particular advantage. When Julius II assumed the triple crown, the
officers who held the fortresses of Romagna with one accord refused to
give them up to the Church, considering them as the lawful conquest and
personal property of their leader. Machiavelli looked only at the
results; this is the justification of the opinion which he expresses
concerning Valentinois in his book, “Il Principe,” in the “Legazione,”
the “Descrizione dei fatti di Romagna,” and the “Decennale.” He was
present when these things were done; he calculated the effect of the
events he witnessed. From his observation of Cæsar at work, he noted the
strength of his will and the resources of his mind, his strategic
talents, and his administrative faculty; and as within certain limits
the acts of Valentinois tended toward a distinct goal, an ideal not
unlike that at which he himself aimed, the Florentine secretary was not
the man to be squeamish about ways and means. What did it matter to him
whose hand struck at the despots of the petty principalities of Italy?
What cared he about the personal ambition of the man who, after
overthrowing them, busied himself at once with the organization of their
states, gave them laws, kept them under stern discipline, and ended by
winning the affections of the people?
Once the idea of union was accepted, a prince of more blameless private
life would succeed Cæsar, and there was always so much progress made
toward the realization of the great conception. The Sforza had fallen;
the princes of the houses of Este and Mantua were not equal to such a
task; Lorenzo de’ Medici was no soldier. Impatient to reach his end,
Machiavelli cast his eyes around in vain; nowhere could he find a
personality capable of great undertakings. Cæsar alone, with his youth
and daring, quick to seize an opportunity, free from scruples, imposing
by his magnificence--Cæsar, who always went straight to the very core of
a matter, a consummate soldier, full of high purposes and lofty
schemes--seemed the one man capable of aiming at the goal and attaining
it. From that time forward, the secretary made him the incarnation of
his ideal prince, removing from his character the hideous elements which
lurked beneath the fair exterior of the skillful diplomate and hardy
soldier.
Of these “high purposes” of which Machiavelli speaks we have also other
proofs, without speaking of the, in a manner, prophetic declaration of
the young cardinal who, at twenty, fixed his eyes on the example of the
Roman Cæsar, and took as his motto “CUM NUMINE CÆSARIS OMEN.” Some of
the contemporaries of the Duke of Valentinois have expressed themselves
in distinct terms regarding him. We have here some real revelations of
his personal intentions which are free from the _après coup_ of the
judgments pronounced by later historians. Speaking of the war which the
Spaniards were carrying on to prevent the Pope from extending his
dominions beyond the Neapolitan frontier, Signor Villari recognizes the
fact that Alexander VI had declared his intention of making Italy “all
one piece.” As for Cæsar, we read in the dispatches of Collenuccio, the
ambassador of Ferrara, that Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, had taken
into his service a secretary who had been for some time in Cæsar’s
employ, and that this person averred that he had heard the Duke of
Romagna say that he had “deliberately resolved to make himself _King of
Italy_.” Here we have it in so many words.
As regards Machiavelli, could we collect in one page all the traits of
character sketched from nature, scattered here and there in his
dispatches to the Florentine Signoria, we should have a literary
portrait of Valentinois, signed with the name of the most sagacious
observer that ever honored Italian diplomacy. Cæsar had never learned
the art of war, yet it would be impossible to pass with greater facility
from the Consistory to the camp than he did. He was no mere warrior.
Brave and impetuous as he was, he had more serious work in hand than the
exchanging of sword-thrusts. He was at once a general, a strategist, and
an administrator. Hardly had he taken a town when he made laws for it,
and organized its administration; the breaches in its fortifications
were repaired, and its defense and retention made as safe as if the
conquest were final. No sooner had Imola, Forli, and Cesena fallen into
his power, than he sent for Leonardo da Vinci to provide for a
sufficient supply of water, to repair the fortresses, and to erect
public monuments. He founded _Monts de Piété_, set up courts of justice,
and did the work of civilization everywhere. The cities which fell under
his sway never misunderstood his efforts; they looked back on the time
of his supremacy with regret.
“This lord is ever noble and magnificent; when his sword is in his
hand, his courage is so great that the most arduous undertakings
seem easy to him; in the pursuit of glory or advantage he shrinks
from no toil or fatigue. He has the good-will of his soldiers; he
has secured the best troops in Italy: it is thus that he makes
himself formidable and victorious. Add to this, that fortune is
constantly favorable to him. He is of solitary habits, and he
possesses craft, promptness, the spirit of order and good fortune;
he has an extraordinary power of profiting by opportunity very
secret (_molto segreto_). He controls himself with prudence; (_gran
conoscitore della occasione_.”)
So Machiavelli warned the Florentines not to treat Cæsar “like the other
barons, but as a new power in Italy, with whom they might conclude
treaties and alliances, rather than offer him an appointment as
_condottiere_.” The purely military element, which was Machiavelli’s
speciality, did not escape the attention of the secretary. Once he had
found the right man, the next requisite was the proper tool to work
with--that is, the army; and so, when he saw these well-disciplined
battalions, and the perfect order that reigned among them, the system of
supplies secured by treaties, the regular equipment, and, above all, the
formidable artillery, “in which department Cæsar alone is as strong as
all the sovereigns of Italy put together,” the Secretary of the Republic
recognized in Cæsar a born commander, for whom he prophesied the most
lofty career.
Cæsar’s life was very short, and the vicissitudes of his fortune
followed each other in rapid succession. In youth he was a murderer, in
youth a conqueror, and in youth he died. His period of activity as a
general extended from the autumn of 1499 to April, 1503, and his actual
reign as Duke of Romagna lasted only two years.
On the 26th of January, 1500, having accomplished the first half of his
task, he entered Rome as a conqueror--on which occasion a representation
was given of the triumph of Cæsar with the various episodes of the life
of the Roman Cæsar shown in _tableaux vivants_, suggested by the painter
Mantegna. Eleven allegorical cars started from the Piazza Navona, Borgia
himself, crowned with laurel, representing in his own person the
conqueror of the world. Before his departure for his second campaign, he
had, as we have already seen, caused the assassination of Lucrezia’s
second husband, Alfonso de Bisceglie, to prepare for the third marriage
of his sister, who was this time to become Duchess of Ferrara, and thus
secure him an alliance which would forward his projects as Duke of
Romagna. On the 27th of September, 1500, he left Rome again to complete
his work, but returned quickly to take part in the war which the King of
France had carried into the Neapolitan kingdom, when he possessed
himself of the city of Capua, thus acquitting his obligation toward his
protector, Louis XII. On the 29th of November his father changed his
title of Vicar of the Holy See to that of Duke of Romagna.
The year 1503 proved an eventful one for him. No longer contented with
his duchy, he prepared to attack Bologna and to threaten Florence. The
day before he set forth on this great undertaking, on the 5th of August,
he assisted, together with Alexander VI, at a banquet given in the
vineyard of the Cardinal of Corneto, at the gates of Rome. On their
return both were taken ill so suddenly that the cardinal was suspected
of having poisoned them. The old man breathed his last on the 18th of
August. Cæsar, younger and more vigorous, struggled against his malady
with extraordinary energy. He wrapped himself, as in a cloak, in the
still quivering carcass of a newly disemboweled mule to overcome the
shiverings brought on by fever, and then was thrown, still covered with
blood, into a vessel of iced water, to bring about the reaction
necessary to save his life. This man of iron seemed to prevail against
Nature herself. He knew that, once his father dead and himself unable to
move, all his enemies would rush upon him at once to crush him. It was
the decisive moment of his life. He first sent his bravo, Micheletto, to
seize the pontifical treasure, thus making sure of a sum of three
hundred thousand ducats, the sinews of resistance. The nine thousand
men-at-arms under his orders, the one disciplined force in the city,
made him master of Rome; the Sacred College set all their hopes upon
this dying man, for he alone possessed sufficient authority to prevent
anarchy.
It is a strange spectacle--the representatives of all nations accredited
to the Holy See assembling at his bedside to negotiate with him, and
Cæsar, weak and helpless as he is, making himself responsible for the
preservation of order, while the Sacred College formed itself into
conclave to elect the new Pope. In order not to put any pressure upon
the cardinals by his presence, the Duke of Valentinois retired to Nepi.
He left Rome, carried on the shoulders of his guards, livid and
shivering with fever. Around his litter walked the ambassadors of Spain,
France, and the empire, and mingled with the troops could be seen his
mother Vanozza, his brother Squillace, and his sister-in-law
Sancha--all three in danger of their lives in excited Rome. One of the
Borgias had been killed, and Fabio Orsini, descendant of one of the
Roman barons ruined by Alexander VI, had steeped his hands in the
detested blood, and sworn to visit all who bore that hated name with the
same fate.
CARDINAL WOLSEY.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Thomas Wolsey, born of low origin 1471, died 1530. After a
university education and taking priest’s orders he was rapidly made
private chaplain to Henry VII, and, on the accession of Henry VIII,
he became the favorite of the new king, and soon afterward lord
chancellor and cardinal. Wolsey’s diplomatic and ministerial genius
became one of the great powers in Europe while he managed English
affairs, a period of about eleven years, and at home his
magnificence rivaled that of the king himself. His fall from power
grew out of his opposition to the king’s marriage with Anne
Boleyn.]
Thomas Wolsey was the son of a wealthy townsman of Ipswich, whose
ability had raised him into notice at the close of the preceding reign,
and who had been taken by Bishop Fox into the service of the crown. His
extraordinary powers hardly, perhaps, required the songs, dances, and
carouses with his indulgence in which he was taunted by his enemies, to
aid him in winning the favor of the young sovereign. From the post of
favorite he soon rose to that of minister. Henry’s resentment at
Ferdinand’s perfidy enabled Wolsey to carry out a policy which reversed
that of his predecessors. The war had freed England from the fear of
French pressure. Wolsey was as resolute to free her from the dictation
of Ferdinand, and saw in a French alliance the best security for English
independence. In 1514 a treaty was concluded with Louis. The same
friendship was continued to his successor, Francis I, whose march across
the Alps for the reconquest of Lombardy was facilitated by Henry and
Wolsey, in the hope that while the war lasted England would be free from
all fear of attack, and that Francis himself might be brought to
inevitable ruin. These hopes were defeated by his great victory at
Marignano. But Francis, in the moment of triumph, saw himself confronted
by a new rival. Master of Castile and Aragon, of Naples and the
Netherlands, the new Spanish king, Charles V, rose into a check on the
French monarchy such as the policy of Henry or Wolsey had never been
able to construct before.
The alliance of England was eagerly sought by both sides, and the
administration of Wolsey, amid all its ceaseless diplomacy, for seven
years kept England out of war. The peace, as we have seen, restored the
hopes of the New Learning; it enabled Colet to reform education, Erasmus
to undertake the regeneration of the Church, More to set on foot a new
science of politics. But peace, as Wolsey used it, was fatal to English
freedom. In the political hints which lie scattered over the “Utopia,”
More notes with bitter irony the advance of the new despotism. It was
only in “Nowhere” that a sovereign was “removable on suspicion of a
design to enslave his people.” In England the work of slavery was being
quietly wrought, hints the great lawyer, through the law. “There will
never be wanting some pretense for deciding in the king’s favor; as that
equity is on his side, or the strict letter of the law, or some forced
interpretation of it; or if none of these, that the royal prerogative
ought, with conscientious judges, to outweigh all other considerations.”
We are startled at the precision with which More maps out the expedients
by which the law courts were to lend themselves to the advance of
tyranny till their crowning judgment in the case of ship-money. But
behind these judicial expedients lay great principles of absolutism,
which, partly from the example of foreign monarchies, partly from the
sense of social and political insecurity, and yet more from the
isolated position of the crown, were gradually winning their way in
public opinion. “These notions,” he goes boldly on, “are fostered by the
maxim that the king can do no wrong, however much he may wish to do it;
that not only the property but the persons of his subjects are his own;
and that a man has a right to no more than the king’s goodness thinks
fit not to take from him.” In the hands of Wolsey these maxims were
transformed into principles of state. The checks which had been imposed
on the action of the sovereign by the presence of great prelates and
nobles at his council were practically removed. All authority was
concentrated in the hands of a single minister. Henry had munificently
rewarded Wolsey’s services to the crown. He had been promoted to the See
of Lincoln and thence to the Archbishopric of York. Henry procured his
elevation to the rank of cardinal, and raised him to the post of
chancellor. The revenues of two sees whose tenants were foreigners fell
into his hands; he held the bishopric of Winchester and the abbacy of
St. Albans; he was in receipt of pensions from France and Spain, while
his official emoluments were enormous. His pomp was almost royal.
A train of prelates and nobles followed him wherever he moved; his
household was composed of five hundred persons of noble birth, and its
chief posts were held by knights and barons of the realm. He spent his
vast wealth with princely ostentation. Two of his houses--Hampton Court
and York House, the later Whitehall--were splendid enough to serve at
his fall as royal palaces. His school at Ipswich was eclipsed by the
glories of his foundation at Oxford, whose name of Cardinal College has
been lost in its later title of Christ-church. Nor was this magnificence
a mere show of power. The whole direction of home and foreign affairs
rested with Wolsey alone; as chancellor he stood at the head of public
justice; his elevation to the office of legate rendered him supreme in
the Church. Enormous as was the mass of work which he undertook, it was
thoroughly done; his administration of the royal treasury was
economical; the number of his dispatches is hardly less remarkable than
the care bestowed upon each; even More, an avowed enemy, confesses that
as chancellor he surpassed all men’s expectations. The court of
chancery, indeed, became so crowded through the character of expedition
and justice which it gained under his rule that subordinate courts had
to be created for its relief. It was this concentration of all secular
and ecclesiastical power in a single hand which accustomed England to
the personal government which began with Henry VIII; and it was, above
all, Wolsey’s long tenure of the whole Papal authority within the realm,
and the consequent suspension of appeals to Rome, that led men to
acquiesce at a later time in Henry’s claim of religious supremacy; for,
proud as was Wolsey’s bearing and high as were his natural powers, he
stood before England as the mere creature of the king. Greatness,
wealth, authority he held, and owned he held, simply at the royal will.
In raising his low-born favorite to the head of Church and state, Henry
was gathering all religious as well as all civil authority into his
personal grasp. The nation which trembled before Wolsey learned to
tremble before the king who could destroy Wolsey by a breath.
FRANCISCO PIZARRO.
BY WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT.
[One of the Spanish conquerors of America, born about 1471, died
1541. The illegitimate son of a Spanish general, his childhood was
spent in a peasant’s hut. Going as an adventurer to the New World,
he took part in several important expeditions, among them Balboa’s
settlement of Darien. In 1524, Pizarro, with a brother adventurer,
Almagro, in an attempt on New Grenada, got intelligence of the
great Peruvian empire of the Incas. It was not till 1531 that
Pizarro, having secured full commission and extraordinary
concessions from Charles V., was able to raise a force of two
hundred and fifty men to attempt the conquest, which was
brilliantly successful. He reigned as viceroy, and was finally
assassinated by a son of his old comrade Almagro, whom he had put
to death.]
Pizarro was tall in stature, well-proportioned, and with a countenance
not unpleasing. Bred in camps, with nothing of the polish of a court, he
had a soldier-like bearing, and the air of one accustomed to command.
But, though not polished, there was no embarrassment or rusticity in his
address, which, where it served his purpose, could be plausible and even
insinuating. The proof of it is the favorable impression made by him, on
presenting himself, after his second expedition--stranger as he was to
all its forms and usages--at the punctilious court of Castile.
Unlike many of his countrymen, he had no passion for ostentatious dress,
which he regarded as an incumbrance. The costume which he most affected
on public occasions was a black cloak, with a white hat, and shoes of
the same color; the last, it is said, being in imitation of the Great
Captain, whose character he had early learned to admire in Italy, but to
which his own, certainly, bore very faint resemblance.
He was temperate in eating, drank sparingly, and usually rose an hour
before dawn. He was punctual in attendance to business, and shrank from
no toil. He had, indeed, great powers of patient endurance. Like most of
his nation, he was fond of play, and cared little for the quality of
those with whom he played; though, when his antagonist could not afford
to lose, he would allow himself, it is said, to be the loser--a mode of
conferring an obligation much commended by a Castilian writer for its
delicacy.
Though avaricious, it was in order to spend, and not to hoard. His ample
treasure, more ample than those, probably, that ever before fell to the
lot of an adventurer, were mostly dissipated in his enterprises, his
architectural works, and schemes of public improvement, which, in a
country where gold and silver might be said to have lost their value
from their abundance, absorbed an incredible amount of money. While he
regarded the whole country, in a manner, as his own, and distributed it
freely among his captains, it is certain that the princely grant of
territory, with twenty thousand vassals, made to him by the Crown, was
never carried into effect; nor did his heirs ever reap the benefit of
it.
Though bold in action and not easily turned from his purpose, Pizarro
was slow in arriving at a decision. This gave him an appearance of
irresolution foreign to his character. Perhaps the consciousness of this
led him to adopt the custom of saying “No,” at first, to applicants for
favor; and afterward, at leisure, to revise his judgment, and grant what
seemed to him expedient. He took the opposite course from his comrade
Almagro, who, it was observed, generally said “Yes,” but too often
failed to keep his promise. This was characteristic of the careless and
easy nature of the latter, governed by impulse rather than principle.
It is hardly necessary to speak of the courage of a man pledged to such
a career as that of Pizarro. Courage, indeed, was a cheap quality among
the Spanish adventurers, for danger was their element. But he possessed
something higher than mere animal courage, in that constancy of purpose
which was rooted too deeply in his nature to be shaken by the wildest
storms of fortune. It was this inflexible constancy which formed the key
to his character, and constituted the secret of his success. A
remarkable evidence of it was given in his first expedition, among the
mangroves and dreary marshes of Choco. He saw his followers pining
around him under the blighting malaria, wasting before an invisible
enemy, and unable to strike a stroke in their own defense. Yet his
spirit did not yield, nor did he falter in his enterprise.
There is something oppressive to the imagination in this war against
nature. In the struggle of man against man, the spirits are raised by a
contest conducted on equal terms; but in a war with the elements we feel
that, however bravely we may contend, we can have no power to control.
Nor are we cheered on by the prospect of glory in such a contest; for,
in the capricious estimate of human glory, the silent endurance of
privations, however painful, is little, in comparison with the
ostentatious trophies of victory. The laurel of the hero--alas for
humanity that it should be so!--grows best on the battle-field.
This inflexible spirit of Pizarro was shown still more strongly when, in
the little island of Gallo, he drew the line on the sand which was to
separate him and his handful of followers from their country and from
civilized man. He trusted that his own constancy would give strength to
the feeble, and rally brave hearts around him for the prosecution of his
enterprise. He looked with confidence to the future, and he did not
miscalculate. This was heroic, and wanted only a nobler motive for its
object to constitute the true moral sublime.
Yet the same feature in his character was displayed in a manner scarcely
less remarkable when, landing on the coast, and ascertaining the real
strength and civilization of the Incas, he persisted in marching into
the interior at the head of a force of less than two hundred men. In
this he undoubtedly proposed to himself the example of Cortés, so
contagious to the adventurous spirits of that day, and especially to
Pizarro, engaged as he was in a similar enterprise. Yet the hazard
assumed by Pizarro was far greater than that of the conqueror of Mexico,
whose force was nearly three times as large, while the terrors of the
Inca name--however justified by the result--were as widely spread as
those of the Aztecs.
It was, doubtless, in imitation of the same captivating model that
Pizarro planned the seizure of Atahualpa. But the situations of the two
Spanish captains were as dissimilar as the manner in which their acts
of violence were conducted. The wanton massacre of the Peruvians
resembled that perpetrated by Alvarado in Mexico, and might have been
attended with consequences as disastrous if the Peruvian character had
been as fierce as that of the Aztecs. But the blow which roused the
latter to madness broke the tamer spirits of the Peruvians. It was a
bold stroke, which left so much to chance that it scarcely merited the
name of policy.
When Pizarro landed in the country, he found it distracted by a contest
for the crown. It would seem to have been for his interest to play off
one party against the other, throwing his own weight into the scale that
suited him. Instead of this, he resorted to an act of audacious violence
which crushed them both at a blow. His subsequent career afforded no
scope for the profound policy displayed by Cortés, when he gathered
conflicting nations under his banner and directed them against a common
foe. Still less did he have the opportunity of displaying the tactics
and admirable strategy of his rival. Cortés conducted his military
operations on the scientific principles of a great captain at the head
of a powerful host. Pizarro appears only as an adventurer, a fortunate
knight-errant. By one bold stroke he broke the spell which had so long
held the land under the dominion of the Incas. The spell was broken, and
the airy fabric of their empire, built on the superstition of ages,
vanished at a touch. This was good fortune, rather than the result of
policy.