Early in 1512, France, by great exertions and without a single

confederate out of Italy, save the false and fluctuating emperor, got an

army into the field superior to that of the allies in point of numbers,

and still more so in the character of its commander. This was Gaston de

Foix, duke of Nemours and brother of the queen of Aragon. Though a boy

in years--for he was but twenty-two--he was ripe in understanding, and

possessed consummate military talents. He introduced a severer discipline

into his army, and an entirely new system of tactics. He looked forward

to his results with stern indifference to the means by which they were

to be effected. He disregarded the difficulties of the roads and the

inclemency of the season, which had hitherto put a check on military

operations. Through the midst of frightful morasses, or in the depth of

winter snows, he performed his marches with a celerity unknown in the

warfare of that age. In less than a fortnight after leaving Milan he

relieved Bologna (February 5th), then besieged by the allies, made a

countermarch on Brescia, defeated a detachment by the way, and the whole

Venetian army under its walls, and, on the same day with the last event,

succeeded in carrying the place by storm. After a few weeks’ dissipation

of the carnival, he again put himself in motion, and, descending on

Ravenna, succeeded in bringing the allied army to a decisive action under

its walls. Ferdinand, well understanding the peculiar characters of the

French and of the Spanish soldier, had cautioned his general to adopt

the Fabian policy of Gonsalvo, and avoid a close encounter as long as

possible.

This battle, fought with the greatest numbers, was also the most

murderous which had stained the fair soil of Italy for a century (April

11th, 1512). No less than eighteen or twenty thousand, according to

authentic accounts, fell in it, comprehending the best blood of France

and Italy. The viceroy Cardona went off somewhat too early for his

reputation. But the Spanish infantry, under the count Pedro Navarro,

behaved in a style worthy of the school of Gonsalvo. During the early

part of the day, they lay on the ground, in a position which sheltered

them from the deadly artillery of Este, then the best mounted and best

served of any in Europe. When at length, as the tide of battle was going

against them, they were brought into the field, Navarro led them at once

against a deep column of _lansquenets_ who, armed with the long German

pike, were bearing down all before them. The Spaniards received the shock

of this formidable weapon on the mailed panoply with which their bodies

were covered, and, dexterously gliding into the hostile ranks, contrived

with their short swords to do such execution on the enemy, unprotected

except by corselets in front, and incapable of availing themselves of

their long weapon, that they were thrown into confusion and totally

discomfited. It was repeating the experiment more than once made during

these wars, but never on so great a scale, and it fully establishes the

superiority of the Spanish arms.

The Italian infantry, which had fallen back before the lansquenets,

now rallied under cover of the Spanish charge; until at length the

overwhelming clouds of French _gendarmerie_ headed by Ives d’Alègre, who

lost his own life in the _mêlée_, compelled the allies to give ground.

The retreat of the Spaniards, however, was conducted with admirable

order, and they preserved their ranks unbroken, as they repeatedly turned

to drive back the tide of pursuit. At this crisis, Gaston de Foix,

flushed with success, was so exasperated by the sight of this valiant

corps going off in so cool and orderly a manner from the field, that

he made a desperate charge at the head of his chivalry, in hopes of

breaking it. Unfortunately, his wounded horse fell under him. It was in

vain his followers called out, “It is our viceroy, the brother of your

queen!” The words had no charm for a Spanish ear, and he was despatched

with a multitude of wounds. He received fourteen or fifteen in the face;

“good proof,” says Bayard’s secretary and biographer, called the _loyal

serviteur_,[j] “that the gentle prince had never turned his back.”

There are few instances in history, if indeed there be any, of so brief

and at the same time so brilliant a military career as that of Gaston de

Foix; and it well entitled him to the epithet his countrymen gave him

of “the thunderbolt of Italy.” He had not merely given extraordinary

promise, but in the course of a very few months had achieved such results

as might well make the greatest powers of the peninsula tremble for their

possessions. His precocious military talents, the early age at which

he assumed the command of armies, as well as many peculiarities of his

discipline and tactics, suggest some resemblance to the beginning of

Napoleon’s career.

Unhappily, his brilliant fame is sullied by a recklessness of human life,

the more odious in one too young to be steeled by familiarity with the

iron trade to which he was devoted. It may be fair, however, to charge

this on the age rather than on the individual, for surely never was there

one characterised by greater brutality and more unsparing ferocity in its

wars. So little had the progress of civilisation done for humanity. It is

not until a recent period that a more generous spirit has operated; that

a fellow-creature has been understood not to forfeit his rights as a man

because he is an enemy; that conventional laws have been established,

tending greatly to mitigate the evils of a condition which, with every

alleviation, is one of unspeakable misery; and that those who hold the

destinies of nations in their hands have been made to feel that there is

less true glory, and far less profit, to be derived from war than from

the wise prevention of it.

The defeat at Ravenna struck a panic into the confederates. The stout

heart of Julius II faltered, and it required all the assurances of the

Spanish and Venetian ministers to keep him staunch to his purpose. King

Ferdinand issued orders to the great captain to hold himself in readiness

for taking the command of forces to be instantly raised for Naples. There

could be no better proof of the royal consternation.

The victory of Ravenna, however, was more fatal to the French than

to their foes. The uninterrupted successes of a commander are so far

unfortunate, that they incline his followers, by the brilliant illusion

they throw around his name, to rely less on their own resources than on

him whom they have hitherto found invincible; and thus subject their own

destiny to all the casualties which attach to the fortunes of a single

individual. The death of Gaston de Foix seemed to dissolve the only bond

which held the French together. The officers became divided, the soldiers

disheartened, and, with the loss of their young hero, lost all interest

in the service.[g]

The ministers of Louis thought they might, after the battle of Ravenna,

safely dismiss a part of their army; but Maximilian, betraying all his

engagements, abandoned the French to their enemies. Without consenting

to make peace with Venice, he gave passage through his territory to

twenty thousand Swiss, who were to join the Venetian army, in order to

attack the French. He, at the same time, recalled all the Germans who had

enlisted under the banner of France. Ferdinand of Aragon and Henry VIII

of England almost simultaneously attacked Louis, who, to defend himself,

was obliged to recall his troops from Italy. In the beginning of June,

they evacuated the Milanese; of which the Swiss took possession, in the

name of Massimiliano Sforza, son of Lodovico il Moro (the Moor). On the

29th of the same month, a revolution drove the French out of Genoa; and

the republic and a new doge were again proclaimed. The possessions of

France were soon reduced to a few small fortresses in that Italy which

the French thought they had subdued. But the Italians did not recover

their liberty by the defeat of only one of their oppressors. From the

yoke of France, they passed under that of the Swiss, the Spaniards, and

the Germans; and the last they endured always seemed the most galling.

To add to their humiliation, the victory of the Holy League enslaved the

last and only republic truly free in Italy.

Florence was connected with France by a treaty concluded in concert

with Ferdinand the Catholic. The republic continued to observe it

scrupulously, even after Ferdinand had disengaged himself from it.

Florence had fulfilled towards all the belligerent powers the duties of

good neighbourhood and neutrality, and had given offence to none; but

the league, which had just driven the French out of Italy, was already

divided in interest, and undecided on the plan which it should pursue. It

was agreed only on one point, that of obtaining money. The Swiss lived at

discretion in Lombardy, and levied in it the most ruinous contributions:

the Spaniards of Raymond de Cardona insisted also on having a province

abandoned to their inexorable avidity; Tuscany was rich and not warlike.

The victorious powers who had assembled in congress at Mantua proposed

to the Florentines to buy themselves off with a contribution; but the

Medici, who presented themselves at this congress, asked to be restored

to their country, asserting that they could extract much more money by

force, for the use of the Holy League, than a republican government could

obtain from the people by gentler means. Raymond de Cardona readily

believed them, and in the month of August, 1512, accompanied them across

the Apennines, with five thousand Spanish infantry as inaccessible to

pity as to fear. Raymond sent forward to tell the Florentines that, if

they would preserve their liberty, they must recall the Medici, displace

the gonfalonier Soderini, and pay the Spanish army 40,000 florins. He

arrived at the same time before the small town of Prato, which shut

its gates against him; it was well fortified, but defended only by the

_ordinanza_, or country militia. On the 30th of August, the Spaniards

made a breach in the wall, which these peasants basely abandoned. The

city was taken by assault; the militia, which would have incurred less

danger in fighting valiantly, were put to the sword; five thousand

citizens were afterwards massacred, and others, divided among the

victors, were put to lingering tortures, either to force them to discover

where they had concealed their treasure, or to oblige their kinsmen to

ransom them out of pity; the Spaniards having already pillaged all they

could discover in holy as well as profane places.

The terror caused at Florence, by the news of the massacre of Prato,

produced next day a revolution. A company of young nobles, belonging to

the most illustrious families, who, under the title of Society of the

Garden Ruccellai, were noted for their love of the arts, of luxury and

pleasure, took possession, on the 31st of August, of the public palace;

they favoured the escape of Soderini, and sent to tell Raymond de Cardona

that they were ready to accept the conditions which he offered. But all

treaties with tyrants are deceptions. Giuliano de’ Medici, the third

son of Lorenzo, whose character was gentle and conciliatory, entered

Florence on the 2nd of September, and consented to leave many of the

liberties of the republic untouched. His brother, the cardinal Giovanni,

afterwards Leo X, who did not enter till the 14th of the same month,

forced the signoria to call a parliament on the 16th. In this pretended

assembly of the sovereign people, few were admitted except strangers

and soldiers: all the laws enacted since the expulsion of the Medici in

1494 were abolished. A balia, composed only of the creatures of that

family, was invested with the sovereignty of the republic. This balia

showed itself abjectly subservient to the cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici,

his brother Giuliano, and their nephew Lorenzo, who now returned to

Florence after eighteen years of exile, during which they had lost every

republican habit, and all sympathy with their fellow-citizens. None of

them had legitimate children; but they brought back with them three

bastards,--Giulio, afterwards Clement VII, Ippolito, and Alessandro,--who

had all a fatal influence on the destiny of their country. Their fortune,

formerly colossal, was dissipated in their long exile; and their first

care, on returning to Florence, was to raise money for themselves, as

well as for the Spaniards, who had re-established their tyranny.

[Sidenote: [1512-1513 A.D.]]

The three destructive wars--_viz._, that of the French and Swiss in the

Milanese, that of the French and Spaniards in the kingdom of Naples,

that of the French, Spaniards, Germans, and Swiss, in the states of

Venice--robbed Italy of her independence. The country to which Europe was

indebted for its progress in every art and science, which had imparted

to other nations the medical science of Salerno, the jurisprudence of

Bologna, the theology of Rome, the philosophy, poetry, and fine arts

of Florence, the tactics and strategy of the Bracceschi and Sforzeschi

schools, the commerce and banks of the Lombards, the process of

irrigation, the scientific cultivation both of hills and plains--that

country now belonged no more to its own inhabitants! The struggle between

the transalpine nations continued, with no other object than that of

determining to which of them Italy should belong; and bequeathed nothing

to that nation but long-enduring, hopeless agonies. Julius II in vain

congratulated himself on having expelled the French, who had first

imposed a foreign yoke on Italy; he vowed in vain that he would never

rest till he had also driven out all the barbarians; but he deceived

himself in his calculations: he did not drive out the barbarians, he only

made them give way to other barbarians; and the new-comers were ever the

most oppressive and cruel. However, this project of national liberation,

which the pope alone could still entertain in Italy with any prospect

of success, was soon abandoned. Eight months after the expulsion of the

French from the Milanese, and five months after the re-establishment

of the Medici at Florence, Julius II, on the 21st of February, 1513,

sank under an inflammatory disease. On the 11th of March, Giovanni de’

Medici succeeded him, under the name of Leo X--eleven months after the

latter had been made prisoner by the French at the battle of Ravenna, and

six months after the Spanish arms had given him the sovereignty of his

country, Florence.

THE AGE OF LEO X

It has been the singular good fortune of Leo X to have his name

associated with the most brilliant epoch of letters and the arts

since their revival. He has thus shared the glory of all the poets,

philosophers, artists, men of learning and science, his contemporaries.

He has been held up to posterity as one who formed and raised to eminence

men who were in fact his elders, and who had attained celebrity before

the epoch of his power. His merit consisted in showering his liberality

on those whose works and whose fame had already deserved it. His reign,

on the other hand, which lasted nine years, was marked by fearful

calamities, which hastened the destruction of those arts and sciences to

which alone the age of Leo owes its splendour. The misfortunes which he

drew down on his successor was still more dreadful. The pope was himself

a man of pleasure, easy, careless, prodigal; who expended in sumptuous

feasts the immense treasures accumulated by his predecessors. He had

the taste to adorn his palace with the finest works of antiquity, and

the sense to enjoy the society of philosophers and poets; but he had

never the elevation of soul to comprehend his duties, or to consult his

conscience. His indecent conversation and licentious conduct scandalised

the church; his prodigality led him to encourage the shameful traffic in

indulgences, which gave rise to the schism of Luther; his thoughtlessness

and indifference to human suffering made him light up wars the most

ruinous, and which he was utterly unable to carry on; he never thought

of securing the independence of Italy, or of expelling the barbarians:

it was simply for the aggrandisement of his family that he contracted or

abandoned alliances with the transalpine nations: he succeeded, indeed,

in procuring that his brother Giuliano should be named duke of Nemours,

and he created his nephew duke of Urbino; but he endeavoured also to

erect for the former a new state, composed of the districts of Parma,

Piacenza, Reggio, and Modena; for the latter, another, consisting of the

several petty principalities which still maintained themselves in the

states of the church. His tortuous policy to accomplish the first object,

his perfidy and cruelty to attain the second, deserved to be much more

severely branded by historians.

The sovereign pontiff and the republic of Venice were the only powers in

Italy which still preserved some shadow of independence. Julius II had

succeeded in uniting Romagna, the Marches, the patrimony and campagna

of Rome, to the holy see. Amongst all the vassals of the church, he had

spared only his own nephew, Gian Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino. On

the defeat of the French, he further seized Parma and Piacenza, which he

detached from the Milanese, without having the remotest title to their

possession, as he also took Modena from the duke of Ferrara, whom he

detested. Leo X found the holy see in possession of all these states,

and was at the same time himself all-powerful at Florence. Even the

moment of his elevation to the pontificate was marked by an event which

showed that every vestige of liberty had disappeared from that republic.

The partisans of the Medici pretended to have discovered at Florence a

conspiracy, of which they produced no other proofs than some imprudent

speeches, and some wishes uttered for liberty. The most illustrious

citizens were, nevertheless, arrested; and Macchiavelli, with several

others, was put to the torture. Pietro Boscoli and Agostino Capponi were

beheaded; and those who were called their accomplices exiled. The two

republics of Siena and Lucca were in a state of trembling subjection to

the pontiff; so that all central Italy, peopled with about four million

inhabitants, was dependent on him: but the court of Rome, since it

had ceased to respect the ancient municipal liberties, never extended

its authority over a new province without ruining its population and

resources. Law and order seemed incompatible with the government of

priests: the laws gave way to intrigue and favour; commerce gave way to

monopoly. Justice deserted the tribunals, foresight the councils, and

valour the armies. It was proverbially said that the arms of the church

had no edge. The great name of pope still moved Europe at a distance, but

it brought no real force to the allies whom he adopted.

[Sidenote: [1513-1515 A.D.]]

The republic of Venice, with a smaller territory, and a far less numerous

population, was in reality much more powerful than the church. Venetian

subjects, if they did not enjoy liberty, had at least a government

which maintained justice, order, and the law; their material prosperity

was judiciously protected. They in return were contented, and proved

themselves devotedly attached to their government; but the wars raised by

the league of Cambray overwhelmed that republic with calamity. The city

of Venice, secure amidst the waters, alone escaped the invasion of the

barbarians; though, even there, the richest quarters had been laid waste

by an accidental fire. The country and the provincial towns experienced

in turn the ferocity of the French, Swiss, Germans, and Spaniards. Three

centuries and a half had elapsed since this same Veronese march, the

cradle of the Lombard League, had repelled the invasion of Frederick

Barbarossa. But while the world boasted a continual progress, since

that period, in civilisation,--while philosophy and justice had better

defined the rights of men,--while the arts, literature, and poetry had

quickened the feelings, and rendered man more susceptible of painful

impressions,--war was made with a ferocity at which men in an age of

the darkest barbarism would have blushed. The massacre of all the

inhabitants of a town taken by assault, the execution of whole garrisons

which had surrendered at discretion, the giving up of prisoners to the

conquering soldiers in order to be tortured into the confession of hidden

treasure, became the common practice of war in the armies of Louis XII,

Ferdinand, and Maximilian. Kings were haughty in proportion to their

power; they considered themselves at so much the greater distance above

human nature: they were the more offended at all resistance, the more

incapable of compassion for sufferings which they did not see or did

not comprehend. The misery which they caused presented itself to them

more as an abstraction; they regarded masses, not individuals; they

justified their cruelties by the name of offended majesty; they quieted

remorse by considering themselves, not as men, but as scourges in the

hand of God. Centuries have elapsed, and civilisation has not ceased to

march forward; the voice of humanity has continued to become more and

more powerful; no one now dares to believe himself great enough to be

dispensed from humanity; nevertheless, those who would shrink with horror

from witnessing the putting to death of an individual do not hesitate to

condemn whole nations to execution. The crimes which remain for us to

relate do not merit more execration than those of which we are ourselves

the witnesses at this day. Kings, in their detestation of freedom, let

loose upon unhappy Italy, in the sixteenth century, famine, war, and

pestilence; as, from the same motive in a later time, they loosed upon

heroic Poland, famine, war, and the cholera.

Louis XII, after having lost the Milanese, through his infatuated

ambition to reconquer the small province of the Cremonese, which he had

himself ceded to the republic of Venice, felt anew the desire of being

reconciled with that republic, his first ally in Italy. The Venetians,

who knew that without their money, artillery, and cavalry, the Swiss

could never have faced the French, much less have driven them out of

Italy, saw that their allies did not appreciate their efforts and

sacrifices. Maximilian, who in joining never granted them peace, but

only a truce, reasserted his claims on Verona and Vicenza, and would not

consent to allow the Venetians any states in terra firma but such as they

purchased from him at an enormous price. The pope, to enforce the demands

of Maximilian, threatened the Venetians with excommunication; and their

danger after victory appeared as great as after defeat. Andrea Gritti,

one of their senators,--made prisoner after the battle of Agnadello,

and the same who, during his captivity at Constantinople, had signed

the peace of his country with the Turks,--again took advantage of his

captivity in France to negotiate with Louis. He reconciled the republic

with that monarch, who had been the first to attack it; and a treaty

of alliance was signed at Blois, on the 24th of March, 1513. This was,

however, a source of new calamity to Venice. A French army, commanded

by La Trémouille, entered the Milanese, and on its approach the Germans

and Spaniards retired. The Swiss, who gloried in having re-established

Massimiliano Sforza on the throne of his ancestors, were, however,

resolved not to abandon him. They descended from their mountains in

numerous bodies, on the 6th of June, 1513; attacked La Trémouille at the

Riotta, near Novara; defeated him, and drove him back with all the French

forces beyond the Alps. The Spaniards and the soldiers of Leo X next

attacked the Venetians without any provocation: they were at peace with

the republic, but they invaded its territory in the name of their ally

Maximilian. They occupied the Paduan state, the Veronese, and that of

Vicenza, from the 13th of June till the end of autumn. It was during this

invasion the Spaniards displayed that heartless cruelty which rendered

them the horror of Italy; that cupidity which multiplied torture, and

which invented sufferings more and more atrocious, to extort gold from

their prisoners. The Germans in the next campaign overran the Venetian

provinces; and, notwithstanding the savage cruelties and numerous crimes

of which the country had just been the theatre, yet the German commander

found means to signalise himself by his ferocity.

_The Battle of Marignano; Last Years of Leo_

Francis I succeeded Louis XII on the 1st of January, 1515; on the 27th

of June he renewed his predecessor’s treaty of alliance with Venice; and

on the 15th of August entered the plains of Lombardy, by the marquisate

of Saluzzo, with a powerful army. He met but little resistance in the

provinces south of the Po; but the Swiss meanwhile arrived in great force

to defend Massimiliano Sforza, whom, since they had reseated him on

the throne, they regarded as their vassal. Francis in vain endeavoured

to negotiate with them: they would not listen to the voice of their

commanders; democracy had passed from their _landsgemeinde_ into their

armies, popular orators roused their passions; and on the 13th of

September they impetuously left Milan to attack Francis I at Marignano

(Melegnano). Deep ditches lined with soldiers bordered the causeway by

which they advanced; their commanders wished by some manœuvre to get

clear of them, or make the enemy change his position; but the Swiss,

despising all the arts of war, expected to command success by mere

intrepidity and bodily strength.[d]

As soon as Francis I became aware that the Swiss were marching against

him he made vigorous preparations to receive them. The duchy of Milan,

which with prudent negotiation he hoped to obtain, could only be gained

by a complete victory.

His army was drawn up on three lines on the road leading from Marignano

to Milan; the advance-guard, commanded by the high constable of Bourbon,

encamped in the village of San Giuliano, a short distance below San

Donato; the main body of the army, the command of which the king had

reserved for himself, was at Santa Brigitta, within bowshot of the

high constable; the rear-guard, placed under the command of the duke

of Alençon, was at about the same distance from the king’s main body.

The army, thus disposed in echelons, held the highway of Milan on its

left, and protecting its right by the river Lambro, occupied a territory

covered with trenches and intersected with small irrigation canals, which

would guard it from the sudden attacks of the Swiss infantry, and also

sometimes be inconvenient for the deploying and the charges of its own

cavalry, wherein lay a principal portion of its strength.

Francis I hastily made his arrangements to face the danger, and withstand

the shock of an encounter with the Swiss army. As he himself said in the

animated description of the battle he sent to his mother, the regent,

he “placed his German foot-soldiers in order.” He had formed two corps

of them, each nine thousand strong, and placed them on the sides of the

avenue by which the Swiss were advancing, besides the picked corps of six

thousand lansquenets of the Black Companies. The Gascon archers and the

French adventurers, under Pedro Navarro, occupied, not far from there, a

very strong position near the heavy artillery, which was ably led by the

seneschal of Armagnac.

The Swiss then came up. They had made the distance between Milan and the

French camp without stopping. “It is not possible,” says the king, “to

advance with greater fury or more boldly.” The discharge of the artillery

forced them to take shelter for a moment in a hollow. Then, with levelled

pikes, they fell upon the French army. The high constable of Bourbon, and

Marshal de la Palice at the head of the men-at-arms of the advance-guard,

charged, but were not able to break through them. Thrown back themselves

upon their infantry, they were pursued by the Swiss, who attacked the

lansquenets with fury and put them to rout. The day was declining, and

the battle, begun late (between four and five o’clock), was assuming

the same appearance as at Navarre. The largest company of Swiss, having

driven back the men-at-arms and overthrown the lansquenets, was marching

upon the guns to seize them, turn them against the French army, and thus

complete her defeat.

But there were braver hearts and more resolute spirits amongst those

commanding at Marignano than at Navarre. Francis I, armed _cap-à-pie_,

mounted on a great charger whose caparison was covered in fleur-de-lis

and his initial, F, crowned, had flung himself in this victorious moment

before the Swiss at the head of two hundred men-at-arms, as well as

eight hundred horsemen. After having valiantly charged one of their

companies and forced them to throw down their pikes, he had attacked

a large company which he was not able to overcome but compelled to

retreat. Then, proceeding in the direction of his threatened artillery,

he there rallied five or six thousand lansquenets, and more than three

thousand men-at-arms, with whom he made a firm stand against the largest

detachment of the Swiss, who were not able to seize and remove the pieces

of cannon as they intended. The better to impede these Swiss, Francis

I discharged a charge of artillery upon them, which dislodged them and

obliged them to return to a trench they had crossed and there take

shelter.

The high constable, on his side, having rallied a large company of

men-at-arms and the majority of the infantry, had attacked five or six

thousand Swiss with much vigour, and had driven them back to their own

places. Night fell whilst both sides were fighting thus--the Swiss

without succeeding in carrying the French camps, the French unable to

completely repulse the attacks of the Swiss. They continued fighting

with pertinacity and no little confusion for several hours by the dim

light of the moon, still veiled by the clouds of dust. The hostile troops

had some difficulty in recognising each other in this vast and confused

struggle. Towards eleven o’clock at night, the moonlight having failed

them, darkness prevented their continuing this desperate conflict. The

Swiss had had the advantage at the commencement of the battle, as they

had broken through the French lines, but things had been less favourable

to them at the finish, as they had been partly driven back to their own.

In spite of their efforts, having attacked that day without vanquishing,

they awaited the morrow to recommence the battle.

[Illustration: ITALIAN ARMOUR, FIRST HALF OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]

Both sides passed the night under arms in the position occupied at the

cessation of action owing to the darkness, and not far from each other.

Francis I, after many charges, had returned to the artillery, who, firing

opportunely upon the Swiss battalions, had several times broken through

them, and were shortly to prove to be of even more powerful assistance.

Showing the foresight of a general after showing the intrepidity of a

soldier, he caused Duprat, the chancellor, who had followed him on this

campaign, to write three most important letters, which were confided

to trusty messengers. The first was addressed to the Venetian general,

Bartolommeo d’Alviano, whom he enjoined to set out immediately, and

to come from Lodi with his customary promptitude, so as to join the

forces he commanded to those of Francis on the following day. The

second exhorted Louis d’Ars, who occupied Pavia, to carefully guard his

stronghold which might, in case of disaster, serve as a point of retreat.

In the third he warned Lautrec of the attack of the Swiss, and advised

him not to remit or allow to be taken the money he carried about him, in

execution of the violated treaty of Gallarate. These precautions taken,

he “spent the rest of the night,” so he wrote after the battle, “in the

saddle, his lance in hand, and his helmet on his head,” and only rested

for a few moments, leaning on a gun-carriage.

An hour before dawn he prepared everything for the coming battle. He took

up a position slightly in the rear, and more favourable than the one he

had occupied the preceding day. Instead of leaving his army drawn up in

three lines, he placed his men abreast in only one line. Remaining in the

centre of his battle array, he called upon the high constable of Bourbon

to form his right wing with the advance-guard, and his brother-in-law,

the duke of Alençon, to form his left wing with the rear-guard. The

guns, well placed and defended, were by well-directed firing, to harass

the enemy on their march, and could only be approached by them with

difficulty. It was in this order that Francis I awaited the attack of the

Swiss.

The leaders of the allies had held a council of war during the night, to

consult as to the next day’s battle and how to render it more decisive.

At daybreak they closed up their huge battalions and set out somewhat

ponderously. They seemed at first to be proceeding in a body towards the

centre of the French army, but some discharges of artillery which pierced

their ranks caused them to retreat in the direction of the positions they

had occupied during the night. There they formed into three detachments

which marched on the main body and the two wings of the French. The

first detachment, supported by the six small guns of the Swiss, advanced

towards Francis I, whose steadfast attitude and powerful artillery kept

it at a certain distance. Whilst this detachment of eight hundred men

faced and attacked the king, the two other detachments of about equal

strength had flung themselves upon the two wings commanded by the high

constable and the duke of Alençon, hoping to scatter them, so as to then

surround, and thus easily overcome, the main body of the army. Whether

the Swiss had less confidence than the day before, or whether they were

met with even more courage and steadfastness, they saw their enemies

facing their pikes as they had never done yet. The high constable with

his lansquenets and men-at-arms, and Pedro Navarro with the Gascon

archers and the adventurers, resisted the detachment attacking the right

wing, and, after a sharp struggle, drove it back. In the left wing the

duke of Alençon was at first less fortunate. Whilst the king stopped

the advance of the central column of the Swiss, and the high constable

victoriously drove back the left one, the right column had turned and

assailed the forces of the duke of Alençon, which had been scattered and

had retreated in confusion. In spite of the terror of the fugitives, who

had precipitately fled from the field of battle, and were spreading along

the road to Pavia the news of the victory of the Swiss, the conflict

remained at this point.

D’Aubigny and Aymar de Prie, having rallied the troops, did their utmost

to repair the disaster of the duke of Alençon, and bravely charged the

enemy. They were struggling with them when Bartolommeo d’Alviano, who had

started early from Lodi, arrived about ten o’clock from that side of the

battle-field. At the head of his armed men and his light cavalry, he at

once fell upon the Swiss with the cry of “Saint Mark!” This unexpected

attack disconcerted them. They feared the whole Venetian army would be

upon them, and they retreated. Closely pursued, they fell back towards

the centre, where the allies’ battalions, placed opposite Francis I,

had not been able to make any progress. They discharged and received

cannon-shots during several hours, possibly awaiting the victorious

issue of the two attacks of the right and left wings to attempt more

securely to break through the main body of the army. They made one last

and vigorous effort. A company of five thousand men were told off, and

marched with the resolution of despair as far as the French lines.

But, taken obliquely by the artillery, charged by Francis I and his

men-at-arms, attacked with hatchets and pikes by the valiant lansquenets

of the Black Company, stationed in the centre with the king, pierced by

the arrows of the Gascon archers, who had hastened from the right side

where they had gained the mastery, the Swiss company was cut to pieces

and none escaped.

[Sidenote: [1515-1516 A.D.]]

The king, with a decisive movement, then bore down with his cavalry upon

the other confederates, who abandoned their position and their guns.

The Swiss, driven back or vanquished on every side, gave the signal

for retreat, and retired from the battle-field, leaving from seven to

eight thousand dead. Carrying their wounded, they retook the Milan road

in fairly good order and without pursuit, and entered that town with

a haughty demeanour, and not as a defeated army. They were beaten,

nevertheless, for they had just lost at Marignano that prestige, which,

since Sempach, Granson, and Morat, and as late as at Novara, had made

them invincible.[h]

This horrible butchery, however, hastened the conclusion of the wars

which arose from the league of Cambray. The Swiss were not sufficiently

powerful to maintain their sway in Lombardy; eight of their cantons, on

the 7th of November, signed, at Geneva, a treaty of peace with Francis I,

who compensated with considerable sums of money all the claims which they

consented to abandon. On the 29th of November the other cantons acceded

to this pacification, which took the name of “_Paix perpétuelle_,”

and France recovered the right of raising such infantry as she needed

among the Swiss. Raymond de Cardona, alarmed at the retreat of the

Swiss, evacuated Lombardy with the Spanish troops. The French recovered

possession of the whole duchy of Milan. Massimiliano Sforza abdicated the

sovereignty for a revenue of 30,000 crowns secured to him in France. Leo

X, ranging himself on the side of the victors, signed, at Viterbo, on the

13th of October, a treaty, by which he restored Parma and Piacenza to the

French.

In a conference held with Francis at Bologna, between the 10th and

15th of the following December, Leo induced that monarch to sacrifice

the liberties of the Gallican church by the concordat, to renounce the

protection he had hitherto extended to the Florentines and to the duke

of Urbino, although the former had always remained faithful to France.

The pope seized the states of the duke of Urbino, and conferred them on

his nephew, Lorenzo II de’ Medici. Amidst these transactions, Ferdinand

the Catholic died, on the 15th of January, 1516, and his grandson Charles

succeeded to his Spanish kingdoms. On the 13th of August following,

Charles signed, at Noyon, a treaty, by which Francis ceded to him all his

right to the kingdom of Naples as the dower of a newborn daughter, whom

he promised to Charles in marriage. From that time Maximilian remained

singly at war with the republic of Venice and with France. During the

campaign of 1516, his German army continued to commit the most enormous

crimes in the Veronese march; but Maximilian had never money enough to

carry on the war without the subsidies of his allies; remaining alone,

he could no longer hope to be successful. On the 14th of December he

consented to accede to the treaty of Noyon; he evacuated Verona, which

he had till then occupied, and the Venetians were once more put by the

French in possession of all the states of which the league of Cambray

had proposed the partition: but their wealth was annihilated, their

population reduced to one-half, their constitution itself shaken, and

they were never after in a state to make those efforts for the defence

of the independence of Italy, which might have been expected from them

before this devastating war.

[Sidenote: [1516-1519 A.D.]]

Had Italy been allowed to repose after so many disasters, she might

still have recovered her strength and population; and when the struggle

should have recommenced with the transalpine nations, she would have

been found prepared for battle; but the heartless levity and ambition of

Leo did not give her time. While the family of the Medici was becoming

extinct around him, he dreamed only of investing it with new dignities;

he refused the Florentines permission to re-establish their republic,

and offered his alliance to whatever foreign monarch would aid him in

founding on its ruins a principality for the bastard Medici. His third

brother Giuliano, duke of Nemours, whom he had at first charged with the

government of Florence, died on the 17th of March, 1516. Lorenzo II, son

of his eldest brother Piero, whom he had made duke of Urbino, and whom he

sent to command at Florence after Giuliano, rendered himself odious there

by his pride and by his contemptible incapacity--he too died only three

years afterwards, on the 28th of April, 1519. Leo supplied his place by

Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VII. This prelate was the

natural son of the first Giuliano killed in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478.

He was considered the most able of the pope’s ministers, and the most

moderate of his lieutenants. Giuliano II had also left an illegitimate

son, Ippolito, afterwards cardinal; and Lorenzo II had a legitimate

daughter, Catherine, afterwards queen of France, and an illegitimate son,

Alexander, destined to be the future tyrant of Florence. Leo, whether

desirous of establishing these descendants, or carried away by the

restlessness and levity of his character, sighed only for war.

[Illustration: AN ATTENDANT OF AN ITALIAN PRINCE, FIRST HALF OF SIXTEENTH

CENTURY]

[Sidenote: [1519-1522 A.D.]]

The emperor Maximilian died on the 19th of January, 1519, leaving his

hereditary states of Austria to his grandson Charles, already sovereign

of all Spain, of the Two Sicilies, of the Low Countries, and of the

county of Burgundy. Charles and Francis both presented themselves as

candidates for the imperial crown; the electors gave it to the former, on

the 28th of June, 1519; he was from that period named Charles V. Italy,

indeed the whole of Europe, was endangered by the immeasurable growth

of this young monarch’s power. The states of the church, over which he

domineered by means of his kingdom of the Two Sicilies, could not hope

to preserve any independence but through an alliance with France. Leo at

first thought so, and signed the preliminary articles of a league with

Francis; but, suddenly changing sides, he invited Charles V to join him

in driving the French out of Italy. A secret treaty was signed between

him and the emperor, on the 8th of May, 1521. By this the duchy of Milan

was to be restored to Francesco Sforza, the second son of Louis the Moor.

Parma, Piacenza, and Ferrara were to be united to the holy see: a duchy

in the kingdom of Naples was to be secured to the bastard Alessandro de’

Medici. The pope united his army to that of the emperor in the kingdom of

Naples; the command of it was given jointly to Prospero Colonna and the

marquis Pescara: war was declared on the 1st of August, and the imperial

and pontifical troops entered Milan on the 19th of November: but in the

midst of the joy of this first success, Leo X died unexpectedly, on the

1st of December, 1521.

SUCCESSORS OF LEO; FRANCIS I AND CHARLES V

Death opportunely delivered Leo from the dangers and anxieties into which

he had thoughtlessly precipitated himself. His finances were exhausted;

his prodigality had deprived him of every resource; and he had no means

of carrying on a war which he had only just begun. He left his successors

in a state of distress which was unjustly attributed to them, and which

rendered them odious to the people; for the war into which he had plunged

them, without any reasonable motive, was the most disastrous of all those

which had yet afflicted unhappy Italy. There remained no power truly

Italian that could take any part in it for her defence. Venice was so

exhausted by the war of the league of Cambray that she was forced to

limit her efforts to the maintenance of her neutrality, and was hardly

powerful enough to make even her neutral position respected. Florence

remained subject to the cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. The republics of

Siena and Lucca were tremblingly prepared to obey the strongest: all the

rest depended on the transalpine power; for an unexpected election, on

the 9th of January, 1522, had given a Flemish successor to Leo X, under

the name of Adrian VI. This person had been the preceptor of Charles

V, and had never seen Italy, where he was regarded as a barbarian. The

kingdom of Naples was governed and plundered by the Spaniards. After

the French had lost the duchy of Milan, Francesco Sforza, who had been

brought back by the imperialists, possessed only the name of sovereign.

He had never been for a moment independent; he had never been able to

protect his subjects from the tyranny of the Spanish and German soldiers,

who were his guards. Finally, the marquis de Montferrat and the duke of

Savoy had allowed the French to become masters in their states, and had

no power to refuse them passage to ravage oppressed Italy anew.

[Sidenote: [1522-1525 A.D.]]

The marshal Lautrec, whom Francis I had charged to defend the Milanese,

and who still occupied the greater part of the territory, was forced by

the Swiss, who formed the sinews of his army, to attack the imperialists

on the 29th of April, 1522, at Bicocca. Prospero Colonna had taken

up a strong position about three or four miles from Milan, on the

road to Monza: he valued himself on making a defensive war--on being

successful without giving battle. The Swiss attacked him in front,

throwing themselves, without listening to the voice of their commander,

into a hollow way which covered him, and where they perished, without

the possibility of resistance. After having performed prodigies of

valour, the remainder were repulsed with dreadful loss. In spite of the

remonstrances of Lautrec, they immediately departed for their mountains;

and he for his court, to justify himself. Lescuns, his successor in the

command, suffered the imperialists to surprise and pillage Lodi; and was

at last forced to capitulate at Cremona on the 6th of May, and evacuate

the rest of Lombardy. Genoa was not comprehended in the capitulation,

and remained still in possession of the French; but, on the 20th of May,

that city was also surprised by the Spaniards, and pillaged with all

the ferocity which signalised that nation. It was one of the largest

depots of commerce in the West, and the ruin of so opulent a town shook

the fortune of every merchant in Europe. The general of Charles then,

judging Lombardy too much exhausted to support his armies, led them to

live at discretion in the provinces of his ally, the pope. They raised

among the states still calling themselves independent enormous subsidies

to pay the soldiers, for which purpose Charles never sent money. The

plague, breaking out at the same time at Rome and Florence, added to

the calamities of Italy so much the more that Adrian VI abolished,

as pagan superstition or acts of revolt against providence, all the

sanitary measures of police which had been invented to stop the spread of

contagion. The pope died on the 14th of September, 1523; and the Romans,

who held him in horror, crowned his physician with laurel, as the saviour

of his country.

The death of Adrian, however, saved no one. The cardinal Giulio de’

Medici was chosen his successor, on the 18th of November, under the name

of Clement VII. This man had passed for an able minister under his cousin

Leo X, because prosperity still endured, and the pontifical treasury was

not exhausted; but when he had to struggle with a distress which he,

however, had not caused, his ignorance in finance and administration,

his sordid avarice, his pusillanimity, his imprudence, his sudden

and ill-considered resolutions, his long indecisions, made him alike

odious and contemptible. He was not strong enough to resist the tide of

adversity. He found himself, without money and without soldiers, engaged

in a war without an object; he was incapable of commanding, and nowhere

found obedience.

The French were not disposed to abandon their title to Lombardy, the

possession of which they had just lost. Before the end of the campaign,

Francis sent thither another army, commanded by his favourite, the

admiral Bonnivet. This admiral entered Italy by Piedmont; passed the

Ticino on the 14th of September, 1523; and marched on Milan. But Prospero

Colonna, who had chosen, among the great men of antiquity, Fabius

Cunctator for his model, was admirable in the art of stopping an army,

of fatiguing it by slight checks, and at last forcing it to retreat

without giving battle. Bonnivet, who maintained himself on the borders

of Lombardy, was forced, in the month of May following, to open himself

a passage to France by Ivrea and Mont St. Bernard. The chevalier Bayard

was killed while protecting the retreat of Bonnivet, in the rear-guard.

The imperialists had been joined, the preceding year, by a deserter of

high importance, the constable Bourbon, one of the first princes of the

blood in France, who was accompanied by many nobles. Charles V put him,

jointly with Pescara, at the head of his army, and sent him into Provence

in the month of July; but, after having besieged Marseilles, he was soon

constrained to retreat. Francis I, who had assembled a powerful army,

again entered Lombardy, and made himself master of Milan: he next laid

siege to Pavia, on the 28th of October. Some time was necessary for the

imperialists to reassemble their army, which the campaign of Provence had

disorganised. At length it approached Pavia, which had resisted through

the whole winter. The king of France was pressed by all his captains

to raise the siege, and to march against the enemy; but he refused,

declaring that it would be a compromise of the royal dignity, and

foolishly remained within his lines. He was attacked by Pescara on the

24th of February, 1525; and, after a murderous battle, made prisoner.

For several months, while Francis I was besieging Pavia, he appeared the

strongest power in Italy; and the pope and the Venetians, alarmed at his

proximity, had treated with him anew, and pledged themselves to remain

neutral. The imperial generals, after their victory, declared that these

treaties with the French were offences against their master, for which

they should demand satisfaction. Always without money, and pressed by

the avidity of their soldiers, they sought only to discover offenders,

as a pretence to raise contributions, and to let their troops live at

free quarters. The pope and the Venetians were at first disposed to join

in a league for resisting these exactions; and they offered Louise of

Savoy, regent of France, their aid to set her son Francis at liberty. But

Clement VII had not sufficient courage to join this league; he preferred

returning again to the alliance of the emperor and the duke of Milan, for

which he paid a considerable sum. As soon as the imperial generals had

received the money, they refused to execute the treaty which they had

made with him, and the pope was obliged to go back to the Venetians and

Louise of Savoy.

Meanwhile Girolamo Morone, chancellor of the duke of Milan, an old man

regarded as the most able politician of his time, made overtures, which

revived the hope of arming all Italy for her independence. Francesco

Sforza found himself treated by the Germans and Spaniards with the

greatest indignity in his own palace: his subjects were exposed to every

kind of insult from an unbridled soldiery; and when he endeavoured

to protect them, the officers took pleasure in making him witness

aggravations of injustice and outrage. The man, however, who made the

German yoke press most severely on him was the marquis Pescara, an

Italian, but descended from the Catalonian house of Avalos, established

in the kingdom of Naples for more than a century. He manifested a sort

of vanity in associating himself with the Spaniards: he commanded their

infantry; he adopted the manners as well as pride of that nation. Morone,

nevertheless, did not despair of awakening his patriotism, by exciting

his ambition. The kingdom of Naples, which had flourished under the

bastard branch of the house of Aragon when the family of Avalos first

entered it, had sunk, since it had been united to Spain, into a state of

the most grievous oppression. Morone determined on offering Pescara the

crown of Naples, if he would join his efforts to those of all the other

Italians, for the deliverance of his country. Success depended on him:

he could distribute the imperial troops, which he commanded, in such a

manner as that they could oppose no resistance. The duke of Milan had

been warned that Charles V intended taking his duchy from him to confer

it on his brother Ferdinand of Austria. The kingdom of Naples and the

duchy of Milan were ready to pass over from the emperor’s party to that

of France, provided the French king would renounce all his claims to

both, acknowledge Pescara king of Naples, Francesco Sforza duke of Milan;

and restore to Italy her independence, after having delivered her from

her enemies.

[Sidenote: [1525-1526 A.D.]]

This negotiation was at first successful; each of the governments to

which the proposition of concurring in the independence of Italy was

addressed, seemed to agree to it. France renounced all pretensions to

Lombardy and the Two Sicilies; Switzerland promised to protect, on its

side, the land of ancient liberty, and to furnish it with soldiers; Henry

VIII of England promised money; Pescara coveted the crown, and Sforza

was impatient to throw off a yoke which had become insupportable to him;

but, unhappily, the negotiation was intrusted to too many cabinets, all

jealous, perfidious, and eager to obtain advantages for themselves by

sacrificing their allies. Clement was desirous of obtaining from the

emperor a more advantageous treaty, by threatening him with France; the

queen regent of France endeavoured to engage Charles to relax his rigour

towards her son, by threatening him with Italy; Pescara, reserving the

choice of either betraying his master or his allies, as should prove

most profitable to him, had warned Charles that he was engaged in a plot

which he would reveal as soon as he had every clew to it. The duchess

of Alençon, sister of Francis, sent by her mother to negotiate at

Madrid, spoke still more clearly. She offered Charles to abandon Italy,

the project respecting which she disclosed, provided the emperor, in

restoring her brother to liberty, would renounce his purpose of making

him purchase it at the price of one of the provinces of France. Pescara,

finding that his court knew more than he had told, determined on adopting

the part of provocative agent instead of rebel; he had only to choose

between them. On the 14th of October, 1525, he invited Morone to a last

conference in the castle of Novara. After having made him explain all his

projects anew, while Spanish officers hid behind the arras heard them,

he caused him to be arrested, seized all the fortresses in the state of

Milan, and laid siege to the castle, in which the duke had shut himself

up. He denounced to the emperor as traitors the pope, and all the other

Italians his accomplices; but while he played this odious part, he was

attacked by a slow disease, of which he died on the 30th of November,

1525, at the age of thirty-six, abhorred by all Italy.

[Illustration: AN ITALIAN CAPTAIN, FIRST HALF OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY]

Charles, abusing the advantages which he had obtained, imposed on Francis

the treaty of Madrid, signed on the 14th of January, 1526; by which the

latter abandoned Italy and the duchy of Burgundy. He was set at liberty

on the 18th of March following; and almost immediately declared to the

Italians that he did not regard himself bound by a treaty extorted from

him by force. On the 22nd of May, he joined a league for the liberty of

Italy with Clement VII, the Venetians, and Francesco Sforza, but still

did not abandon the policy of his mother: instead of thinking in earnest

of restoring Italian independence, and thus securing the equilibrium

of Europe, he had only one purpose--that of alarming Charles with the

Italians; and was ready to sacrifice them as soon as the emperor should

abandon Burgundy. At the same time, his supineness, love of pleasure,

distrust of his fortune, and repugnance to violate the Treaty of

Madrid, hindered him from fulfilling any of the engagements which he

had contracted towards the Italians; he sent them neither money, French

cavalry, nor Swiss forces. Charles, on the other hand, sent no supplies

to pay his armies to Antonio de Leyva, the constable Bourbon, and Hugo de

Monçada, their commanders. These troops were therefore obliged to live

at free quarters, and the oppression of the whole country was still more

dreadful than it had ever yet been.

[Sidenote: [1526-1527 A.D.]]

The defection of the duke of Milan, in particular, gave a pretence to

Antonio de Leyva to treat the wretched Milanese with redoubled rigour,

as if they could be responsible for what Leyva called the treachery of

their master. The Spanish army was quartered on the citizens of Milan;

and there was not a soldier who did not make his host a prisoner, keeping

him bound at the foot of the bed, or in the cellar, for the purpose of

having him daily at hand, to force him, by blows or fresh torture, to

satisfy some new caprice. As soon as one wretched person died under his

sufferings, or broke his bonds and ended his sufferings by voluntary

death, either precipitating himself through a window or into a well, the

Spaniard passed into another house to recommence on its proprietor the

same torture.

The Venetians and the pope had united their forces, under the command of

the duke of Urbino, who, exaggerating the tactics of Prospero Colonna,

was ambitious of no other success in war than that of avoiding battle.

He announced to the senate of Venice that he would not approach Milan

till the French and Swiss, whose support he had been promised, joined

him. His inaction, while witnessing so many horrors, reduced the Italians

to despair. Sforza, who had been nine months blockaded in the castle

of Milan, and who always hoped to be delivered by the duke of Urbino,

whose colours were in sight, supported the last extremity of hunger

before he surrendered to the Spaniards, on the 24th of July, 1526. The

pope, meanwhile, was far from suspecting himself in any danger; but

his personal enemy, Pompeo Colonna, took advantage of the name of the

imperial party to raise in the papal state eight thousand armed peasants,

with whom, on the 20th of September, he surprised the Vatican, pillaged

the palace, as well as the temple of St. Peter, and constrained the pope

to abjure the alliance of France and Venice. About the same time, George

of Frundsberg, a German condottiere, entered Lombardy with thirteen

thousand adventurers, whom he had engaged to follow him, and serve the

emperor without pay, contenting themselves with the pillage of that

unhappy country.

The constable Bourbon, to whom Charles had given chief command of his

forces in Italy, determined to take advantage of this new army, and unite

it to that for which at Milan he had now no further occasion; but it was

not without great difficulty that he could persuade the Spaniards to quit

that city where they enjoyed the savage pleasure of inflicting torture

on their hosts. At length, however, he succeeded in leading them to

Pavia. On the 30th of January, 1527, he joined Frundsberg, who died soon

after of apoplexy. Bourbon now remained alone charged with the command

of this formidable army, already exceeding twenty-five thousand men, and

continually joined on its route by disbanded soldiers and brigands intent

on pillage. The constable had neither money, equipments, nor artillery,

and very few cavalry; every town shut its gates on his approach, and

he was often on the point of wanting provisions. He took the road of

southern Italy, and entered Tuscany, still uncertain whether he should

pillage Florence or Rome. The marquis of Saluzzo, with a small army,

retreated before him; the duke of Urbino followed in his rear, but always

keeping out of reach of battle. At last, Bourbon took the road to Rome,

by the valley of the Tiber. On the 5th of May, 1527, he arrived before

the capital of Christendom. Clement had on the 15th of March signed

a truce with the viceroy of Naples and dismissed his troops. On the

approach of Bourbon the walls of Rome were again mounted with engines of

war.[d]

CAPTURE AND SACK OF ROME

[Sidenote: [1527 A.D.]]

Bourbon encamped in the fields near Rome on the 5th of May and with

military insolence sent a trumpeter to the pope to ask for passage

through the city, that he might lead his army into the kingdom of

Naples. The next day at daybreak he attacked Borgo on the side of the

mountain and the church of Santo Spirito, resolved to conquer or die

(for indeed no other hope was left him) and a fierce battle was begun.

Fortune favoured him in approaching, for a thick fog arose before day

which enabled him more securely to establish his army in the place where

the battle commenced. From the first Bourbon fought desperately at the

head of his troops, not only because he had no refuge if the victory

failed him but also because it appeared to him that the German infantry

proceeded coldly to the assault. The assault was but begun when he was

wounded by an arquebuse and fell dead.[b] The fall of Bourbon was due

to Benvenuto Cellini, if we may accept the statements of that somewhat

egotistical autobiographer. Cellini was participating in the defence of

Rome and has left us a vivid account of many of its incidents. He tells

us that he had gone with one Alexander del Bene to the walls of Campo

Santo, and that finding the enemy irresistible they had determined to

return with the utmost speed, but that before doing so he was determined

to perform some manly action.[a] “Having taken aim with my piece,” he

says, “where I saw the thickest crowd of the enemy, I fixed my eye on

a person who seemed to be lifted up by the rest: but the misty weather

prevented me from distinguishing whether he was on horseback or on foot.

Then turning suddenly about to Alexander and Cecchino, I bade them

fire off their pieces, and showed them how to escape every shot of the

besiegers. Having accordingly fired twice for the enemy’s once, I softly

approached the walls, and perceived that there was an extraordinary

confusion among the assailants, occasioned by our having shot the duke of

Bourbon: he was, as I understood afterwards, that chief personage whom

I saw raised by the rest.”[c] The fall of Bourbon, far from cooling the

ardour of his soldiers did but increase it, and after fighting furiously

for two hours they entered Borgo at last, assisted by the weakness of the

defences and the faint resistance of the enemy.

As it is always difficult to carry an assault without cannon, the

besiegers lost about a thousand men. As soon as the imperial army had

forced an entrance, everyone took to flight, and many made for the

castle, leaving the suburbs at the mercy of the conquerors. The pope,

who awaited the event in the Vatican, when he heard that the enemy was

in the city, immediately fled to the castle with many cardinals. Here he

considered whether he should stay where he was, or if he might escape

through Rome with the light cavalry of his guard and reach a place of

safety.

News was brought him by Berard de Padone, of the imperial army, of the

death of Bourbon and that the troops, full of consternation at their

loss, were disposed to come to terms. The pope sent an envoy to their

chiefs and unfortunately gave up the idea of flight, while he and his

captains had never been so irresolute in taking measures for their

own defence as they were on this occasion. The Spaniards, finding no

attempt was made to defend the Trastevere, entered it at noon without

any resistance. They had no difficulty in entering Rome by the Ponte

Sisto at five o’clock the same evening. Here, as is usual in such cases,

everything was in confusion, and all the court and citizens had taken to

flight except those who trusted in the name of their party, and certain

cardinals who were known for their adherence to Cesare, and therefore

thought themselves safer than the rest. Then the soldiers sacked the

city on every side without distinction of friend or foe.

It is impossible to estimate the extent of the spoil because of the

accumulation of riches, and rare and precious things belonging to the

courtiers and merchants, and of the quality and number of the prisoners

for whom heavy ransoms were paid. But worst of all, the soldiers,

especially the Germans, who were rendered cruel and insolent by their

hatred for the Roman church, seized several prelates and having dressed

them in their pontifical robes and the insignia of their office, mounted

them on asses and led them with scorn and derision through the streets of

Rome.

Four thousand men or thereabout perished in the battle or in the fury of

pillage. The palaces of the cardinals were all sacked (including that

of Cardinal Colonna, who was not with the army) excepting those palaces

in which the merchants had taken refuge with their personal effects and

those of many others, and which were spared from pillage upon payment

of large sums of money. Many who had thus compounded with the Spaniards

were pillaged by the Germans or obliged to compound with them also.

The marchioness of Mantua paid 50,000 ducats to save her palace, this

sum being furnished by the merchants who had taken refuge there; it

was rumoured that 10,000 went to her son Don Ferrand. The cardinal of

Siena, who had inherited his adherence to the emperor from his ancestors,

was taken prisoner by the Germans, who sacked his palace though he had

compounded for it with the Spaniards. They led him bareheaded through

Borgo with many blows, and he only escaped from their hands by payment

of 5,000 ducats. The cardinals of Minerva and Ponzetto met with a

similar misfortune; they were taken prisoner by the Germans and paid

their ransom, but they were first led through Rome in a vile procession.

The Spanish and German prelates, who did not expect insult from their

compatriots, were taken prisoner and treated as cruelly as the rest.

On every side arose the cries and lamentations of Roman ladies and nuns

dragged off by bands of soldiers to satisfy their lust. Everywhere arose

the wails of those who were being horribly tortured to force them to

pay ransom, and reveal where their property was concealed. All the holy

things, the sacrament, and relics of saints, of which the churches were

full, lay scattered on the ground stripped of their ornaments and further

outraged by the barbarous Germans. Whatever escaped the soldiers (which

was everything of little value) was pillaged by the peasants of the lands

of Colonna who arrived later; but Cardinal Colonna who arrived next

day saved many ladies who had taken refuge in his palace. It was said

that the spoil in money, gold, silver, and precious stones amounted to

1,000,000 ducats, and that the ransoms amounted to a much higher sum.

While the imperial army was taking Rome, Count Guido at the head of

the light cavalry and eight hundred arquebusiers appeared on the Ponte

de Salara, expecting to enter the city that evening; for in spite of

the letter of the bishop of Verona he had continued on his way, not

wishing to lose the glory of having helped to save the capital. But

being informed of what had occurred, he resolved to withdraw to Orticoli

where he rejoined the rest of his troops. As it is human nature to judge

mildly and favourably of one’s own actions and to look with the utmost

severity on the actions of others, there were some who greatly blamed

the count for having missed so good an opportunity; for the imperial

troops all intent on pillage, ransacking the houses, seeking hidden

treasures, taking prisoners and removing their booty to a safe place,

were scattered about the city in disorder, heedless of their banners and

of the commands of their captains. Therefore many believed that if Count

Guido had promptly led his men into Rome and marched upon the castle,

which was not besieged nor guarded by any from without, he might not only

have liberated the pope but also have achieved a more glorious success.

The enemy was so intent on plunder that it would have been difficult to

assemble a large number upon any sudden alarm. This was most certainly

proved a few days later when by command of the captains, or upon some

alarm, the call to arms was sounded and not a soldier rallied to his

banner. However, men often persuade themselves that if a certain act had

been done or omitted, certain results would have followed; whereas if the

matter had been put to the proof, experience would often show them their

mistake.[b]

[Illustration: PORTA DEL POPOLO, ROME]

[Sidenote: [1527-1528 A.D.]]

The capital of Christendom was thus abandoned to a pillage unparalleled

in the most calamitous period--that of the first triumph of barbarism

over civilisation: neither Alaric the Goth nor Genseric the Vandal had

treated it with like ferocity. This dreadful state of crime and agony

lasted not merely days, but was prolonged for more than nine months:

it was not till the 17th of February, 1528, that the prince of Orange,

one of the French lords who had accompanied Bourbon in his rebellion,

finally withdrew from Rome all of this army that vice and disease had

spared. The Germans, indeed, after the first few days, had sheathed their

swords, to plunge into drunkenness and the most brutal debauchery; but

the Spaniards, up to the last hour of their stay in Rome, indefatigable

in their cold-blooded cruelty, continued to invent fresh torture to

extort new ransoms from all who fell into their hands; even the plague,

the consequence of so much suffering, moral and physical, which broke out

amidst all these horrors, did not make the rapacious Spaniard loose his

prey.

The struggle between the Italians, feebly seconded by the French, and the

generals of Charles V, was prolonged yet more than two years after the

sack of Rome; but it only added to the desolation of Italy, and destroyed

alike in all the Italian provinces the last remains of prosperity. On the

18th of August, 1527, Henry VIII of England and Francis I contracted the

Treaty of Amiens, for the deliverance, as the two sovereigns announced,

of the pope. A powerful French army, commanded by Lautrec, entered

Italy in the same month, by the province of Alessandria. They surprised

Pavia on the 1st of October, and during eight days barbarously pillaged

that great city, under pretence of avenging the defeat of their king

under its walls. After this success, Lautrec, instead of completing the

conquest of Lombardy, directed his march towards the south; renewed the

alliance of France with the duke of Ferrara, to whose son was given in

marriage a daughter of Louis XII, sister of the queen of France. He

secured the friendship of the Florentine Republic, which, on the 17th of

the preceding May, had taken advantage of the distress and captivity of

the pope to recover its liberty and to re-establish its government in

the same form in which it stood in 1512. The pope, learning that Lautrec

had arrived at Orvieto, escaped from the castle of St. Angelo on the 9th

of December, and took refuge in the French camp. The Spaniard Alarcon

had detained him captive, with thirteen cardinals, during six months,

in that fortress; and, though the plague had broken out there, he did

not relax in his severity. After having received 400,000 ducats for his

ransom, instead of releasing him, as he had engaged to the next day, it

is probable that he suffered him to escape, lest his own soldiers should

arrest him in order to extort a second ransom.

Lautrec passed the Tronto to enter the Abruzzi with his powerful army

on the 10th of February, 1528. The banditti whom Charles V called his

soldiers, whom he never paid, and who showed no disposition to obedience,

were cantoned at Milan, Rome, and the principal cities in Italy: they

divided their time between debauchery and the infliction of torture on

their hosts; their officers were unable to induce them to leave the towns

and advance towards the enemy. The people, in the excess of suffering,

met every change with eagerness, and received Lautrec as a deliverer. He

would probably have obtained complete success, if Francis had not just at

this moment withheld the monthly advance of money which he had promised.

That monarch, identifying his pride of royalty with prodigality,

exhausted his finances in pleasures and entertainments; his want of

economy drew on him all his disasters.

Lautrec, on his side, although he had many qualities of a good general,

was harsh, proud, and obstinate: he piqued himself on doing always

the opposite of what he was counselled. Disregarding the national

peculiarities of the French, he attempted in war to discipline them in

slow and regular movements. He lost valuable time in Apulia, where he

took and sacked Melfi, on the 23rd of March, with a barbarity worthy

of his adversaries, the Spaniards: he did not arrive till the 1st of

May before Naples. The prince of Orange had just entered that city with

the army which had sacked Rome, but of which the greater part had been

carried off by a dreadful mortality, the consequence and punishment of

its vices and crimes. Instead of vigorously attacking them, Lautrec, in

spite of the warm remonstrances of his officers, persisted in reducing

Naples by blockade; thus exposing his army to the influence of a

destructive climate. The imperial fleet was destroyed, on the 28th of

May, in the gulf of Salerno, by Filippino Doria, who was in the pay of

France. The inhabitants of Naples experienced the most cruel privations,

and sickness soon made great havoc amongst them: but a malady not less

fatal broke out at the same time in the French camp. The soldiers, under

a burning sun, surrounded with putrid water, condemned to every kind

of privation, harassed by the light cavalry of the enemy, infinitely

superior to theirs, sank, one after the other, under pestilential fevers.

In the middle of June, the French reckoned in their camp twenty-five

thousand men; by the 2nd of August there did not remain four thousand

fit for service. At this period all the springs were dry, and the troops

began to suffer from hunger and thirst. Lautrec, ill as he was, had till

then supported the army by his courage and invincible obstinacy; but,

worn out at last, he expired in the night of the 15th of August: almost

all the other officers died in like manner. The marquis of Saluzzo,

on whom the command of the army devolved, felt the necessity of a

retreat, but knew not how to secure it in presence of such a superior

force. He tried to escape from the imperialists, by taking advantage of

a tremendous storm, in the night of the 29th of August; but was soon

pursued, and overtaken at Aversa, where, on the 30th, he was forced

to capitulate. The magazines and hospitals at Capua were, at the same

time, given up to the Spaniards. The prisoners and the sick were crowded

together in the stables of the Magdalen, where contagion acquired new

force. The Spaniards foresaw it, and watched with indifference the agony

and death of all; for nearly all of that brilliant army perished--a few

invalids only ever returning to France.

[Illustration: CASTEL DELL’OVO, NAPLES]

[Sidenote: [1528-1529 A.D.]]

During the same campaign another French army, conducted by François de

Bourbon, count of St. Pol, had entered Lombardy, at the moment when

Henry, duke of Brunswick, led thither a German army. Henry, finding

nothing more to pillage, announced that his mission was to punish a

rebellious nation, and put to the sword all the inhabitants of the

villages through which he passed. Milan was at once a prey to famine

and the plague, aggravated by the cupidity and cold-blooded ferocity of

Leyva, who still commanded the Spanish garrison. Leyva seized all the

provisions brought in from the country; and, to profit by the general

misery, resold them at an enormous price. Genoa had remained subject

to the French, and was little less oppressed; none of its republican

institutions was any longer respected: but a great admiral still rendered

it illustrious. Andrea Doria had collected a fleet, on board of which he

summoned all the enterprising spirits of Liguria: his nephew Filippino,

who had just gained a victory over the imperialists, was his lieutenant.

The Dorias demanded the restoration of liberty to their country as the

price of their services: unable to obtain it from the French, they passed

over to the imperialists. Assured by the promises of Charles, they

presented themselves, on the 12th of September, before Genoa, excited

their countrymen to revolt, and constrained the French to evacuate the

town: they made themselves masters of Savona on the 21st of October,

and a few days afterwards of Castelletto. Doria then proclaimed the

republic, and re-established once more the freedom of Genoa, at the

moment when all freedom was near its end in Italy. The winter passed in

suffering and inaction. The following year, Antonio de Leyva surprised

the count de St. Pol at Landriano, on the 21st of June, 1529, and made

him prisoner, with all the principal officers of the French army. The

rest dispersed or returned to France. This was the last military incident

in this dreadful war.

Peace was ardently desired on all sides; negotiations were actively

carried on, but every potentate sought to deceive his ally in order to

obtain better conditions from his adversary. Margaret of Austria, the

sister of the emperor’s father, and Louise of Savoy, the mother of the

king of France, met at Cambray; and, in conference to which no witnesses

were admitted, arranged what was called “_le traité des dames_.” Clement

VII had at the same time a nuncio at Barcelona, who negotiated with the

emperor. The latter was impatient to arrange the affairs of Italy, in

order to pass into Germany. Not only had Suleiman invaded Austria, and,

on the 13th of September, arrived under the walls of Vienna, but the

reformation of Luther excited in all the north of Germany a continually

increasing ferment. On the 20th of June, 1529, Charles signed at

Barcelona a treaty of perpetual alliance with the pope: by it he engaged

to sacrifice the republic of Florence to the pope’s vengeance, and to

place in the service of Clement, in order to accomplish it, all the

brigands who had previously devastated Italy. Florence was to be given

in sovereignty to the bastard Alessandro de’ Medici, who was to marry

an illegitimate daughter of Charles V. On the 5th of August following,

Louise and Margaret signed the Treaty of Cambray, by which France

abandoned, without reserve, all its Italian allies to the caprices of

Charles; who, on his side, renounced Burgundy, and restored to Francis

his two sons, who had been retained as hostages.

Charles arrived at Genoa, on board the fleet of Andrea Doria, on the 12th

of August. The pope awaited him at Bologna, into which he made his entry

on the 5th of November. He summoned thither all the princes of Italy,

or their deputies, and treated them with more moderation than might

have been expected after the shameful abandonment of them by France.

As he knew the health of Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, to be in a

declining state, which promised but few years of life, he granted him

the restitution of his duchy for the sum of 900,000 ducats, which Sforza

was to pay at different terms: they had not all fallen due when that

prince died, on the 24th of October, 1535, without issue, and his estates

escheated to the emperor. On the 23rd of December, 1529, Charles granted

peace to the Venetians; who restored him only some places in Apulia, and

gave up Ravenna and Cervia to the pope. On the 20th of March, Alfonso

d’Este also signed a treaty, by which he referred his differences with

the pope to the arbitration of the emperor. Charles did not pronounce

on them till the following year. He conferred on Alfonso the possession

of Modena, Reggio, and Rubiera, as fiefs of the empire; and he made the

pope give him the investiture of Ferrara. On the 25th of March, 1530,

a diploma of the emperor raised the marquisate of Mantua to a duchy,

in favour of Federigo de Gonzaga. The duke of Savoy and the marquis of

Montferrat, till then protected by France, arrived at Bologna, to place

themselves under the protection of the emperor. The duke of Urbino

was recommended to him by the Venetians, and obtained some promises

of favour. The republics of Genoa, Siena, and Lucca had permission to

vegetate under the imperial protection; and Charles, having received from

the pope, at Bologna, on the 22nd of February and 24th of March, the two

crowns of Lombardy and of the empire, departed in the beginning of April

for Germany, in order to escape witnessing the odious service in which he

consented that his troops should be employed against Florence.

THE FALL OF FLORENCE

[Sidenote: [1527-1530 A.D.]]

The Florentines who, from 1512, had been victims of all the faults of

Leo X and Clement VII, who had been drawn into all the oscillations of

their policy, and called upon to make prodigious sacrifices of money

for projects with which they had not even been made acquainted, were

taught under these popes to detest the yoke of the Medici. When the

constable of Bourbon approached their walls in his march to Rome, on

the 26th of April, 1527, they were on the point of recovering their

liberty; the cardinal De Cortona, who commanded for the pope at Florence,

had distributed arms among the citizens for their defence, and they

determined to employ them for their liberation; but the terror which this

army of brigands inspired did the cardinal the service of repressing

insurrection. When, however, they heard soon after of the taking of Rome,

and of the captivity of the pope, all the most notable citizens presented

themselves in their civic dress to the cardinal De Cortona; declared

firmly, but with calmness, that they were henceforth free; and compelled

him, with the two bastard Medici whom he brought up, to quit the city.

It was on the 17th of May, 1527, that the lieutenant of Clement obeyed;

and the constitution, such as it existed in 1512, with its grand council,

was restored without change, except that the office of gonfalonier was

declared annual. The first person invested with this charge was Niccolo

Capponi, a man enthusiastic in religion, and moderate in politics; he was

the son of Pietro Capponi, who had braved Charles VIII. In 1529, he was

succeeded by Baldassare Carducci, whose character was more energetic, and

opinions more democratic. Carducci was succeeded, in 1530, by Raffaelle

Girolami, who witnessed the end of the republic.

Florence, during the whole period of its glory and power, had neglected

the arts of war; it reckoned for its defence on the adventurers whom its

wealth could summon from all parts to its service; and set but little

value on a courage which men, without any other virtue, were so eager to

sell to the highest bidder. Since the transalpine nations had begun to

subdue Italy to their tyranny, these hireling arms sufficed no longer for

the public safety. Statesmen began to see the necessity of giving the

republic a protection within itself. Macchiavelli, who died on the 22nd

of June, 1527, six weeks after the restoration of the popular government,

had been long engaged in persuading his fellow citizens of the necessity

of awakening a military spirit in the people; it was he who caused the

country militia, named _l’ordinanza_, to be formed into regiments. A

body of mercenaries, organised by Giovanni de’ Medici, a distant kinsman

of the popes, served at the time as a military school for the Tuscans,

among whom alone the corps had been raised; it acquired a high reputation

under the name of _bande nere_. No infantry equalled it in courage and

intelligence. Five thousand of these warriors served under Lautrec in the

kingdom of Naples, where they almost all perished. When, towards the year

1528, the Florentines perceived that their situation became more and more

critical, they formed, among those who enjoyed the greatest privileges

in their country, two bodies of militia, which displayed the utmost

valour for its defence. The first, consisting of three hundred young men

of noble families, undertook the guard of the palace, and the support

of the constitution; the second, of four thousand soldiers drawn only

from among families having a right to sit in the council general, were

called the civic militia; both soon found opportunities of proving that

generosity and patriotism suffice to create, in a very short period, the

best soldiers. The illustrious Michelangelo was charged to superintend

the fortifications of Florence; they were completed in the month of

April, 1529. Lastly, the ten commissioners of war chose for the command

of the city Malatesta Baglioni of Perugia, who was recommended to them

as much for his hatred of the Medici, who had unjustly put his father to

death, as for his reputation for valour and military talent.

Clement VII sent against Florence, his native state, that very prince

of Orange, the successor of Bourbon, who had made him prisoner at Rome;

and with him that very army of robbers which had overwhelmed the holy

see, and its subjects, with misery and every outrage. This army entered

Tuscany in the month of September, 1529, and took possession of Cortona,

Arezzo, and all the upper Val d’Arno. On the 14th of October the prince

of Orange encamped in the plain of Ripoli, at the foot of the walls of

Florence; and, towards the end of December, Ferdinando di Gonzaga led

on the right bank of the Arno another imperial army, composed of twenty

thousand Spaniards and Germans, which occupied without resistance Pistoia

and Prato. Notwithstanding the immense superiority of their forces, the

imperialists did not attempt to make a breach in the walls of Florence;

they resolved to make themselves masters of the city by a blockade. The

Florentines, on the contrary, animated by preachers who inherited the

zeal of Savonarola, and who united liberty with religion as an object

of their worship, were eager for battle; they made frequent attacks on

the whole line of their enemies, led in turns by Malatesta Baglioni and

Stefano Colonna. They made nightly sallies, covered with white shirts to

distinguish each other in the dark, and successively surprised the posts

of the imperialists; but the slight advantages thus obtained could not

disguise the growing danger of the republic. France had abandoned them to

their enemies; there remained not one ally either in Italy or the rest

of Europe; while the army of the pope and emperor comprehended all the

survivors of those soldiers who had so long been the terror of Italy by

their courage and ferocity, and whose warlike ardour was now redoubled by

the hope of the approaching pillage of the richest city in the West.

The Florentines had one solitary chance of deliverance. Francesco

Ferrucci, one of their citizens, who had learned the art of war in the

_bande nere_, and joined to a mind full of resources an unconquerable

intrepidity and an ardent patriotism, was not shut up within the walls of

Florence; he had been named commissary-general, with unlimited power over

all that remained without the capital. Ferrucci was at first engaged in

conveying provisions from Empoli to Florence; he afterwards took Volterra

from the imperialists, and, having formed a small army, proposed to the

signoria to seduce all the adventurers and brigands from the imperial

army, by promising them another pillage of the pontifical court, and

succeeding in that, to march at their head on Rome, frighten Clement,

and force him to grant peace to their country. The signoria rejected

this plan as too daring. Ferrucci then formed a second, which was little

less bold. He departed from Volterra, made the tour of Tuscany, which

the imperial troops traversed in every direction, collected at Livorno,

Pisa, the Val di Nievole, and in the mountains of Pistoia, every soldier,

every man of courage, still devoted to the republic; and, after having

thus increased his army, he intended to fall on the imperial camp before

Florence and force the prince of Orange, who began to feel the want

of money, to raise the siege. Ferrucci, with an intrepidity equal to

his skill, led his little troop, from the 14th of July to the 2nd of

August, 1530, through numerous bodies of imperialists, who preceded,

followed, and surrounded him on all sides, as far as Gavinana, four

miles from San Marcello, in the mountains of Pistoia. He entered that

village about midday, on the 2nd of August, with three thousand infantry

and five hundred cavalry. The prince of Orange at the same time entered

by another gate, with a part of the army which besieged Florence. The

different corps, which had on every side harassed Ferrucci in his march,

poured in upon him from all quarters; the battle instantly began, and

was fought with relentless fury within the walls of Gavinana. Philibert

de Châlons, prince of Orange, in whom that house became extinct, was

killed by a double shot, and his corps put to flight, but other bands of

imperialists successively arrived, and continually renewed the attack

on a small force exhausted with fatigue; two thousand Florentines were

already stretched on the field of battle, when Ferrucci, pierced with

several mortal wounds, was borne bleeding to the presence of his personal

enemy, Fabrizio Maramaldi, a Calabrese, who commanded the light cavalry

of the emperor. The Calabrese stabbed him several times in his rage,

while Ferrucci calmly said, “Thou wouldst kill a dead man!” The republic

perished with him.

[Sidenote: [1530-1531 A.D.]]

When news of the disaster at Gavinana reached Florence, the consternation

was extreme. Baglioni, who for some days had been in treaty with the

prince of Orange, and who was accused of having given him notice of the

project of Ferrucci, declared that a longer resistance was impossible,

and that he was determined to save an imprudent city, which seemed bent

upon its own ruin. On the 8th of August he opened the bastion, in which

he was stationed, to an imperial captain, and planted his artillery so as

to command the town. The citizens in consternation abandoned the defence

of the walls to employ themselves in concealing their valuable effects in

the churches; and the signoria acquainted Ferdinando di Gonzaga, who had

succeeded the prince of Orange in the command of the army, that they were

ready to capitulate. The terms granted on the 12th of August, 1530, were

less rigorous than the Florentines might have apprehended. They were to

pay a gratuity of 80,000 crowns to the army which besieged them, and to

recall the Medici. In return, a complete amnesty was to be granted to all

who had acted against that family, the pope, or the emperor. But Clement

had no intention to observe any of the engagements contracted in his

name. On the 20th of August, he caused the parliament, in the name of the

sovereign people, to create a balia, which was to execute the vengeance

of which he would not himself take the responsibility; he subjected to

the torture, and afterwards punished with exile or death, by means of

this balia, all the patriots who had signalised themselves by their zeal

for liberty. In the first month 150 illustrious citizens were banished;

before the end of the year there were more than one thousand sufferers;

every Florentine family, even among those most devoted to the Medici, had

some one member among the proscribed.

Alessandro, the bastard Medici, whom Clement had appointed chief of

the Florentine Republic in preference to his cousin Ippolito, did not

return to his country till the 5th of July, 1531; he was the bearer of

a rescript from the emperor, which gave Florence a constitution nearly

monarchial; but, so far from confining himself within the limits traced,

Alessandro oppressed the people with the most grievous tyranny. Cruelty,

debauchery, and extortion marked him for public hatred. On the 10th of

August, 1535, he caused to be poisoned his cousin, the cardinal Ippolito,

who undertook the defence of his fellow countrymen against him. He at

last, on the 6th of January, 1537, was himself assassinated by his

kinsman and companion in licentiousness, Lorenzino de’ Medici.

[Sidenote: [1531-1737 A.D.]]

But the death of Alessandro did not restore freedom to his country. The

agents of his tyranny, the most able but also the most odious of whom was

the historian Guicciardini, needed a prince for their protector. They

made choice of Cosmo de’ Medici, a young man of nineteen, descended in

the fourth generation from Lorenzo, the brother of the former Cosmo. On

the 9th of January, 1537, they proclaimed him duke of Florence, hoping to

guide him henceforth at their pleasure; but they were deceived. This man,

false, cool-blooded, and ferocious, who had all the vices of Filippo II,

and who shrank from no crime, soon got rid of his counsellors, as well

as of his adversaries. Cosmo I, in 1569, obtained from the pope, Pius V,

the title of grand duke of Tuscany, a title that the emperor would not

then acknowledge, though he afterwards, in 1575, granted it to the son of

Cosmo. Seven grand dukes of that family reigned successively at Florence.

The last, Gian Gastone, died on the 9th of July, 1737.[d]

Right had disappeared, cries Quinet, leaving an immense gap--in fact a

gulf which opened under the nation’s feet and into which she went head

foremost, almost dragging her conquerors after her. To understand these

times we must remember that there had been no real conquest because no

national resistance. No one in the fifteenth century had really defended

the sovereignty of Italy. When Europe presented herself she entered as

into a vacant heritage, devoid of humanity. Italy did not defend herself,

because practically non-existent. She had not been able to pull herself

together. Never has such a thing been seen on the earth: a great people

invaded, and this invasion finding no obstacle. The foreigners who

entered, by the always open breach of the papacy, came with precaution.

They sounded the land, thinking to find a people, and only found an

illusion. Reassured, they came on restrainedly. Europe overflowed the

empty places.

In her last moments Italy made profession of worshipping only strength,

crying with Macchiavelli, “Woe to the conquered!” She reserved for

her defeat none of those life doctrines which nourish even corpses

and prevent their crumbling to powder. Her theories were only for the

victorious. Now that she was conquered she was taken in her own trap, and

could not well revive because she had pronounced her own death sentence.

Evil had arrived at such a pitch that two things were equally necessary:

Luther’s reform to break Catholicism; the chastisement of Italy to

restore that which threatened to disappear--the human conscience. Each

town was smitten by the arms proper to her. Venice fell slowly but

noiselessly, like a body drowned by the doges in the lagunes. There

were other cities which languished as if they had been poisoned. As for

Florence, who had gained so many subjects, she perished, put up and sold

at auction like poisoners bought and sold for the pleasure of choking

them.

In reality, the papacy had the honour of aiming the two decisive blows.

Julius II, in the league of Cambray, crushed Venice. Clement VII, in

league with Charles V, crushed Florence. These two vital centres once

destroyed, all was lost.[i]

[Sidenote: [1494-1530 A.D.]]

The evil destiny of Italy was accomplished. Charles VIII, when he

first invaded that country, opened its gates to all the transalpine

nations: from that period Italy was ravaged, during thirty-six years, by

Germans, French, Spaniards, Swiss, and even Turks. They inflicted on

her calamities beyond example in history; calamities so much the more

keenly felt, as the sufferers were more civilised, and the authors more

barbarous. The French invasion ended in giving to the greatest enemies

of France the dominion of that country, so rich, so industrious, and of

which the possession was sought ardently by all. Never would the house

of Austria have achieved the conquest of Italy, if Charles VIII, Louis

XII, and Francis I had not previously destroyed the wealth and military

organisation of the nation; if they had not themselves introduced the

Spaniards into the kingdom of Naples, and the Germans into the states of

Venice; forgetting that both must soon after be subject to Charles V. The

independence of Italy would have been beneficial to France; the rapacious

and improvident policy which made France seek subjects where it should

only have sought allies, was the origin of a long train of disasters to

the French.

A period of three centuries of weakness, humiliation, and suffering, in

Italy, began in the year 1530; from that time she was always oppressed

by foreigners, and enervated and corrupted by her masters. These

last reproached her with the vices of which they were themselves the

authors. After having reduced her to the impossibility of resisting,

they accused her of cowardice when she submitted, and of rebellion when

she made efforts to vindicate herself. The Italians, during this long

period of slavery, were agitated with the desire of becoming once more a

nation: as, however, they had lost the direction of their own affairs,

they ceased to have any history which could be called theirs; their

misfortunes have become but episodes in the histories of other nations.[d]

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