liberty, six of whom were taken from the people and two from the patricians. Giano Giorgio and Matteo Fieschi were placed at the head of the army; but to defend the city from the threatened invasion a spirit of greater force and audacity was needed. The eyes of the people fell upon Obietto Fieschi, who was at Rome a prisoner of Sixtus IV., the ally of Sforza. He eluded the Pope’s vigilance, put himself at the head of his own vassals, and fought long, until, defeated by the imperial forces under Prospero Adorno, he was forced to take shelter in the castles of his county. The fortresses of Pontremoli, Varese, Torriglia, Savignone, and Montobbio were one after the other wrested from him, and he himself was captured and conducted to Milan, where, becoming involved in a plot against the Duchess Bona, he was detained in prison. His brother, Gianluigi, took his place and kept alive the fire of liberty. He routed Giovanni del Conte and Giovanni Pallavicini, in Rapallo, with terrible slaughter. He afterwards entered into negociations, and ceded Torriglia and Roccatagliata to Prospero Adorno.
But the Sforza government had so outraged the Genoese that popular indignation ran high against it, and Prospero Adorno resolved to free himself from his unfortunate alliance, and, to strengthen his new position, sought and obtained the aid of the counts of Lavagna. The Lombard regency sent a splendidly equipped army of more than sixteen thousand men, to compel the rebels to return to their allegiance; but Gianluigi Fieschi assaulted them in flank and rear with such skill and courage that he put them to complete rout. The enemy took refuge in Savignone and Montobbio, but Fieschi refused to listen to terms of accommodation, stormed those strongholds, recovered his feuds, and retained the prisoners as a ransom for Obietto.
The Fieschi may have been restless partisans and promoters of intestine strife, but they were never tyrants. Their broad lands, from which they drew large revenues and considerable armies, enabled them to make war upon a republic already strong in arms, and to snatch victory from the troops of foreign lords. At this period they held in the duchies of Parma and Piacenza the feuds of Calestano, Vigolone, Pontremoli, Valdettaro, Terzogno, Albere, Tizzano, Balone, and a number of smaller castles; in the territory of Lunigiana—Massa, Carrara, Suvero, Calice, Vepulli, Madrignano, Groppoli, Godano, Caranza, and Brugnato; in Valdibubera they were masters of Varzi, Grimiasco, Torriglia, Cantalupo, Pietra, and Savignone; in Piedmont—Vercelli, Masserano, and Crevacore; in Lombardy—Voghera (which Tortona sold to Percival Fieschi in 1303), and Castiglione di Lodi; in Umbria—Mugnano; in the kingdom of Naples—San Valentino; in Liguria, to say nothing of Lavagna, where they coined money before 1294,[6] they possessed more than a hundred boroughs.
It should be added that most of these possessions came into their power by conquest, purchase, or imperial gift before Innocent and Hadrian ascended to the Pontifical throne. Nicolò Fieschi alone, to pass by others of the family, bought seventy castles in Lunigiana from the bishop of Luni and from the lords of Carpena then very powerful. He ceded a great part of these feuds to the Republic, when he took the leadership of the Guelphs and formed alliance with Naples against the Ubertines (1270). This was the origin of long and bitter contests which finally ended in a treaty of peace and the absolution of Genoa from the interdict hurled against her by Pope Gregory at the instance of Cardinal Fieschi, whose lands the Republic had seized. The convention provided for the cession of a great part of the Cardinal’s feuds to Genoa (1276). We believe there is no other family which counts in its registers two Popes, seventy-two Cardinals and three-hundred Archbishops, Bishops and Patriarchs. Sinibaldo who assumed the tiara in 1242 under the title of Innocent IV, was an illustrious Pontiff. Frederick II, who had found in him when cardinal a warm ally, proved the strength of his hostility when he became Pope. The Emperor shut up the Pope in the castle of Sutri in 1244 and the Genoese sent twenty two galleys to raise the siege and rescue the pontiff. Innocent accompanied his deliverers to Genoa and from here travelled by the mountain road of Varazze to the castle of Stella, of which Jacopo Grillo (an accomplished troubadour) was lord, and remained there for forty days. A fountain from which he was wont to slake his thirst is still called Fontana Del Papa. From Stella he journeyed by way of Acqui to Lyons, where he summoned a general council and excommunicated Frederick, his son Corrado and his followers and partisans the Duke of Bavaria and Ezzelino.
The Emperor to avenge this affront, captured and destroyed the castles of the Fieschi in Liguria. The Pope, to rebuild and secure a home wasted by many invasions, formed the magnificent scheme of surrounding Genoa with walls and converting it into a refuge for the Guelph party. He selected for his own residence the convent of S. Domenico,[7] which had been the church of St. Egidius (having been donated to that patriarch in 1220.) The Ghibellines, learning the Pope’s design, raised a tumult and prevented the erection on that site of the palace which afterwards adorned the summit of Carignano.
Ottobuono, son of Tedisio, followed Innocent in the papal dignity and took the name of Hadrian V. As legate of Urban IV, he had conducted with success some difficult political negotiations. In the Council of Lyons and in his embassies to Germany and Spain, the superiority of his mind had given him a foremost place. When he ascended the pontifical throne, he curbed the insolence of Charles of Anjou who was abusing his office as Senator of Rome. His reign was short, for as Dante sings,
“Un mese e poco piu provò Come pesa il gran manto”[8]
The great Poet condemns him to the circle of the avaricious in Purgatory, perhaps on account of the vast wealth which he amassed while cardinal, the rental of which exceeded a hundred thousand gold marks.
Luca Fieschi, Cardinal of S. Maria Invialata, was still richer. He, like all the rest of his family, wielded the sword as well as made pastoral addresses. The famous Sciarra Colonna, captured by him at Anagni, had bitter experience of his warlike spirit. This cardinal as legate of Clement V in Italy, accompanied Henry VII in his expedition to our Peninsula in 1311. It was through his influence that Brescia and Piacenza were saved from pillage as a punishment for their revolt. After Henry’s coronation in Rome, the cardinal obtained by a decree, issued at Pisa in 1313, the full confirmation of all his ancient feudal rights. In his will, he ordered that, whoever of his heirs should be patron of the church of S. Adriano in Trigoso should build, on the estates of Benedetta De Marini, a church of equal size and beauty with that in Trigoso, and he bequeathed a large amount of property to be spent in its construction. This is the origin of that Gothic church in Vialata whose sides are covered with alternate slabs of black and white marbles. The word Vialata is not derived from the violets which once blossomed over that height, as some tell us, but from the cardinalate of that temple which the vandals of our time have not yet entirely disfigured. The friends of Luca Fieschi erected an honourable monument to him, in the duomo of Genoa, some remains of which are yet visible on a side door of our cathedral.
Giovanni Fieschi, bishop of Vercelli and Guelph leader was also a military chieftain. In 1371, he marched upon Genoa at the head of eight hundred horse to avenge his family who as rebels had been dispossessed of the castle of Roccatagliata by the Republic. He waged a long war with the Visconti. They had robbed him of Vercelli, but he reacquired this feud by subsequent treaty. He obtained from the Pope the temporal sovereignty of that city; and Boniface IX and his successors invested him with Montecapelli, Masserano and Crevacore. After his death, Vercelli passed into the hands of his nephew Gianello, of good fame both as a cardinal and warrior. It was by his influence and that of Giacomo Fieschi, Archbishop of Genoa, that the Republic undertook to rescue Urban IX when he was besieged in Nocera di Puglia. Nor were Guglielmo and Alberto Fieschi without military celebrity. They conquered the kingdom of Naples for their uncle Innocent IV. Not less warlike were Emanuele and Giovanni Fieschi, who as bishops and lords governed Biella in the middle of the fourteenth century. Giovanni, however, had the misfortune to incur the displeasure of his people, was driven from power, and ended his days in prison, 1377. The civil life of Genoa for many centuries was a succession of political revolutions. The leading spirits were always the Fieschi and Grimaldi, Guelphs, and the Spinola and Doria, partisans of the Empire. Carlo Fieschi was certainly a turbulent spirit and a promoter of discord. In order to remove from power the opposite party, he handed the Republic over to Robert of Naples, and Francesco Fieschi attempted to give Genoa to his son-in-law the marquis of Monferrato. Francesco had fought as Guelph general against Opizzino Spinola and the marquis of Monferrato had given him valuable aid in the campaign which he successfully closed by burning Busalla and desolating the Spinola estates.
But Francesco exercised the rights acquired by conquest with a moderation unusual in those times; and he committed the government of the city to sixteen citizens.
For the rest, the Fieschi though sometimes turbulent and dangerous to the peace of the city, never laid violent hands on the liberties of the Republic. Their struggles aimed to emancipate the city from the influence and control of the imperial party, and they always faithfully served those to whom they offered their arms.
It is fitting to enumerate among the heroes of this noble line a Giacomo Fieschi whom St. Louis created a grand marshal of France as a reward for many distinguished services. Innocent IV. invested this Giacomo with the kingdom of Naples and it is probable that Charles V alluded to this fact when, writing to Sinibaldo Fieschi, he declared him descended from the loins of kings. Nor can we omit Giovanni Fieschi who, in 1337 governed the province of Milan and fell bravely in battle; nor Danielo and Luca Fieschi who served as Florentine generals. It was this Luca who in 1406 conquered Pisa.
The Fieschi race is not famous alone for its men; its women have been distinguished for purity of life and force of character, a few, unfortunately, for vicious practices. We pass by Alassina, wife of Moruello Malaspina whom Dante, after having lived in her court, praised for her virtues. We know little else of her career. We pass Virginia, daughter of Ettore Fieschi and wife of the Prince of Piombino, a wise and virtuous matron; and also Jacopina who after the death of her first husband, Nino Scoto, married Obizzo da Este.
Alconata, or according to others Gianetta Fieschi, daughter of Carlo and wife of Pietro de Rossi, lord of Parma, was notorious for lascivious manners, and a still more infamous celebrity attaches to the name of Isabella Fieschi, wife of Lucchino Visconti. The Milanese Chroniclers tell us that Fosca (an epithet given to Isabella) obtained permission from her husband to attend the naval tournament held in Venice at the feast of the ascension in 1347. Magnificent preparations were made in Lodi for the journey of the duchess. She selected for her cortège the flower of the Lombard knights and ladies. It is said that every dame was accompanied by her admirer. Isabella was received at Mantua with distinguished courtesy by Ugolino Gonzaga whom she made happy by her embraces. On her arrival in Venice she abandoned herself to the arms of Doge Dandolo and the most elegant and accomplished gentleman of that republican court. The dames of her cortège, as usually happens, followed the example and imitated the gallantries of their mistress.
The fame of these amours reached Milan, where after the return of the party, the dames one after another confessed their errors. No husband was more deeply wounded than Lucchino, and he resolved to avenge his dishonour in the blood of Fosca. The unscrupulous Genoese dame, on learning the intention of her outraged lord, frustrated it by administering to him, according to tradition, a slow poison. Isabella was the most beautiful woman of her time; she had a numerous family which she confessed on her death bed to have been the fruit of her intrigues with Galeazzo, nephew of Lucchino, who was a brave and accomplished knight.
The daughter of Giacomo Fieschi and Francesca di Negro made ample amends for the licentiousness of these members of her family. We speak of that Catherine whom the church has glorified as a saint. She was beautiful in person, simple in her tastes and pure in her life. From her earliest years she avowed her desire to take the veil; but, constrained by her parents, she married Giuliano Adorno, a man addicted to every species and degree of vice. The virtues and prayers of Catherine, whose pure spirit above all earthly aims looked steadfastly towards heavenly things, were powerful enough to draw him back to the paths of virtue.
She was a miracle of love and wisdom. She wrote learned works, especially a treatise upon Purgatory, which received the encomiums of Cardinal Bellarmino, of the doctors of the Sorbonne and of the first philosophers and critics of that period (1510.)
Her relative and disciple, Tomasina Fieschi, imitated the devotional spirit of the sainted Catherine. Nor was she less charming in person nor less gifted in literary talents; but her manuscripts are unfortunately lost and time has destroyed all but the sweet perfume of her virtues.
In the beginning of the thirteenth century, the counts of Fieschi separated into two branches, that of Savignone of which we do not purpose to write, and that of Torriglia. Both however continued to call themselves counts of Lavagna, in memory of their origin.
At this early period they were followers of the imperial party and they received from Frederic, as his feudatories, the armorial bearing of three azure bars on a silver field. But when Frederic quarrelled with the Holy See the Counts embraced the Papal side and became leaders of the Guelph party. Then they placed the cat (gatto) over their crests in honour of the Bavarian family, head of the Guelph faction in Germany, which probably gave us the name. Later, they wrote under the cat “sedens ago” a symbol, says Federigo, of that wisdom which produces by force of intellect rather than of hand.[9] The Torriglia branch used sometimes to place a dragon upon their helmets; but the cat, as more ancient, was the true armorial bearing of the family.
The Lords of Este and Monferrato, the Gonzaga, Visconti Orsini, Sanseverini, Sanvitali, Caretto, Pallavicini and Rossi took their spouses from the Fieschi family, and received feuds, estates, and burghs as dowries. The most illustrious families of Italy coveted alliance with their blood. Even the counts of Savoy intermarried with them and in this way acquired large possessions in Piedemont. Innocent IV. married his niece Beatrice to count Tomaso of Savoy, and gave as dower the castles of Rivoli and Viana, together with the valley of Sesia. In 1259 count Tomaso was created by Innocent gonfaloniere of the church; and Ottobuono Fieschi liberated from prison in Asti Amedeo, Tomaso and Ludovico, sons of Tomaso.
They were not less generous and distinguished at home. About the year 1286, they erected a large tower and a castle at the gate of Sant’Andrea. In times equally remote, Opizzo Fieschi built for his residence a marble palace on the piazza of the duomo, enriching it with statutes, decorations, and precious vessels. This palace served afterwards for the council chamber of the Podesta, until Boccanegra took possession of it. Innocent IV. was born there. They built several other palaces in the city, which enjoyed full immunity; neither the sheriff nor his officers could cross their thresholds to serve writs or capture those who had taken refuge within them. The greater part of their palaces were destroyed in the rage of civil war. The one which Carlo Fieschi fortified near the church of S. Donato was ruined in 1393, and a year later that of cardinal Giacomo Fieschi, one of the most sumptuous in Italy, shared the same fate.
They did not content themselves with adorning Genoa with palaces. The convents of Servi, S. Leonardo, and S. Francesco bear witness to their public spirit, not to mention the many hospitals, churches, and other public edifices with which they enriched the Eastern Riviera. These public charities were at various times rewarded with dignities and privileges, especially by a decree that the first-born of the count of Lavagna should sit in the council chamber above the elders and next to the Doge. The office of doge, denied by law to the nobles until 1528, the Fieschi, in the height of their power, conferred upon their adherents, and in peaceful times they were by this means masters of the Republic. There is no instance in which a Fieschi, in any revolution, attempted to grasp at supreme power, or lay violent hands on popular liberty.
Gianluigi II. was no exception to this rule. He purchased from Corrado Doria the feud of Loano, and was ambitious of becoming master of Pisa. When the Pisans asked as a favour to be incorporated into the Republic of Genoa, Gianluigi, as a means to his private ambition, discouraged his fellow-citizens from accepting the gift. The Genoese were so enraged at discovering the motives and intrigues of Fieschi, that a year after they excluded the nobles from office, took possession of the Fieschi castles, and elected eight tribunes of the people as heads of the government. Louis XII., instigated by the nobility, punished this plebeian audacity by restoring the Fieschi to their ancient dominions, and assigning them the government of all Eastern Liguria. At that time the king visited Genoa, and lodged in the Fieschi palace in Carignano, where, perhaps in the festal rejoicings, he encountered that Tomasina Spinola, who, according to the chronicles of the period, was so smitten with his personal charms, that she died soon after of her unhappy love.
The riches and power of Gianluigi gave him the title of Great, and his virtues and varied abilities acquired him such consideration that, when after the death of his first wife, Bartolomea della Rovere, he wedded Catherine, sister of the Marquis of Finale, the senate paid homage to his distinguished merit by proclaiming a safe conduct from Corvo to Monaco for all who should attend the espousals. His son, Sinibaldo, did not, like his father, cultivate the friendship of the French. His brother was assassinated by the Fregosi, and to obtain vengeance he used his influence to elevate the Adorni to the place occupied by the Fregosi. When Ottaviano Fregoso returned to power, Sinibaldo retired to his estates, formed an alliance with the Adorni, and marched upon Genoa in 1522. He fought bravely against the French when Cesare Fregoso led them against the city, but he was made prisoner, and only obtained his liberty by the payment of a heavy ransom. Afterwards he united with Andrea Doria to expel the French from Genoa; he captured Savona by storm, and gave powerful aid to Andrea in carrying the Republic over to the Imperial cause. Having lost his brothers, he came to be the sole head of his family, and inherited all the vast possessions and wealth of his father. Charles V. confirmed his titles to his estates. He went as the ambassador of the Republic, to assume the investiture from the emperor of some castles, and spent on the occasion a large sum which he would not permit the Republic to repay.
Sinibaldo united to his feuds Pontremoli, for which he paid twelve thousand gold crowns[10] to Francesco Sforza. His united possessions now embraced thirty-three walled castles, besides innumerable estates and villas on the sides of the Appennines, bounded by Genoa and Sarzana on the sea, and by Tortona, Bobbio, Parma and Piacenza, inland.
He was also master of many other feuds separated from his county. He drew such large revenues from these lands that the Republic had no other citizen of equal wealth, and he lived with a pomp and luxury till then unknown in Italy. His munificent generosity earned him the merited praise of Ariosto, who places him at the fountain of Malagigi,—foremost among those whose lances are wounding the fierce image of avarice.
He died in 1532, leaving Maria della Rovere a widow. She was the niece of Julius II., and bore Sinibaldo a numerous family. He was buried, wrapped in silk cloth of gold, in the vault of his fathers, in our cathedral, and Ugo Partenopeo pronounced his funeral oration.
The eldest son of Sinibaldo was that Gianluigi, whose career we are about to describe. But in order to pronounce a just opinion of his actual character, we believe it important to speak at some length of the condition of Italy and the Republic of Genoa when he appeared on the political stage. A great man is, in our opinion, the expression of a social want; he embodies and expresses the ideas of the times wherein he is born, and therefore is a compendious symbol of the people among whom he lives.
[CHAPTER II.]
THE ITALIAN STATES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
Leo X., and his false glories—Desperate condition of the Italian states in the sixteenth century—Their aversion to the Austrian power—The Sack of Rome—Wars and Plagues—Charles V. and Francis I.—The Despotism of Christian powers causes Italian powers to desire the yoke of the Turks—The Papal theocracy renews with the empire the compact of Charlemagne.
The age of Leo X., in painting whose meretricious splendours, our historians have rivalled each other, was one of the most unfortunate in the history of Italy. Let others call the age of Valentine and Charles V. the age of gold; Raphael, Titian, and Michael Angelo cannot make us forget Leyva, Baglioni, and the barbarians who overran Italy, bringing in plague, famine, and intestine war. Swiss and French in Lombardy, French and Spaniards in Naples, Swiss and Germans in Venetia rendered every region desolate and every government despotic. Julius II. spoke falsehood when he boasted that he had expelled the Ultramontanes from Italian soil; he merely drove out one foreigner by the help of another, and the last invaders filled the people with desperate longing for the old oppressors. After his death the Papal dignity was conferred on Leo de’ Medici, whose name has a false lustre in letters and arts.
It was a grave delusion or a sychophantic flattery to attribute to him the impulse that revived liberal studies. The great intellects who flourished under his pontificate had risen to fame before his time. He covered them with wealth and honours out of no sympathy with their pursuits, but to emasculate their independent spirits and stifle the groans of the nation in whose bosom the spirit of independence began to react under the hammer of incessant misfortune.
The manners of Leo were wholly corrupt and his religion atheism. The Lutheran doctrines which spread in his time owed their success to the trade in indulgences, the profits of which he conferred before collection upon his sister Magdalene Cybo, to repay her family for the princely receptions they gave him in Genoa.
The scribblers called him The Great, because they lived upon him, and were only idle ornaments of a luxurious court. He entertained the Romans with feasts and games, because he was a devotee of pleasure, and, according to the saying of the people, wished to enjoy the papacy. But the chases of Corneto and Viterbo, the infamies of Malliana, the suppers of the gods, and the fisheries of Bolsena were paid for with money borrowed at forty per cent. The people of the Romagna, bleeding under his insatiable collectors of revenue, prayed for the Turkish yoke, as a relief from that of the Popes. When it was his plain duty to restore his wasted provinces by permanent peace, he excited new wars, for whose conduct he had neither money, energy, nor talents. History has been strangely generous with Leo. His intrigues, his wrongheaded policy, the fictitious conspiracy of Florence,—for which Macchiavello was beheaded, Braccioli and Capponi killed, and many others imprisoned or banished,—still await a pen sharp enough to cut away his borrowed glories.
At the death of Maximilian of Austria, the electors conferred the empire on Charles V. of Spain, who was already master of the Two Sicilies. The power of Charles threatened the independence of Rome, and Leo formed a league with France, in the audacious hope of expelling the Spaniard from Italy. But he betrayed his ally for a dukedom in the kingdom, conferred on his bastard son Alexander de’ Medici. A war broke out, and the Papal and Imperial troops, led by Prospero Colonna and Marquis Pescara, had already occupied Milan, when the sudden death of Leo cut short his enterprises. His successor was the Flemish Van Trusen, under the title of Hadrian VI. He had never set foot in Italy, and was therefore called a barbarian. The corrupt prelates despised a Pope, under whom absolution cost only a ducat.
Hadrian was unable to continue the war, the Papal treasury having been drained by the prodigality of Leo. Besides the Rovere, Baglioni and Malatesta had seized the Papal dominions. The other states of Italy were not more fortunate than the Papal. Venice had been bleeding to death since the league of Cambray; Florence was under the heel of Julius de’ Medici; the lords of Mantua and Ferrara were in the grasp of a master; the Marquis of Monferrato and the Duke of Savoy were protected by French garrisons; the kingdom of Naples was barbarized and taxed to the verge of ruin by those Spanish hordes who from the poverty of their clothing were called the Bisogni.[11] Charles did not pay his armies a sous, and they had scarcely routed the French under Lautrec when they began a general pillage of Italy. Though the Pope was Charles’ ally the pontificial territory did not escape the common fate. The excesses of Ultramontane lust and avarice bred a terrible pestilence in Florence and in Rome; new wounds for Italy. When the plague had reached its height, the pontiff in an insane fright abolished the sanitary laws on the plea that they were offensive to Heaven and heretical. Thus the pestilence, encountering no obstacles, raged with unchecked violence.
We are told that in these straits, the Romans longing to find a barrier to such a flood of woes, sacrificed a bull with all the pagan ceremonies to the divinities of the ancient Republic. To such a degree had the atheism of the popes taken root among the people!
Julius, of the Medici family, succeeded to Hadrian VI.; but he did not bring peace to Italy. The French, led by Bonnivet made a new attempt to recover Lombardy. Prospero Colonna made them pay dearly for the enterprise; but Francis I. invaded Italy in force, and Milan, desolated by the plague, came into his power. Who at that period cared for the independence of Italy? Venice, Venice alone. In the battle of Pavia, Francis I. was beaten and captured. Venice seeing the knife pointed at her own breast by Imperial hands, proposed to Louisa of Savoy, mother of the captive French king and regent of France, a general league of the enemies of Spain, the mustering of armies and the liberation of the illustrious prisoner. The Pope opposed the scheme and bound himself closer to the emperor whose satellites he paid largely for leaving him in peace. The German leaders divided the money and went on robbing the subjects of the Pope.
In the meantime the treaty of Madrid (1526) released Francis I. from prison and he made haste to violate the stipulations extorted from him by force. He formed an alliance for the liberation of Italy, with the Pope, the Venitians and Francis Sforza. The French monarch proclaimed himself the apostle of liberty for oppressed people and awakened everywhere the spirit of resistance to the Spanish power. A strange delusion that the French monarch sought to enfranchise Italy seized upon the most illustrious men of our Peninsula. The Genoese were especially forward in urging the Pope to abandon the Imperial alliance and join the French league. Foremost among those who shared this delusion was Giammateo Ghiberti of Genoa, chancellor of Clement VII., a knight of stainless honour and a prelate uncontaminated by the moral leprosy which raged in the Roman court.
The choicest spirit in literature and science supported the generous hopes of Ghiberti. Among them was Pietro Bembo who had been secretary to Leo X., Ludovico Canossa, the French ambassador in Venice, and Jacopo Sodoleto, an extraordinary genius whom the amorous overtures of the beautiful Imperia failed to degrade. Sodoleto, a man deeply religious and patriotic had urged Clement to make bold reforms in the bosom of the church. He founded in Rome, with the cöperation of Ghiberti, Bembo, Caraffa and many others, the oratorio of divine love, and he openly professed his belief in the doctrine of justification by faith, a dogma of the evangelical churches.
Around these leaders, the lovers of liberal studies and of their country, began to form a party, which included such men as Valeriano Pierio, Vida, Bini, Blasio, Negri, Navagero and even Berni, who, when he saw that Pope Clement neglected the advice of patriots and clung to Spain, prophesied that the Pope and his shearers would share the ruin of Italy. This awaking to liberty and the increasing aversion of the Italians to the Imperial power, stimulated the Spanish governors to harsher measures. The desertion of their party by the duke of Milan furnished the conquerors with a specious pretext for desolating whole provinces and draining the blood of the people by taxation and subsidies. This unfortunate country saw at that moment a spectacle of unbridled barbarity without parallel in history. The Spanish soldiers were quartered in the houses of the Milanese, and the citizen was treated not as a host but as a prisoner. His feet were tied to a bed, or to a beam; or he was thrown into a cellar, where he would be tormented into surrendering money or lands; or to the gratification of a more vile cupidity. When the unfortunate victim died of grief or, impelled by rage and despair, drowned himself in a well or threw himself from a window, the Bisogni immediately sought another house in which to renew the same barbarities. The Lombard provinces had not even the consolation of human pity. The duke of Urbino, commanding the armies of Venice and Rome, gave them no encouragement to hope. Indeed, he lacked the means for open war or even for skirmishing with the Spanish army. Germany poured down new soldiers. Shall we say soldiers? George Frandesperg marched at the head of fifteen thousand robbers, and swore to put a halter round the neck of the Pope and to pay his legions with the pillage of Italian cities.
Nor were foreigners the only tormentors of the bleeding peninsula. In Rome the Orsini supported the Pope the Colonna were partisans of Cæsar. Cardinal Pompeo collected eight thousand peasants on the Agro Romano and unleashed them against the Vatican. They made a general pillage and their leader compelled the Sultan of Christianity, as he styled the Pope, to break the league he had formed with Venice and France. Deeds were committed which history shrinks from recording. The Ultramontanes, not content with enslaving provinces, slaked their thirst in the blood of the people. The inhumanity of the Germans, the avarice of the Swiss—who even then made merchandise of their fealty—the rapacity of the Aragonese and the licentiousness of the Gauls reached and polluted everything in Italy.
It is true that there was this diversity in their manners, that the Swiss and Germans, despising the restraints of both law and religion, utterly despoiled the vanquished and revelled in every species of brutality; while the French divided the spoils with those to whom they belonged and seduced, instead of violating, the women. As for the Spaniards, words are inadequate to describe the cruelty with which they slaughtered and tore in pieces our conquered populations. Macchiavello has finely contrasted the French and the Spaniards of that time. “The Frenchman is equally prodigal of his own property and that of his neighbour and he robs with small concern whether he is to eat the booty, destroy it or make riot of it with the lawful owner. The spirit of the Spanish plunderer is different; when he robs you do not hope to see a shred of your own again.” Spanish despotism imprinted its bloody hands on the face of every province. Witness the pillage of Rome by the Constable of Bourbon—who perished there, perhaps by the hand of Cellini—for proof that the Goth Alaric and every other barbarian leader were less ferocious than a christian army. The Spanish hordes plundered all the wealth and precious vessels which the devotion of christendom had amassed in the churches of Rome during twelve centuries. The Spanish catholics were worse vandals than the German Lutherans. Whoever escaped the clutches of the one was put to death by the other, or at best only saved himself by paying heavy ransom. In Rome the most venerable things were put to unseemly uses. Drunken soldiers in sacred robes and mitres danced obscene dances in the streets and public squares, and their impious mockeries always ended in bloody saturnalia. The corpses of murdered citizens strewed the streets; and after nine months of this carnival of death, a fierce pestilence broke out to complete the desolation.
The emperor derived no advantage from imprisoning the Pope, wasting his provinces and butchering his people. A pressing want of money induced Charles to restore Julius to his throne, as the same motive had led him to liberate the French king. It seems incredible that the master of Spain, the Netherlands, Sicily, the Lombard provinces and Mexico should have drawn no profit from his vast possessions. The Lutheran movement in Germany, the threats of France, the distrust of the king of England, the secret intrigues of the Pope and the doubtful fidelity of some Italian princes, whom Venice was inciting to revolt, may have conspired to palsy his arms in the very moment of victory.
A little before the sack of Rome, Odo di Foix, lord of Lautrec and general of France avenged the defeat of his sovereign at Pavia by capturing this city and subjecting it to an eight day’s pillage. The edifices were so ruined and the population so thinned that Leandro Alberti writes;—“The sight of it excited compassion.” It is melancholy satisfaction to write, that, of the crowds of foreigners who poured into Italy to plunder and ravage, very few returned to their native lands. The Peninsula became their sepulchre—of the French particularly—who to speak truth, seldom committed those excesses which were common to the Spaniards and Germans. It may be added, too, that it has always been the misfortune of France to make useless conquests in Italy. Her army which, after the destruction of Melfi, advanced to the siege of Naples, counting more than twenty-five thousand men, was so thinned by pestilential fevers that two months afterwards it did not contain four thousand men fit for duty. The frightful plague did not spare Lautrec, and after the treaty of Antwerp only a few skeletons were permitted to set foot on the soil of France. The army which deluged Rome with blood met with a more calamitous fate. Shut up in Naples under the Prince of Orange, governor of that city, it was attacked and mowed down by a pestilence which was at once the consequence and punishment of its insane license. Even Francis Bourbon, count of San Polo, who, the Bisogni having left nothing to plunder, put the villages and hamlets through which he passed to fire and sword, was totally defeated and made prisoner in Landriano (1529) by the ferocious Antonio di Leyva, the scourge of Lombardy.
The kings becoming weary, the people being drained of their blood, the necessity of peace was strongly felt. Charles V., who had no title to greatness, but the extent of his dominions, who was crooked in design and avaricious of spirit, hastened to form an incestuous union with the Pope, and the fruit of their embraces was the slavery of Florence. Cæsar bound himself to immolate the Republic to the vengeance of Clement and put under Papal pay the hordes of assassins who had already desolated the greater part of the Peninsula. The bastard Alexander de’ Medici married a bastard daughter of the emperor; whence the treaty of Cambray by which France delivered Italy, bound hand and foot to Charles Fifth, recovering Bourgogne and his children for the shameful desertion. He ignominiously lost in this treaty the honour which he preserved stainless in his defeat and capture at Pavia. This king had strange contradictions in his character. He promised, with apparent sincerity, liberty to nations and then abandoned them at caprice; he was hated by people whom he overwhelmed with public burdens, but loved by the learned whom he protected and honoured. He offered his hand to the heretics of Germany, and burned under a slow fire the heretics of France. He invited the Turks into Italy and betrayed the Venitians and Florentines; but he kept faith with his bitter enemy, granting Charles V. safe conduct through French territory.
The pontiff being about to crown Charles in Bologna with the Lombard and Imperial diadems, the latter ordered the Italian princes, as his vassals, to pay him homage on that occasion (1530). Alfonso d’Este, Frederick Gonzaga, the dukes of Urbino and Savoy, and the Marquis of Monferrato submitted to him; the Republics of Genoa, Siena and Lucca counted themselves happy in being permitted to retain their old form of government, and Florence which under the influence of Nicolò Capponi had elected Christ for its king, now vainly defended by the brave Ferruccio was forced to humble herself to slavery. That portion of North Italy which in modern language is called Piedmont was involved in equal if not greater disasters. On account of its situation between Austria and France, it was overrun and desolated by barbarian invaders from 1494 to 1559. “We do not believe,” say the commissioners of Henry VIII. of England, “that it is possible to find in all Christendom greater wretchedness than reigns in this country. The best towns are either in ruins or depopulated. There are few districts in which food is to be found. The extensive plain, fifty miles in length, which lies between Vercelli and Pavia, once so fertile in cereals and wines, is reduced to a desert. The fields are uncultivated; except three poor women gathering a few grapes, we saw not the shadow of a human creature. There, they neither sow nor reap; the country sides are growing wild, and the uncultivated vines are returning to their primitive state.”
Charles III., the unfortunate, was ruling over these desolated provinces and his subjects suffered every species of indignity, outrage and despotism. To render matters, if possible, a little worse, Gonzaga urged the Emperor to reduce to a swamp all that wide plain between the Alps and the Po to form a barrier to French invasion of Lombardy.
In fine, there was no city in all Italy which was not conquered and oppressed by foreign armies. Of Genoa I shall speak in its place. It is worth while to mention Nice, where in 1538 Paul III. held the congress at which a truce was concluded between Cæsar and Francis I. Five years afterwards, Francis marched upon and besieged it with the help of the Turks. This siege is memorable in Italian history for the heroic spirit of Segurana, but after the death at the sword’s point of all her bravest defenders, the city was forced to surrender. The citizens abandoned their homes, though they had obtained a promise of immunity for their property from pillage by the soldiery. The Turks kept faith, while the French violated their pledges, thus giving rise to a general desire among Italians to become subject to the Turks, from a conviction that they could no longer endure the weight of their misfortunes. There were writers as Vives, who speaking of Italy, (1529) sought to discourage this sentiment, telling the Italians that the Turks would heap worse miseries upon them. But it is incredible that Soliman could have equalled the endless tortures inflicted by Francis I. and Charles V. Segni says: “More than two hundred thousand persons killed in war, more than a hundred cities and important castles sacked and destroyed, so many thousands of innocent men and women destroyed by pestilence and famine that one cannot number them, matrons debauched, maidens ravished, abominable practices with children, an endless catalogue of crimes against religion and nature committed against each other by christians, all owe their origin to the implacable enmity of two men, who were born and have grown old in eternal hatred to each other. They are not weary of shedding the blood of their fellows; they continue to fight and will fight to the end of their lives.”[12] He proceeds:—“Afflicted peoples cannot do better than pray God to destroy or subject them both to the sway of the grand Turk, so that the world may come under the power of a single monarch, who, though he be a barbarian and an enemy to our laws, may give us a little repose wherein to rear our children to a life, of poverty indeed, but free from the burdens of our miserable existence.”
The people of Germany, always restless under the yoke of ancient Rome, were rising against the Papal power, which had taken the place of the ancient empire. At the voice of Luther laying bare the festering diseases of the Roman court, the learned of Italy were moved. The Pope comprehended that there was no other means of extirpating the seeds of reform which had already sprung up in Italy but to ally himself with catholic Spain: she was in the zenith of her glory. Such captains as Cortes and Pizzaro sailed away with a galley and returned conquerors of a new world. Who better than the compatriots of Torquemada could suffocate in blood the free voices of the disciples of Huss and Wicliffe? From that moment the compact of Charlemagne was renewed between Charles V. and the Roman theocracy, and through it the Spaniards tightened their grasp on Milan, Naples, Palermo and Cagliari, and established their ascendency over the whole Peninsula.
From Charles V. dates our humiliation and slavery. From his time the Peninsula has had no proper history. Its vicissitudes and calamities are only episodes of the great drama enacted by the nations who have fought against each other for our blood. The council of Trent was not an act of national life. It grew out of the philosophic spirit of reform and the scandals of the Roman court, and was initiated by Germany and France while England was separating herself from the catholic church. This celebrated synod shows nothing but the conflict between the church and the empire, between the reformers and the courtiers of Rome struggling to maintain their privileges, between the Popes who fought to maintain their abuses and the secular princes who secretly laboured to shake off the priestly yoke. The Italian people had no part in it. The religious discussions upon divine grace, predestination and justification by faith did not reach us, who were everywhere plotting to recover our independence and freedom.
In fact this is the century of popular conspiracies, which were always strangled by degenerate nobles and foreign armies. It is true that the most illustrious Italians sided with the people and died for their righteous cause; but these were vain struggles. From the day that Lorenzino de’Medici, for whom the Spanish power (which Duke Alexander was consolidating in Italy) was too bitter, formed the design of restoring the Republic and then, bought by promises of lascivious embraces, stifled his own purpose, the spark of liberty took fire and in every city the plebeians rose against their foreign oppressors.
Such, briefly, was the condition of Italy in the early part of the sixteenth century, in which she lost that preëminence and reputation under which she had hitherto flourished. It is necessary to study this period, because it was then that Europe initiated the great work of her civil renovation, while in Italy there was desperate strife between dying liberties and rising tyrannies. Two hostile forces were wrestling together and shaking men’s souls; the regal and foreign dominion supported by the nobles, and the generous pride of citizens making heroic sacrifices to remain a people. Charles V. turned the trembling balance. Only in that age could have risen the company of Jesus, who did not, like the monks, constitute a democracy but an absolute monarchy such as Cæsar was founding on the ruins of our communes. The disciples of Loyola and the nobles were the sole supporters of the Austro-Spanish power, and they showed a common solicitude to strengthen the principles of despotic government.
[CHAPTER III.]
ANDREA DORIA AND THE REPUBLIC OF GENOA.
The Nobles and the People—Andrea Doria and his first enterprises—How he abandoned France, and went over to the Emperor—Accusations and opinions with regard to his motives—The laws of the Union destroyed the popular, and created the aristocratic Government—The objects of Doria in contrast with those of the Genoese Government and the Italian Republics—The lieutenants of Andrea and his naval forces—Popular movements arrested by bloody vengeance.
We turn with painful recollections from the conditions of Italy to that of the Genoese Republic. Our annals offer us only vicissitudes of intestine divisions and wars, in which, however, there were heroic achievements that have rendered the Republic illustrious.
The history of Liguria is full of the Doria name. There is no modern family which can boast so many examples of heroism as this house, and only the Scipios among the ancients are entitled to equal fame. From the earliest times they were partisans of the empire; while the Fieschi, after Innocent IV. maintained the cause of the people, drawing to that side the powerful family of Grimaldi. The Doria and Spinola formed alliance, and became the leaders of the Ghibellines. From that moment a warm contest arose between these great families, and it did not end until, in 1257, the people elected Guglielmo Boccanegra captain and defender of their liberties. After his death, the hostile nobles renewed their insane discords; but the people, weary of these domestic wars and following the examples of other Italian communes, drove out the nobles, (1340) and created Simon Boccanegra first Doge. The nobles were by law excluded from this highest office, and even from the command of a galley;[13] and not a few illustrious families passed into the ranks of the people by their own election. It is well known that before the reforms of Doria, the so-called nobles were held in less honour than distinguished men of the people, because their rank excluded them from the Dogate and many other offices. The Doria and Spinola came to power in a revolutionary period, and in violation of law. This severe prohibition was afterwards modified, but the office of Doge continued to be a popular prerogative. The principal families of the people were the Adorni and Fregosi, in whose hands the supreme offices remained for several centuries, and these names are conspicuous in our civil conflicts which were so frequent and bitter that in one year the head of the government was four times changed. In these calamitous times—redeemed from disgrace by the three manly figures of Columbus, Julius II., and Andrea Doria,—the Genoese, whose misfortune has ever been to despise servitude and to be incapable of preserving liberty, were compelled to invoke the protection of princes strong enough to curb the ambition of individual citizens. But it was always stipulated that the franchises of the city should not be impaired, nor its laws changed; there was, in fact, no true transfer of power. Whenever we were borne down by foreign arms, it was the work of the nobility conspiring against the people.
Even in the time of Louis XII., when Italy was yielding him a tardy and reluctant obedience, the Genoese rose in rebellion, triumphed over the plots of the nobles, threw down the government of the royal vicar, drove out the army of Cleves, assembled in the Church of St. Maria di Castello, and elected eight tribunes of the people. The nobles were put to flight, the hostile army routed, and supreme power returned to the hands of the people.
The Geonese showed themselves truly great. They drew out of his workshop Paolo da Novi, a silk dyer, and despite his modest refusals elected him Doge. Nor did they err in electing the modest operative to the highest office. “Paolo,” as Foglietta writes, “was a man of honour and integrity, pure from every vice, and proof against all the temptations of the great.” His first and sole study was the glory and unity of the Republic. He, in fact, reconquered some feuds for the state, particularly Monaco, which the Grimaldi had usurped.
In the midst of Paolo’s generous designs, Louis XII., to whom the Geonese nobility had opened the doors of their country, descended upon him with a formidable army. Genoa was converted into a field of battle; every plebeian became a soldier, and the valour of the citizens checked the impetuous advance of the French battalions. But the patriots were overcome by numbers and discipline; Paolo di Novi was betrayed and butchered; the people were reduced to slavery. Rodolfo di Lanoia, to whom Louis committed the government of the city, was constrained to resign his office,—says Foglietta—on account of the boundless avarice and insolence of the nobles who struggled to advance their private interests by ruining the public weal.
As Boccanegra was the father of our popular liberty so Doria was its executioner. He wrested the government from the hands of the people, and committed it to those of the nobles. He momentarily silenced, but did not destroy, the rage of parties. By depressing the populace, he cut the nerves of the Republic; he gave us independence in name, but he destroyed the franchises of the citizens. A great historian has justly said, that the liberties given us by Andrea Doria are ridiculous; the future will accept that as the final decision of history.
Andrea was a soldier from his youth. He learned the rudiments of war from Domenico Doria, who was of his blood and had distinguished himself in the court of Innocent VIII. He served successfully under the Pope, Ferdinando the old of Naples and his son Alfonso II., and sustained the siege of Rocca Guglelma against Gonsalvo di Cordova. Afterwards he fought under Giovanni della Rovere, duke of Urbino, and having been elected tutor of the duke’s son, Francesco Maria, he saved him from the intrigues of Cæsar Borgia, by taking him to Venice and entrusting him to the protection of the Venitian senate.
He allied himself with the party of the Fregosi, who were friends of his house; and when Doge Ottaviano besieged for twenty-two months the fortress of Cape Faro, which was held for the French; he fought single-handed with the brave Emanuel Cavallo, and was slightly wounded in the contest.
But his greatest glory was acquired in naval war. His battles with the Moors and Turks gave him fame and wealth, and after the battle of Pianosa (1519), in which, with six vessels, he conquered thirteen of the enemy’s; capturing several with the famous corsair Gad Ali’ he became the terror of Saracen ships. When the Fregosi were driven from power and their places taken by the Adorni, Doria, disdaining to serve under this family, sold his services to France, and took with him six galleys belonging to the Republic, which he never restored. The motive of this appropriation of public property was his bitter animosity to Spain, whose party the Adorni and the Republic had embraced. This animosity was rendered more violent by the sack of Genoa in 1522 by the Spanish army, a pillage so horrible that when the authors of it, Pescara, Colonna and Sforza, presented themselves to Pope Hadrian humbly asking pardon, the pontiff indignantly repulsed them, crying,—“I cannot, I ought not, I will not forgive you.”
Doria was so incensed that he condemned to chains and the galleys, without hope of redemption, all Spaniards who fell into his hands.
In the year 1527, Pope Clement VIII. was allied with his most Christian Majesty, with the Venitians the Florentines and other governments against the power of Charles. To further the objects of the alliance Francis sent Lautrec into Italy at the head of forty thousand men, and Andrea Doria besieged Genoa with a large force. It is not within our scope to describe how the Republic, through the influence of Cæsar Fregosi and Doria, went over to the party of France. Francis, to gratify the wishes of Andrea, entrusted the government to Teodoro Trivulzio, Antoniotto Adorno, having gracefully retired from the office of Doge.
Doria having been created admiral of France, with a salary of thirty-six thousand crowns, rose to great fame, on account of his victories and those of his lieutenants. Among these victories, that of Filippino Doria in the gulf of Salerno, deserves a brief mention, both because it was won by Italian arms, and because something should be added to the accounts given by other authors. Lautrec, while besieging Naples, desired to blockade the port, so as to prevent the supply of provisions to its defenders, and sent for the galleys of Doria, seven of which were then in Leghorn, under the command of Filippino Doria Count of Sassocorbario and Canosa and Andrea’s cousin.
Naples, surrounded on every side, would have been unable to sustain the siege, and the viceroy, Hugo Moncada, saw the necessity of breaking the enclosing lines by some daring undertaking. He collected six galleys called the Capitana and Gobba, (the property of Fabrizio Giustiniano) one belonging to Sicames, another which was the property of Don Bernardo Vallamarino, the Perpugnana and Calabrese. To these were added ten brigantines and some smaller vessels. The viceroy embarked upon the ships twelve hundred Spaniards clad in mail and commanded by the flower of the officers and barons of the kingdom. Finally, he himself joined the expedition and gave the command of the artillery to Gerolamo da Trani and that of the army to Fabrizio Giustiniano, called the hunchback, a brave Genoese in the pay of Spain. The latter, knowing the courage and skill of the Ligurian mariners advised that the Spanish fleet should avoid a close engagement with Doria; but a contrary opinion prevailed.
Count Filippino was in the waters of Salerno when the report reached him that the imperial fleet had left Naples.
He asked Lautrec to reinforce him with only two hundred infantry. Of the eight vessels under his command, that is, the Capitana, Pellegrina, Donzella, Sirena, Fortuna, Mora, Padrona and Signora, he sent the three last under the command of Nicolò Lomellino out to sea as if they wished to escape, with orders, however, to turn about, and, driving down before the wind, attack the enemy in the rear. Filippino with the remaining five vessels awaited the assault of Moncada, who, trusting to the strength of his fleet and the bravery of his captains, confidently looked for a signal victory. The galley of the viceroy closed with the Capitana, the flag-ship of Doria, who, firing his basilisk, small cannon and falconets, raked the Spanish vessel from prow to poop with such fatal accuracy that forty armed men were killed, among whom were the bravest barons of the kingdom, Leo Tassino, a nobleman of Ferrara, Luigi Cosmano a famous musician, Don Pietro di Cardona and many others. The batteries of Moncada replied but did little damage to the Genoese. The Gobba, the galley of Sicames and that of Don Bernardo were more fortunate. They closed with the Pellegrina and the Donzella and the Spanish soldiers boarded without difficulty. The Perpugnana and the Calabrese cannonaded the Sirena until she was forced to surrender. Doria had now lost three galleys, the Capitana and the Fortuna were in imminent danger of being boarded, not being able to sustain the attacks of six galleys and fifteen smaller vessels whose grappling irons were seizing them on every side. Everything looked propitious for Moncada and victory seemed secure to him, when the three galleys which Doria had sent to sea turned their prows and bore down swiftly before the wind. At close quarters, they poured in a terrible fire which dismasted the Spanish vessels and strewed their decks with the dead. The viceroy himself while standing upon the quarter deck of his vessel with his sword in one hand, and rotella in the other, animating his crews, was wounded in his right arm by an arquebus, his left thigh was broken by a falconet and he fell among his men mowed down under the fire-balls and showers of stones poured in by the Genoese. Having captured the flag-ship of the viceroy, Lomellino assailed the Gobba. Here more than a hundred arquebusiers were killed, Cæsar Fieramosca lost his life and Giustiniano was wounded and lost his galley. Filippino Doria now released from their chains the convicts and the Turkish slaves with a promise of liberty and sent them to recover the Donzella, which they soon accomplished. They attacked the Pellegrina and the Sirena with such fury that the Perpugnana and Calabrese, seeing further defence useless, turned their prows and sailed away seaward. The brigantines were reduced to helpless wrecks and the remainder of the Spanish vessels found it impossible to continue the conflict. The marquis of Vasto and Ascanio Fieramosca, after having displayed a most admirable courage, seeing their galleys reduced to a sinking condition, Gerolamo da Trani killed, their captains wounded, their soldiers shattered and pounded by stones and half consumed by fire, gracefully surrendered to Nicolò Lomellino who was already at close quarters with the Mora. Sicames and Don Bernardo Vallamarino, fighting to the last, were killed and their ships sunk. All the lancers were killed, but their leader Corradino escaped with the galley Perpugnana. The killed amounted to more than a thousand and the prisoners were much more numerous. Among the latter, the ancient chronicles enumerate the marquis Vasto, Ascanio Fieramosca, the Prince of Salerno, the marquis Santa Croce, Fabrizio Giustiniano, and other illustrious barons and famous warriors.
This action was fought on the 28th of April, 1528. It was not long after this signal victory so fatal to the imperial power and counted so honourable to the name of Doria—though it was fought by his lieutenant Filippino—that Andrea changed sides and enlisted under the very power he had conquered.
History has not yet given a satisfactory account of the motives which led Doria, hitherto a violent enemy of Cæsar, to desert the standard of France and offer his sword to Spain. It was a desertion fruitful of numberless misfortunes as we shall show in the progress of this work. It is certain that this change contributed more largely than anything else to alter the fortunes of Italy, and to reduce her to slavery under the empire. It induced both peoples and princes to submit to the Spanish power, Luigi Alamanni, seduced by the influence of Andrea, adopted that policy, though he was one of the warmest friends of liberty, and he attempted to persuade the Florentines to ally themselves with Cæsar. The unfortunate patriot suffered for his delusion. The people hearing the rumour that he advocated such opinions compelled him to seek personal safety in exile from Florence.
Returning to the question, we mention first the reasons put forward by the historians for the justification of Doria. They tell us that France had not paid him according to her promises; that Frances I. took away from him the prince of Orange whom Doria had captured, thus defrauding the Admiral of the twenty thousand ducats of ransom; that the king sought to get possession of the marquises Vasto and Colonna with a like motive; that this monarch granted favours in prejudice of Genoese rights to rebellious Savona; and that a rumour ran of the king’s having given this city in feud to Montmorency.
However, Doria was blamed (according to the testimony of Varchi,) by the greater part of the Italians, and many accused him of desertion and treason. They said that his conduct was not dictated by his resentment at the liberty of Savona, or the slavery of Genoa, which he himself enslaved, but rather by his boundless appetite for wealth and honours. Some affirm that Giovanni Battista Lasagna, whom Doria had sent to Paris to treat for the recovery of Savona, informed him that the king’s council had determined to deprive him, not only of his prisoners, but also of his own life, and that this information led him to enlist under Cæsar. Others, on the contrary, say that the king of France having heard that Doria intended to abandon his service, sent to him Pierfrancesco di Noceto, Count of Pontremoli and his esquire, to dissuade him from that design and to promise payment of the ransom of Orange and other prisoners as well as the Admiral’s personal salary. It is difficult to arrive at the truth when testimony is so conflicting. One fact only is unquestioned: that before the last day of the month of June, the period at which his contract with France would expire, he mounted his galley and repaired to Lerici.
At Lerici, Filippino, having abandoned the blockade of Naples, joined him, and by the good offices of the marquis Vasto he opened negociations with Cæsar and entered into the service of Spain, sending back to Francis the decorations of the order of St. Michael with which that monarch had honoured him. This desertion to the imperial party gave to Charles V. (as Segni has sensibly said) the victory in the Italian strife.[14]
While these events were passing, there were secret and public consultations in Genoa, for the purpose of quieting the political factions, uniting the citizens and organizing the civil government on a better basis. The chief honours of this undertaking belong to Ottaviano Fregoso, who in 1520 was engaged in these efforts, acting with Raphael Ponzoni. For the time these praiseworthy designs were unsuccessful, because Federico Fregoso, archbishop of Salerno and brother of the Doge, opposed the project with all his ingenuity and power,[15] going so far as to drive out from the Cathedral of San Lorenzo those citizens who had assembled to promote concord. The difficult task was resumed in 1528, and, amidst the horrors of a pestilence which was mowing down the population, a union was effected without the coöperation of Doria, though it is now clearly proved that even France counselled the measure. On the 12th of December, Doria, contrary to the general wish of the citizens, including his own relations who were open partisans of France, presented himself before Genoa, landed his mariners and without bloodshed liberated the city from the control of the small French garrison.[16]
It is painful to see this brave Admiral selling his sword now to the Pope, now to Naples, now to France, and finally to Spain! It is painful to see him becoming the ally of foreign oppressors who sought to subdue our peoples and engulf Italy. History must pronounce him more fortunate than great. In truth, most of his undertakings were singularly successful; but his attempts to capture the famous corsair Chisr, better known under the name of Barbarossa, who was governing Algiers for Selim with the title of Begherbeg, were not crowned with success. Indeed, a rumour ran that between these two lords of the main there was a secret contract that they should never meet in pitched battles. It is certain that Doria conducted his war upon his rival with much coldness and rather as a neutral than as an enemy. He permitted the pirate to escape at Prevesa (1539), when he had the power to destroy his fleet.
This failure of Doria left the fierce corsair to spread the terror of his name for many years along the Italian coasts, particularly in the kingdom of Naples, where he had already carried desolation and ruin, devoting to fire and pillage Noceto, Sperlunga and Fondi. He had been attracted thither by the beauty of Giulia Gonzaga, who narrowly escaped his hands by fleeing in her night dress, accompanied only by a single page. The poor page suffered most, for she caused him to be stabbed because he had that night either seen or dared too much.
Doria is also accused of having used every means to excite the Turks against Venice; and this Republic, through his plotting, was assailed in her Greek possessions. Doria, by refusing to unite his forces to those of the Pope and the Venitians, incurred the responsibility for the capture of seven thousand Christians at the siege of Corfu, the pillage of the Ionian Islands and of Dalmatia. Having become a blind devotee of Spain, whose rule in the Peninsula he wished to strengthen, he refused to fight at Prevesa, because the Venitians had declined to receive his Bisogni on board their galleys; or, which amounts to the same thing, in order to let a flood of Turks overwhelm Venice and render her submissive to the yoke of Spain. All parties accused him of having promoted the ruin of Christians by the very means to which they looked for salvation.
As to the history of his policy in Genoa, if it were our office to write the life of Andrea, there is much that deserves to be rendered more clear. It was not a sagacious policy to subject the Republic to Spain at a time when the seeds of civil concord were springing up. It was more foolish to permit a foreign ruler to carry on her government, and despite the entreaties of his relatives to permit Savona to be torn from the body of the Republic.
Nor should it be forgotten that soon after this, he, to promote his own ends, wished to make Genoa a partner in his alienation from France, though his family favoured the union promoted by the amiable Trivulzio and the King of France. Truth requires us, also, to assert that he did not enter the service of Spain with the praiseworthy object of recovering Savona for Genoa. He drove out the French from Genoa in September, 1528, but Savona had been from the first of July reconciled and restored to the Republic, a fact which is proved by a decree of Francis I. soon to be printed.[17] When Guicciardini wrote that, “among the motives attributed to Doria for his change of masters, it was believed that the most probable and the principal one was, not offended pride for having been too highly esteemed or any other personal discontent, but the desire to advance his own greatness under the name of national liberty,” we think the verdict creditable to the first of our Italian historians.
But these accusations cannot deprive Doria of the merit of having refrained from assuming the absolute sovereignty of his country; though we know that the love of liberty in his fellow citizens must have been, sooner or later, fatal to such an ambition. In such an open assault upon popular liberty, he would have found enemies in his own house, as he did, in fact, when he enlisted in the service of Spain. This is proved by the documents which Molini[18] found in the French Archives, and is a conspicuous proof of the profound antipathy of Liguria to Spain. Doria, knowing well the liberal tendencies of his fellow citizens, contrived to get princely authority and power without assuming the name.
The laws of the union shaped by him changed the face of the Republic. His chief reform consisted in removing the middle classes from the public offices by adding new families to the nobility. The gentlemen resented the elevation of plebeians to their side; the lower classes complained; for though the law left them free to ascribe themselves to the nobility, it was soon seen that this law was a new deception. The constitution of Doria was fashioned with aristocratic aims, and if it established equality, it was only among the nobles. The people had neither guaranty nor representation. Leo writes that however wisely the instrument was framed, it failed to establish the rights of the plebeians. This class had no more share in the state than the peasantry of the Riviera, and remained, with its precarious and humble title of citizenship, subject to the nobility.
The law which changed a family into a collection of persons, or Albergo, was more than unjust, it was iniquitous. Those who entered these Alberghi were forced to renounce their own names, however honourable they might be, to extinguish their own memory and that of their ancestors, in order to assume the name of the congregation; so that for example, a Biagio Asereto would be compelled to take the name of a Vivaldi for no other reason than that the latter name was borne by more persons. Many truly illustrious and most honourable houses preferred to remain in the number of the people; and it is related that of two brothers Castelli; one made himself a noble under the title of Grimaldi, while the other remained a man of the people under his christian name Giustiniano.
It can no longer be denied that the laws of 1528 destroyed the government by the people and created that by the nobility. The book of gold was opened every year to eight plebeians of the city and of the Riviera; but this was not enough to silence the just complaints of that portion of the people, who until these reforms had always taken part in public affairs. In 1531, to satisfy the common grievance, forty-seven families, who before had been left forgotten among the lower class, were enrolled among the nobles; the expedient did not at all tend to remove the defects of the constitution. These admissions into the class who held power were controlled by the caprices of a single person or at best only a few. Every year eight senators were appointed to select the eight families for promotion, and in practice each senator selected one from his friends among the people. The gravest abuses grew out of this, and the book of gold was often opened to the most vulgar and degraded plebeians.
Neither moral nor intellectual qualifications, nor even distinguished services rendered to the country, could break down the barrier to the patriciate; but the inscribing of a name often served for the dowers of Senator’s daughters—nay, it was even sold.
The new nobles, in order to increase their numbers and to retain the friendship of the people, inscribed their relatives and friends, however despicable might be their social condition. There was even a greater abuse. The chancellors, who kept the book of gold, inscribed names at their pleasure. In 1560 the names of three families were ordered to be erased, having been entered without authority.
These abuses were never fully abolished until the reforms of 1576 which entirely excluded the people from the public offices.
We have seen that the reforms of Doria, practically placed the government in the hands of the nobles. The newly inscribed were few in number; and things were so arranged that the old patricians always had the control in the administration. This created a new element of discord in the hatred which sprung up between the old and the new nobles. A profound rancour diffused its virus through the body politic, and clanships grew strong and fought hard against each other. Nothing was wanting but names; and names are sometimes a great power, by which to designate the opposing factions. The names were found, and the old nobles were called the Portico of San Luca, and the new, Portico of San Pietro. Both epithets were derived from the places where the hostile factions were accustomed to assemble.
The new men, finding that they could not triumph by weight of numbers in the public councils, resolved to attempt secret ways to their end. They managed so well that in 1545 they secured the election to the Dogate of Giovanni Battista de Fornari.[19] The faction of San Luca raised a great outcry of indignation, but in vain. De Fornari, a new noble, stepped over their heads into the highest office. They remembered the humiliation, and afterwards avenged themselves upon the new Doge.
From what we have said it will be seen that the laws of Andrea, far from restoring the Republic, sowed new seeds of discontent between the nobles, so concordant in their discord, and the people over whom they ruled.
Doria, Admiral of Cæsar, conqueror by the arms of his lieutenants in so many battles, and owner of more than twenty galleys, concentrated all power in the hands of the old nobility, whom he made blindly devoted to his interests. It is no marvel that he directed at pleasure the ship of the Republic. Without the name, he possessed the supremacy and honours of a prince. Men called him the Father of his country and the Restorer of liberty. What we have said shows the nature of the liberties which he gave the State, and they will be further illustrated in the progress of this history. He loved his country; but he spent all his long life in establishing a stable despotism in the room of tumultuous liberty. He loved his country; but obeying the orders which he received weekly from Cæsar, he enslaved that country to Spain. On the contrary, the Republic had always better consulted her interests by standing in a neutral attitude between contending princes.
Ottaviano Sauli gave eminent proof of such political wisdom when the Republic sent him as its envoy to the Duke of Milan, and he brought back and enforced by his advice the counsel of that prince, to keep neutral and resist the influence of Cæsar in Genoa. The government preferred this policy, and in its letters to the English king, to Venice and to Florence, openly avowed that its chief care was to live in freedom; that it knew the advantages of neutrality, and would not bow to the will of others; that its single aim was to strengthen and maintain its integrity and its policy of supporting the independence of the other Italian Republics.[20]
These were generous words, and they were supported by deeds. But Doria willed the supremacy of Spain, and he triumphed. Then Genoa, in the siege of Florence, favoured the enemies of Italy; even threw a lance at Siena; extinguished in blood the revolt of Naples, and, with the arm of Doria, strangled everywhere the voice of national liberty.
From that moment the robust vigour of the Republic began to decrease, and the shadows of old age fell on her. The lifeless forms of the court of Spain took the place of our civil strifes and our heroic achievements abroad.
Doria, though naturally disposed to temperate and modest habits of life, gradually developed the pomp and state of a prince. He lived in Fassolo, in the houses once given to Pietro Fregoso for his brave deeds in Cyprus (1373). Doria called from every part of Italy the most famous architects to embellish this palace. The sculptures of Montorsoli and of Giovanni and Silvio Corsini da Fiesole, the paintings of Pierin del Vaga, Pordenone, Gerolamo da Trevigi, Giulio Romano and Beccafumi rendered this residence famous throughout Italy. Here he was surrounded by his own soldiers, and received, writes Mascardi,[21] not as a simple citizen, but as a proud grandee. The same author ascribes to this luxury of life the origin of the conspiracy of Fieschi; and he approves ostracism by republics of citizens who affect the manners of princes.
These mimicries of royalty gave general dissatisfaction; but the selection of Gianettino di Tommaso as his adopted son and his successor in the dignity of Admiral, was even more unpopular.
We find notices of this young man which represent him to have once, on account of the slender means of his father, kept a shop for the sale of oil. Afterwards he entered the service of Bernardo Invrea, a silk-weaver, and remained with him until, being pursued by the sheriff for some offence, he found it necessary to seek safety on board the galleys of Andrea, to whom he was allied by blood.
Taking up from necessity the profession of arms, Gianettino soon acquired a considerable name for warlike feats marked by enterprise and audacity. He possessed an intrepidity rather singular than rare. He soon became haughty and despotic putting on airs fitter for a Castilian than a Genoese, and decorating himself with a coat of arms as though supreme authority were already in his hands. The prince, instead of correcting these excesses, permitted the arrogant youth to lord it over the plebeians and to indulge his wild caprices at pleasure.
Count Filippino Doria, as we have seen, contributed to the fame of Doria. He was of humble fortune until the Duke of Urbino, as a mark of gratitude for having perilled his life to succour the duke in a single combat, conferred upon him an estate of the Urbino family. Some other members of Doria’s house, who had been schooled under him, gave good proof of their skill and acquired riches and honours which reflected lustre on their master. Such were Francesco Doria di Giovanni; Antonio Doria, marquis of Santo Stefano, Aveto and Ginnosa, and one of the principal generals at the victory of San Quintino; Giovanni Battista Doria, son of Antonio and heir of his valour; Giorgio Doria, and Domenico Doria who having abandoned the cloister was called the Converso.
To these we should add, Andrea Doria d’Alaone; the brothers Cristoforo and Erasmo Opizio, who as lieutenants of Andrea went in 1534 to the aid of Messina; Giorgio di Melchiorre; Imperiale di Bartolomeo, lord of Dolceaqua; Lamba di Alaone; Lazzaro di Andrea; and Scipione di Antonio, all in repute as brave Admirals; and they sailed so many ships and gained so many victories that it seemed as if this family claimed exclusive dominion of the seas.
When Andrea prepared for any enterprise he commanded, in addition to the triremes of the empire, not less than twenty taride or large galleys of his own, manned by his own officers and crews and paid by the emperor at the rate of five hundred broad ducats of gold per month for each vessel. He took with him, also, the ships of the Republic, and those of his relations and of other citizens who chartered their panfili, or vessels of sixty oars, to the emperor of Spain. At the assault of Prevesa the prince commanded, not to speak of square-sailed galleons and caracks, twenty-two triremes whose names we find set down in the chronicles of that period.[22] Antonio Doria, who was only less illustrious in naval warfare than Andrea—though, as Badaero wrote in his report to the Venitian senate, he was so fond of traffic that, when his ships passed from one port to another, they carried so much merchandise that they looked like merchantmen—had six vessels in his division. There were many other Genoese ships in this expedition. Two belonged to Onorato Grimaldi, lord of Monaco; two were the property of the Cicala, and one each of Centurione, Preve, the Gentile and Francesco Costa, not to speak of many others. The Fieschi also sent a vessel, and the Republic furnished twelve.
In fact there was no distinguished family which did not arm a ship, but not one of these houses could rival Doria, not even the Cicala who always kept not less than six galleys in commission. It is worth while to remind the Italians, who are so prone to forget the glory of their ancestors, that Andrea was the first to use armoured ships in battle. In his assault on Tunis, he had in his fleet a galleon called Sant’Anna, to which he was principally indebted for the victory which restored Muley-Hassan to his throne. This ship was the first ever clad with slabs of lead fastened by pivots of bronze. She was built at Nice in 1530, and was equipped by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. She was manned by three hundred warriors and carried many guns. The solidity of her armour rendered her invulnerable to the enemy’s fire. There were a large chapel and sumptuous saloons under her decks, and what seems more strange, ovens so well arranged that they furnished her crew with fresh bread daily.[23]
The Republic having broken with France, was prostrated under the power of Spain and Doria. The citizens were profoundly indignant at this double servitude. They were prohibited by law, under the severest penalties, from proposing or advocating any change in the new constitution of the Republic; so that many, before the attempt of Fieschi, ardently wished to throw off the yoke and place the country once more under the protection of France. In 1534, Granara and Corsanico went to Marseilles followed by many of the people with the intention of preparing a revolution. The enterprise became known by Doria, and Granara lost his head. Corsanico was captured by Doria, and, without the least form of condemnation, hurled into the sea.
A few months later, Tomaso Sauli who had attempted a similar conspiracy with Cardinal di Agramonte, in Bologna, was condemned and quartered. The exiles excelled all others in their devotion to liberty; and in 1536, led by Cæsar Fregoso and Cagnino Gonzaga, with ten thousand foot and eight hundred horse, they marched to attack Genoa. This is not the place to relate how after a few skirmishes they broke up their camp; it is only to our purpose to add that hundreds of citizens who were suspected of complicity with the exiles lost their heads, while their houses were levelled with the earth.
Not only in Genoa, but throughout Liguria these conspiracies abounded; especially in Chiavari, where the revolt of Fregoso, of which Stradiotto was the leader, had its origin. Blood whenever it was shed, far from quenching the thirst for liberty, begot new advocates for the old supremacy of the people. Soon after, that is in 1539, a pious priest named Valerio Zuccarello, beloved by the people, was accused of revolutionary sympathies and leanings to France. He was subjected to an inquisition and lost his head on the scaffold. The nobility struggled to maintain its power; the people to regain the inheritance of which they had been defrauded. The Republic was passing through such pains as these when Gianluigi Fieschi listened to her complaints and resolved to avenge them.
[CHAPTER IV.]
GIANLUIGI FIESCHI.
Maria della Rovere and her children.—The natural gifts of Gianluigi.—Andrea Doria prevents his marriage with the daughter of Prince Centurione.—Gianluigi’s first quarrels with Gianettino Doria.—Naval battle of Giralatte and capture of the corsair Torghud Rais—Count Fieschi espouses Eleonora of the Princes of Cybo—The hill of Carignano in the early part of the sixteenth century—Sumptousness of the Fieschi palace—Gianluigi, Pansa and other distinguished men—Female writers—Eleonora Fieschi and her rhymes.
Maria Grasso della Rovere, the spirited niece of Julius II. after the death of Sinibaldo removed from the city to her castles, first to those in Pontremoli and Valditaro where she gave birth to Scipione, and then to Montobbio where she established her residence. In those days our matrons, when their husbands were fighting abroad or when they became widows, took active charge of their estates and, laying aside all elegant recreations, employed their zeal in promoting their family fortunes. From this came the masculine counsels and splendid examples which illustrated their history. Of such was Maria della Rovere, daughter of the Duke of Urbino.
Emancipated from the luxury and pomp of her Genoese life, she applied herself, like a good farmer’s wife, to restore the fortunes of her house and to pay the large debts of Sinibaldo, especially the twelve thousand ducats of gold due to Sforza for the feud of Pontremoli. Her chief care, however, was the education of her children. The eldest of them, Gianluigi, was ten years of age at the death of his father. The others were Gerolamo, Ottobuono, Camilla (who became the wife of Nicolò Doria, illegitimate son of Cardinal Gerolamo), Angela, Caterina, and Scipione, born after his father’s death. There was in addition a Cornelio, who though illegitimate (his mother was a certain Clementina of Torriglia), was much beloved on account of his spirited character. Some report that Sinibaldo had other illegitimate children, and number among them a Giulio and a Claudia, the latter of whom married into the family of the Ravaschieri.
The children were instructed by Paolo Panza, a man of many literary acquirements, who trained them in liberal studies.
The ardent spirit of Gianluigi imbibed less from the gentle instructions of Panza than from the masculine promptings of Maria della Rovere, who, in the fashion of Spartan mothers, exhorted him not to forget the paths by which his ancestors reached fame, contending as Guelphs for the rights of the people. Influenced by such counsels, he grew up into youth, and acquired strength both of body and mind in rough exercises of arms and in the chase. He was so skilful in these arts and in swimming, that the most robust of his rivals could not excel him. His mother taught him to hate the rule of strangers; and he must very early have become an enemy to the Dorias, whom he saw grasping the destinies of the Republic.
When he was eighteen years of age he took charge of his patrimony, which the prudence of his mother and the address of his guardian, Paolo Pansa, had so much improved that it is said to have yielded two hundred thousand crowns of rent. On the fourth of June, 1535, Charles V. confirmed his title to the domains of his ancestors, and continued in him the titles of Vicar-general in Italy, Prince of the empire, Count of the sacred palace, and imperial councillor. Perhaps it was on that occasion that he also received from Cæsar the two thousand gold crowns mentioned by some writers.
On coming to the city from Montobbio, he was honoured with festive receptions by all the nobility; his manners and his gentle courtesy acquired him the love of the best among the people. Bonfadio[24] describes him as beautiful of countenance, skilful in the use of arms and the management of horses, remarkable for the beauty and strength of his body, manly in speech, grateful, obliging and winning to others: in fine his sweetness of character and vivacity of temper completes the picture of an Alcibiades, formed for captivating all hearts. In fact he was called an Alcibiades, and perhaps he was one, the vices included; it is certain that in patriotism he deserved the name. It is said that when, mounted upon a bay saddle-horse, caparisoned with orange-coloured velvet trappings laced in vermillion, and poitrel of silver, he rode through the narrow and crowded streets of Genoa followed by his valets and equerries, the people gathered from every side to do him honour, and he repaid them all with a salute full of winning courtesy. He dressed with the luxury which had come down to him from his illustrious ancestry. A picture, which many believe to be that of Gianluigi, represents him in a black velvet morning gown having the sleeves slashed, as was the fashion of the time; there is a collar about his neck with cannon shaped points, and a chain from which hangs a medallion bearing the motto Gatto. His head is covered with a cap, also of black velvet, surmounted on the left side by a white plume. The limbs are comely and chaste, the air brave and courteous, the hair of a mulberry tint, the hands white with fingers long and clean as those of a virgin, the eyes black and brilliant. Leandro Alberti describes him as a prudent, brave and eloquent young man. Porzio[25] writes that he served not without honour in the wars of Lombardy under the standards of the marquis Vasto. But though fond of glory and successful in arms, he scorned to seek fame in other enterprises while the times forbade him to use his sword for national liberty.
Endowed with such gifts, there was no illustrious family which did not seek his hand for a daughter. Among the beautiful damsels who in every part of Italy were ambitious of the title of Countess of Lavagna, he fixed his eyes upon Ginetta, daughter of Prince Adamo Centurione. In every maidenly grace she was unrivalled. The prince and his wife Oriettina, who loved Gianluigi, were delighted to expouse Gianetta to the most virtuous knight in Genoa. However, difficulties arose which overthrew the project; and as the misfortunes of Fieschi begin from this disappointment, we deem it of importance to touch upon some circumstances which were unknown to, or have been ignored by historians.
The Prince Centurione was a firm supporter of the Austro-Spanish rule, and was united to the Dorias. He had fought, as a volunteer and at his own expense, in the wars of Charles in Germany; and his vast wealth procured him favours from the principal monarchs. When the emperor passed through Genoa, his minister asked Doria to lend the royal visitor two hundred thousand crowns, for his enterprise against Algiers. The Genoese responded that he would immediately supply his sovereign with all the money he might need. He presented the money to the emperor and with it a receipt for its payment. The emperor, not wishing to be outdone in generosity, tore the receipt in pieces. Prince Adorno also lent two hundred thousand crowns of gold at one time to Duke Cosimo. He paid eight hundred thousand pieces for the marquisate of Steppa and Pedrera, in Spain, and a large sum to marquis Antonio Malaspina for the estates of Monte di Vai, Bibola and Laula. He bought other castles in the Langhe; and the Venitian ambassadors reported that his rents amounted to a million of ducats.
Memoirs worthy of credit relate that Centurione one day informed Andrea that he had contracted Gianetta in marriage to the first gentleman in Genoa, and named Fieschi; to which Doria answered that no gentleman in Genoa could rank higher than Gianettino, his successor in the admiralty and heir of all his possessions, adding that Centurione ought to renounce Fieschi and give the hand of his daughter to the prince’s nephew. Centurione did not at first consent to break his faith; but the solicitations of Andrea, with whom he did not wish to be at enmity, at length triumphed over his scruples and he espoused Gianetta to Gianettino giving her a dower of seventy thousand gold crowns of the sun.
This violation of plighted faith deeply wounded Gianetta who had set her affections on Gianluigi; and the Princess Oriettina took it so much to heart that she fell sick, and finding herself near death, as a last proof of her devotion to the Fieschi family had that life of St. Catherine written which is still preserved in manuscript in the library of the Genoese studio. This broken contract of marriage was the first spark of that great fire which blazed up between Fieschi and Doria.[26]
The count was gifted with great powers of dissimulation and he did not permit Doria to perceive that he felt the insult. He carried an open face and silently matured his vengeance. He contracted greater familiarity with the new nobles, the old being devoted partisans of Andrea.
The haughty arrogance of Gianettino added new fuel to the fire. This youth forgetful of the humble place from which he had risen, adopted an insolence of tone and a luxury of life which gave general offence. The natural insolence of his character had been greatly increased by a military life and the habit of command.
The control of twenty galleys, the succession as admiral and the proofs of personal courage which he had given raised him above the mass of the citizens;[27] but instead of knightly courtesy he had a scornful and imperious look, and he never entered the city without being attended by a cortège of officers and armed men. He affected in a free land the sumptuous customs of princes.
The people, whom he thrust aside, hated him; the nobles caressed him as a means of getting privileges and honours, but they secretly despised him because he, not content to be their equal, regarded them as subjects. The plebeians murmured; “why such arrogant assumption in a land whose laws forbid despotism! He who refuses to treat you as an equal wishes to make you his slave.[28] See how bravely he drives it towards princely powers?”
Thus the people abhorred Gianettino as its future tyrant, and longed for a favourable moment to strike down the Spanish power and restore the rule of the citizens. The old prince either encouraged or regarded without displeasure, the insolent habits of his heir which were bringing odium upon his house. Gianettino became unboundedly arrogant after his victory over the Corsair Dragut, or Torghud Rais, once governor of Montesche. The annals of Liguria give us but few particulars of this fight, and some modern writers believe that no such battle was ever fought. We have found in old chronicles the materials for correcting the errors and supplying the defects of those who have written upon the subject. This will not lead us beyond the range of our subject; since the honours showered upon Gianettino for this victory stimulated Gianluigi to illustrate his own name by deeds not less worthy of fame, while the pride of the young Admiral grew so high that he insolently treated the count as his inferior.
In the spring of 1539, Prince Doria was with the army in Sicily, and Torghud took advantage of his absence to make a piratical cruise in the Ligurian sea. Andrea, as soon as he received notice of the movement, sent his nephew to oppose the Corsair. The latter had already began his depredations along the coast, and had desolated Capraia, carrying off seven hundred prisoners and a large Genoese galleon. Gianettino, having a fleet of twenty galleys and a frigate commanded by a certain Fra Marco, acted upon his knowledge of the Corsair’s habit of beating up against the wind, and pursued him by the use of his oars. At the same time he sent his lieutenant, Giorgio Doria, with six galleys and the frigate to the bay of Giralatte where he believed the pirate to have run for shelter. His calculations proved to be accurate. Torghud, believing these galleys to be the principal fleet of the Genoese, left two vessels to guard his booty, and sailed to attack Giorgio Doria with nine ships, two of which he had captured from the Venitians at Prevesa.
Hearing the sound of the engagement, Gianettino, who was not far distant, sailed into the waters of Giralatte and joined his lieutenant. The Corsair seeing himself outnumbered, retired from the contest and endeavoured to escape; but Gianettino pursued him so closely that he soon saw flight to be impossible and resolved to sell his life as dearly as possible.