his grandmother Bona (Bonne) de Bourbon. On attaining his majority he
first directed his efforts to strengthening his power in the outlying
provinces. The states of Savoy now extended from the Lake of Geneva to
the Mediterranean, and from the Saône to the Sesia. Amadeus threw all
the weight of his power on the side of the emperor, and Sigismund in
1416 erected the counties of Savoy and Piedmont into duchies. At this
time, too, the duke recovered the fief of Piedmont, which had been
granted to Philip, prince of Achaia, by Amadeus V. The county of Vercelli
afterwards rewarded him for joining the league against the duke of
Milan, but in 1434 a plot against his life made him put into execution
a plan he had long formed, of retiring to a monastery. He accordingly
made his son Louis lieutenant-general of the dukedom, and assumed the
habit of the knights of St. Maurice. But he was not destined to find the
repose he sought. The prelates assembled at the council of Bâle voted
the deposition of Pope Eugenius IV, and elected Amadeus in his place, as
Felix V. He abdicated his dukedom definitely, but without much gain in
temporal honours, for the schism continued until the death of Eugenius
in 1447, shortly after which it was healed by the honourable submission
of Felix to Nicholas V. The early years of Louis’ reign were under the
guidance of his father, and peace and prosperity blessed his people; but
he afterwards made an alliance with the dauphin which brought him into
conflict with Charles VII of France, though a lasting reconciliation was
soon effected. His son Amadeus IX succeeded in 1465, but, though his
virtues led to his beatification, his bodily sufferings made him assign
the regency to his wife Yolande, a daughter of Charles VII. He died
in 1472, when his son Philibert I succeeded to the throne and to his
share in the contests of Yolande with her brother and brothers-in-law.
His reign lasted only ten years, when he was succeeded by his brother
Charles I. This prince raised for a time by his valour the drooping
fortunes of his house, but he died in 1489 at the age of thirty-one,
having inherited from his aunt, Charlotte of Lusignan, her pretensions to
the titular kingdoms of Cyprus, Jerusalem, and Armenia. He was succeeded
by his son Charles II, an infant, who, dying in 1496, was followed by
Philip II, brother of Amadeus XI. He died in 1497, leaving Philibert
II, who succeeded him, and Charles III, who ascended the throne on his
brother’s death in 1504. In spite of himself Charles was drawn into the
wars of the period, but the decisive victory of Francis at Marignano
gave the duke the opportunity of negotiating the conference at Bologna
which led to the conclusion of peace in 1516. Charles was less fortunate
in the part he took in the wars between Francis I and Charles V, the
brother-in-law of his wife. He tried to maintain a strict neutrality,
but his attendance at the emperor’s coronation at Bologna in 1530 was
imperative in his double character of kinsman and vassal. The visit was
fatal to him, for he was rewarded with the county of Asti, and this so
displeased the French king that on the revolt of Geneva to Protestantism
in 1532, Francis sent help to the citizens. Berne and Fribourg did
likewise, and so expelled the duke from Lausanne and Vaud. Charles now
sided definitely with the emperor, and Francis at once raised some
imaginary claims to his states. On their rejection the French army
marched into Savoy, descended on Piedmont, and seized Turin (1536).
Charles V came to the aid of his ally, and invested the city, but was
obliged to make peace. France kept Savoy, and the emperor occupied
Piedmont, so that only Nice remained to the duke. On the resumption of
hostilities in 1541 Piedmont again suffered. In 1544 the Treaty of Crespy
restored his states to Charles, but the terms were not carried out, and
he died of grief in 1553. His only surviving son, Emmanuel Philibert,
succeeded to the rights, but not the domains of his ancestors. On the
abdication of Charles V the duke was appointed governor of the Low
Countries, and in 1557 the victory of St. Quentin marked him as one of
the first generals of his time. Such services could not go unrewarded,
and the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis restored him his states, with certain
exceptions still to be held by France and Spain. One of the conditions of
the treaty also provided for the marriage of the duke with Margaret of
France, sister of Henry II. The evacuation of the places held by them was
faithfully carried out by the contracting powers, and Emmanuel Philibert
occupied himself in strengthening his military and naval forces, until
his death in 1580 prevented the execution of his ambitious designs. His
son Charles Emmanuel I, called the Great, threw in his lot with Spain,
and in 1590 invaded Provence and was received by the citizens of Aix.
His intention was doubtless to revive the ancient kingdom of Arles, but
his plans were frustrated by the accession of Henry IV to the throne of
France.[e]
[Sidenote: [1482-1601 A.D.]]
By his treaty with Henry, in the year 1601, Charles Emmanuel exchanged
his Savoyard county of Bresse for the Italian marquisate of Saluzzo. By
this arrangement, the duke of Savoy sacrificed a fertile province to
acquire a barren and rocky territory; but he excluded the French from
an easy access into Piedmont, and strengthened his Italian frontier. By
consolidating his states, he gained a considerable advance towards the
future independence of his family; and the superiority of his policy
over that of Henry IV in this transaction occasioned the remark of a
contemporary, that the French king had bargained like a peddler, and the
Savoyard duke like a king.
From this epoch, the house of Savoy became almost exclusively an Italian
power, and its princes, to use the language of one of their historians,
thenceforth viewed the remains of their transmontane possessions only
as a nobleman, moving in the splendour of a court, regards the ancient
and neglected fief from which he derives his title. Charles Emmanuel
found that the improvement effected in the geographical posture of
his states immediately increased his importance; and his alliance was
courted both by France and Spain. But during the remainder of his long
reign, his own restless and overweening ambition, and the natural
difficulties of his situation, placed as he was with inferior strength
between two mighty rivals, entailed many calamities on his dominions. He
made an unsuccessful attempt in 1602 to surprise Geneva by an escalade
in the night, and after a disgraceful repulse concluded a peace, which
recognised the independence of that republic. Ten years later, he
endeavoured, as we have seen, to wrest Montferrat from the house of
Gonzaga; but being violently opposed by Spain, and weakly supported by
France, he was compelled, after several years of hostilities, to submit
his claim to the decision of the emperor--or, in other words, to abandon
it altogether. Such checks to his ambition were, however, of little
importance, in comparison with the reverses consequent upon the share
which he took in the war of the Mantuan succession (1628).
[Sidenote: [1601-1634 A.D.]]
In that contest he was induced, by the hope of partitioning Montferrat
with the Spaniards, to unite with them against the new duke of Mantua
and the French his supporters; and he suffered heavily in this alliance.
When Louis XIII, at the head of a gallant army, forced the strong pass of
Susa against the duke and his troops, and overran all Piedmont, Charles
Emmanuel was compelled to purchase the deliverance of his states by
signing a separate peace, and leaving the fortress of Susa as a pledge
in the hands of the conquerors. They insisted further that he should
act offensively against his former allies; but Louis XIII and his great
minister Richelieu were no sooner recalled into France by the war against
the Protestants, than the versatile duke, resenting their tyranny,
immediately resumed his league with Spain.
The possession of Susa rendered the French masters of the gates of the
Savoyard dominions; and as soon as Richelieu had triumphantly concluded
the war against the Huguenots, he returned to the Alps. He was invested
by his master with a supreme military command, which disgraced his
priestly functions; and he poured the forces of France again into
Piedmont. All Savoy was conquered by the French king in person; and above
half of Piedmont was seized by his forces under the warlike cardinal.
Amidst so many cruel reverses, oppressed by the overwhelming strength of
his enemies, and abandoned by his Spanish allies, who made no vigorous
efforts to arrest the progress of the French, Charles Emmanuel suddenly
breathed his last, after a reign of fifty years (1630).
Victor Amadeus I, his eldest son and successor, was the husband of
Christina, daughter of Henry IV of France, and therefore disposed to
ally himself with her country. Almost immediately after his accession
to the ducal crown, he entered into negotiations with Richelieu, which
terminated in a truce. In the following year, the general peace, which
concluded the war of the Mantuan succession, was signed at Cherasco
(1631). By this treaty, the new duke of Savoy recovered all his dominions
except Pinerolo (Pignerol), which he was compelled to cede to the French;
who, although Richelieu restored Susa to Victor Amadeus, thus retained
possession of the passes of the Alps by Briançon and the valley of
Exilles. Victor Amadeus was not inferior to his father either in courage
or abilities; but he was not equally restless and intriguing. Submitting
to circumstances beyond his control, he endured the ascendency which
France had acquired over his states, and the yet more galling pride of
Richelieu, with temper and prudence. To the close of his short reign
he maintained with good faith a close alliance with Louis XIII, which
indeed it was scarcely optional with him to have rejected, and which, in
1634, involved him, as an auxiliary, in a new war undertaken by Richelieu
against the house of Austria.
[Sidenote: [1634-1657 A.D.]]
The death of Victor Amadeus in 1637, while this contest was yet
raging, was the prelude to still heavier calamities for his house and
his subjects than either had known for nearly a century. He left two
infant sons, the eldest of whom dying almost immediately after him, the
succession devolved upon the other, Charles Emmanuel II, a boy of four
years of age. By his testament, Victor Amadeus committed the regency of
his states, and the care of his children, to his duchess Christina. The
government of that princess was in the outset assailed by the secret
machinations of Richelieu, and by the open hostility of the brothers
of her late husband. Richelieu designed to imprison the sister, and to
despoil the nephew of his own master; and he would have annexed their
states to the French monarchy, under the plea that the care of the
young prince and the regency of his duchy belonged of right to Louis
XIII, as his maternal uncle. When the vigilance of Christina defeated
the intention of the cardinal to surprise her at Vercelli, the sister
of Louis XIII had still to endure all the despotic influence of her
brother’s minister. The conduct of her husband’s relations left her
however no alternative but to purchase the aid of the French against them.
Both the brothers of Victor Amadeus, the cardinal Maurice, and Prince
Thomas (founder of the branch of Savoy-Carignano), had quarrelled with
the late duke, and withdrawn from his court to embrace the party of
his enemies; the one entered the service of the emperor, the other
that of the king of Spain in the Low Countries. On the death of Victor
Amadeus, they returned to Piedmont only to trouble the administration of
Christina by themselves laying claim to the regency; and at length, on
her resisting their pretensions, they openly asserted them in arms. The
two princes were supported by the house of Austria; the duchess-regent
was protected by France; and the whole country of Savoy and Piedmont was
at once plunged into the aggravated horrors of foreign and civil war. In
the first year of this unhappy contest, the capital was delivered into
the hands of Prince Thomas by his partisans; and the regent, escaping
with difficulty on this surprise into the citadel of Turin, was compelled
to consign the defence of that fortress to the French, who treacherously
retained the deposit for eighteen years. In like manner, they acquired
possession of several important places; the Spaniards on their part
became masters of others; and while the regent and her brothers-in-law
were contending for the government of Piedmont, they were betrayed by the
ill faith and ambition of their respective protectors.
A reconciliation in the ducal family was at length effected by the tardy
discovery that mutual injuries could terminate only in common ruin. The
two princes deserted the party of Spain, and succeeded in recovering for
their house most of the fortresses which they had aided the Spaniards in
reducing. The duchess-mother retained the regency; and the princes were
gratified with the same appanages by which she had originally offered
to purchase their friendship. Still the French remained all powerful in
Piedmont; and if death had not interrupted the projects of Richelieu,
it is probable that the ducal house of Savoy would have been utterly
sacrificed to his skilful and unprincipled policy, and that its dominions
would have been permanently annexed to the monarchy of France. Even
under the government of his more pacific successor, Mazarin, it was
not until the year 1657 that the French garrison was withdrawn from the
citadel of Turin; and this act of justice was only extorted from that
minister as the price of his niece’s marriage into the ducal family of
Savoy. The exhaustion of Spain and the internal troubles of France had
totally prevented the active prosecution in northern Italy of the long
war between those powers. But the embers of hostility were not wholly
extinguished in Piedmont until the Peace of the Pyrenees, by which
Charles Emmanuel II recovered all his duchy except Pinerolo and its
Alpine passes, and these the French still retained (1659).
[Sidenote: [1657-1692 A.D.]]
The termination of the minority of Charles Emmanuel II, in 1648, had put
an end to the intrigues of his uncles. But the duke continued to submit
to the ambitious and able control of his mother until her death; and his
subsequent reign was in no respect brilliant. His states, however, after
the Treaty of the Pyrenees, enjoyed a long interval of repose; and though
the early close of his life in 1675 subjected them to another minority,
it proved neither turbulent nor calamitous, as his own had done. His
son, the celebrated Victor Amadeus II, was only nine years old when
he nominally commenced his reign under the regency of his mother. The
princess, a daughter of the French house of Nemours, had all the ambition
without the talents which had distinguished the duchess Christina.
Surrounded by French favourites and by the partisans of that nation, she
was wholly subservient to the will of Louis XIV; and Victor Amadeus,
on attaining the age of manhood, gave the first indications of the
consummate political ability for which he became afterwards so famous, by
his decent address in dispossessing his reluctant parent and her faction
of all influence in public affairs, without having recourse to actual
violence.
The policy of the duke soon excited the suspicion of Louis XIV; and after
exhausting all the resources of negotiation and intrigue for some years,
to gain him over to his purpose of wresting Milan from the Spaniards, the
French monarch resolved to disarm him. But Victor Amadeus penetrated his
designs, and anticipated their execution. He was too good a politician,
and too sensible of his own weakness, not to discover that, if he
consented to open a free passage to Louis XIV through his dominions, and
to aid him in effecting the conquest of Lombardy, he should speedily be
despoiled in his turn, and reduced to the rank of a vassal of the French
crown. He therefore acceded to the league of Augsburg between the empire,
England, Spain, and Holland; and his subjects eagerly seconded him in his
resolution rather to encounter the dangers of a contest with the gigantic
power of France, than to submit without a struggle to the imperious and
humiliating demands of Louis.
The commencement of the war in Piedmont was marked by a torrent of
misfortune, which might have overwhelmed a prince of less fortitude than
Victor Amadeus with sudden despair. Although he was joined by a Spanish
army at the opening of hostilities, the French, who commanded the gates
of Italy by the possession of Pinerolo had already assembled in force in
Piedmont. They were led by Catinat, who deserves to be mentioned among
the most accomplished and scientific captains of his own or of any age;
and the superior abilities of this great commander triumphed over the
military talents of the young duke. At the battle of Staffarda (1690) in
the first campaign, the allies were totally defeated; and great part both
of Savoy and Piedmont was almost immediately afterwards reduced by the
conquerors. Victor Amadeus was however undismayed; he continued the war
with energy and skill; and the support of his allies and his own activity
had the effect of balancing the fortune of the contest. Penetrating into
France, in 1692, he was even enabled to retaliate upon his enemies by
this diversion, for the ravage of his dominions; and although Catinat,
in the fourth campaign, inflicted at Marsaglia upon the Piedmontese,
Austrian, and Spanish armies, under the duke in person and the famous
prince Eugene, a yet more calamitous and memorable defeat than that at
Staffarda, the allies speedily recovered from the disaster.
But it comes not within our purpose to repeat the often-told tale of
military operations, which belong to the general history of Europe. After
six years of incessant warfare, Victor Amadeus was still in an attitude
to render his neutrality an important object for France to gain, and one
which he had himself every reason to desire. So that it could be attained
with advantage to himself, he was little scrupulous in abandoning his
allies; and the conditions which he extorted from Louis XIV had all
the results of victory. By the separate peace concluded between France
and Savoy at Turin, Louis XIV abandoned the possession of Pinerolo and
restored all his conquests in Savoy and Piedmont; but the most material
stipulation of the treaty was the neutrality of all Italy, to which the
contracting parties equally bound themselves to oblige all other powers
to accede. To enforce this article, Victor Amadeus did not hesitate to
join his arms to those of France against his former allies; and the
entrance of his forces, in conjunction with the army of Catinat, into the
Milanese territories, immediately compelled the emperor and the king of
Spain to consent to a suspension of arms in the peninsula.
[Illustration: A MUSKETEER OF THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
The allies of Victor Amadeus might justly reproach him with a desertion
of their cause, and perhaps even with the aggravation of perfidy; but
he deserved the gratitude of Italy, if not for his selfish policy, at
least for its fruits. In closing the gates of his own frontiers, he
had skilfully provided also for the repose of the peninsula and its
evacuation by the French. All Italy regarded him as a liberator; the
security of his own dominions was effected, and his power and consequence
were prodigiously augmented. Thus, by establishing the independence of
his states, he prepared the claim of his house to the assumption of the
royal title among the powers of Europe, to which he elevated it in the
beginning of the new century.
The increasing power of the sovereigns of Piedmont was a foreboding of
evil for the only republic of the Middle Ages which had partially escaped
the storms of despotism in that quarter of Italy; and Genoa had already
gained, during the seventeenth century, sufficient experience of the
dangers of her vicinity to the princes of the house of Savoy. In the
Grison war, between France and the house of Austria, the republic was
involved by her dependence upon Spain; and the share which she took in
the contest enabled the duke of Savoy, then in alliance with France, to
draw down the weight of the French arms upon her. Besides being actuated
by the usual rapacity of his ambition, with the hope of annexing the
Genoese territory to his states, Charles Emmanuel I had several causes
of offence against the republic. Her rulers had before given assistance
to the Spaniards against him; they had attempted to control him in the
purchase of the fief of Zucarel from the family of Carretto; and the
populace of Genoa had insulted him by defacing his portrait in their
city during the excesses of a riot. He therefore pointed out Genoa to
his allies for an easy and important conquest; and while he overran
the Ligurian country, a French army of thirty thousand men under the
constable de Lesdiguières advanced to the siege of the republican
capital. Though the Genoese were unprovided against this sudden attack,
they were animated by the brave spirit, and the eloquence of one of
their fellow-citizens, a member of the illustrious house of Doria, to
oppose a firm resistance to the besiegers; and their gallant defence
of the city was converted into a triumph, at the moment when they were
reduced to extremity. A powerful Spanish armament, equipped with unusual
vigour, arrived to their succour from Naples and Milan; the French were
compelled to raise the siege; and the peace, which shortly followed these
hostilities, served only to cover the duke of Savoy with the disgrace of
merited failure in his designs against the existence of the republic.
[Sidenote: [1624-1628 A.D.]]
The secret hostility which Charles Emmanuel cherished against Genoa
menaced her, a few years later, with more imminent perils; since the
revengeful spirit of the duke was associated with the discontent of a
large party in the republic. We have formerly noticed the constitution of
the sovereign oligarchy of Genoa, and its tendency, by the extinction of
some noble houses, and the reduction of numbers in others, to narrow the
circle of political rights. The surviving body, meanwhile, were sparing
in the use of the law, which authorised them to admit ten new families
annually to a share in their privileges of sovereignty. The senate either
began to elude it altogether, or applied it only to childless or aged
individuals. Thus, before the middle of the seventeenth century, the
number of persons whose names appeared in the _libro d’oro_--the golden
volume of privileged nobility--had dwindled to about seven hundred. A law
was then passed, by which the whole of these exclusive proprietors of the
rights of citizenship thenceforth took their seats in the great council,
on reaching the age of manhood, instead of entering it by rotation, as
had formerly been the practice, when the republic was represented by a
more comprehensive aristocracy.
While the arrogance and the individual importance of the members of
the oligarchy were increased in proportion to this diminution in their
numbers, another class, that of the unprivileged aristocracy of birth
and wealth, had multiplied in the state. Many ancient houses, possessors
of rural fiefs in Liguria, and invested with titles of nobility, had
been originally omitted in the roll of citizenship; many other families
of newer pretensions had since acquired riches and distinction by
commercial industry, and accidents of fortune; and the union of all these
constituted an order, which rivalled the oligarchy in the usual sources
of pride, and far outweighed them in numbers. Affected superiority and
contempt on the one hand, and mortification and envy on the other,
produced reciprocal hatred between these branches of the Genoese
aristocracy; and their divisions inspired the duke of Savoy with the hope
of plunging the state into an anarchy, by which he might profit.
[Sidenote: [1628-1672 A.D.]]
Pursuing his master’s views, the ambassador of Charles Emmanuel at
Genoa selected a wealthy merchant of the unprivileged aristocracy,
Giulio Cesare Vachero, for the agitator and leader of a conspiracy to
overthrow the oligarchical constitution. Vachero, although engaged in
the occupation of commerce, aspired to move in the sphere of nobility.
His immense riches, his numerous retinue, his splendid establishment,
rivalled the magnificence of the Fregosi, the Adorni, the _popolani
grandi_ of other days. He always appeared armed and in martial
costume--the characteristics of the gentleman of the times; he was
surrounded by bravos; and he unscrupulously employed these desperate
men in the atrocious gratification of his pride and his vengeance. He
found sufficient occupation for their poniards in the numerous petty
affronts, which the privileged nobles delighted to heap on a person of
his condition. Vachero was stung to the soul by all the scorn and disdain
which the highly born affect for upstart and unwarranted pretensions--by
the contemptuous denial of the courtesy of a passing salutation, the
supercilious stare, the provoking smile of derision, the taunting
innuendo, the jest, the sneer. Every one of these slights or insults
offered to himself or his wife was washed out in the blood of the noble
offenders (1628).
But all these covert assassinations could not satiate the revengeful
spirit nor heal the rankling irritation of Vachero; and he was easily
instigated by the arts of the Savoyard ambassador to organise a plot,
and to place himself at its head, for the destruction of the oligarchy.
He knew that his discontent was shared by all the citizens like himself,
whose names had not been admitted into the _libro d’oro_; and he reckoned
on the co-operation of very many of the feudal seigniors of Liguria,
whose ancient houses had never been inserted in that register, and who
found their consequence eclipsed in the city, by their detested and more
fortunate rivals of the oligarchy. He readily induced a numerous party
to embrace his design; he secretly increased the force of his retainers
and bravos; and he lavished immense sums among the lower people, to
secure their fidelity without entrusting them with his plans. The day
was already named for the attack of the palace of government: it was
determined to overpower the foreign guard; to cast the senators from
the windows; to massacre all the individuals embraced in the privileged
order; to change the constitution of the republic; and finally, to invest
Vachero with the supreme authority of the state, by the title of doge,
and under the protection of the duke of Savoy. But at the moment when the
conspiracy was ripe for execution, it was betrayed to the government by
a retainer of Vachero, who had been appointed to act a subordinate share
in it. Vachero himself, and a few other leading personages in the plot,
were secured before the alarm was given to the rest, who immediately
fled. The guilt of Vachero and his accomplices was clearly established;
the proofs against them were even supported by the conduct of the duke
of Savoy, who openly avowed himself the protector of their enterprise;
and notwithstanding his arrogant threat of revenging their punishment
upon the republic, the senate did not hesitate to order their immediate
execution.
The insolent menaces of Charles Emmanuel were vain; and the firmness of
the Genoese government produced no material consequences. During the
distractions which closed his own reign, and which, filling that of
his son, extended through the minority of his grandsons, the republic
remained undisturbed by the aggressions of the house of Savoy. In this
long period of above forty years, the repose of Genoa was disturbed
neither by any other foreign hostilities, nor by intestine commotions.
A second war, which at length broke out between the republic and the
duchy of Savoy, during the reign of Charles Emmanuel II, scarcely
merits our notice, for its circumstances and its conclusion were alike
insignificant; and during the remainder of the seventeenth century,
the Genoese oligarchy were only startled from their dream of pride and
security by a single event--the most humiliating, until our own times at
least, in the long annals of their republic.
When Louis XIV became master of Casale by purchase from the duke of
Mantua, he demanded of the republic of Genoa permission to establish
a depot at the port of Savona, for the free supply of salt to the
inhabitants of his new city, and the transit of warlike stores and
recruits for his garrison. The Genoese government were sufficiently
acquainted with the character of the French monarch to anticipate that
their compliance with this demand would terminate in his appropriating
the port of Savona altogether to himself; and cautiously exerting the
option of refusal which they unquestionably possessed, they eluded the
application. With equal right and more boldness, they fitted out a few
galleys to guard their coasts against any surprise, and to protect their
revenue on salt. Louis imperiously required them to disarm this squadron;
and then, driven beyond all the limits of endurance, and justly incensed
at such an insult upon the independence of the republic, the senate
treated the summons with contempt.
But the oligarchy of Genoa had not sufficiently measured the weakness
of their state, or the implacable and unbounded pride of the powerful
tyrant. A French armament of fourteen sail of the line, with a long
train of frigates, galleys, and bomb ketches, suddenly appeared before
Genoa, and a furious bombardment of three days, in which fifty thousand
shells and carcasses are said to have been thrown into the place, reduced
to a heap of ruins half the numerous and magnificent palaces, which
had obtained for Genoa the appellation of “the Proud.” The senate were
compelled to save the remains of their capital from total destruction
by an unqualified submission; and the terms dictated by the arrogance
of the French monarch, obliged the doge and four of the principal
senators, to repair in their robes of state to Paris, to sue for pardon
and to supplicate his clemency. The epithets of glory have often been
prostituted on the character of Louis XIV, by those who are easily
dazzled with the glare of false splendour; but of all the wholesale
outrages upon humanity which disgraced the detestable ambition of that
heartless destroyer of his species, this unprovoked assault upon a
defenceless people, merely to gratify his insatiable vanity, was--if we
except the horrible devastation of the Palatinate--the most barbarous and
wanton.
VENICE
[Sidenote: [1600-1685 A.D.]]
While Genoa was either wholly subservient to the influence of Spain,
with difficulty repulsing the machinations of the princes of Savoy,
or enduring all the insulting arrogance of France, her ancient rival
was holding her political course with more pretensions to independence
and dignity. Throughout the age before us, Venice seemed roused to
the exertion of the few remains of her ancient spirit and strength.
Starting with renewed vigour from the languor and obscurity of the
preceding century, the republic evinced a proud resolution to maintain
her prescriptive rights, and even in some measure aspired to assert the
lost independence of Italy. Her efforts in this latter respect, indeed,
deserve to be mentioned, rather for the courage which dictated them, than
for their results. The relative force of the states of Europe had too
essentially changed; the commercial foundations of her own prosperity
were too irretrievably ruined to render it possible that she should
rear her head again above other powers of the second order, or become
the protectress and successful champion of the peninsula. But, in the
seventeenth century, the annals of Venice were at least not stained with
disgrace. Even her losses, in a protracted and unequal contest with the
Turks, were redeemed from shame by many brilliant acts of heroism in her
unavailing defence; and the unfortunate issue of one war was balanced by
the happier results of a second. But the firmness of the republic was
conspicuous, and her success unalloyed.
[Sidenote: [1600-1606 A.D.]]
The first of the struggles, in which Venice was called upon to engage
in this century, was produced, soon after its opening, by that violent
attempt of Pope Paul V, to which we have before alluded, to revive the
monstrous and exploded doctrine of papal jurisdiction and supremacy
over the temporal affairs of the world (1605). The Venetians had, even
in the dark ages, been remarkable for their freedom from the trammels
of superstition, and consistent in repelling the encroachments of
ecclesiastical power. Upon no occasion would the senate either permit
the publication or execution of any papal decree in their territories,
until it had received their previous sanction; or suffer an appeal
to the court of Rome from any of their subjects, except by their own
authority, and through the ambassador of the republic. The jurisdiction
of the Council of Ten was as despotic and final over the Venetian clergy
as over all other classes in the state; and while ecclesiastics were
rigidly excluded from all interference in political affairs, and from
the exercise of any civil functions, the right of the secular tribunals
to judge them in every case not purely spiritual was a principle, from
which the government never departed either in theory or practice. Of all
the extravagant privileges claimed by the Romish church for its militia,
the exemption of the ecclesiastical body from taxation (unless as the
immediate act of the popes) was the only one recognised by the Venetian
government; and, to annul this, immunity was a project which had more
than once been entertained.
[Illustration: A VENETIAN BEGGAR
(Many of these were people in straitened circumstances, who wore a mask
to disguise their features.)]
With a spirit similar to that which retained the clergy under due
subjection, universal religious toleration was a steady maxim of the
Venetian senate. The public and peaceable worship of the Mussulman, the
Jew, the Greek, the Armenian, had always been equally permitted in the
republican dominions; and in later times even the Protestant sects had
met in the capital and provinces with a like indulgence. The iniquitous
principles of the oligarchical administration forbid us from attributing
to its conduct in these respects any higher or more enlightened motive
than the interested and necessary policy of a commercial state. But
it is a striking proof of the ability and stern vigilance of this
government, that, notwithstanding its universal toleration and rejection
of ecclesiastical control, no pretence was left for the popes to impugn
its zealous fidelity to the Romish church; and that, at a time when all
Europe was convulsed by the struggle of religious opinions, Venice alone
could receive into her corrupted bosom the elements of discord, without
shaking the foundations of her established faith or sustaining the
slightest shock to her habitual tranquillity.
The fierce temper with which Paul V seated himself on the papal throne,
and the systematic determination of the Venetian senate to submit to no
ecclesiastical usurpations, could not fail to bring the republic into
collision with so rash and violent a pontiff. Accordingly Paul V had
scarcely commenced his reign, when he conceived offence at the refusal of
the senate to provoke a war with the Turks, by assisting the Hungarians
at his command with subsidies against the infidels. His dissatisfaction
with the republic was increased by her obstinacy in levying duty upon all
merchandise entering the papal ports in the Adriatic--a matter in which,
assuredly, religion was in nowise interested; and it reached its height
when the senate passed a law, or rather revived an old one, forbidding
the further alienation of immovable property in favour of religious
foundations; which indeed, even in their states, were already possessed
of overgrown wealth.
At this juncture the Council of Ten, acting upon its established
principle of subjecting priests to secular jurisdiction, caused two
ecclesiastics, a canon of Vicenza, named Sarraceno, and an abbot of
Nervesa, to be successively arrested and thrown into prison, to await
their trials for offences with which they were charged. Their alleged
crimes were of the blackest enormity: rape in one case; assassination,
poisonings, and parricide in the other. The pope, as if the rights of
the church had been violently outraged by these arrests, summoned the
doge and senate to deliver over the two priests to the spiritual arm, on
pain of excommunication; and he seized the occasion to demand, under the
same penalty, the repeal of the existing regulations against the increase
of the ecclesiastical edifices and property. But the doge and senate,
positively refusing to retract their measures, treated the papal menaces
with contempt; and Paul V then struck them, their capital, and their
whole republic with excommunication and interdict (1606).
The Venetian government endured the anathemas, so appalling to the
votaries of superstition, with unshaken firmness. In reply to the papal
denunciations of the divine wrath against the republic, they successfully
published repeated and forcible appeals to the justice of their cause,
and to the common-sense of the world. The general sentiment of Catholic
Europe responded to their arguments; and their own subjects, filled with
indignation at the unprovoked sentence against the state, zealously
seconded their spirit. In private the doge had not hesitated to hold
out to the papal nuncio an alarming threat that the perseverance of his
holiness in violent measures would impel the republic to dissolve her
connection altogether with the Roman see; and the open procedure of the
senate was scarcely less bold. On pain of death, all parochial ministers
and monks in the Venetian states were commanded to pay no regard to
the interdict, and to continue to perform the offices of religion as
usual. The secular clergy yielded implicit obedience to the decree; and
when the Jesuits, Capuchins, and other monastic orders endeavoured to
qualify their allegiance, between the pope and the republic, by making
a reservation against the performance of mass, they were immediately
deprived of their possessions, and expelled from the Venetian territories.
The pope, finding his spiritual weapons ineffectual against the constancy
of the Venetians, showed an inclination to have recourse to temporal
arms. He levied troops, and endeavoured to engage Philip III of Spain
and other princes in the support of his authority. At the same time, both
the Spanish monarch and Henry IV of France, the ally of the republic,
began to interest themselves in a quarrel which nearly concerned all
Catholic powers, and threatened Europe with commotion. In reality, both
sovereigns aspired to the honour of being the arbiter of the difference.
But the feint of arming to second the pope, by which Philip III hoped
to terrify the republic into submitting to his mediation, had only the
effect of determining the senate to prefer the interposition of his
rival; and Henry IV became the zealous negotiator between the pope and
the republic.
[Sidenote: [1606-1615 A.D.]]
Paul IV discovered at length that Spain had no serious resolution to
support him by arms, and that, without the application of a force which
he could not command, it was vain to expect submission from so inflexible
a body as the Venetian oligarchy. He was therefore reduced to the most
humiliating compromise of his boasted dignity. Without obtaining a
single concession on the point in dispute, he was obliged to revoke
his spiritual sentences. The doge and senate could not even receive an
absolution; they refused to alter their decree against the alienation
of property in favour of the church; and though they consigned the two
imprisoned ecclesiastics to the disposal of Henry IV, they accompanied
this act with a formal declaration, that was intended only as a voluntary
mark of their respect for that monarch their ally, and to be in no
degree construed into an abandonment of their right and practice of
subjecting their clergy to secular jurisdiction. Even their deference
for Henry IV could not prevail over their resentment and suspicion
of the banished Jesuits: they peremptorily refused to reinstate that
order in its possessions; and it was not until after the middle of the
century that the Jesuits obtained admission again into the states of the
republic. Thus, with the signal triumph of Venice, terminated a struggle,
happily a bloodless one, which was not less remarkable for the firmness
of the republic than important for its general effects in crushing the
pretensions of papal tyranny. For its issue may assuredly be regarded
as having relieved all Roman Catholic states from future dread of
excommunication and interdict--and therefore from the danger of spiritual
engines, impotent in themselves, and formidable only when unresisted.
With the same unyielding spirit which characterised their resistance to
papal and ecclesiastical usurpation, the Venetian senate resolved to
tolerate no infringement upon the tyrannical pretension of their own
republic to the despotic sovereignty of the Adriatic. Before the contest
with Paul V, their state had already been seriously incommoded by the
piracies of the Uscochi. This community, originally formed of Christian
inhabitants of Dalmatia and Croatia, had been driven, in the sixteenth
century, by the perpetual Turkish invasions of their provinces, to the
fastness of Clissa, whence they successfully retaliated upon their
infidel foes by incursions into the Ottoman territories. At length,
overpowered by the Turks, and dispersed from their stronghold, these
Uscochi, or refugees, as their name implies in the Dalmatian tongue,
were collected by Ferdinand, archduke of Austria (afterwards emperor),
and established in the maritime town of Segna to guard that post against
the Turks. In their new station, which, on the land side, was protected
from access by mountains and forests, while numerous inlets and intricate
shallows rendered it difficult of approach from the sea, the Uscochi
betook themselves to piracy; and, for above seventy years, their light
and swift barks boldly infested the Adriatic with impunity. Their
first attacks were directed against the infidels; but irritated by the
interference of the Venetians, who, as sovereigns of the Adriatic, found
themselves compelled by the complaints and threats of the Porte to punish
their freebooting enterprises, they began to extend their depredations to
the commerce of the republic.
[Sidenote: [1615-1617 A.D.]]
It was to little purpose that the senate called upon the Austrian
government to restrain its lawless subjects; their representations
were either eluded altogether, or failed in obtaining any effectual
satisfaction. The Uscochi, a fearless and desperate band, recruited
by outlaws and men of abandoned lives, became more audacious by the
connivance of Austria; and the republic was obliged to maintain a small
squadron constantly at sea to protect her commerce against them. At
length, after having recourse alternately, for above half a century,
to fruitless negotiations with Austria, and insufficient attempts to
chastise the pirates, the republic seriously determined to put an end to
their vexatious hostilities and increasing insolence. The capture of a
Venetian galley and the massacre of its crew in 1615, and an irruption
of the Uscochi into Istria, brought affairs to a crisis. The Austrian
government, then directed by the archduke Ferdinand of Styria, instead
of giving satisfaction for these outrages, demanded the free navigation
of the Adriatic for its vessels; and the senate found an appeal to arms
the only mode of preserving its efficient sovereignty over the gulf. The
Venetian troops made reprisals on the Austrian territory; and an open war
commenced between the archduke and the republic.
The contest was soon associated, by the interference of Spain, with the
hostilities then carried on between that monarchy and the duke of Savoy
in northern Italy respecting Montferrat. For protection against the
enmity of the two branches of the house of Austria, Venice united herself
with Savoy, and largely subsidised that state. She even sought more
distant allies, and a league, offensive and defensive, was signed between
her and the seven united provinces. Notwithstanding the difference of
religious faith, which, in that age constituted in itself a principle of
political hostility, the two republics found a bond of union, stronger
than this repulsion, in their common reasons for opposing the Spanish
power. They engaged to afford each other a reciprocal assistance in
money, vessels, or men, whenever menaced with attack; and in fulfilment
of this treaty, a strong body of Dutch troops arrived in the Adriatic.
Before the disembarkation of this force, the Venetians had already gained
some advantages in the Austrian provinces on the coasts of that sea; and
the archduke was induced by the appearance of the Dutch, and his projects
in Germany, to open negotiations for a general peace in northern Italy.
[Illustration: LION, SUPPORTING THE PILLAR OF THE PULPIT, ST. MARK’S]
The same treaty terminated the wars of the house of Austria respecting
Montferrat and the Uscochi. Ferdinand of Austria gave security for
the dispersion of the pirates, whom he had protected; and thus the
Venetian republic was finally delivered from the vexatious and lawless
depredations of those freebooters, who had so long annoyed her commerce
and harassed her subjects (1617). It does not appear that the force of
this singular race of pirates, who had thus risen into historical notice,
ever exceeded a thousand men; but their extraordinary hardihood and
ferocity, their incessant enterprise and activity, their inaccessible
position, and the connivance of Austria, had rendered them formidable
enemies. Their depredations, and the constant expense of petty armaments
against them, were estimated to have cost the Venetians in thirty years a
loss of more than 20,000,000 gold ducats; and no less a question than the
security of the dominion of the republic over the Adriatic was decided by
the war against them.
[Sidenote: [1617-1618 A.D.]]
Although Spain and Venice had not been regularly at war, the tyrannical
ascendency exercised by the Spanish court over the affairs of Italy,
occasioned the Venetians to regard that power with particular
apprehension and enmity; and the spirit shown by the senate in the late
contest had filled the Spanish government with implacable hatred towards
the republic. By her alliances and her whole procedure, Venice had
declared against the house of Austria, and betrayed her disposition to
curb the alarming and overspreading authority of both its branches in
the peninsula. The haughty ministers of Philip III secretly nourished
projects of vengeance against the state, which had dared to manifest
a systematic hostility to the Spanish dominion; and they are accused,
even in apparent peace, of having regarded the republic as an enemy whom
it behoved them to destroy. At the epoch of the conclusion of the war
relative to Montferrat and the Uscochi, the duke of Osuna was viceroy
of Naples, Don Pedro de Toledo, governor of Milan, and the marquis of
Bedmar, ambassador at Venice from the court of Madrid. To the hostility
entertained against the republic by these three ministers, the two
former of whom governed the Italian possessions of Spain with almost
regal independence, has usually been attributed the formation, with the
connivance of the court of Madrid, of one of the most atrocious and
deep-laid conspiracies on record. The real character of this mysterious
transaction must ever remain among the unsolved problems of history;
for even the circumstances which were partially suffered by the Council
of Ten to transpire were so imperfectly explained, and so liable to
suspicion from the habitual iniquity of their policy, as to have given
rise to a thousand various and contradictory versions of the same events.
Of these we shall attempt to collect only such as are scarcely open to
doubt.
The Venetians had no reason to hope that the exasperation of the Spanish
government, at the part which they had taken in the late war in Italy,
would die away with the termination of hostilities; and it appeared to
the world a consequence of the enmity of the court of Madrid towards
the republic that the duke of Osuna, the viceroy of Naples, continued
his warlike equipments in that kingdom with undiminished activity,
notwithstanding the signature of peace. The viceroy, indeed, pretended
that his naval armaments were designed against the infidels; and when
the court of Madrid recalled the royal Spanish fleet from the coasts of
Italy, the duke of Osuna sent the Neapolitan squadron to sea under a flag
emblazoned with his own family arms. But it was difficult to suppose,
either that a viceroy dared to hoist his personal standard unsanctioned
by his sovereign and would be suffered to engage in a private war against
the Ottoman Empire, or that he would require for that purpose the charts
of the Venetian lagunes, and the flat-bottomed vessels fitted for
their navigation, which he busily collected. The republic accordingly
manifested serious alarm, and sedulously prepared for defence.
Affairs were in this state, when one morning several strangers were
found suspended from the gibbets of the square of St. Mark. The public
consternation increased when, on the following dawn, other bodies were
also found hanging on the same fatal spot--also of strangers. It was at
the same time whispered that numerous arrests had filled the dungeons
of the Council of Ten with some hundreds of criminals; and there was,
too, certain proof that many persons had been privately drowned in the
canals of Venice. To these fearful indications that the state had been
alarmed by some extraordinary danger, the terrors of which were magnified
by their obscurity, were shortly added further rumours that several
foreigners serving in the fleet had been poniarded, hanged, or cast into
the sea. The city was then filled with the most alarming reports: that
a conspiracy of long duration had been discovered; that its object was
to massacre the nobility, to destroy the republic, to deliver the whole
capital to flames and pillage; that the Spanish ambassador was the mover
of the horrible plot. Venice was filled with indignation and terror; yet
the impenetrable Council of Ten preserved the most profound silence,
neither confirming nor contradicting the general belief. The life of the
marquis of Bedmar was violently threatened by the populace: he retired
from Venice; the senate received a new ambassador from Spain without any
signs of displeasure; and, finally, it was not until five months after
the executions that the government commanded solemn thanksgiving to be
offered up to the Almighty for the preservation of the state from the
dangers which had threatened its existence.
[Sidenote: [1618-1619 A.D.]]
On the extent of these dangers nothing was ever certainly known; but
amongst the persons executed the most conspicuous was ascertained to be
a French naval captain of high reputation for ability and courage in his
vocation, Jacques Pierre, who, after a life passed in enterprises of a
doubtful or piratical character, had apparently deserted the service of
the viceroy of Naples to embrace that of the republic. This man, and a
brother adventurer, one Langlade, who had been employed in the arsenal
in the construction of petards and other fireworks, were absent from
Venice with the fleet when the other executions took place; and they were
suddenly put to death while on this service. Two other French captains
named Regnault and Bouslart, with numerous foreigners, principally of
the same nation, who had lately been taken into the republican service,
were privately tortured and executed in various ways in the capital; and
altogether 260 officers and other military adventurers are stated to
have perished by the hands of the executioner for their alleged share
in the conspiracy. The vengeance or shocking policy of the Council
of Ten proceeded yet further; and so careful was that body to bury
every trace of this inexplicable affair in the deepest oblivion, that
Antoine Jaffier, also a French captain, and other informers, who had
revealed the existence of a plot, though at first rewarded, were all in
the sequel either known to have met a violent death, or mysteriously
disappeared altogether. Of the three Spanish ministers, to whom it has
been customary to assign the origin of the conspiracy, the two principal
were distinguished by opposite fates. The marquis of Bedmar, after the
termination of his embassy, found signal political advancement, and
finished by obtaining a cardinal’s hat, by the interest of his court
with the holy see. But the duke of Osuna, after being removed from
viceroyalty, was disgraced on suspicion of having designed to renounce
his allegiance, and to place the crown of Naples on his own head; and he
died in prison.
Whether the safety of Venice had really been endangered or not by the
machinations of Spain, the measures of that power were observed by the
senate with a watchful and jealous eye; and, for many years, the policy
of the republic was constantly employed in endeavours to counteract the
projects of the house of Austria. In 1619, the Venetians perceived with
violent alarm that the court of Madrid, under pretence of protecting the
Catholics of the Valtelline against their rulers, the Protestants of the
Grison confederation, was labouring to acquire the possession of that
valley, which, by connecting the Milanese states with the Tyrol, would
cement the dominions of the Spanish and German dynasties of the Austrian
family. The establishment of this easy communication was particularly
dangerous for the Venetians, because it would envelop their states, from
the Lisonzo to the Po, with an unbroken chain of hostile posts, and
would intercept all direct intercourse with Savoy and the territories of
France. The senate eagerly therefore negotiated the league between these
last two powers and their republic, which, in 1623, was followed by the
Grison war against the house of Austria. This contest produced little
satisfactory fruits for the Venetians; and it did not terminate before
the Grisons, though they recovered their sovereignty over the Valtelline,
had themselves embraced the party of Spain.
[Sidenote: [1619-1645 A.D.]]
The Grison war had not closed, when Venice was drawn, by her systematic
opposition to the Spanish power, into a more important quarrel--that of
the Mantuan Succession, in which she of course espoused the cause of the
Gonzaga of Nevers. In this struggle the republic, who sent an army of
twenty thousand men into the field on her Lombard frontiers, experienced
nothing but disgrace; and the senate were but too happy to find their
states left, by the Peace of Cherasco in 1631, precisely in the same
situation as before the war; while the prince whom they had supported
remained seated on the throne of Mantua. This pacification reconciled
the republic with the house of Austria, and terminated her share in the
Italian wars of the seventeenth century. Her efforts to promote the
deliverance of the peninsula from the Spanish power can scarcely be said
to have met with success; nor was the rapid decline of that monarchy,
which had already commenced, hastened, perhaps, by her hostility. But she
had displayed remarkable energy in the policy of her counsels; and the
recovery of her own particular independence was at least triumphantly
effected. So completely were her pretensions to the sovereignty of
the Adriatic maintained that, when in the year 1630, just before the
conclusion of the Mantuan War, a princess of the Spanish dynasty wished
to pass by sea from Naples to Trieste, to espouse the son of the emperor,
the senator refused to allow the Spanish squadron to escort her, as an
infringement upon their right of excluding every foreign armament from
those waters; but they gallantly offered their own fleet for her service.
The Spanish government at first rejected the offer; but the Venetians,
says Giannone, boldly declared that, if the Spaniards were resolved to
prefer a trial of force to their friendly proposal, the infanta must
fight her way to her wedding through fire and smoke. The haughty court of
Madrid was compelled to yield; and the Venetian admiral, Antonio Pisani,
then gave the princess a convoy in splendid bearing to Trieste with a
squadron of light galleys.
_Venetian Wars with the Turks_
[Sidenote: [1645-1657 A.D.]]
Throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century, the affairs of
Venice had little connection with those of the older Italian states; and
in tracing the annals of the republic, our attention is wholly diverted
to the Eastern theatre of her struggles against the Ottoman power. It was
a sudden and overwhelming aggression which first broke the long interval
of peace between the Turkish and Venetian governments. Under pretence
of taking vengeance upon the knights of Malta, for the capture of some
Turkish vessels, the Porte fitted out an enormous expedition; and 348
galleys and other vessels of war, with an immense number of transports,
having on board a land-force of fifty thousand men, issued from the
Dardanelles with the ostensible design of attacking the stronghold of
the order of St. John (1645). But instead of making sail for Malta, the
fleet of the sultan steered for the shores of Candia; and unexpectedly,
and without any provocation, the Turkish army disembarked on that island.
The Venetians, although the senate had conceived some uneasiness on the
real destination of the Ottoman expedition, were little prepared for
resistance; but they defended themselves against this faithless surprise
with remarkable courage, and even with desperation. During a long war of
twenty-five years, the most ruinous which they had ever sustained against
the infidels, the Venetian senate and all classes of their subjects
displayed a zealous energy and a fortitude worthy of the best days of
their republic. But the resources of Venice were no longer what they
had been in the early ages of her prosperity; and although the empire
of the sultans had declined from the meridian of its power, the contest
was still too disproportionate between the fanatical and warlike myriads
of Turkey and the limited forces of a maritime state. The Venetians,
perhaps, could not withdraw from the unequal conflict with honour; but
the prudent senate might easily foresee its disastrous result.
The first important operation of the Turkish army in Candia was the
siege of Canea, one of the principal cities of the island. Before the
end of the first campaign, the assailants had entered that place by
capitulation; but so gallant was the defence that, although the garrison
was composed only of two or three thousand native militia, twenty
thousand Turks are said to have fallen before the walls. Meanwhile, at
Venice, all orders had rivalled each other in devotion and pecuniary
sacrifices to preserve the most valuable colony of the state; and
notwithstanding the apathy of Spain, the disorders of France and the
empire, and other causes, which deprived the republic of the efficient
support of Christendom against a common enemy, the senate were able to
reinforce the garrisons of Candia, and to oppose a powerful fleet to the
infidels. The naval force of the republic was still indeed very inferior
in numbers to that of the Moslems; but this inferiority was compensated
by the advantages of skill and disciplined courage; and throughout the
war the offensive operations of the Venetians on the waves strikingly
displayed their superiority in maritime science and conduct. For many
successive years, the Venetian squadrons assumed and triumphantly
maintained their station, during the seasons of active operations, at
the mouth of the Dardanelles, and blockaded the straits and the port
of Constantinople. The Mussulmans constantly endeavoured with furious
perseverance to remove the shame of their confinement by an inferior
force; but they were almost always defeated. The naval trophies of Venice
were swelled by many brilliant victories, but by five in particular:
in 1649 near Smyrna; in 1651 near Paros; in 1655 at the passage of the
Dardanelles; and, in the two following years, at the same place. In
these encounters, the exploits of the patrician families of Morosini, of
Grimani, of Mocenigo emulated the glorious deeds of their illustrious
ancestors; and their successes gave temporary possession to the republic
of some ports in Dalmatia, and of several islands in the Archipelago.
But, notwithstanding the devotion and courage of the Venetians on their
own element, and their desperate resistance in the fortresses of Candia,
the war in that island was draining the life-blood of the republic,
without affording one rational hope of ultimate success. The vigilance of
the Venetian squadrons could not prevent the Turks from feeding their
army in Candia with desultory and perpetual reinforcements of janissaries
and other troops from the neighbouring shore of the Morea; and whenever
tempests, or exhaustion, or the overwhelming strength of the Ottoman
armaments compelled the republican fleet to retire into port, the numbers
of the invading army were swollen by fresh thousands. The exhaustless
stream of the Ottoman population was directed with unceasing flow
towards the scene of contest: the Porte was contented to purchase the
acquisition of Candia by the sacrifice of hecatombs of human victims. To
raise new resources, the Venetian senate were reduced to the humiliating
expedient of offering the dignity of admission into their body and
the highest offices of state to public sale: to obtain the continued
means of succouring Candia, they implored the aid of all the powers of
Europe. As the contest became more desperate, their entreaties met with
general attention; and almost every Christian state afforded them a few
reinforcements. But these were never simultaneous or numerous; and though
they arrested the progress of the infidels, they only protracted the
calamitous struggle.
[Sidenote: [1648-1669 A.D.]]
In 1648 the Turkish army had penetrated to the walls of Candia, the
capital of the island; and for twenty years they kept that city in a
continued state of siege. But it was only in the year 1666 that the
assaults of the infidels attained their consummation of vigour, by the
debarkation of reinforcements which raised their army to seventy thousand
men, and on the arrival of Akhmet Kiupergli, the famous Ottoman vizir,
to assume in person the direction of their irresistible force. This
able commander was opposed by a leader in no respect inferior to him,
Francesco Morosini, captain-general of the Venetians; and thenceforth
the defence of Candia was signalised by prodigies of desperate valour,
which exceed all belief. But we, in these days, are surprised to find
that the Turks, in the direction of their approaches, and the employment
of an immense battering train, showed a far superior skill to that of the
Christians. The details of the siege of Candia belong to the history of
the military art; but the general reader will best imagine the obstinacy
of the defence from the fact that, in six months, the combatants
exchanged thirty-two general assaults and seventeen furious sallies; that
above six hundred mines were sprung; and that four thousand Christians
and twenty thousand Mussulmans perished in the ditches and trenches of
the place.
The most numerous and the last reinforcements received by the Venetians
was six thousand French troops, despatched by Louis XIV under the dukes
of Beaufort and Navailles. The characteristic rashness of their nation
induced these commanders, contrary to the advice of Morosini, to hazard
an imprudent sortie, in which they were totally defeated, and the former
of these noblemen slain. After this disaster, no entreaty of Morosini
could prevent the duke of Navailles from abandoning the defence of the
city, with a precipitation as great as that which had provoked the
calamity. The French re-embarked; the other auxiliaries followed their
example; and Morosini was left with a handful of Venetians among a mass
of blackened and untenable ruins. Thus deserted, after a glorious though
hopeless resistance which has immortalised his name, Francesco Morosini
ventured on his sole responsibility to conclude a treaty of peace with
the vizir, which the Venetian senate, notwithstanding their jealousy of
such unauthorised acts in their officers, rejoiced to confirm. The whole
island of Candia, except two or three ports, was surrendered to the
Turks; the republic preserved her other possessions in the Levant; and
the war was thus terminated by the event of a siege, in the long course
of which the incredible number of 120,000 Turks and 30,000 Christians are
declared to have perished (1669).
[Sidenote: [1669-1687 A.D.]]
Notwithstanding the unfortunate issue of this war, the Venetian republic
had not come off without honour from an unequal struggle, which had been
signalised by ten naval victories and by one of the most stubborn and
brilliant defences recorded in history. Although, therefore, a prodigious
expenditure of blood and treasure had utterly drained the resources of
the republic, her courage was unsubdued, and her pride was even augmented
by the events of the contest. The successes of the infidels had inspired
less terror than indignant impatience and thirst of revenge; and the
senate watched in secret for the first favourable occasion of retaliating
upon the Mussulmans. After the Venetian strength had been repaired by
fifteen years of uninterrupted repose and prosperous industry, this
occasion of vengeance was found, in the war which the Porte had declared
against the empire in 1682. An offensive league was signed between the
emperor, the king of Poland, the czar of Muscovy, and the Venetians. The
principal stipulation of this alliance was that each party should be
guaranteed in the possession of its future conquests from the infidels;
and the republic immediately fitted out a squadron of twenty-four sail of
the line, and about fifty galleys.
There appeared but one man at Venice worthy of the chief command--that
Francesco Morosini, who had so gallantly defended Candia, and whom the
senate and people had rewarded with the most flagrant ingratitude. A
strange and wanton accusation of cowardice was too palpably belied by
every event of his public life to be persisted in, even by the envy
which his eminent reputation had provoked, and by the malignity that
commonly waits upon public services, where they have been unfortunate.
But a second and unprovoked charge of malversation had been followed by
imprisonment. Still, however, devoting himself to his country’s cause,
and forgetting his private injuries, Morosini shamed his enemies by a
noble revenge; and, once more at the head of the Venetian armaments, he
led them to a brilliant career of victory. The chief force of the Ottoman
Empire was diverted to the Austrian War; and the vigorous efforts of the
republican armies were feebly or unsuccessfully resisted by the divided
strength of the Mussulmans. In the first naval campaign, the mouth of the
Adriatic was secured by the reduction of the island of Santa Maura, one
of the keys of that sea; and the neighbouring continent of Greece was
invaded. In three years more, Morosini consummated his bold design of
wresting the whole of the Morea from the infidels. In the course of the
operations in that peninsula, the count of Königsmark, a Swedish officer
who was entrusted with the command of the Venetian land-forces under
the captain-general, inflicted two signal defeats in the field upon the
Turkish armies. Modon, Argos, and Napoli di Romania, the capital of the
Morea, successfully fell after regular sieges.[c]
The year 1687 was not so propitious for the Venetians; nevertheless
Morosini rendered himself master of Lepanto and Corinth. The conquest of
the Morea was nearly completed. At this time the senate voted for the
great captain a bust in bronze, bearing the inscription: “_Francisco
Maurocenico Peloponnesiaco adhuc viventi Senatus_.” This honour redoubled
the ardour of Morosini. After conquering Sparta he turned to Attica,
and laying siege to Athens easily took it. It was in this assault on
Athens that a shell struck the Parthenon, of which the Turks had made a
powder magazine, and reduced that celebrated edifice to ruins. Morosini,
who to skill in war and love of country added admiration for the great
and beautiful, did his best to save what he could of this venerated
relic, and exclaimed: “Oh Athens, protector of Art, to what art thou
reduced!” Thus was ancient Greece avenged on ancient barbarism. But
different rulers had left too deep furrows on this sacred soil to enable
the republic of Venice, already enfeebled, to recall it to life; there
reigned the silence of a past which could never be renewed.
[Sidenote: [1687-1695 A.D.]]
In 1688 the Venetian fleet leaving the Gulf of Ægina operated against
the island of Negropont (Eubœa), but was unable to take it, not only on
account of the resistance offered by the Turks, but because sickness
had begun to decimate the ranks, and a band of Germans fighting for the
republic were withdrawn. The Venetians were however continually gaining
victories in Dalmatia, while the Turks were frequently discomfited in
Hungary; so that the latter began to make proposals for peace. The
demands of the allies, however, were so exorbitant that the negotiations
failed, and the Turks decided to continue the war to the utmost of their
power, a decision which was influenced by the turbulent state of Europe.
Morosini was not discouraged by this new boldness on the part of the
Turks; he had now been raised to the supreme dignity of the dogeship,
and wished by some fresh, great deed to prove that the republic had done
wisely in reposing complete faith in him. He had in his mind the design
of attempting once more the conquest of Negropont; but the forces there
being already under other leaders, he decided to take Monembasia, which
would make the conquest of the Morea quite complete. But the siege had
scarcely begun when Morosini fell ill, and he was obliged to surrender
his command to Girolamo Cornaro and return to Venice. The porte brought
forward fresh proposals for peace, but they were rejected.
The emperor wished to employ all his forces against the French; he was
not disinclined to listen to suggestions for an agreement. Knowing this,
the Venetians understood how much it was to their interest to conduct
carefully the enterprise which they had in hand, so that if peace
should be concluded it might be to their advantage. So Cornaro assailed
Monembasia with great ardour until he finally mastered it, after which
he attacked the Ottoman fleet and defeated it at Mytilene. After the
taking of Vallona, which was dismantled, an illness ended Cornaro’s
honoured life. Domenico Mocenigo who succeeded him in his command was
very different from his predecessor. An attempt made by him to conquer
Candia failed through his cowardice; he was punished by the senate,
who deprived him of his command and begged Morosini to place himself
once more at the head of the army. Morosini, though well on in years,
started at once from Monembasia the 24th of May, 1693. On this occasion,
however, he did nothing very remarkable beyond acquiring possession
of some islands--among others Salamis; partly because the season was
unfavourable, and the Turks were strongly fortified in the Hellenic
territory which still remained to them. He died not long after (January
9th, 1694), and was succeeded in his command by Antonio Zeno.
The new commander, while the troops were gaining fresh victories in
Dalmatia, took Scio; but he afterwards allowed a favourable opportunity
of defeating the Turkish fleet to escape him, and did not even trouble to
keep Scio which he had conquered. He was called upon to give an account
of his conduct, and thrown into prison where he died before sentence
had been pronounced against him. His successor, Alessandro Molin, was
more fortunate. It seemed as though the star of Venice was once more
declining, and the enemy’s forces again became threatening. The Turks,
recovering from the defeats they had sustained, again attempted the
reconquest of the Morea. But not only were they unsuccessful in this,
but Molin determined to meet them off Scio and there gained over them a
signal victory. Equally auspicious for Venice were the years 1696, 1697,
1698, in which last, on September 20th, the purveyor extraordinary,
Girolan Dolfin, gained another naval victory by which supremacy of the
sea was secured to the republic and the dominion of the Archipelago
guaranteed. But already the other great victory of Zenta, within the
military boundaries, was gained by Prince Eugene of Savoy on September
11th; and as the Turks lost their grand vizir, seventeen pashas, thirty
thousand soldiers dead and three thousand prisoners, the sultan was
convinced that the only thing which remained for him to do was to sue
once more for peace, the more so as Cornale, who succeeded Molin as
commander, had in various encounters defeated the Ottoman army and,
closing the passage of the Dardanelles, had several times reduced
Constantinople to starvation. The Christian powers were not this time
deaf to the request of the sultan. They perceived the necessity of making
peace with the East, since the hopes and fears growing out of the war of
the Spanish Succession had given rise to contentions of all kinds among
the three cabinets.
[Sidenote: [1695-1699 A.D.]]
Through the mediation of England and Holland--after the overcoming of
many difficulties brought forward principally by the Venetians, who
feared that they might lose in peace what they had gained in war, or
that they would not receive from the empire, a rival power, all due
regard for their interests--on the 13th of November, 1693, the imperial
plenipotentiaries, with those of Poland, Russia, Venice, and the Turks,
assembled in congress at Karlowitz, a town on the Danube to the south of
Peterwardein.[d]
By the Treaty of Karlowitz, which the republic, in concert with the
empire, concluded with the Ottoman Porte, Venice retained all her
conquests in the Morea (including Corinth and its isthmus), the islands
of Algina and Santa Maura, and some Dalmatian fortresses which she had
captured; and she restored Athens and her remaining acquisitions on the
Grecian continent (1699).[c]
[Illustration]