ITALY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, 1313-1402
Guelfs and Ghibellines—Equality of parties leads to foreign
intervention—Lewis the Bavarian—John of Bohemia—League against
Mastino della Scala—Walter de Brienne in Florence—Rise of
mercenaries—Foreign and native Condottieri—Joanna I. of
Naples—Succession disputes in Naples—Rome and the Papal
States—Career of Rienzi—Cardinal Albornoz recovers the Papal
States—Return of the Popes to Rome and outbreak of the Great
Schism—Strife of classes and families in Florence—Rising of the
_Ciompi_—Revolution of 1382 and triumph of the oligarchy in
Florence—Rivalry of Venice and Genoa—War of Chioggia—The Visconti in
Milan—Successes of Gian Galeazzo Visconti—His death.
The death of Henry VII. marks the failure of the last serious effort on
the part of a German king to carry out the ideal of [Sidenote: Guelfs
and Ghibellines.] Dante’s _De Monarchia_ by establishing an efficient
monarchy in Italy. A few years earlier the Papacy, which had done more
than any other power to thwart the imperial pretensions, had almost
deliberately weakened its authority by transferring its residence to the
banks of the Rhône. It seemed as if Italy might for a time be freed from
the rivalry of the two claimants to universal rule, whose quarrel had
done so much to cause discord and anarchy in the peninsula. But it is
one of the numerous anomalies of Italian history that the factions of
Guelfs and Ghibellines continue their feuds with the same vigour and
animosity as in the days when each had a substantial cause to fight for.
Yet beneath these feuds we can trace a growing undercurrent of political
interests and of selfish aggrandisement, which gradually led to the
absorption of the lesser states by their more powerful neighbours, and
ultimately to the formation of the five greater powers whose rivalry
fills the history of the next century. The example was set by Venice,
[Sidenote: Venetian policy.] whose geographical position removed her
from the main current of party strife, while her interests were more
strictly defined than those of any other state. In the east she had to
maintain and extend her trade and her influence against the rivalry of
Genoa; and she had also to face the serious problems raised by the
steady decline of the Eastern Empire and the constant aggressions of the
Turks. In the west she had not yet acquired any territory on the
mainland, but two pressing interests compelled her to keep a watchful
eye on the politics of Lombardy. She could not with safety allow any
continental power to obtain complete control of the Alpine passes
through which Venetian merchandise found its way to the markets of
Central Europe. Still less could she neglect the imperative need of
securing supplies of food. Built upon the small islands of the lagoons,
she could not possibly raise enough produce to feed her citizens, and
was necessarily dependent upon importations from eastern Lombardy or
Dalmatia. If a hostile power could cut off these supplies, Venice must
be speedily starved into surrender. This double interest forced Venice
to play a more prominent part in Italian politics than her isolated
position seemed to warrant, and in the end impelled her to join in the
scramble for territory on the mainland.
With the exception of Venice, all the Italian states were more or less
involved in the strife of factions. In the south [Sidenote: Balance of
parties.] Robert of Naples, relying upon Papal and French support, still
held the Guelf leadership, and still aimed, like his grandfather, at
converting this leadership into a kingdom of Italy. But the Angevin
power was no longer what it had been in the days of Charles I. The
Sicilian Vespers had given Sicily to a hostile dynasty, and the Popes in
Avignon were less valuable allies than their predecessors in Rome. In
the north lay the main strength of the Ghibelline party. Despots, like
Matteo Visconti in Milan and Cangrande della Scala in Verona, were
rapidly overthrowing the republican independence of the Lombard cities,
and these men had no legal basis for their authority save their
appointment as imperial vicars. Between Naples and Lombardy lay the
Papal States and Tuscany. In the former, the Popes continued to employ
what authority they could wield through their legates on the Guelf and
Angevin side. But the decline of their direct authority led to the rise
of petty despots in cities which were nominally papal fiefs, and these
despots, desiring the maximum of independence for themselves, naturally
leaned towards Ghibellinism. In Tuscany there was also a marked
division. Florence was the head of a group of communes which retained
republican institutions and were ardently Guelf in sympathy. But Pisa,
also a republic, was equally resolute on the Ghibelline side.
On the whole the two parties were so evenly matched in strength, that it
was difficult for either to resist the temptation of trying to turn the
balance in its own favour by [Sidenote: Foreign intervention in Italy.]
calling in foreign assistance. It is true that a number of writers,
including Sismondi, have represented the Guelfs as the national and the
Ghibellines as the anti-national party. But this view involves both a
misconception of the mediæval empire, and also the anachronism of
assuming a sense of nationality to exist in Italy at a time when no such
idea was possible. The only sentiment which could vie with devotion to
party was patriotism; but patriotism beyond the bounds of his own city
was as unknown to a citizen of Florence or Milan as it was to an
Athenian or a Spartan in the days of Greek independence. Robert of
Naples was as much a foreigner to a native of Lombardy or Tuscany as
Lewis the Bavarian, and the king of France was much more so. As long as
party spirit was the strongest force in Italy, we can trace a succession
of appeals for foreign intervention: and when party spirit finally gave
way to the rivalry of state with state, this intervention grew into
conquest and occupation.
Henry VII. in the last struggle before his death had clearly and
correctly perceived that the key to the situation was in [Sidenote:
Struggle in Tuscany.] Tuscany, that if the Ghibelline cause could
triumph in that province the overthrow of the Guelfs might be
confidently expected. And not long after his death the desired state of
things seemed not unlikely to be realised. One of the most famous
adventurers of the age, Castruccio Castracani, who had risen to
prominence by his military ability, made himself lord of Lucca and there
became a formidable neighbour to Florence. In 1325 he reduced the
intermediate town of Pistoia, and defeated the Florentine forces at
Altopascio. So terrified were the Florentines that they resolved to
sacrifice their independence as the price of safety and the victory of
their party. They offered the lordship of the city to Robert of Naples,
who accepted it for his only son, Charles of Calabria. The progress of
Castruccio was checked, and the appearance of Neapolitan forces in
Tuscany impelled the Ghibelline leaders to call in the assistance of
Lewis of Bavaria (_vide_ p. 104). Lewis [Sidenote: Lewis the Bavarian in
Italy.] entered Italy in 1327, but his coming brought little real gain
to his allies. In Milan he imprisoned his host, Galeazzo Visconti, and
restored to the citizens a mockery of republican independence. Pisa, in
spite of her Ghibelline traditions, stood a month’s siege before she
would open her gates to a prince who might hand her over as a reward to
his chief supporter Castruccio Castracani. No attempt was made to attack
the Duke of Calabria in Florence, and Lewis hurried on to Rome. There he
was crowned emperor. John XXII. was deposed as a heretic, and an
Antipope was elected. Castruccio was formally created Duke of Lucca,
Pistoia, and Volterra. But the news came that the Florentines had
captured Pistoia by stratagem, and Castruccio had to hurry north for the
defence of his duchy. He was indignant that Lewis had given the lordship
of Pisa to the empress, and in defiance of imperial authority he took
measures to secure his own rule in the city. From Pisa he advanced to a
successful siege of Pistoia, but he died almost immediately after
(September 3, 1328) of a fever contracted in the trenches.
The death of Castruccio and the humiliating failure of Lewis the
Bavarian, who was forced to evacuate Rome in the autumn of 1328,
deprived the Ghibellines of the advantages which they had secured in the
early part of the year. Lucca, which had threatened to subdue both
Florence and Pisa, became a prize for which many states and adventurers
contended. But the Guelfs did not profit as much as might have been
expected from the disasters of their opponents. Charles of Calabria,
having served the purpose of the Florentines by saving them from
Castruccio, died on November 9, 1328, and Florence recovered her
independence. Robert of Naples, profoundly discouraged by the death of
his only son, abandoned most of his ambitious projects and ceased to
interfere in the politics of northern Italy. Soon afterwards the emperor
found it necessary to leave Italy in order to look after his interests
in Germany. Before his departure he restored Milan to the rule of Azzo
Visconti, the son of the deposed Galeazzo, who had perished, like
Castruccio, of a disease contracted during the siege of Pistoia.
The departure of Lewis and the inactivity of the Neapolitan king left
the parties in northern Italy to fight out their quarrels without
foreign aid. The Ghibellines had lost their short-lived ascendency in
Tuscany, but they were still omnipotent on the Lombard plain. By far the
most powerful Ghibelline prince at this time was [Sidenote: Power of
Mastino della Scala.] Mastino della Scala, who in 1329 had succeeded his
uncle Cangrande in the government of Verona. Cangrande, a typical
Italian despot in his combination of relentless cruelty with the
patronage of letters, had established a strong territorial power in
eastern Lombardy. He had forced Marsilio Carrara to govern Padua as his
lieutenant, while he had brought into direct submission the towns of
Vicenza, Feltre, Belluno, and Treviso, and was thus enabled to control
the most important eastern passes through the Alps. Mastino inherited
his uncle’s ambition with his territories, and on receiving an appeal
for aid from the Ghibelline exiles of Brescia, he eagerly seized the
pretext for laying siege to that city. This aggression led to the most
interesting and unique instance of foreign intervention in Italy. John
of Bohemia [Sidenote: John of Bohemia.] (_vide_ p. 18) happened to be at
the moment on the Italian borders at Trent, negotiating the marriage of
his second son with the heiress of Tyrol, Margaret Maultasch (_vide_ p.
107). He had never taken part in Italian politics, but he enjoyed a
brilliant reputation in Europe, and there was much in his position to
attract the attention of the Italians. He was known to be on the most
intimate terms with the Pope and the French king, both patrons of the
Guelf cause. At the same time, as the son of Henry VII., he had strong
claims on the allegiance of the Ghibellines. If any man could act as a
mediator in the party feuds of Italy, it was the head of the house of
Luxemburg.
To King John the besieged Brescians appealed for assistance, and offered
in return the sovereignty over the city. [Sidenote: Successes of John in
Italy.] The prospect of a new field for adventure was more than John
could resist. He ordered levies to be collected in Bohemia, and warned
Mastino della Scala to desist from attacking a city which owned his
lordship. Mastino obeyed on condition that the Ghibelline exiles should
be restored; and this promise, to the great chagrin of the dominant
party in Brescia, the king fulfilled. On his entry into the city
(December 31, 1330) John announced that he would belong to no party,
that his one aim was to restore peace and justice, and that he hoped
that before long there would be no more Guelfs and Ghibellines. The
immediate effect of such unprecedented language was almost magical. The
Italians, exhausted with continual party warfare, welcomed as a
protecting angel the prince who promised impartiality. One after another
the cities of northern Italy, Bergamo, Cremona, Pavia, Vercelli, and
Novara, placed themselves under the rule of John of Bohemia. Even Azzo
Visconti, the powerful lord of Milan, found it advisable to acknowledge
the suzerainty of the king, and to accept the title of royal vicar. Soon
afterwards John’s dominions were extended southwards by the submission
of Parma, Reggio, Modena, and the unfortunate Lucca, which had been
tossed from hand to hand since the death of Castruccio Castracani. In
every case the exiles, of either faction, were allowed to return, and
the government was established without any regard to party divisions.
For a moment it seemed that the spontaneous action of the Italians
themselves might create the monarchy that had so long seemed an
impossible dream.
But John’s success was too sudden to be lasting. Party enmities were too
deeply rooted to be torn up at the first [Sidenote: Opposition to John.]
effort. Men began to ask in whose name had he come; did he represent the
Emperor or the Pope? An appeal to these potentates produced only
negative answers. John XXII. was indignant with the king for restoring
the Ghibelline exiles in Guelf strongholds; Lewis was jealous that a
rival should succeed where he had failed. And John had enemies both in
Italy and outside. Mastino della Scala felt himself threatened by the
rise of a conterminous principality in Lombardy, and Florence was afraid
lest a power which extended so far as Lucca might endanger her own
independence. In the north the dukes of Austria and the kings of Poland
and Hungary formed a league against him, and John had to cross the Alps
for the defence of Bohemia. His absence only hastened the destruction of
a dominion that rested on too shallow a foundation to endure. If he had
succeeded for a moment in uniting Guelfs and Ghibellines under his rule,
a still more wonderful union was brought about for his overthrow. In
1332 the strange spectacle was seen of a close league of Florence and
Naples with Azzo Visconti, Mastino della Scala, and other Ghibelline
princes of the north. Mastino had already succeeded in capturing
Brescia, and Azzo had seized upon Bergamo and Vercelli. The rest of
John’s possessions were to be partitioned among the allies. Cremona was
to go to Visconti, Parma to Mastino, Modena to the house of Este, Reggio
to the Gonzagas of Mantua, and Lucca to the Florentines.
John of Bohemia had succeeded in dividing the northern league, and had
proceeded to France and Avignon in order to secure the support of Philip
VI. and the Pope. He now hurried back to the aid of his son Charles,
whom he had left in charge of his Italian dominions. But he found that
he had no sufficient native support to [Sidenote: Collapse of his
power.] enable him to face the hostile coalition. The two parties whom
he had tried to conciliate were now united in opposition. He had few
real interests at stake in Italy, whither he had been mainly attracted
by the love of adventure. Instead of prosecuting the struggle, he sold
his prerogatives in each town to the highest bidder he could find, and
quitted Italy with his son in 1333. The episode is interesting as
throwing light on the character of John, and on the impulsive character
of the Italians, but in an indirect way it was of unforeseen importance.
The future emperor, Charles IV., never forgot the experience of Italian
politics which he had obtained during the two years in which he acted as
his father’s deputy, and one of the dominant influences which shaped his
subsequent policy in Germany (see chapter vi.), was a desire to save
that country from falling into the same condition as Italy.
The chief gainers by the overthrow of John of Bohemia were the
Ghibelline leaders of the confederacy against him, [Sidenote: League
against Mastino della Scala.] and especially Mastino della Scala, who
not only took his own share of the plunder, but refused to give up
Lucca, which should have fallen to Florence. It was reckoned by
contemporaries that only one European prince, the king of France, drew a
larger revenue from his subjects than the lord of Verona. But the rapid
growth of his power only served to excite the enmity of his neighbours.
Venice was impelled by self-interest to attack a potentate who not only
dominated the district from which the republic drew its most available
supplies of food, but also commanded the all-important Alpine passes.
Florence was eager to punish the ill-faith which withheld from her the
coveted possession of Lucca. Marsilio Carrara was tempted by the
prospect of recovering the independent lordship of Padua, while Azzo
Visconti and the other Lombard despots welcomed the opportunity of
destroying the ascendency in Lombardy which for the last decade had been
enjoyed by the Scaligers. The result was the formation of a powerful
league which Mastino was unable to resist. In 1338 he was forced to
conclude a treaty which put an end to the preponderance of Verona in the
north. Venice received Treviso, with the adjacent territory, Castelbaldo
and Bassano, thus securing a land fertile in corn and cattle, and at the
same time access to the foot of the Alps. The Carrara dynasty was
established in Padua as a buffer between Venice and the growing power of
the Visconti, who seized Brescia and Bergamo. Only Verona and Vicenza
remained to the house of Scala.
But the unfortunate Florentines were again duped of the reward which
should have attended their alliance with the Ghibelline princes. Lucca
was indeed ceded by Mastino for a money payment, but the Pisans
intervened to prevent such an addition to the dominions of their rivals.
In 1341 the Pisans defeated the forces of Florence, and in the next year
they obtained the surrender of Lucca. This disappointment was the last
of a series of disasters which weakened and discredited the government
of the _popolo grasso_ in Florence (_vide_ p. 32). In their chagrin the
citizens resorted to the expedient, so familiar in the mediæval history
of Italy, of intrusting a temporary dictatorship to a foreigner. Their
choice fell upon Walter [Sidenote: Walter de Brienne in Florence, 1343.]
de Brienne, who had previously been active in Florence as a follower of
Charles of Calabria. His ancestors had gained the duchy of Athens at the
time when the Fourth Crusade had given to western princes the dominion
of the eastern empire, and though his father had been forced to resign
in 1312, Walter still called himself Duke of Athens. The temporary
military and judicial authority intrusted to the duke failed to satisfy
his ambition, and he set himself to establish a permanent despotism in
Florence. It was not difficult for him to gain over the _grandi_ and the
lower classes, who were jealous of the monopoly of power claimed by the
wealthy burgesses. With their aid a parliament was convoked which
insisted on voting the signory to the duke for his life. But ten months
of arbitrary rule sufficed to disgust the most liberty-loving people in
Italy, and the nobles and lesser guilds combined with the greater guilds
to overthrow the despotism which had risen through the jealousy of
classes. Walter de Brienne ordered his hired horsemen to ‘course the
city,’ _i.e._ to gallop along the principal streets and disperse the
insurgents. But the citizens had erected barricades to bar the progress
of the cavalry, and the duke, besieged in the Palazzo Vecchio, was
compelled to abdicate. His fall was followed by concessions to the
_grandi_ who had taken an active part in the struggle. The Ordinances of
Justice [Sidenote: Constitutional changes.] (_vide_ p. 32) were
repealed, and the office of gonfalonier, whose original function was to
enforce the ordinances, was abolished. The government was to be
intrusted to twelve priors, three from each quarter of the city; and of
these three, one was to be a noble and two burghers. Other offices were
also thrown open to the nobles. But the old jealousy of the _grandi_ was
too deeply seated to allow this arrangement to be permanent. A rising of
the mob forced the four noble priors to quit the _palazzo_. The nobles
took up arms to defend their cause, but the civil strife was fatal to
the power of their whole class. The ordinances, and with them the office
of gonfalonier, were revived, and the only permanent result of the
crisis was the extension of political privileges to the _popolo minuto_,
or members of the lesser guilds. The number of priors was fixed at
eight, two from each quarter, and half the number were to belong to the
lesser guilds. The gonfalonier was to be chosen alternately from the two
classes of citizens. But while the exclusion of the noble class from
office was rendered permanent, some five hundred members of that class
were freed from its disabilities by being disennobled and ‘raised’ to
the rank of ordinary burghers.
The martial spirit which enabled the Florentines to defeat the schemes
of the Duke of Athens, was by no means common in Italy at the time, and
did not endure long even in Florence. The fourteenth century witnessed a
change in the military system of [Sidenote: Rise of Mercenaries in
Italy.] Italy which was destined to exercise the most vital and lasting
effects upon the history of the peninsula. In the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries the military force of each state had consisted of the male
population of the state organised as a militia. The central
rallying-point of the army was the _carroccio_ or city standard, and the
regiments were arranged according to local divisions, or sometimes
according to the guild organisation of the city. Such a force was the
firmest security for the maintenance of political liberty. But when
despots began to overthrow republican independence in most of the
communes, their first aim was to disarm their subjects, and to procure
troops who had no natural sympathy with the native population. The
example was set by Frederick II., whose government of his southern
kingdom furnished in many ways a model for the imitation of later
rulers. In his struggle with the Popes he incurred great odium by taking
Saracens into his pay. The northern despots tried to secure their power
by enlisting foreign soldiers under their standard. Each of the
successive invasions of Henry VII., Lewis the Bavarian, and John of
Bohemia, left behind a number of German adventurers who were willing to
take Italian pay. These men were formed into body-guards by the Visconti
and other Italian despots, who were thus enabled to disarm their
subjects, and to trample on their liberties. And the republics which
retained their independence soon found it necessary to follow the
example of the princes. The mercenary troops were for the most part
heavy-armed cavalry, and the civic infantry were no match for them in
the open field. The republics would only have courted destruction by
continuing to employ a force which was inadequate for their defence.
Moreover, under the altered conditions of warfare, campaigns were much
longer than when the struggle was decided by a single contest between
the armed populace of two rival cities. The ordinary citizen could no
longer afford to sacrifice his time and his business to do work which he
might pay others to do for him. It was cheaper to be heavily taxed for
the maintenance of a hired force, than to leave the shop or the
counting-house for a protracted campaign. The Florentines soon adopted
the custom of employing mercenaries, and in 1351 commuted personal
service for a money payment. The Venetians, though they employed native
crews and native commanders in their fleet, always hired foreigners to
fight their battles on land. One result of the change was that infantry
was wholly superseded by heavy-armed cavalry, until the general use of
gunpowder, and the intervention of the great powers in Italy, brought
about another great change in the art of war.
At first the mercenary troops in Italy were employed as the body-guard
of a tyrant, or as the standing army of a republic. But as the leaders
of these forces became conscious [Sidenote: Foreign Condottieri.] of
their power, they began to form independent armies, which might live at
the expense of the unwarlike natives, or might acquire wealth by letting
out their services to the highest bidder. The first notable instance of
such an army was in 1343, when a German, Werner, or, as the Italians
called him, Guarnieri, formed the Great Company. He levied contributions
on the states which he entered with his forces, and only occasionally
took part in the Italian wars. The same company, or another with the
same name, appears in 1353 under the command of Fra Moreale, who was
afterwards put to death by Rienzi. When the treaty of Bretigny put an
end for a time to the English wars in France, a new flood of foreign
adventurers poured into Italy, where they formed the White Company under
the famous Englishman, John Hawkwood or Giovanni Acuto. He was
distinguished among _condottieri_ for the fidelity with which he
performed his contracts, and the Florentines expressed their sense of
his services by giving him a tomb and a monument in the _Duomo_.
In the earlier part of the fourteenth century the majority of the
mercenary soldiers and their commanders were foreigners; in the later
part of the century their place was to a large extent taken by native
troops and _condottieri_. As the smaller communes were gradually
deprived of liberty and of an independent political life by the
extension of the larger states, the more energetic and [Sidenote: Native
Condottieri.] ambitious citizens were only too glad to find an opening
for their activity in the career of arms. In 1379 the Company of St.
George, into which none but Italians were admitted, was founded by
Alberigo da Barbiano, a noble of Romagna. In this company were trained
Braccio and Sforza, the founders of the two great schools of Italian
commanders in the fifteenth century. That the native troops could be as
efficient as the foreigners whom they superseded was proved in 1401,
when a German army in the service of the Emperor Rupert was routed by an
Italian force which had been hired by the Duke of Milan.
Whatever semblance of unity had been given to Italian history by the
continuance of party feuds disappeared altogether in the later part of
the fourteenth century, when party allegiance was finally subordinated
to the desire of each state for territorial aggrandisement.
Chronological arrangement becomes impossible, and all that can be done
is to briefly point out the most notable incidents in the history of the
greater states. It will be convenient to begin this survey with the
south of the peninsula, and to proceed northwards.
The ambition of Robert of Naples had been moderated by the death of his
only son in 1328, and though he continued [Sidenote: Naples.] to support
the Popes in their quarrel with Lewis the Bavarian, he took very little
part in Italian politics in his later years. The subsequent history of
Naples turns for the most part upon dynastic rivalry, and demands an
accurate knowledge of genealogy.[9] Robert himself had succeeded his
father in 1309 to the exclusion of the stronger hereditary claim of his
nephew, Carobert of Hungary. Carobert died in 1342, leaving two sons,
Lewis, king of Hungary and afterwards of Poland, and Andrew. Robert, who
died in the following year, had no direct descendants except two
granddaughters, Joanna and Maria, the children of Charles of Calabria.
In the hope of averting strife with the Hungarian branch Robert, before
his death, arranged a marriage between Joanna and her cousin Andrew.
[Sidenote: Joanna I. and Andrew.] But this expedient failed to produce
the desired result. Joanna claimed the right of succession to her
grandfather, and wished to treat her husband as a mere prince-consort.
Andrew, however, insisted on the priority of his own claim as the male
representative of the eldest line. The quarrel was complicated by the
action of two descendants of Robert’s younger brothers, Lewis of
Taranto, who was suspected of being Joanna’s lover, and Charles of
Durazzo, who had married Maria, the queen’s younger sister. Both were
aspirants for the succession, and while Lewis sided with Joanna, Charles
encouraged the Hungarian prince to assert his claims. At last, in 1345,
Europe was scandalised by the news that Andrew had been murdered.
Suspicion rested from the first upon Joanna and Lewis of Taranto, whom
she subsequently married, though it is as difficult to furnish absolute
proof of their guilt as in the superficially similar case of Mary Stuart
and Bothwell. Lewis of Hungary, however, considered himself justified in
accusing Joanna of his brother’s murder, and took measures to exact
vengeance and, [Sidenote: Lewis of Hungary invades Naples.] at the same
time, to assert his own claim. His expedition was delayed for two years
by the intrigues of Pope Clement VI., by the struggle in Germany between
Lewis the Bavarian and Charles IV., and by the opposition of the
Venetians, always quarrelling with Hungary for the possession of
Dalmatia. It was not till the end of 1347 that Lewis was able to make
his way overland to Naples. Many of the nobles, including Charles of
Durazzo, rallied to his cause, and Joanna was forced to fly to Provence.
Lewis was crowned king of Naples, and one of his first acts was to put
to death Charles of Durazzo, nominally on a charge of complicity in
Andrew’s death, but probably because he might prove a dangerous
candidate for the throne. The outbreak of the Black Death and
difficulties in Hungary compelled Lewis to return northwards, and Joanna
seized the opportunity to attempt the recovery of her kingdom. To raise
money she sold Avignon to Clement VI., and it remained a papal
possession till its annexation to France in 1791. Joanna’s return to
Naples was followed by a desultory war with the Hungarian party. Lewis
returned to uphold his cause in 1350, but he found it practically
impossible to hold a kingdom so distant from Hungary, and in 1351 he
agreed to a treaty. The question of Joanna’s guilt was referred to the
Pope, and on his decision in her favour Lewis resigned the Neapolitan
crown, magnanimously refusing the money compensation which was offered
him by the papal award.
For the next thirty years the history of Naples was comparatively
uneventful. Joanna married two more husbands [Sidenote: Succession to
Joanna I.] after the death of Lewis of Taranto, but had no children to
survive her. As she grew old the question of the succession became of
pressing importance. Her nearest relative was her niece, Margaret, the
daughter of her sister Maria and the Charles of Durazzo who had been put
to death in 1348. The latter’s brother, Lewis, had left a son, another
Charles of Durazzo, who, in 1370, married his cousin Margaret, and was
afterwards treated by Joanna as her heir. But in 1378 the Great Schism
in the Papacy began, and the queen and her nephew took opposite sides.
Joanna was the first and most ardent supporter of Clement VII., whereas
Charles of Durazzo, who had been trained and employed by his kinsman,
Lewis of Hungary, espoused the cause of Urban VI. The result was a
violent quarrel, and Urban encouraged Charles, in 1381, to take up arms
against Joanna instead of waiting for the succession. Determined to
disinherit her undutiful kinsman, and, at the same time, to gain the
support of France, Joanna offered to [Sidenote: The second House of
Anjou.] adopt as her heir Louis of Anjou, brother of Charles V. of
France. Louis could trace descent from the Neapolitan house, as his
great-grandfather, Charles of Valois, had married a daughter of Charles
II. of Naples. The offer was accepted, and from it arose the claim to
Naples of the second house of Anjou—a claim which distracted southern
Italy for a century, and ultimately passing to the French king, became
the pretext for the famous invasion of Charles VIII. in 1494. But for
the moment Joanna’s action brought her little good. Before aid could
come from France she was taken prisoner by Charles, and died in
captivity (May 22, 1382). The successful [Sidenote: Charles III. and
Louis I.] prince was crowned as Charles III. of Naples. His rival, Louis
of Anjou, seized one of Joanna’s dominions, the county of Provence,
which remained in the hands of his descendants. He also led a formidable
army to enforce his claim upon Naples, but he was not successful, and
died in 1385 without gaining more than the mere title of king.
Charles III. was now firmly established in Naples, but the disturbances
in Hungary after the death of Lewis the Great induced him to assert a
claim to that kingdom. A momentary success was followed by his
assassination (February 24, 1386). Hungary fell into the hands of
Sigismund, and civil war broke out in Naples between the supporters of
Ladislas, [Sidenote: Ladislas and Louis II.] Charles III.’s son, and
Louis II. of Anjou, who inherited the claims of his father. There is no
need to trace the details of the struggle, which after many fluctuations
of success ended in the victory of Ladislas. For a few years in the next
century Ladislas was one of the most influential and active princes of
Italy. On his premature death in 1414, the crown of Naples passed to his
sister Joanna II., in whom the direct line of the original Angevin house
of Naples came to an end.
It would be tedious, and perhaps impossible, to narrate in detail the
history of the Papal States during the residence of [Sidenote: Rome and
the Papal States.] the Popes at Avignon and the subsequent schism. Under
the strongest of the preceding Popes, there had never been any organised
central government in the territories which owned their sway. The Popes
had been the suzerains rather than the rulers of the States of the
Church. Every considerable city was either a republic with its own
municipal government, or was subject to a despot who had succeeded in
undermining the communal institutions. Even in Rome itself the bishop
could exercise little direct authority. Over and over again, the
turbulence of the citizens had driven successive Popes to seek a refuge
in some smaller town. In fact, the Romans might easily have shaken off
papal rule altogether but for two considerations. The Popes drew so much
wealth from Latin Christendom that they could afford to levy very light
taxes upon their immediate subjects. And the Romans gained enormous
indirect profit from the crowds of pilgrims and wealthy suitors who were
constantly drawn to the papal court. It is true that this profit was
diverted to Avignon in the fourteenth century, but though this was a
great grievance to the Romans, it was a reason for demanding the return
of the Popes rather than for making the separation permanent. The
government of Rome was in theory republican, but nothing survived from
the ancient republic except its memory and its disorder. A Senate had
been revived in the twelfth century only to prove a complete failure,
and the name of Senator had come to be applied to a temporary
magistrate, who was sometimes elected by the citizens but more often
nominated by the Pope. A central board of thirteen officers, one from
each _rione_ or district of the city, was intrusted with the municipal
administration, but it had little real authority. Every other commune in
Italy had found it necessary to restrict or abolish the privileges of
the feudal nobles. But in Rome the Colonnas, the Orsini, and other noble
families enjoyed the most lawless independence and treated the citizens
with the utmost contempt. The brawls of their retainers filled the
streets with disorder, and it was dangerous for the townspeople to
resist any outrage either on person or on property. The Popes had rarely
been successful in checking the lawlessness of the barons, and now that
the Pope was at a distance from Rome all restraint upon their licence
seemed to be removed.
It was in these circumstances that a momentary revival of order and
liberty was effected by the most extraordinary adventurer of an age that
was prolific in adventurers. [Sidenote: Rienzi.] Cola di Rienzi was born
of humble parents, though he afterwards tried to gratify his own vanity
and to gain the ear of Charles IV. by claiming to be the bastard son of
Henry VII. A wrong which he could not venture to avenge excited his
bitter hostility against the baronage, while the study of Livy and other
classical writers inspired him with regretful admiration for the glories
of ancient Rome. He succeeded in attracting notice by his personal
beauty and by the rather turgid eloquence which was his chief talent. In
1342 he took the most prominent part in an embassy from the citizens to
Clement VI., and though he failed to induce the Pope to return to Rome,
which at that time he seems to have regarded as the panacea for the
evils of the time, he gained sufficient favour at Avignon to be
appointed papal notary. From this time he deliberately set himself to
raise the people to open resistance against their oppressors, while he
disarmed the suspicions of the nobles by intentional buffoonery and
extravagance of conduct. On May 20, 1347, the first blow was struck.
Rienzi with a chosen band of conspirators, and accompanied by the papal
vicar, who had every interest in weakening the baronage, proceeded to
the Capitol, and, amidst the applause of the mob, promulgated the laws
of the _buono stato_. He himself took the title [Sidenote: The ‘good
estate.’] of Tribune in order to emphasise his championship of the lower
classes. The most important of his laws were for the maintenance of
order. Private garrisons and fortified houses were forbidden. Each of
the thirteen districts was to maintain an armed force of a hundred
infantry and twenty-five horsemen. Every port was provided with a
cruiser for the protection of merchandise, and the trade on the Tiber
was to be secured by a river police.
The nobles watched the progress of this astonishing revolution with
impotent surprise. Stefano Colonna, who was [Sidenote: Rienzi’s triumph
and fall.] absent on the eventful day, expressed his scorn of the mob
and their leader. But a popular attack on his palace convinced him of
his error, and forced him to fly from the city. Within fifteen days the
triumph of Rienzi seemed to be complete, when the proudest nobles of
Rome submitted and took an oath to support the new constitution. But the
suddenness of his success was enough to turn a head which was never of
the strongest. The Tribune began to dream of restoring to the Roman
Republic its old supremacy. And for a moment even this dream seemed
hardly chimerical. Europe was really dazzled by the revival of its
ancient capital. Lewis of Hungary and Joanna of Naples submitted their
quarrel to Rienzi’s arbitration. Thus encouraged, he set no bounds to
his ambition. He called upon the Pope and cardinals to return at once to
Rome. He summoned Lewis and Charles, the two claimants to the imperial
dignity, to appear before his throne and submit to his tribunal. His
arrogance was shown in the pretentious titles which he assumed, and in
the gorgeous pomp with which he was accompanied on public and even on
private occasions. On August 15, after bathing in the porphyry font in
which the Emperor Constantine had been baptized, he was crowned with
seven crowns representing the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. His most
loyal admirer prophesied disaster when the Tribune ventured on this
occasion to blasphemously compare himself with Christ. And Rienzi’s
government deteriorated with his personal character. It had at first
been liberal and just; it became arbitrary and even treacherous. His
personal timidity made him at once harsh and vacillating. The heads of
the great families, whom he had invited to a banquet, were seized and
condemned to death on a charge of conspiracy. But a sudden terror of the
possible consequences of his action caused him to relent, and he
released his victims just as they were preparing for execution. His
leniency was as ill-timed as his previous severity. The nobles could no
longer trust him, and their fear was diminished by the weakness which
they despised while they profited by it. They retired from Rome and
concerted measures for the overthrow of their enemy. The first attack,
which was led by Stefano Colonna, was repulsed almost by accident; but
Rienzi, who had shown more cowardice than generalship, disgusted his
supporters by his indecent exultation over the bodies of the slain. And
there was one fatal ambiguity in Rienzi’s position. He had begun by
announcing himself as the ally and champion of the Papacy, and Clement
VI. had been willing enough to stand by and watch the destruction of the
baronage. But the growing independence and the arrogant pretensions of
the Tribune exasperated the Pope. A new legate was despatched to Italy
to denounce and excommunicate Rienzi as a heretic. The latter had no
longer any support to lean upon. When a new attack was threatened, the
people sullenly refused to obey the call to arms. Rienzi had not
sufficient courage to risk a final struggle. On December 15 he abdicated
and retired in disguise from Rome. His rise to power, his dazzling
triumph, and his downfall were all comprised within the brief period of
seven months.
For the next few years Rienzi disappeared from view. According to his
own account he was concealed in a cave in the [Sidenote: Rienzi in
exile.] Apennines, where he associated with some of the wilder members
of the sect of the Fraticelli, and probably imbibed some of their
tenets. Rome relapsed into anarchy, and men’s minds were distracted from
politics by the ravages of the Black Death. The great jubilee held in
Rome in 1350 became a kind of thanksgiving service of those whom the
plague had spared. It is said that Rienzi himself visited the scene of
his exploits without detection among the crowds of pilgrims. But he was
destined to reappear in a more public and disastrous manner. In his
solitude his courage and his ambition revived, and he meditated new
plans for restoring freedom to Rome and to Italy. The allegiance to the
Church, which he had professed in 1347, was weakened by the conduct of
Clement VI. and by the influence of the Fraticelli, and he resolved in
the future to ally himself with the secular rather than with the
ecclesiastical power, with the Empire rather than with the Papacy. In
August 1351 he appeared in disguise in Prague and demanded an audience
of Charles IV. To him he proposed the far-reaching scheme which he had
formed during his exile. The Pope and the whole body of clergy were to
be deprived of their temporal power; the petty tyrants of Italy were to
be driven out; and the emperor was to fix his residence in Rome as the
supreme ruler of Christendom. All this was to be accomplished by Rienzi
himself at his own cost and trouble. Charles IV. listened with some
curiosity to a man whose career had excited such universal interest, but
he was the last man to be carried away by such chimerical suggestions.
The introduction into the political proposals of some of the religious
and communistic ideas of the Fraticelli gave the king a pretext for
committing Rienzi to the Archbishop of Prague for correction and
instruction. The archbishop communicated with the Pope, and on the
demand of Clement VI. Charles agreed to hand Rienzi over to the papal
court on condition that his life should be spared. In 1352 Rienzi was
conveyed to Avignon and thrust into prison. He owed his life perhaps
less to the king’s request than to the opportune death of Clement VI. in
this year.
The new Pope, Innocent VI., was more independent of French control than
his immediate predecessors. The French king was fully occupied with
internal disorders, and with the English war. Thus the Pope was able to
give more attention to Italian politics, which were sufficiently
pressing. The independence and anarchy of the Papal States constituted a
serious problem, but the danger of their subjection to a foreign power
was still more serious. In 1350 the important city of Bologna had been
seized by the Visconti of Milan, and the progress of this powerful
family threatened to absorb the whole of the Romagna. Innocent
determined to resist their encroachments, and at the same time to
restore the papal authority, and in 1353 he intrusted [Sidenote:
Albornoz in Italy.] this double task to Cardinal Albornoz. Albornoz,
equally distinguished as a diplomatist and as a military commander,
resolved to ally the cause of the Papacy with that of liberty. His
programme was to overthrow the tyrants as the enemies both of the people
and of the Popes, and to restore municipal self-government under papal
protection. His attention was first directed to the city of Rome, which,
after many vicissitudes since 1347, had fallen under the influence of a
demagogue named Baroncelli. Baroncelli had revived to some extent the
schemes of Rienzi, but had declared openly against papal rule. To oppose
this new tribune, Albornoz conceived the project of using the influence
of Rienzi, whose rule was now [Sidenote: Rienzi’s return and death,
1354.] regretted by the populace that had previously deserted him. The
Pope was persuaded to release Rienzi from prison and to send him to
Rome, where the effect of his presence was almost magical. The Romans
flocked to welcome their former liberator, and he was reinstalled in
power with the title of Senator, conferred upon him by the Pope. But his
character was not improved by adversity, and his rule was more arbitrary
and selfish than it had been before. The execution of the _condottiere_,
Fra Moreale, was an act of ingratitude as well as of treachery. Popular
favour was soon alienated from a ruler who could no longer command
either affection or respect, and in a mob rising Rienzi was put to death
(October 8, 1354). But his return had served the purpose of Albornoz.
Rome was preserved to the Papacy, and the cardinal [Sidenote: Recovery
of the Papal States.] could proceed in safety with his task of subduing
the independent tyrants of Romagna. Central Italy had not yet witnessed
the general introduction of mercenaries, and the native populations
still fought their own battles. The policy of exciting revolts among the
subject citizens was completely successful, and by 1360 almost the whole
of Romagna had submitted to the papal legate. His triumph was crowned in
this year, when, by skilful use of quarrels among the Visconti princes,
he succeeded in recovering Bologna.
But the successes of Albornoz appeared more like the conquests of a
foreign power than the restoration of a legitimate authority. The long
residence in Avignon had alienated Italian sympathies from [Sidenote:
Return of the Popes to Rome.] the Papacy. The Visconti embarked in open
war with the Popes after the fall of Bologna, and they had many
advantages on their side. The ecclesiastical thunders which had
frightened Lewis the Bavarian into submission had no terrors for Italian
princes. When Bernabo Visconti received a bull of excommunication from
the Pope, he forced the legates to eat the parchment and the leaden
seal. It was evident that nothing but a return to Italy could render
permanent the restored secular authority of the Popes. Urban V., who
succeeded Innocent VI. in 1362, was induced by the arguments of Albornoz
and the personal influence of Charles IV. to disregard the prejudices of
the cardinals, and in 1368 he entered Rome, where he was joined by the
emperor. But Urban was soon discouraged by the death of Albornoz, and
the obvious weakness of imperial support. He had no natural interests in
Italy, which was a foreign country to him, and he found Rome quite as
uncomfortable a place of residence as it had been represented. In 1370
he embarked for Marseilles, and returned to Avignon. His departure had
the most disastrous results. Papal authority was repudiated by the
cities of Romagna, and the Visconti hastened to take advantage of the
altered conditions. Even Gregory XI., who had been chosen by the
cardinals as the least likely candidate to quit Avignon, found it
necessary to follow his predecessor’s example and return to Italy. But
his experience in Rome convinced him that the enterprise was hopeless,
and his departure was only prevented by his death (March, 1378). The
choice of an Italian, Urban VI., as his successor was a partial
concession to the violence [Sidenote: The Schism, 1378-1418.] of the
Roman mob. On the first pretext the French cardinals deserted their
nominee, and the election of a rival Pope, Clement VII., inaugurated the
Great Schism which lasted for forty years. During this period the
temporal authority of the Papacy was again annihilated, and it was not
till the Council of Constance had restored unity in 1418 that its
revival could once more be seriously undertaken.
The history of Florence in the fourteenth century is filled with a
continuous struggle of classes and families for political [Sidenote:
Florence.] ascendency. Though the details of the struggle are
complicated and wearisome, it is necessary to pay some attention to its
general character in order to understand the conditions under which the
later authority of the Medici grew up. The expulsion of the Duke of
Athens had been followed by a settlement by which the _grandi_ were
excluded from political power, which was to be shared between the
members of the greater and the lesser guilds. But as time went on, and
the memory of previous disasters was effaced, the _popolo grasso_ began
to aim at the [Sidenote: Class jealousies.] recovery of their former
preponderance in the city. To propose a direct change of the
constitution might provoke a rising of the artisans, so it was decided
to obtain the desired end by indirect methods. A law of 1301, of which
it was forbidden to propose the revocation under heavy penalties,
decreed that a Ghibelline, or any man suspected of not being a true
Guelf, was to be incapable of holding office. For the carrying out of
this law there grew up the practice of _ammonizio_, which has been
called the ostracism of Florence. If a charge of Ghibellinism were
brought against a man, and supported by six witnesses, who swore to
public report, the priors were bound to admonish the accused, and any
person thus admonished (_ammonito_) was excluded from office. His name
was not placed in the bags, or if it were already included, it was put
on one side when drawn out and another name drawn in its place. This
party device was now employed by the wealthy burghers to recover a
monopoly of power for their class. By systematically bringing a charge
of Ghibellinism against the members of the lesser guilds who were likely
to obtain office, their exclusion could be effected without any open
assertion of disqualification. In carrying out this policy the
plutocrats were aided by the organisation of the _parte Guelfa_ (_vide_
p. 35), which was the stronghold of oligarchical interests within the
republic. The accusations were managed by the captains of the _parte_,
and they could always find the necessary six witnesses. The pretext for
so strict an enforcement of the law against Ghibellinism was found in
the two Italian visits of Charles IV. in 1353 and 1368, though the
emperor did nothing whatever to excite the alarm of the Guelfs.
No sooner had the wealthy burghers won their victory by the abuse of
what should have been a legal proceeding, than they were divided by the
family quarrel of the Albizzi and the Ricci. Both families belonged to
the _popolo grasso_, and [Sidenote: The Albizzi and Ricci.] their feud
had at first none of the political significance which came to be
associated with it. In fact, the Ricci were the first to urge the harsh
enforcement of the anti-Ghibelline laws, hoping to discredit their
opponents, who came originally from the Ghibelline town of Arezzo. But
the Albizzi succeeded in gaining the support of the _parte Guelfa_, and
were thus enabled to turn the tables on their rivals. The _ammonizio_
was as useful a weapon against the Ricci faction as against the _popolo
minuto_. By 1374 the Albizzi and their supporters had got the government
into their hands. But the indiscreet violence of their proceedings
provoked serious opposition. The _ammoniti_, constantly increasing in
number, became more and more formidable. The desire for office, such a
passion among the Florentines, was not merely due to ordinary ambition,
but also to the fact that the taxes were assessed by the arbitrary will
of the state officials. The dominant faction, however, failed to
appreciate the dangers that confronted them, and in seven months of 1377
more than eighty persons were admonished. This recklessness brought
about their ruin. In May 1378, Salvestro de’ Medici, who belonged to the
Ricci party, was drawn as gonfalonier. The bags were so depleted that
the possibility of his selection was foreseen, but his attachment to
Guelf principles was so well known that it was considered unsafe to
accuse him. In his second month of office he proposed a law to lessen
the power of the _parte Guelfa_, and to facilitate the recovery of civic
rights by the _ammoniti_. As the scheme met with opposition in the
council, one of Salvestro’s supporters, Benedetto Alberti, called the
people to arms, and the law was carried under the pressure of mob
violence. The result was an unforeseen revolution. The Ricci had been
driven by common grievances into an alliance with the lesser guilds, but
the [Sidenote: Rising of the Ciompi, 1378.] demand for redress was taken
up by the _Ciompi_, the lowest class of all. They were influenced, not
so much by the wish to obtain political power as by the desire to extort
better terms from their employers. Their movement was half revolution
and half strike. The rising of the mob, which speedily passed beyond the
control of those who had called in its aid, might have destroyed the
foundations of the state but for the action of a poor wool-comber,
Michel Lando, who was raised to the office of gonfalonier by the
accident of popular caprice. He succeeded in suppressing disorder, while
he satisfied the more rational demands of his own class. A number of new
guilds were formed of artisans who had hitherto been unorganised. Of the
eight priors, three were to be taken from the _arti maggiori_, three
from the _arti minori_, and two from the new guilds. After effecting
this settlement, Lando, with a modesty as rare as the untaught
statesmanship he had displayed, resigned his office. His retirement left
the chief power in the hands of the party which had started the
movement, but had been unable to control its course. Salvestro de’
Medici had disappeared from public life. Though he was only a distant
relative of the later Medici, his career served to associate the family
name with the popular cause, and to give them a cue for the policy they
afterwards pursued. The leadership of his party fell into the hands of a
triumvirate, consisting of Benedetto Alberti, Tommaso Strozzi, and
Giorgio Scali. Alberti was a fairly moderate politician, but his two
associates were ambitious demagogues, who imitated the abuses of the
Albizzi, and employed the _ammonizio_ to rid [Sidenote:
Counter-revolution in 1382.] themselves of their personal enemies. The
inevitable reaction set in in 1382. A hostile _signoria_ came into
office, and a servant of Giorgio Scali was arrested on a charge of
bearing false witness. Strozzi fled from the city, but Scali, trusting
in the favour of the mob, determined to resist. His attempt to rescue
his servant was a failure, and he himself was seized by the priors. The
populace would not rise on his behalf, and he was put to death. A
counter-revolution undid all the changes of 1378. A _balia_ constituted
by a parliament abolished the new guilds, and decreed that the priors
should be chosen, four from the greater, and four from the lesser
guilds. The gonfalonier was always to belong to the former, who thus
secured a majority in the signory. The Albizzi and other exiles were
recalled to the city.
For the next fifty years after 1382, Florence was ruled by an
ever-narrowing oligarchy. First, the greater guilds [Sidenote:
Oligarchical rule in Florence.] recovered a practical monopoly of
office. Later, certain members of these guilds obtained such complete
ascendency that the government almost ceased to be a republic, and thus
the way was prepared for the absolutism of the Medici. In 1387 Benedetto
Alberti, the most blameless of the leaders in 1378, was driven into
exile. A new _squittinio_ filled the bags with the names of partisans of
the dominant faction. A separate bag was formed for the chief leaders of
the faction, and two priors were to be drawn from among them (_Priori
del Borsellino_). Six of the priors were to belong to the greater
guilds, and only two to the lesser. In 1393 Maso Albizzi, the leader of
the oligarchy, held the office of gonfalonier, and further measures were
taken to strengthen its supremacy. If a gonfalonier were drawn who was
displeasing to the rulers, another was to be drawn in his place, though
the former was to remain one of the priors. Three priors instead of two
were to be taken from the _borsellino_, or special bag. The signory was
allowed to raise troops, and to levy taxes for their payment, without
having to obtain the consent of the councils. These measures provoked a
rising among the artisans. The rioters repaired to the house of Vieri de
Medici, and invited him to lead them against the Albizzi. Vieri, who was
a kinsman of Salvestro de’ Medici, refused the offer of the mob, and the
movement was suppressed. In 1397 another rebellion, in which two members
of the Medici family were concerned, was also put down, and the rule of
the dominant oligarchy was more firmly established than ever.
The great characteristic of this period of oligarchical government is
the activity and aggressiveness of the republic [Sidenote: Growth of
Florentine dominions.] in its external relations. Before 1342 Florence
had acquired the rule of considerable territories beyond the limits of
its own _contado_, but most of these dominions were lost in the
disturbances which accompanied the expulsion of the Duke of Athens. The
great service which the oligarchy rendered to Florence was the recovery
of its ascendency in northern Tuscany. Prato, Pistoia, Volterra, San
Miniato, and several lesser towns were acquired between 1350 and 1368.
In 1387 the important town of Arezzo was sold to the Florentines by
Enguerrand de Coucy, who had held it as the lieutenant of Louis of
Anjou. For some years after this the growth of Florence was checked by a
desperate war against the encroachments of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who
threatened to unite Tuscany and Lombardy under his rule. It was in this
war that Sir John Hawkwood commanded for Florence against the Milanese
_condottiere_, Jacopo del Verme. After Hawkwood’s death in 1394, the
republic was for a time in serious danger. To save their independence,
the Florentines took the unusual step of appealing for German
assistance, and urged the Elector Palatine, Rupert, who had been elected
king of the Romans in opposition to Wenzel of Bohemia, to make war
against the lord of Milan. The defeat of the German army at the battle
of Brescia left Florence in greater straits than ever, when the sudden
death of Gian Galeazzo in 1402 not only saved the Florentines from
Milanese aggression, but enabled them to resume their policy of
expansion. Within the next twenty years Pisa, Cortona, and Livorno had
been added to the dominions of Florence.
In northern Italy the fourteenth century witnessed the final struggle
between the two great maritime republics, [Sidenote: Venice and Genoa.]
Venice and Genoa. Ever since the beginning of the Crusades they had been
rivals for commercial and political ascendency in the Levant. At first
the advantage had been on the side of the Venetians, and the diversion
of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 to attack the Eastern Empire had given
them a dominant position in the islands and coasts of the Ægean. But the
Genoese had their revenge in 1261, when they aided to overthrow the
Latin Empire, and to establish Michael Palæologus in Constantinople. As
a reward for their services they received the suburb of Pera with the
fortress of Galata, whence they could dictate to the occupants of the
imperial throne. The control of the straits enabled them to assume a
virtual monopoly of the trade of the Black Sea, and their port of Caffa
in the Crimea became one of the most flourishing cities in the east.
Pisa, which had once been the equal or even the superior of Genoa, lost
all maritime importance after the battle of Meloria (1284). For the next
century Venice and Genoa contended on fairly equal terms. In wealth and
maritime power they were evenly matched. Genoa had most of the northern
trade that passed through the Black Sea and Constantinople; but Venice,
which retained possession of Negropont, Crete, and other islands, had
the advantage in the other two channels of eastern trade, through Asia
Minor and Egypt. Genoa, however, was ready to seize any opportunity of
contesting this southern trade with her rival. The occupation of Chios
gave her a valuable port in the Ægean. Cyprus, which became an important
commercial centre after the fall of Acre (1291), was the scene of many
conflicts between the two republics. The people and the ruling house of
Lusignan were in favour of Venice, but the Genoese went to war to secure
their interests, and the seizure of Famagusta in 1373 gave them for some
time the upper hand in Cyprus. On the African coast they also succeeded
in establishing trade settlements. Farther west, the Genoese had several
things in their favour. The occupation of Corsica gave them a great
addition of maritime strength, though their dispute with Aragon for the
possession of Sardinia exposed them to the enmity of the Catalans, who
ranked after Venice and Genoa as the third naval power in the
Mediterranean. On the mainland the mountains which confined Genoa to a
narrow strip of coast, and prohibited territorial expansion, served also
to protect her from continental enemies. Venice, on the other hand, ever
since the war with Mastino della Scala had given her territories on the
mainland, was exposed to the hostility of her neighbours, especially the
kings of Hungary and the lords of Padua. If these states were allied
with Genoa, Venice ran the risk of being cut off from supplies both by
sea and land. As against this balance of strength in east and west,
there was one important difference between the two states which
ultimately turned the scales decisively in favour of Venice. By the
beginning of the century she had built up a constitution which, whatever
its narrowness and other defects, had the supreme merit of stability.
The so-called conspiracy of Marin Falier, which led to the execution of
the Doge in 1355, only served to prove the strength of the edifice which
he proposed to attack, and the impotence of the chief magistrate to
resist the Council of Ten. Genoa, on the other hand, was one of the most
turbulent and factious of Italian cities. For a long time the leaders of
these domestic feuds were the four noble houses of Doria, Fieschi,
Spinola, and Grimaldi, who disguised their family jealousies under the
names of Ghibelline and Guelf. In 1339 the Genoese, weary of their
factions, adopted for their chief magistracy the title of Doge, and
conferred it by acclamation upon an eminent citizen, Simone Boccanegra.
After the fashion of Florence and other Tuscan communes, the nobles were
disqualified from holding political office. But in Genoa the remedy
proved wholly illusory. The nobles continued to command the military and
naval forces of the republic, and were thus enabled to retain their
predominance in the state. The offices, which they could not hold
themselves, were conferred upon their plebeian adherents, as the Adorni
and Fregosi, who for a long time succeeded each other in the dogeship
according to the fluctuations of power among their noble patrons. As
Commines tells us, ‘the nobles in Genoa could appoint a doge, though
they could not hold the office themselves.’ Thus Genoa continued to be
distracted by factions, and when the citizens sought a brief interval of
repose, the only method by which they could secure it was to sacrifice
their liberty to a foreign ruler—sometimes to Milan, and sometimes to
France.
The attempt of the Genoese merchants at Caffa to exclude the Venetians
from the lucrative free trade with the Tartars led to numerous quarrels
in the Black Sea, and [Sidenote: War of Venice and Genoa, 1350-5.]
ultimately to open warfare between the two states. Venice secured the
support of John Cantacuzene, the Greek emperor, who disliked Genoese
dictation at Pera, and of Peter of Aragon, who was contending with Genoa
for the possession of Sardinia. In 1352 Niccolo Pisani, with a powerful
fleet of Venetian, Greek, and Catalan vessels, sailed to attack Pera,
which was defended by the Genoese admiral, Paganino Doria. In the narrow
waters of the Bosphorus the allies were unable to make full use of their
numbers, and a furious storm threw their vessels into such disorder that
they did more harm to each other than to the enemy. Pisani was forced to
retire, but Doria, though victorious, had suffered such losses that he
was superseded by Antonio Grimaldi. In 1353 the Aragonese, who had fewer
interests in the Levant than their allies, insisted upon transferring
hostilities to the coast of Sardinia. In the open water off Cagliari the
Venetians and Catalans gained a complete victory, and Grimaldi with
difficulty escaped to carry the news of this crushing disaster to Genoa.
Pisani was too weakened by the encounter to venture a direct attack upon
Genoa, but the Genoese were so panic-stricken that they offered the
lordship of the city to Giovanni Visconti, in order to gain the aid of
Milan. Venice replied to this move by an alliance with the opponents of
Milan on the mainland, but the struggle continued to be fought out at
sea. Paganino Doria, restored to the command after Grimaldi’s defeat,
once more carried the war into eastern waters. Pisani, after an
uneventful campaign in 1354, had retired into winter quarters at
Portolungo on the coast of the Morea, under the shelter of the island of
Sapienza. There the Venetians were surprised by Doria, and their fleet
was completely annihilated (November 4, 1354). The battle of Sapienza
was the most decisive engagement of the struggle. It was followed by the
conspiracy and death of Marin Falier, and the Venetians were so
discouraged by the combination of external defeat and domestic treason
that they concluded peace with Genoa in 1355. All demands for
concessions in the Black Sea were abandoned, and Genoa retained its
superiority in the northern trade.
For the next twenty years the two republics remained at peace with each
other. Genoa succeeded in throwing off the Milanese yoke in 1356, with
the result that the factions resumed their quarrels. Venice became
involved in a war with Lewis the Great of Hungary (1356-8), in which
Dalmatia was lost and Treviso was only retained with difficulty. This
was followed by a revolt in Crete which was put down (1364), and by
almost continuous quarrels with Francesco Carrara of Padua. These events
forced the Venetians to maintain a policy of peace in the east. Even the
war of 1373 in Cyprus, which subjected that island to the suzerainty of
Genoa, failed to provoke more than a verbal protest from Venice. But
events in the Eastern Empire at last drove the two republics to resume
hostilities. John Palæologus had promised to Venice the rocky island of
Tenedos, which commanded the entrance to the Hellespont. The Genoese,
regarding this as threatening their security in Pera, organised a palace
revolution in Constantinople, and seated Andronicus on the throne in
place of his father. In return for this aid the usurper ceded Tenedos to
his allies. But the governor of the island refused to recognise the
authority of Andronicus, and handed his charge over to the Venetians.
This was the immediate occasion for war. Vettor Pisani, in 1378,
defeated the Genoese fleet off Cape Antium, and cleared the Adriatic of
[Sidenote: War of Chioggia, 1378-81.] the pirates who plundered Venetian
commerce. The winter he spent in the harbour of Pola, and was still
there when he was confronted by Luciano Doria in command of another
Genoese force (May 7, 1379). In the battle which followed Pisani was
completely defeated, and was sentenced by the indignant Venetians to six
months’ imprisonment and exclusion from any command for five years.
Pietro Doria, the successor of Luciano who had been killed in the
engagement, led the victorious fleet to the lagoons of Venice. The town
of Chioggia, which commanded one of the main entrances from the open
sea, was taken after an obstinate defence, and the way was opened to
Venice itself. A prompt attack would probably have been successful, but
Doria preferred the slower and surer method of a blockade. In this he
reckoned upon the aid of Francesco Carrara, who eagerly welcomed the
opportunity of humbling the formidable republic, and undertook to
prevent the transit of supplies from the mainland. Never had the
Venetians been in such a strait, but the courage of the citizens rose to
meet the danger. Every vessel in Venetian waters was equipped and
manned, and Vettor Pisani, the idol of the sailors, was released from
prison to assume the chief command. Messengers were sent eastwards to
recall Carlo Zeno, who had been despatched to the Levant at the
beginning of the war with the second Venetian fleet. Meanwhile Pisani
undertook the defence of Venice, and gradually drove the Genoese back to
their stronghold of Chioggia. There he determined to shut them in by
blocking the main outlets to the sea. Ships full of stones were sunk in
the channels of Brondolo, Chioggia, and Malamocco, and thus the
blockaders were in their turn blockaded. But Pisani’s force was hardly
strong enough to maintain the blockade during the storms of winter. If
reinforcements came from Genoa he would be forced to retire, and Venice
would once more be in imminent danger. So conscious were the Venetian
leaders of the risk of ultimate defeat that they even discussed the
possible abandonment of their islands and the transference of the
republic to Crete. On the 1st of January 1380 sails were seen in the
distance, but as they approached they proved to be the long-expected
fleet of Zeno. This sealed the fate of the Genoese in Chioggia. Every
effort to force a passage, or to cut a canal through the low-lying
barrier between them and the sea, was foiled by the vigilance of the
besiegers, and on June 24 the whole of the Genoese force was compelled
to capitulate.
By the fall of Chioggia Venice secured a magnificent and permanent
triumph over her great Italian rival. The naval [Sidenote: Decline of
Genoa.] power of Genoa never recovered from the blow which it then
received, and commercial superiority could only be maintained by
maritime ascendency. Chagrined at such a sudden change from anticipated
triumph to humiliating defeat, distracted by domestic feuds, and
perpetually endangered by the aggressive policy of Milan, the Genoese
sought to escape from their troubles by accepting the suzerainty of
Charles VI. of France, and admitting a French governor into the city
(1396). For the next century Genoa enters into history mainly as an
object of contention between France and Milan, and the greatness of the
republic perished with its independence.
But Venice had to pay more than one heavy penalty for her success. In
the east the war of the two republics had been [Sidenote: Venice after
the War.] suicidal. In their mutual jealousy they had completely lost
sight of their common interest in upholding the Eastern Empire against
the Turks. The struggle between Venice and Genoa was among the chief
causes of the rapid growth of the Ottoman power, which was destined to
be fatal to both the contending states. The more Venice gained in the
east by the decline of Genoa the more she stood to lose to the advancing
Turks; and nearer home the struggle was costly to Venice. By the peace
of Turin, in 1381, she had to confirm the cession of Dalmatia to
Hungary, to resign the island of Tenedos, which had been the occasion of
the war, and to give up Treviso and all other possessions on the
mainland of Italy. All that she had gained in the contest with the
Scaligers was lost again. It is true that Treviso was ceded to Leopold
of Hapsburg in order to disappoint Francesco Carrara, whose
aggrandisement would be much more dangerous to Venice. But Leopold had
too much to engage his attention in Germany to be keenly interested in
Italian territories. Five years later he sold Treviso, with Feltre and
Ceneda, to Carrara, who thus obtained that control over the approaches
to the Alpine passes which had driven Venice to make war on Mastino
della Scala. For the second time Venice was forced by the same danger to
take an active part in the politics of northern Italy. There was one
obvious method of humbling the house of Carrara, and that was to invite
the intervention of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who required the annexation
of Padua to complete his supremacy in Lombardy. On the other hand, such
a policy involved the equally obvious danger that the lord of Milan
would prove a far more formidable neighbour than the lord of Padua. To
understand the course of action adopted by Venice in this dilemma it is
necessary to turn to the history of Milan.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century the lordship of Milan was
disputed by two families, the della Torre and the [Sidenote: The
Visconti in Milan.] Visconti. The supremacy of the latter was
established in 1312 when Henry VII. conferred the title of imperial
vicar upon Matteo Visconti. Of Matteo’s numerous family four sons
deserve mention: Galeazzo, Lucchino, and Giovanni, who all ruled in
Milan, and Stefano, who died in 1327 without obtaining power, but whose
children subsequently came to govern. Galeazzo, the eldest son, who
succeeded his father in 1322, was deposed by Lewis the Bavarian in 1327,
and died in the following year at the siege of Pistoia. His son Azzo
recovered, in 1329, the sovereignty of Milan, and the tide of imperial
vicar. He proved a successful ruler, and by joining in the successive
leagues against John of Bohemia and Mastino della Scala, he extended his
authority over the greater part of central Lombardy. On his early death
in 1339 his uncle Lucchino succeeded to the lordship over Milan,
Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Lodi, Piacenza, Vercelli, Novara, and a less
complete sovereignty over Pavia. To these dominions Lucchino added Parma
in 1346, and Tortona, Alessandria, and Asti in 1347. On the west these
territories were bounded by the dominions of the Marquis of Montferrat
and the Count of Savoy; while on the east they were separated from
Venice and the States of the Church by the possessions of four tyrants
of lesser power—the Gonzagas in Mantua, the house of Este in Ferrara,
the della Scala in Verona and Vicenza, and the Carrara in Padua. On the
death of Lucchino in 1349 his dominions passed to his younger brother
Giovanni, who had entered the Church, and had received from Benedict
XII. the archbishopric of Milan. In spite of his ecclesiastical position
Giovanni did not scruple to aggrandise himself at the expense of the
Papacy. In 1350 he induced the Pepoli, who had made themselves lords of
Bologna, to cede that city to him. This advance from Lombardy into
central Italy made a profound impression on contemporaries, and
completely altered the position of the Visconti. It marked the beginning
of a prolonged quarrel with the Papacy, and it alarmed Florence and the
Tuscan communes for their independence. In 1353 the defeat of Genoa in
her naval war with Venice led to the temporary submission of the
Ligurian republic to Milanese rule. This was the last great triumph of
the militant archbishop, who died suddenly in 1354.
The house of Visconti was now represented by the three sons of Stefano:
Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo. They agreed to divide their uncle’s
dominions between them, but to keep the two chief cities of Milan and
Genoa under their joint rule. Matteo, who was vicious and debauched even
[Sidenote: Bernabo and Galeazzo Visconti.] beyond the standard of the
Visconti, was assassinated by order of his brothers in 1355, and Bernabo
and Galeazzo divided his share between them. On the whole their joint
rule was wonderfully harmonious, though in later life they fell rather
apart and adopted different residences—Bernabo in Milan and Galeazzo in
Pavia. Few pictures are more repulsive than that which has been handed
down of the domestic government of the two brothers. In the midst of
lavish profusion and ostentatious patronage of men of letters, they
ruled their subjects with a rod of iron. State criminals, instead of
immediate execution, were publicly tortured for forty days according to
a fixed daily programme. The game laws were enforced with atrocious
severity even for those days. A peasant who had killed a hare was given
to Bernabo’s hounds to be devoured by them. Yet these bloodthirsty
despots, belonging to an upstart family and without any recognised or
legal title in their dominions, were allowed to ally themselves by
intermarriage with the greatest dynasties in Europe. They were the
richest rulers of their time, and their wealth induced even kings to
shut their eyes both to the cruelty of their rule and to their ignoble
origin. Bernabo married his daughter Verde or Virida to the Leopold of
Hapsburg who afterwards fell in the battle of Sempach. Galeazzo obtained
for his son, Gian Galeazzo, the hand of Isabella, daughter of John of
France, with the county of Vertus in Champagne; and his daughter
Violante was married to Lionel of Clarence, the second son of Edward
III. of England.
In spite of these alliances, which gave to the Visconti a unique
position among the despots of northern Italy, the [Sidenote: Milanese
reverses.] rule of the two brothers was by no means uninterruptedly
successful. Genoa revolted in 1356 and recovered its freedom. Cardinal
Albornoz, who was engaged in restoring papal authority in the Papal
States, organised a league among the northern despots, the Gonzagas, the
della Scala, the Marquis of Montferrat, and all who were jealous of
Visconti ascendency. Pavia recovered its independence for two years
under the encouragement of a republican monk, Jacopo Bussolari, but was
compelled to surrender to Galeazzo in 1359. Asti, Novara, Como, and
other western towns were for a time wrested from Visconti rule by the
Marquis of Montferrat. A more serious loss was that of Bologna. Giovanni
d’Oleggio, who had been appointed governor of the city by Giovanni
Visconti, refused to acknowledge the authority of the latter’s nephews.
When Bernabo endeavoured to compel his submission in 1360, Oleggio
baulked him by surrendering Bologna to Albornoz. The successes of the
papal legate and the return of Urban V. to Rome seemed for a moment to
render hopeless any extension of the rule of the Visconti beyond the
limits of Lombardy. But Albornoz died in 1368, Urban returned to Avignon
in 1370, and a general revolt in Romagna against papal rule restored to
the Visconti the advantages which for a moment they had lost. It was
not, however, Bernabo Visconti who profited by these changes, but a new
and more famous member of the family.
In 1378—an eventful year in Italian history—Galeazzo Visconti died,
leaving his share of the family dominions to his only son, Gian
Galeazzo. Fearing the ambition [Sidenote: Gian Galeazzo Visconti.] of
Bernabo, who might well desire to provide for his numerous children at
his nephew’s expense, the young prince ruled in Pavia with such
ostentation of piety and moderation that his uncle deemed him a harmless
simpleton. Having thus disarmed all suspicion, Gian Galeazzo decoyed his
uncle from Milan to a friendly interview, consigned him to a prison
which he never left alive, and reunited the territories of Bernabo with
his own (1385). To the cruelty and unscrupulousness of his predecessors,
Gian Galeazzo added a dogged resolution and a capacity for intrigue
which enabled him to attain a height of power beyond their most sanguine
dreams. Personally he was so timid that a sudden sound excited a terror
which he could not conceal. But his lack of courage—an unusual defect
among Italian tyrants—proved no bar to his ambition. His wealth enabled
him to attract to his service most of the ablest _condottieri_ of the
age, and to purchase from them a fidelity which was quite uncommon.
Himself the husband of a French princess, he drew closer the connection
with France by marrying his daughter, Valentina, to Charles VI.’s
brother, Louis of Orleans (1389). The bride not only brought to the
Orleans family the town of Asti as her dowry, but also an eventual claim
to the succession in Milan which was fraught with most momentous
consequences to Europe. A few years later Gian Galeazzo succeeded in
removing one great defect in the dignity of the Visconti by obtaining
from Wenzel, king of the Romans, the formal creation in his favour of a
hereditary duchy of Milan (1395).
The great ambition of Gian Galeazzo Visconti was to found a kingdom of
northern Italy, and circumstances were [Sidenote: His schemes.] so
extraordinarily favourable that he very nearly succeeded in gaining his
object. The two great Guelf powers, Naples and the Papacy, might
naturally be expected to oppose such a design. But the Papacy was in the
throes of the Schism, and Naples was the scene of civil strife between
the two houses of Anjou. Of the three leading republics whose
independence was directly threatened, Genoa was powerless. Florence was
hampered by the jealousy of Siena, Perugia, and other communes in
Tuscany and Romagna, while Venice had for the moment more immediate
enemies than Milan, and might be bribed to aid in their destruction. The
empire was in the feeble hands of Wenzel, France in the equally feeble
hands of Charles VI., and both princes were allied with the Visconti.
There seemed to be hardly any danger either of foreign intervention or
of efficient resistance in Italy.
The first task which Gian Galeazzo undertook was the reduction of
eastern Lombardy. A quarrel between Francesco Carrara and Antonio della
Scala gave him his opportunity. [Sidenote: Conquest of Verona and
Padua.] He offered his aid to both princes, but ultimately concluded a
treaty with Carrara in 1387 by which Verona was to go to himself and
Vicenza to Padua. Both cities were easily taken by Gian Galeazzo’s
troops, and the once famous house of della Scala was ruined. But the
lord of Milan kept Vicenza as well as Verona, and Carrara perceived too
late that he had only hastened his own downfall. Venice was eager to
punish the neighbour who had done all he could for her destruction in
the wars both with Hungary and with Genoa. In spite of the obvious
danger of aggrandising Milan, Venice agreed to a partition of the
territories of Carrara. Resistance to such a combination was hopeless;
Padua was compelled to surrender to Milanese rule, and Treviso and the
marches were handed over to Venice (1388). The supremacy of Gian
Galeazzo in Lombardy was now uncontested. The remaining princes of
Savoy, Montferrat, Mantua, and Ferrara, were all, for one reason or
another, his humble vassals.
In 1389 Gian Galeazzo was free to turn his attention to Tuscany and
Romagna, where his ambition seemed to be equally favoured by internal
dissensions. Siena, Perugia, and a number of petty lords in Romagna
[Sidenote: War with Florence, 1390-2.] joined in a league against
Florence, whose fall would have assured the supremacy of Milan. But the
Florentine oligarchy served the republic faithfully in this hour of
danger. Sir John Hawkwood was taken into the service of Florence, and
the Count of Armagnac was bribed to bring a body of French troops to aid
the republic. Visconti had engaged the most eminent Italian leaders,
Jacopo dal Verme, Facino Cane, and others, and the numerical superiority
of their troops might have gained an ultimate victory. Armagnac was
defeated and slain, and this disaster compelled Hawkwood, who had
invaded Lombardy as far as the Adda, to conduct a difficult and
hazardous retreat. But the balance was turned against Milan by a wholly
unexpected reverse in the north. The younger Francesco Carrara, who had
been imprisoned with his father after the fall of Padua, succeeded in
escaping. After hairbreadth escapes and the most romantic wanderings
over Europe, he succeeded in getting supplies of money from Florence and
of men from Bavaria. With a small body of followers he entered Padua by
the bed of the Brenta in June 1390. The citizens welcomed his return,
and the rule of Milan was overthrown. This revolution in Padua was a
great blow to Gian Galeazzo. It compelled him to withdraw part of his
forces from Tuscany, and in 1392 he decided to postpone his southern
enterprise and to conclude a treaty. Padua was left in the hands of
Francesco Carrara on condition of paying tribute to Milan; Florence was
to abstain from intervention in Lombardy, and Gian Galeazzo from
intervention in Tuscany.
The treaty of 1392 was followed by a few years of troubled peace, broken
by only a brief renewal of hostilities in 1397, which was ended by
another treaty in 1398. During these years Gian Galeazzo continued to
prosecute his schemes by diplomacy and intrigue. [Sidenote: Successes of
Gian Galeazzo.] In 1394 a revolution was effected in Pisa and the
lordship of the city acquired by Jacopo d’Appiano, who was notoriously
in the pay of Milan. Five years later, Appiano’s son completed the
bargain by handing over Pisa to Gian Galeazzo in return for the
principality of Piombino. Genoa only escaped a similar fate by a
voluntary submission to France in 1396. Siena in 1399, Perugia and
Assisi in 1400 sought to escape the disorders of faction by accepting
the rule of Milan. Everywhere republican liberties seemed destined to
give way to the advance of despotism. Paolo Guinigi, with the help of
Milanese gold, made himself lord of Lucca in 1400, and in the next year
Giovanni Bentivoglio became the master of Bologna. Slowly but surely the
coils were being drawn round Florence, and the league which she had
formed for the defence of liberty was wholly broken up. Hawkwood had
died in 1394, and no leader of equal merit could be found except in the
service of Milan. A momentary prospect of relief was offered when the
princes of Germany in 1400 deposed the incapable Wenzel and gave the
kingship of the Romans to the Elector Palatine, Rupert III. Rupert
undertook to invade Italy and to crush the upstart ruler of Milan whom
his rival had raised to the rank of duke. But the German troops were no
match either in skill or in discipline for the mercenaries of Italy, and
were utterly routed at Brescia by Jacopo dal Verme (October 24, 1401).
The last hope of Florence disappeared when Giovanni Bentivoglio, who had
turned against Milan, was compelled to surrender, and the Bolognese
welcomed the substitution of a foreign for a native despot (July, 1402).
But death intervened to thwart an [Sidenote: His death in 1402.]
ambition which human opposition had failed to check. On September 3,
1402, Gian Galeazzo was carried off by the plague at the age of
fifty-five. The kingdom of northern Italy perished with the man who had
practically created it.
Footnote 9:
See Genealogical Table I, in Appendix.