Frederick II. was left without a rival for the imperial throne in 1218

by the death of Otto IV., and on the 22nd of November 1220, Honorius

III., Innocent's successor, crowned him in Rome. It was impossible for

any section of the Italians to mistake the gravity of his access to

power. In his single person he combined the prestige of empire with the

Crowns of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Germany and Burgundy; and in 1225, by

marriage with Yolande de Brienne, he added that of Jerusalem. There was

no prince greater or more formidable in the habitable globe. The

communes, no less than the popes, felt that they must prepare themselves

for contest to the death with a power which threatened their existence.

Already in 1218, the Guelphs of Lombardy had resuscitated their old

league, and had been defeated by the Ghibellines in a battle near

Ghibello. Italy seemed to lie prostrate before the emperor, who

commanded her for the first time from the south as well as from the

north. In 1227 Frederick, who had promised to lead a crusade, was

excommunicated by Gregory IX. because he was obliged by illness to defer

his undertaking; and thus the spiritual power declared war upon its

rival. The Guelph towns of Lombardy again raised their levies. Frederick

enlisted his Saracen troops at Nocera and Luceria, and appointed the

terrible Ezzelino da Romano his vicar in the Marches of Verona to quell

their insurrection. It was 1236, however, before he was able to take the

field himself against the Lombards. Having established Ezzelino in

Verona, Vicenza and Padua, he defeated the Milanese and their allies at

Cortenuova in 1237, and sent their carroccio as a trophy of his victory

to Rome. Gregory IX. feared lest the Guelph party would be ruined by

this check. He therefore made alliance with Venice and Genoa, fulminated

a new excommunication against Frederick, and convoked a council at Rome

to ratify his ban in 1241. The Genoese undertook to bring the French

bishops to this council. Their fleet was attacked at Meloria by the

Pisans, and utterly defeated. The French prelates went in silver chains

to prison in the Ghibelline capital of Tuscany. So far Frederick had

been successful at all points. In 1243 a new pope, Innocent IV., was

elected, who prosecuted the war with still bitterer spirit. Forced to

fly to France, he there, at Lyons, in 1245, convened a council, which

enforced his condemnation of the emperor. Frederick's subjects were

freed from their allegiance, and he was declared dethroned and deprived

of all rights. Five times king and emperor as he was, Frederick, placed

under the ban of the church, led henceforth a doomed existence. The

mendicant monks stirred up the populace to acts of fanatical enmity. To

plot against him, to attempt his life by poison or the sword, was

accounted virtuous. His secretary, Piero delle Vigne, was wrongly

suspected of conspiring. The crimes of his vicar Ezzelino, who laid

whole provinces waste and murdered men by thousands in his Paduan

prisons, increased the horror with which he was regarded. Parma revolted

from him, and he spent months in 1247-1248 vainly trying to reduce this

one time faithful city. The only gleam of success which shone on his ill

fortune was the revolution which placed Florence in the hands of the

Ghibellines in 1248. Next year Bologna rose against him, defeated his

troops and took his son Enzio, king of Sardinia, prisoner at Fossalta.

Hunted to the ground and broken-hearted, Frederick expired at the end of

1250 in his Apulian castle of Fiorentino. It is difficult to judge his

career with fairness. The only prince who could, with any probability of

success, have established the German rule in Italy, his ruin proved the

impossibility of that long-cherished scheme. The nation had outgrown

dependence upon foreigners, and after his death no German emperor

interfered with anything but miserable failure in Italian affairs. Yet

from many points of view it might be regretted that Frederick was not

suffered to rule Italy. By birth and breeding an Italian, highly gifted

and widely cultivated, liberal in his opinions, a patron of literature,

a founder of universities, he anticipated the spirit of the Renaissance.

At his court Italian started into being as a language. His laws were

wise. He was capable of giving to Italy a large and noble culture. But

the commanding greatness of his position proved his ruin. Emperor and

king of Sicily, he was the natural enemy of popes, who could not

tolerate so overwhelming a rival.

Papal war against Frederick's successors.

After Frederick's death, the popes carried on their war for eighteen

years against his descendants. The cause of his son Conrad was sustained

in Lower Italy by Manfred, one of Frederick's many natural children;

and, when Conrad died in 1254, Manfred still acted as vicegerent for the

Swabians, who were now represented by a boy Conradin. Innocent IV. and

Alexander IV. continued to make head against the Ghibelline party. The

most dramatic incident in this struggle was the crusade preached against

Ezzelino. This tyrant had made himself justly odious; and when he was

hunted to death in 1259, the triumph was less for the Guelph cause than

for humanity outraged by the iniquities of such a monster. The battle

between Guelph and Ghibelline raged with unintermitting fury. While the

former faction gained in Lombardy by the massacre of Ezzelino, the

latter revived in Tuscany after the battle of Montaperti, which in 1260

placed Florence at the discretion of the Ghibellines. Manfred, now

called king of Sicily, headed the Ghibellines, and there was no strong

counterpoise against him. In this necessity Urban IV. and Clement IV.

invited Charles of Anjou to enter Italy and take the Guelph command.

They made him senator of Rome and vicar of Tuscany, and promised him the

investiture of the regno provided he stipulated that it should not be

held in combination with the empire. Charles accepted these terms, and

was welcomed by the Guelph party as their chief throughout Italy. He

defeated Manfred in a battle at Grandella near Benevento in 1266.

Manfred was killed; and, when Conradin, a lad of sixteen, descended from

Germany to make good his claims to the kingdom, he too was defeated at

Tagliacozzo in 1267. Less lucky than his uncle, Conradin escaped with

his life, to die upon a scaffold at Naples. His glove was carried to his

cousin Constance, wife of Peter of Aragon, the last of the great

Norman-Swabian family. Enzio died in his prison four years later. The

popes had been successful; but they had purchased their bloody victory

at a great cost. This first invitation to French princes brought with it

incalculable evils.

Civil War of Guelphs and Ghibellines.

Charles of Anjou, supported by Rome, and recognized as chief in Tuscany,

was by far the most formidable of the Italian potentates. In his turn he

now excited the jealousy of the popes, who began, though cautiously, to

cast their weight into the Ghibelline scale. Gregory initiated the

policy of establishing an equilibrium between the parties, which was

carried out by his successor Nicholas III. Charles was forced to resign

the senatorship of Rome and the signoria of Lombardy and Tuscany. In

1282 he received a more decided check, when Sicily rose against him in

the famous rebellion of the Vespers. He lost the island, which gave

itself to Aragon; and thus the kingdom of Sicily was severed from that

of Naples, the dynasty in the one being Spanish and Ghibelline, in the

other French and Guelph. Meanwhile a new emperor had been elected, the

prudent Rudolf of Habsburg, who abstained from interference with Italy,

and who confirmed the territorial pretensions of the popes by solemn

charter in 1278. Henceforth Emilia, Romagna, the March of Ancona, the

patrimony of St Peter and the Campagna of Rome held of the Holy See, and

not of the empire. The imperial chancery, without inquiring closely into

the deeds furnished by the papal curia, made a deed of gift, which

placed the pope in the position of a temporal sovereign. While Nicholas

III. thus bettered the position of the church in Italy, the Guelph party

grew stronger than ever, through the crushing defeat of the Pisans by

the Genoese at Meloria in 1284. Pisa, who had ruined Amalfi, was now

ruined by Genoa. She never held her head so high again after this

victory, which sent her best and bravest citizens to die in the Ligurian

dungeons. The Mediterranean was left to be fought for by Genoa and

Venice, while Guelph Florence grew still more powerful in Tuscany. Not

long after the battle of Meloria Charles of Anjou died, and was

succeeded by his son Charles II. of Naples, who played no prominent part

in Italian affairs. The Guelph party was held together with a less tight

hand even in cities so consistent as Florence. Here in the year 1300 new

factions, subdividing the old Guelphs and Ghibellines under the names of

Neri and Bianchi, had acquired such force that Boniface VIII., a

violently Guelph pope, called in Charles of Valois to pacify the

republic and undertake the charge of Italian affairs. Boniface was a

passionate and unwise man. After quarrelling with the French king,

Philip le Bel, he fell into the hands of the Colonna family at Anagni,

and died, either of the violence he there received or of mortification,

in October 1303.

Translation of the Papacy to Avignon.

After the short papacy of Benedict XI. a Frenchman, Clement V., was

elected, and the seat of the papacy was transferred to Avignon. Thus

began that Babylonian exile of the popes which placed them in subjection

to the French crown and ruined their prestige in Italy. Lasting seventy

years, and joining on to the sixty years of the Great Schism, this

enfeeblement of the papal authority, coinciding as it did with the

practical elimination of the empire from Italian affairs, gave a long

period of comparative independence to the nation. Nor must it be

forgotten that this exile was due to the policy which induced the

pontiffs, in their detestation of Ghibellinism, to rely successively

upon the houses of Anjou and of Valois. This policy it was which

justified Dante's fierce epigram--the _puttaneggiar co regi_.

The period we have briefly traversed was immortalized by Dante in an

epic which from one point of view might be called the poem of the

Guelphs and Ghibellines. From the foregoing bare narration of events it

is impossible to estimate the importance of these parties, or to

understand their bearing on subsequent Italian history. We are therefore

forced to pause awhile, and probe beneath the surface. The civil wars

may be regarded as a continuation of the previous municipal struggle,

intensified by recent hostilities between the burghers and the nobles.

The quarrels of the church and empire lend pretexts and furnish

war-cries; but the real question at issue is not the supremacy of pope

or emperor. The conflict is a social one, between civic and feudal

institutions, between commercial and military interests, between

progress and conservatism. Guelph democracy and industry idealize the

pope. The banner of the church waves above the camp of those who aim at

positive prosperity and republican equality. Ghibelline aristocracy and

immobility idealize the emperor. The prestige of the empire, based upon

Roman law and feudal tradition, attracts imaginative patriots and

systematic thinkers. The two ideals are counterposed and mutually

exclusive. No city calls itself either Guelph or Ghibelline till it has

expelled one-half of its inhabitants; for each party is resolved to

constitute the state according to its own conception, and the

affirmation of the one programme is the negation of the other. The

Ghibelline honestly believes that the Guelphs will reduce society to

chaos. The Guelph is persuaded that the Ghibellines will annihilate

freedom and strangle commerce. The struggle is waged by two sets of men

who equally love their city, but who would fain rule it upon

diametrically opposite principles, and who fight to the death for its

possession. This contradiction enters into the minutest details of

life--armorial bearings, clothes, habits at table, symbolize and

accentuate the difference. Meanwhile each party forms its own

organization of chiefs, finance-officers and registrars at home, and

sends ambassadors to foreign cities of the same complexion. A network of

party policy embraces and dominates the burghs of Italy, bringing the

most distant centres into relation, and by the very division of the

country augmenting the sense of nationality. The Italians learn through

their discords at this epoch that they form one community. The victory

in the conflict practically falls to the hitherto unenfranchised

plebeians. The elder noble families die out or lose their preponderance.

In some cities, as notably in Florence after the date 1292, it becomes

criminal to be _scioperato_, or unemployed in industry. New houses rise

into importance; a new commercial aristocracy is formed. Burghers of all

denominations are enrolled in one or other of the arts or gilds, and

these trading companies furnish the material from which the government

or signoria of the city is composed. Plebeian handicrafts assert their

right to be represented on an equality with learned professions and

wealthy corporations. The ancient classes are confounded and obliterated

in a population more homogeneous, more adapted for democracy and

despotism.

New constitution of the free cities.

In addition to the parliament and the councils which have been already

enumerated, we now find a _council of the party_ established within the

city. This body tends to become a little state within the state, and, by

controlling the victorious majority, disposes of the government as it

thinks best. The consuls are merged in _ancients_ or _priors_, chosen

from the arts. A new magistrate, the _gonfalonier of justice_, appears

in some of the Guelph cities, with the special duty of keeping the

insolence of the nobility in check. Meanwhile the podestà still

subsists; but he is no longer equal to the task of maintaining an

equilibrium of forces. He sinks more and more into a judge, loses more

and more the character of dictator. His ancient place is now occupied by

a new functionary, no longer acting as arbiter, but concentrating the

forces of the triumphant party. The _captain of the people_, acting as

head of the ascendant Guelphs or Ghibellines, undertakes the

responsibility of proscriptions, decides on questions of policy, forms

alliances, declares war. Like all officers created to meet an emergency,

the limitations to his power are ill-defined, and he is often little

better than an autocrat.

Origin of Tyrannies.

V. _Age of the Despots._--Thus the Italians, during the heat of the

civil wars, were ostensibly divided between partisans of the empire and

partisans of the church. After the death of Frederick II. their affairs

were managed by Manfred and by Charles of Anjou, the supreme captains of

the parties, under whose orders acted the captains of the people in each

city. The contest being carried on by warfare, it followed that these

captains in the burghs were chosen on account of military skill; and,

since the nobles were men of arms by profession, members of ancient

houses took the lead again in towns where they had been absorbed into

the bourgeoisie. In this way, after the downfall of the Ezzelini of

Romano, the Della Scala dynasty arose in Verona, and the Carraresi in

Padua. The Estensi made themselves lords of Ferrara; the Torriani headed

the Guelphs of Milan. At Ravenna we find the Polenta family, at Rimini

the Malatestas, at Parma the Rossi, at Piacenza the Scotti, at Faenza

the Manfredi. There is not a burgh of northern Italy but can trace the

rise of a dynastic house to the vicissitudes of this period. In Tuscany,

where the Guelph party was very strongly organized, and the commercial

constitution of Florence kept the nobility in check, the communes

remained as yet free from hereditary masters. Yet generals from time to

time arose, the Conte Ugolino della Gheradesca at Pisa, Uguccione della

Faggiuola at Lucca, the Conte Guido di Montefeltro at Florence, who

threatened the liberties of Tuscan cities with military despotism.

Left to themselves by absentee emperors and exiled popes, the Italians

pursued their own course of development unchecked. After the

commencement of the 14th century, the civil wars decreased in fury, and

at the same time it was perceived that their effect had been to confirm

tyrants in their grasp upon free cities. Growing up out of the captain

of the people or signore of the commune, the tyrant annihilated both

parties for his own profit and for the peace of the state. He used the

dictatorial powers with which he was invested to place himself above the

law, resuming in his person the state-machinery which had preceded him.

In him, for the first time, the city attained self-consciousness; the

blindly working forces of previous revolutions were combined in the will

of a ruler. The tyrant's general policy was to favour the multitude at

the expense of his own caste. He won favour by these means, and

completed the levelling down of classes, which had been proceeding ever

since the emergence of the communes.

Decline of civil wars. Advent of the bourgeoisie.

In 1309 Robert, grandson of Charles, the first Angevine sovereign,

succeeded to the throne of Naples, and became the leader of the Guelphs

in Italy. In the next year Henry VII. of Luxembourg crossed the Alps

soon after his election to the empire, and raised the hopes of the

Ghibellines. Dante from his mountain solitudes passionately called upon

him to play the part of a Messiah. But it was now impossible for any

German to control the "Garden of the Empire." Italy had entered on a new

phase of her existence, and the great poet's _De monarchia_ represented

a dream of the past which could not be realized. Henry established

imperial vicars in the Lombard towns, confirming the tyrants, but

gaining nothing for the empire in exchange for the titles he conferred.

After receiving the crown in Rome, he died at Buonconvento, a little

walled town south of Siena, on his backward journey in 1313. The profits

of his inroad were reaped by despots, who used the Ghibelline prestige

for the consolidation of their own power. It is from this epoch that the

supremacy of the Visconti, hitherto the unsuccessful rivals of the

Guelphic Torriani for the signory of Milan, dates. The Scaligers in

Verona and the Carraresi in Padua were strengthened; and in Tuscany

Castruccio Castracane, Uguccione's successor at Lucca, became

formidable. In 1325 he defeated the Florentines at Alto Pascio, and

carried home their carroccio as a trophy of his victory over the

Guelphs. Louis of Bavaria, the next emperor, made a similar excursion in

the year 1327, with even greater loss of imperial prestige. He deposed

Galeazzo Visconti on his downward journey, and offered Milan for a sum

of money to his son Azzo upon his return. Castruccio Castracane was

nominated by him duke of Lucca; and this is the first instance of a

dynastic title conferred upon an Italian adventurer by the emperor.

Castruccio dominated Tuscany, where the Guelph cause, in the weakness of

King Robert, languished. But the adventurer's death in 1328 saved the

stronghold of republican institutions, and Florence breathed freely for

a while again. Can Grande della Scala's death in the next year inflicted

on the Lombard Ghibellines a loss hardly inferior to that of

Castruccio's on their Tuscan allies. Equally contemptible in its

political results and void of historical interest was the brief visit of

John of Bohemia, son of Henry VII., whom the Ghibellines next invited to

assume their leadership. He sold a few privileges, conferred a few

titles, and recrossed the Alps in 1333. It is clear that at this time

the fury of the civil wars was spent. In spite of repeated efforts on

the part of the Ghibellines, in spite of King Robert's supine

incapacity, the imperialists gained no permanent advantage. The Italians

were tired of fighting, and the leaders of both factions looked

exclusively to their own interests. Each city which had been the cradle

of freedom thankfully accepted a master, to quench the conflagration of

party strife, encourage trade, and make the handicraftsmen comfortable.

Even the Florentines in 1342 submitted for a few months to the despotism

of the duke of Athens. They conferred the signory upon him for life;

and, had he not mismanaged matters, he might have held the city in his

grasp. Italy was settling down and turning her attention to home

comforts, arts and literature. Boccaccio, the contented bourgeois,

succeeded to Dante, the fierce aristocrat.

The most marked proof of the change which came over Italy towards the

middle of the 14th century is furnished by the companies of adventure.

It was with their own militia that the burghers won freedom in the war

of independence, subdued the nobles, and fought the battles of the

parties. But from this time forward they laid down their arms, and

played the game of warfare by the aid of mercenaries. Ecclesiastical

overlords, interfering from a distance in Italian politics; prosperous

republics, with plenty of money to spend but no leisure or inclination

for camp-life; cautious tyrants, glad of every pretext to emasculate

their subjects, and courting popularity by exchanging conscription for

taxation--all combined to favour the new system. Mercenary troops are

said to have been first levied from disbanded Germans, together with

Breton and English adventurers, whom the Visconti and Castruccio took

into their pay. They soon appeared under their own captains, who hired

them out to the highest bidder, or marched them on marauding expeditions

up and down the less protected districts. The names of some of these

earliest captains of adventure, Fra Moriale, Count Lando and Duke

Werner, who styled himself the "Enemy of God and Mercy," have been

preserved to us. As the companies grew in size and improved their

discipline, it was seen by the Italian nobles that this kind of service

offered a good career for men of spirit, who had learned the use of

arms. To leave so powerful and profitable a calling in the hands of

foreigners seemed both dangerous and uneconomical. Therefore, after the

middle of the century, this profession fell into the hands of natives.

The first Italian who formed an exclusively Italian company was Alberico

da Barbiano, a nobleman of Romagna, and founder of the Milanese house of

Belgiojoso. In his school the great condottieri Braccio da Montone and

Sforza Attendolo were formed; and henceforth the battles of Italy were

fought by Italian generals commanding native troops. This was better in

some respects than if the mercenaries had been foreigners. Yet it must

not be forgotten that the new companies of adventure, who decided

Italian affairs for the next century, were in no sense patriotic. They

sold themselves for money, irrespective of the cause which they upheld;

and, while changing masters, they had no care for any interests but

their own. The name condottiero, derived from _condotta_, a paid

contract to supply so many fighting men in serviceable order,

sufficiently indicates the nature of the business. In the hands of able

captains, like Francesco Sforza or Piccinino, these mercenary troops

became moving despotisms, draining the country of its wealth, and always

eager to fasten and found tyrannies upon the provinces they had been

summoned to defend. Their generals substituted heavy-armed cavalry for

the old militia, and introduced systems of campaigning which reduced the

art of war to a game of skill. Battles became all but bloodless;

diplomacy and tactics superseded feats of arms and hard blows in pitched

fields. In this way the Italians lost their military vigour, and wars

were waged by despots from their cabinets, who pulled the strings of

puppet captains in their pay. Nor were the people only enfeebled for

resistance to a real foe; the whole political spirit of the race was

demoralized. The purely selfish bond between condottieri and their

employers, whether princes or republics, involved intrigues and

treachery, checks and counterchecks, secret terror on the one hand and

treasonable practice on the other, which ended by making statecraft in

Italy synonymous with perfidy.

Change in type of despotism.

It must further be noticed that the rise of mercenaries was synchronous

with a change in the nature of Italian despotism. The tyrants, as we

have already seen, established themselves as captains of the people,

vicars of the empire, vicars for the church, leaders of the Guelph and

Ghibelline parties. They were accepted by a population eager for

repose, who had merged old class distinctions in the conflicts of

preceding centuries. They rested in large measure on the favour of the

multitude, and pursued a policy of sacrificing to their interests the

nobles. It was natural that these self-made princes should seek to

secure the peace which they had promised in their cities, by freeing the

people from military service and disarming the aristocracy. As their

tenure of power grew firmer, they advanced dynastic claims, assumed

titles, and took the style of petty sovereigns. Their government became

paternal; and, though there was no limit to their cruelty when stung by

terror, they used the purse rather than the sword, bribery at home and

treasonable intrigue abroad in preference to coercive measures or open

war. Thus was elaborated the type of despot which attained completeness

in Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Lorenzo de' Medici. No longer a tyrant of

Ezzelino's stamp, he reigned by intelligence and terrorism masked

beneath a smile. He substituted cunning and corruption for violence. The

lesser people tolerated him because he extended the power of their city

and made it beautiful with public buildings. The bourgeoisie, protected

in their trade, found it convenient to support him. The nobles, turned

into courtiers, placemen, diplomatists and men of affairs, ended by

preferring his authority to the alternative of democratic institutions.

A lethargy of well-being, broken only by the pinch of taxation for

war-costs, or by outbursts of frantic ferocity and lust in the less

calculating tyrants, descended on the population of cities which had

boasted of their freedom. Only Florence and Venice, at the close of the

period upon which we are now entering, maintained their republican

independence. And Venice was ruled by a close oligarchy; Florence was

passing from the hands of her oligarchs into the power of the Medicean

merchants.

Discrimination of the five great powers.

Between the year 1305, when Clement V. settled at Avignon, and the year

1447, when Nicholas V. re-established the papacy upon a solid basis at

Rome, the Italians approximated more nearly to self-government than at

any other epoch of their history. The conditions which have been

described, of despotism, mercenary warfare and bourgeois prosperity,

determined the character of this epoch, which was also the period when

the great achievements of the Renaissance were prepared. At the end of

this century and a half, five principal powers divided the peninsula;

and their confederated action during the next forty-five years

(1447-1492) secured for Italy a season of peace and brilliant

prosperity. These five powers were the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of

Milan, the republic of Florence, the republic of Venice and the papacy.

The subsequent events of Italian history will be rendered most

intelligible if at this point we trace the development of these five

constituents of Italian greatness separately.

The Two Sicilies.

When Robert of Anjou died in 1343, he was succeeded by his

grand-daughter Joan, the childless wife of four successive husbands,

Andrew of Hungary, Louis of Taranto, James of Aragon and Otto of

Brunswick. Charles of Durazzo, the last male scion of the Angevine house

in Lower Italy, murdered Joan in 1382, and held the kingdom for five

years. Dying in 1387, he transmitted Naples to his son Ladislaus, who

had no children, and was followed in 1414 by his sister Joan II. She

too, though twice married, died without issue, having at one time

adopted Louis III. of Provence and his brother René, at another Alfonso

V. of Aragon, who inherited the crown of Sicily. After her death in

February 1435 the kingdom was fought for between René of Anjou and

Alfonso, surnamed the Magnanimous. René found supporters among the

Italian princes, especially the Milanese Visconti, who helped him to

assert his claims with arms. During the war of succession which ensued,

Alfonso was taken prisoner by the Genoese fleet in August 1435, and was

sent a prisoner to Filippo Maria at Milan. Here he pleaded his own cause

so powerfully, and proved so incontestably the advantage which might

ensue to the Visconti from his alliance, if he held the regno, that he

obtained his release and recognition as king. From the end of the year

1435 Alfonso reigned alone and undisturbed in Lower Italy, combining

for the first time since the year 1282 the crowns of Sicily and Naples.

The former he held by inheritance, together with that of Aragon. The

latter he considered to be his by conquest. Therefore, when he died in

1458, he bequeathed Naples to his natural son Ferdinand, while Sicily

and Aragon passed together to his brother John, and so on to Ferdinand

the Catholic. The twenty-three years of Alfonso's reign were the most

prosperous and splendid period of South Italian history. He became an

Italian in taste and sympathy, entering with enthusiasm into the

humanistic ardour of the earlier Renaissance, encouraging men of letters

at his court, administering his kingdom on the principles of an

enlightened despotism, and lending his authority to establish that

equilibrium in the peninsula upon which the politicians of his age

believed, not without reason, that Italian independence might be

secured.

Duchy of Milan.

The last member of the Visconti family of whom we had occasion to speak

was Azzo, who bought the city in 1328 from Louis of Bavaria. His uncle

Lucchino succeeded, but was murdered in 1349 by a wife against whose

life he had been plotting. Lucchino's brother John, archbishop of Milan,

now assumed the lordship of the city, and extended the power of the

Visconti over Genoa and the whole of north Italy, with the exception of

Piedmont, Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Venice. The greatness of the

family dates from the reign of this masterful prelate. He died in 1354,

and his heritage was divided between three members of his house, Matteo,

Bernabò and Galeazzo. In the next year Matteo, being judged incompetent

to rule, was assassinated by order of his brothers, who made an equal

partition of their subject cities--Bernabò residing in Milan, Galeazzo

in Pavia. Galeazzo was the wealthiest and most magnificent Italian of

his epoch. He married his daughter Violante to our duke of Clarence, and

his son Gian Galeazzo to a daughter of King John of France. When he died

in 1378, this son resolved to reunite the domains of the Visconti; and,

with this object in view, he plotted and executed the murder of his

uncle Bernabò. Gian Galeazzo thus became by one stroke the most

formidable of Italian despots. Immured in his castle at Pavia,

accumulating wealth by systematic taxation and methodical economy, he

organized the mercenary troops who eagerly took service under so good a

paymaster; and, by directing their operations from his cabinet, he

threatened the whole of Italy with conquest. The last scions of the

Della Scala family still reigned in Verona, the last Carraresi in Padua;

the Estensi were powerful in Ferrara, the Gonzaghi in Mantua. Gian

Galeazzo, partly by force and partly by intrigue, discredited these

minor despots, pushed his dominion to the very verge of Venice, and,

having subjected Lombardy to his sway, proceeded to attack Tuscany. Pisa

and Perugia were threatened with extinction, and Florence dreaded the

advance of the Visconti arms, when the plague suddenly cut short his

career of treachery and conquest in the year 1402. Seven years before

his death Gian Galeazzo bought the title of duke of Milan and count of

Pavia from the emperor Wenceslaus, and there is no doubt that he was

aiming at the sovereignty of Italy. But no sooner was he dead than the

essential weakness of an artificial state, built up by cunning and

perfidious policy, with the aid of bought troops, dignified by no

dynastic title, and consolidated by no sense of loyalty, became

apparent. Gian Galeazzo's duchy was a masterpiece of mechanical

contrivance, the creation of a scheming intellect and lawless will. When

the mind which had planned it was withdrawn, it fell to pieces, and the

very hands which had been used to build it helped to scatter its

fragments. The Visconti's own generals, Facino Cane, Pandolfo Malatesta,

Jacopo dal Verme, Gabrino Fondulo, Ottobon Terzo, seized upon the

tyranny of several Lombard cities. In others the petty tyrants whom the

Visconti had uprooted reappeared. The Estensi recovered their grasp upon

Ferrara, and the Gonzaghi upon Mantua. Venice strengthened herself

between the Adriatic and the Alps. Florence reassumed her Tuscan

hegemony. Other communes which still preserved the shadow of

independence, like Perugia and Bologna, began once more to dream of

republican freedom under their own leading families. Meanwhile Gian

Galeazzo had left two sons, Giovanni Maria and Filippo Maria. Giovanni,

a monster of cruelty and lust, was assassinated by some Milanese nobles

in 1412; and now Filippo set about rebuilding his father's duchy. Herein

he was aided by the troops of Facino Cane, who, dying opportunely at

this period, left considerable wealth, a well-trained band of

mercenaries, and a widow, Beatrice di Tenda. Filippo married and then

beheaded Beatrice after a mock trial for adultery, having used her money

and her influence in reuniting several subject cities to the crown of

Milan. He subsequently spent a long, suspicious, secret and

incomprehensible career in the attempt to piece together Gian Galeazzo's

Lombard state, and to carry out his schemes of Italian conquest. In this

endeavour he met with vigorous opponents. Venice and Florence, strong in

the strength of their resentful oligarchies, offered a determined

resistance; nor was Filippo equal in ability to his father. His infernal

cunning often defeated its own aims, checkmating him at the point of

achievement by suggestions of duplicity or terror. In the course of

Filippo's wars with Florence and Venice, the greatest generals of this

age were formed--Francesco Carmagnola, who was beheaded between the

columns at Venice in 1432; Niccolò Piccinino, who died at Milan in 1444;

and Francesco Sforza, who survived to seize his master's heritage in

1450. Son of Attendolo Sforza, this Francesco received the hand of

Filippo's natural daughter, Bianca, as a reward for past service and a

pledge of future support. When the Visconti dynasty ended by the duke's

death in 1447, he pretended to espouse the cause of the Milanese

republic, which was then re-established; but he played his cards so

subtly as to make himself, by the help of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence,

duke _de facto_ if not _de jure_. Francesco Sforza was the only

condottiero among many aspiring to be tyrants who planted themselves

firmly on a throne of first-rate importance. Once seated in the duchy of

Milan, he displayed rare qualities as a ruler; for he not only entered

into the spirit of the age, which required humanity and culture from a

despot, but he also knew how to curb his desire for territory. The

conception of confederated Italy found in him a vigorous supporter. Thus

the limitation of the Milanese duchy under Filippo Maria Visconti, and

its consolidation under Francesco Sforza, were equally effectual in

preparing the balance of power to which Italian politics now tended.

[Illustration: Map of the Unification of Italy 1859-1870.]

This balance could not have been established without the concurrent aid

of Florence. After the expulsion of the duke of Athens in 1343, and the

great plague of 1348, the Florentine proletariate rose up against the

merchant princes. This insurgence of the artisans, in a republic which

had been remodelled upon economical principles by Giano della Bella's

constitution of 1292, reached a climax in 1378, when the Ciompi

rebellion placed the city for a few years in the hands of the Lesser

Arts. The revolution was but temporary, and was rather a symptom of

democratic tendencies in the state than the sign of any capacity for

government on the part of the working classes. The necessities of war

and foreign affairs soon placed Florence in the power of an oligarchy

headed by the great Albizzi family. They fought the battles of the

republic with success against the Visconti, and widely extended the

Florentine domain over the Tuscan cities. During their season of

ascendancy Pisa was enslaved, and Florence gained the access to the sea.

But throughout this period a powerful opposition was gathering strength.

It was led by the Medici, who sided with the common people, and

increased their political importance by the accumulation and wise

employment of vast commercial wealth. In 1433 the Albizzi and the Medici

came to open strife. Cosimo de' Medici, the chief of the opposition, was

exiled to Venice. In the next year he returned, assumed the presidency

of the democratic party, and by a system of corruption and

popularity-hunting, combined with the patronage of arts and letters,

established himself as the real but unacknowledged dictator of the

commonwealth. Cosimo abandoned the policy of his predecessors. Instead

of opposing Francesco Sforza in Milan, he lent him his prestige and

influence, foreseeing that the dynastic future of his own family and the

pacification of Italy might be secured by a balance of power in which

Florence should rank on equal terms with Milan and Naples.

Venice.

The republic of Venice differed essentially from any other state in

Italy; and her history was so separate that, up to this point, it would

have been needless to interrupt the narrative by tracing it. Venice,

however, in the 14th century took her place at last as an Italian power

on an equality at least with the very greatest. The constitution of the

commonwealth had slowly matured itself through a series of revolutions,

which confirmed and defined a type of singular stability. During the

earlier days of the republic the doge had been a prince elected by the

people, and answerable only to the popular assemblies. In 1032 he was

obliged to act in concert with a senate, called _pregadi_; and in 1172

the grand council, which became the real sovereign of the state, was

formed. The several steps whereby the members of the grand council

succeeded in eliminating the people from a share in the government, and

reducing the doge to the position of their ornamental representative,

cannot here be described. It must suffice to say that these changes

culminated in 1297, when an act was passed for closing the grand

council, or in other words for confining it to a fixed number of

privileged families, in whom the government was henceforth vested by

hereditary right. This ratification of the oligarchical principle,

together with the establishment in 1311 of the Council of Ten, completed

that famous constitution which endured till the extinction of the

republic in 1797. Meanwhile, throughout the middle ages, it had been the

policy of Venice to refrain from conquests on the Italian mainland, and

to confine her energies to commerce in the East. The first entry of any

moment made by the Venetians into strictly Italian affairs was in 1336,

when the republics of Florence and St Mark allied themselves against

Mastino della Scala, and the latter took possession of Treviso. After

this, for thirty years, between 1352 and 1381, Venice and Genoa

contested the supremacy of the Mediterranean. Pisa's maritime power

having been extinguished in the battle of Meloria (1284), the two

surviving republics had no rivals. They fought their duel out upon the

Bosporus, off Sardinia, and in the Morea, with various success. From the

first great encounter, in 1355, Venice retired well-nigh exhausted, and

Genoa was so crippled that she placed herself under the protection of

the Visconti. The second and decisive battle was fought upon the

Adriatic. The Genoese fleet under Luciano Doria defeated the Venetians

off Pola in 1379, and sailed without opposition to Chioggia, which was

stormed and taken. Thus the Venetians found themselves blockaded in

their own lagoons. Meanwhile a fleet was raised for their relief by

Carlo Zeno in the Levant, and the admiral Vittore Pisani, who had been

imprisoned after the defeat at Pola, was released to lead their forlorn

hope from the city side. The Genoese in their turn were now blockaded in

Chioggia, and forced by famine to surrender. The losses of men and money

which the war of Chioggia, as it was called, entailed, though they did

not immediately depress the spirit of the Genoese republic, signed her

naval ruin. During this second struggle to the death with Genoa, the

Venetians had been also at strife with the Carraresi of Padua and the

Scaligers of Verona. In 1406, after the extinction of these princely

houses they added Verona, Vicenza and Padua to the territories they

claimed on _terra firma_. Their career of conquest, and their new policy

of forming Italian alliances and entering into the management of Italian

affairs were confirmed by the long dogeship of Francesco Foscari

(1423-1457), who must rank with Alfonso, Cosimo de' Medici, Francesco

Sforza and Nicholas V., as a joint-founder of confederated Italy. When

Constantinople fell in 1453, the old ties between Venice and the Eastern

empire were broken, and she now entered on a wholly new phase of her

history. Ranking as one of the five Italian powers, she was also

destined to defend Western Christendom against the encroachments of the

Turk in Europe. (See VENICE: _History_.)

The Papacy.

By their settlement in Avignon, the popes relinquished their

protectorate of Italian liberties, and lost their position as Italian

potentates. Rienzi's revolution in Rome (1347-1354), and his

establishment of a republic upon a fantastic basis, half classical,

half feudal, proved the temper of the times; while the rise of dynastic

families in the cities of the church, claiming the title of papal

vicars, but acting in their own interests, weakened the authority of the

Holy See. The predatory expeditions of Bertrand du Poiet and Robert of

Geneva were as ineffective as the descents of the emperors; and, though

the cardinal Albornoz conquered Romagna and the March in 1364, the

legates who resided in those districts were not long able to hold them

against their despots. At last Gregory XI. returned to Rome; and Urban

VI., elected in 1378, put a final end to the Avignonian exile. Still the

Great Schism, which now distracted Western Christendom, so enfeebled the

papacy, and kept the Roman pontiffs so engaged in ecclesiastical

disputes, that they had neither power nor leisure to occupy themselves

seriously with their temporal affairs. The threatening presence of the

two princely houses of Orsini and Colonna, alike dangerous as friends or

foes, rendered Rome an unsafe residence. Even when the schism was

nominally terminated in 1415 by the council of Constance, the next two

popes held but a precarious grasp upon their Italian domains. Martin V.

(1417-1431) resided principally at Florence. Eugenius IV. (1431-1447)

followed his example. And what Martin managed to regain Eugenius lost.

At the same time, the change which had now come over Italian politics,

the desire on all sides for a settlement, and the growing conviction

that a federation was necessary, proved advantageous to the popes as

sovereigns. They gradually entered into the spirit of their age, assumed

the style of despots and made use of the humanistic movement, then at

its height, to place themselves in a new relation to Italy. The election

of Nicholas V. in 1447 determined this revolution in the papacy, and

opened a period of temporal splendour, which ended with the

establishment of the popes as sovereigns. Thomas of Sarzana was a

distinguished humanist. Humbly born, he had been tutor in the house of

the Albizzi, and afterwards librarian of the Medici at Florence, where

he imbibed the politics together with the culture of the Renaissance.

Soon after assuming the tiara, he found himself without a rival in the

church; for the schism ended by Felix V.'s resignation in 1449. Nicholas

fixed his residence in Rome, which he began to rebuild and to fortify,

determining to render the Eternal City once more a capital worthy of its

high place in Europe. The Romans were flattered; and, though his reign

was disturbed by republican conspiracy, Nicholas V. was able before his

death in 1455 to secure the modern status of the pontiff as a splendid

patron and a wealthy temporal potentate.

Confederated Italy.

Italy was now for a brief space independent. The humanistic movement had

created a common culture, a common language and sense of common

nationality. The five great powers, with their satellites--dukes of

Savoy and Urbino, marquesses of Ferrara and Mantua, republics of

Bologna, Perugia, Siena--were constituted. All political institutions

tended toward despotism. The Medici became yearly more indispensable to

Florence, the Bentivogli more autocratic in Bologna, the Baglioni in

Perugia; and even Siena was ruled by the Petrucci. But this despotism

was of a mild type. The princes were Italians; they shared the common

enthusiasms of the nation for art, learning, literature and science;

they studied how to mask their tyranny with arts agreeable to the

multitude. When Italy had reached this point, Constantinople was taken

by the Turks. On all sides it was felt that the Italian alliance must be

tightened; and one of the last, best acts of Nicholas V.'s pontificate

was the appeal in 1453 to the five great powers in federation. As

regards their common opposition to the Turk, this appeal led to nothing;

but it marked the growth of a new Italian consciousness.

Between 1453 and 1492 Italy continued to be prosperous and tranquil.

Nearly all wars during this period were undertaken either to check the

growing power of Venice or to further the ambition of the papacy. Having

become despots, the popes sought to establish their relatives in

principalities. The word nepotism acquired new significance in the

reigns of Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. Though the country was convulsed

by no great struggle, these forty years witnessed a truly appalling

increase of political crime. To be a prince was tantamount to being the

mark of secret conspiracy and assassination. Among the most noteworthy

examples of such attempts may be mentioned the revolt of the barons

against Ferdinand I. of Naples (1464), the murder of Galeazzo Maria

Sforza at Milan (1476) and the plot of the Pazzi to destroy the Medici

(1478). After Cosimo de' Medici's death in 1464, the presidency of the

Florentine republic passed to his son Piero, who left it in 1469 to his

sons Lorenzo and Giuliano. These youths assumed the style of princes,

and it was against their lives that the Pazzi, with the sanction of

Sixtus IV., aimed their blow. Giuliano was murdered, Lorenzo escaped, to

tighten his grasp upon the city, which now loved him and was proud of

him. During the following fourteen years of his brilliant career he made

himself absolute master of Florence, and so modified her institutions

that the Medici were henceforth necessary to the state. Apprehending the

importance of Italian federation, Lorenzo, by his personal tact and

prudent leadership of the republic, secured peace and a common

intelligence between the five powers. His own family was fortified by

the marriage of his daughter to a son of Innocent VIII., which procured

his son Giovanni's elevation to the cardinalate, and involved two

Medicean papacies and the future dependence of Florence upon Rome.

Invasion of Charles VIII.

VI. _Age of Invasions._--The year 1492 opened a new age for Italy. In

this year Lorenzo died, and was succeeded by his son, the vain and weak

Piero; France passed beneath the personal control of the inexperienced

Charles VIII.; the fall of Granada freed Spain from her embarrassments;

Columbus discovered America, destroying the commercial supremacy of

Venice; last, but not least, Roderigo Borgia assumed the tiara with the

famous title of Alexander VI. In this year the short-lived federation of

the five powers was shaken, and Italy was once more drawn into the

vortex of European affairs. The events which led to this disaster may be

briefly told. After Galeazzo Maria's assassination, his crown passed to

a boy, Gian Galeazzo, who was in due course married to a grand-daughter

of Ferdinand I. of Naples. But the government of Milan remained in the

hands of this youth's uncle, Lodovico, surnamed Il Moro. Lodovico

resolved to become duke of Milan. The king of Naples was his natural

enemy, and he had cause to suspect that Piero de' Medici might abandon

his alliance. Feeling himself alone, with no right to the title he was

bent on seizing, he had recourse to Charles VIII. of France, whom he

urged to make good his claim to the kingdom of Naples. This claim, it

may be said in passing, rested on the will of King René of Anjou. After

some hesitation, Charles agreed to invade Italy. He crossed the Alps in

1495, passed through Lombardy, entered Tuscany, freed Pisa from the yoke

of Florence, witnessed the expulsion of the Medici, marched to Naples

and was crowned there--all this without striking a blow. Meanwhile

Lodovico procured his nephew's death, and raised a league against the

French in Lombardy. Charles hurried back from Naples, and narrowly

escaped destruction at Fornovo in the passes of the Apennines. He made

good his retreat, however, and returned to France in 1495. Little

remained to him of his light acquisitions; but he had convulsed Italy by

this invasion, destroyed her equilibrium, exposed her military weakness

and political disunion, and revealed her wealth to greedy and more

powerful nations.

Louis XII.

The princes of the house of Aragon, now represented by Frederick, a son

of Ferdinand I., returned to Naples. Florence made herself a republic,

adopting a form of constitution analogous to that of Venice. At this

crisis she was ruled by the monk Girolamo Savonarola, who inspired the

people with a thirst for freedom, preached the necessity of reformation,

and placed himself in direct antagonism to Rome. After a short but

eventful career, the influence of which was long effective, he lost his

hold upon the citizens. Alexander VI. procured a mock trial, and his

enemies burned him upon the Piazza in 1498. In this year Louis XII.

succeeded Charles VIII. upon the throne of France. As duke of Orleans he

had certain claims to Milan through his grandmother Valentina, daughter

of Gian Galeazzo, the first duke. They were not valid, for the

investiture of the duchy had been granted only to male heirs. But they

served as a sufficient pretext, and in 1499 Louis entered and subdued

the Milanese. Lodovico escaped to Germany, returned the next year, was

betrayed by his Swiss mercenaries and sent to die at Loches in France.

In 1500 Louis made the blunder of calling Ferdinand the Catholic to help

him in the conquest of Naples. By a treaty signed at Granada, the French

and Spanish kings were to divide the spoil. The conquest was easy; but,

when it came to a partition, Ferdinand played his ally false. He made

himself supreme over the Two Sicilies, which he now reunited under a

single crown. Three years later, unlessoned by this experience, Louis

signed the treaty of Blois (1504), whereby he invited the emperor

Maximilian to aid him in the subjugation of Venice. No policy could have

been less far-sighted; for Charles V., joint heir to Austria, Burgundy,

Castile and Aragon, the future overwhelming rival of France, was already

born.

The stage was now prepared, and all the actors who were destined to

accomplish the ruin of Italy trod it with their armies. Spain, France,

Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, had been summoned upon various

pretexts to partake her provinces. Then, too late, patriots like

Machiavelli perceived the suicidal self-indulgence of the past, which,

by substituting mercenary troops for national militias, left the

Italians at the absolute discretion of their neighbours. Whatever parts

the Italians themselves played in the succeeding quarter of a century,

the game was in the hands of French, Spanish and German invaders.

Meanwhile, no scheme for combination against common foes arose in the

peninsula. Each petty potentate strove for his own private advantage in

the confusion; and at this epoch the chief gains accrued to the papacy.

Aided by his terrible son, Cesare Borgia, Alexander VI. chastised the

Roman nobles, subdued Romagna and the March, threatened Tuscany, and

seemed to be upon the point of creating a Central Italian state in

favour of his progeny, when he died suddenly in 1503. His conquests

reverted to the Holy See. Julius II., his bitterest enemy and powerful

successor, continued Alexander's policy, but no longer in the interest

of his own relatives. It became the nobler ambition of Julius to

aggrandize the church, and to reassume the protectorate of the Italian

people. With this object, he secured Emilia, carried his victorious arms

against Ferrara, and curbed the tyranny of the Baglioni in Perugia.

Julius II. played a perilous game; but the stakes were high, and he

fancied himself strong enough to guide the tempest he evoked.

Quarrelling with the Venetians in 1508, he combined the forces of all

Europe by the league of Cambray against them; and, when he had succeeded

in his first purpose of humbling them even to the dust, he turned round

in 1510, uttered his famous resolve to expel the barbarians from Italy,

and pitted the Spaniards against the French. It was with the Swiss that

he hoped to effect this revolution; but the Swiss, now interfering for

the first time as principals in Italian affairs, were incapable of more

than adding to the already maddening distractions of the people. Formed

for mercenary warfare, they proved a perilous instrument in the hands of

those who used them, and were hardly less injurious to their friends

than to their foes. In 1512 the battle of Ravenna between the French

troops and the allies of Julius--Spaniards, Venetians and Swiss--was

fought. Gaston de Foix bought a doubtful victory dearly with his death;

and the allies, though beaten on the banks of the Ronco, immediately

afterwards expelled the French from Lombardy. Yet Julius II. had failed,

as might have been foreseen. He only exchanged one set of foreign

masters for another, and taught a new barbarian race how pleasant were

the plains of Italy. As a consequence of the battle of Ravenna, the

Medici returned in 1512 to Florence.

When Leo X. was elected in 1513, Rome and Florence rejoiced; but Italy

had no repose. Louis XII. had lost the game, and the Spaniards were

triumphant. But new actors appeared upon the scene, and the same old

struggle was resumed with fiercer energy. By the victory of Marignano in

1515 Francis I., having now succeeded to the throne of France, regained

the Milanese, and broke the power of the Swiss, who held it for

Massimiliano Sforza, the titular duke. Leo for a while relied on

Francis; for the vast power of Charles V., who succeeded to the empire

in 1519, as in 1516 he had succeeded to the crowns of Spain and Lower

Italy, threatened the whole of Europe. It was Leo's nature, however, to

be inconstant. In 1521 he changed sides, allied himself to Charles, and

died after hearing that the imperial troops had again expelled the

French from Milan. During the next four years the Franco-Spanish war

dragged on in Lombardy until the decisive battle of Pavia in 1525, when

Francis was taken prisoner, and Italy lay open to the Spanish armies.

Meanwhile Leo X. had been followed by Adrian VI., and Adrian by Clement

VII., of the house of Medici, who had long ruled Florence. In the reign

of this pope Francis was released from his prison in Madrid (1526), and

Clement hoped that he might still be used in the Italian interest as a

counterpoise to Charles. It is impossible in this place to follow the

tangled intrigues of that period. The year 1527 was signalized by the

famous sack of Rome. An army of mixed German and Spanish troops,

pretending to act for the emperor, but which may rather be regarded as a

vast marauding party, entered Italy under their leader Frundsberg. After

his death, the Constable de Bourbon took command of them; they marched

slowly down, aided by the marquis of Ferrara, and unopposed by the duke

of Urbino, reached Rome, and took it by assault. The constable was

killed in the first onslaught; Clement was imprisoned in the castle of

St Angelo; Rome was abandoned to the rage of 30,000 ruffians. As an

immediate result of this catastrophe, Florence shook off the Medici, and

established a republic. But Clement, having made peace with the emperor,

turned the remnants of the army which had sacked Rome against his native

city. After a desperate resistance, Florence fell in 1530. Alessandro

de' Medici was placed there with the title of duke of Cività di Penna;

and, on his murder in 1537, Cosimo de' Medici, of the younger branch of

the ruling house, was made duke. Acting as lieutenant for the Spaniards,

he subsequently (1555) subdued Siena, and bequeathed to his descendants

the grand-duchy of Tuscany.

Settlement of Italy by Spain.

VII. _Spanish-Austrian Ascendancy._--It was high time, after the sack of

Rome in 1527, that Charles V. should undertake Italian affairs. The

country was exposed to anarchy, of which this had been the last and most

disgraceful example. The Turks were threatening western Europe, and

Luther was inflaming Germany. By the treaty of Barcelona in 1529 the

pope and emperor made terms. By that of Cambray in the same year France

relinquished Italy to Spain. Charles then entered the port of Genoa, and

on the 5th of November met Clement VII. at Bologna. He there received

the imperial crown, and summoned the Italian princes for a settlement of

all disputed claims. Francesco Sforza, the last and childless heir of

the ducal house, was left in Milan till his death, which happened in

1535. The republic of Venice was respected in her liberties and Lombard

territories. The Este family received a confirmation of their duchy of

Modena and Reggio, and were invested in their fief of Ferrara by the

pope. The marquessate of Mantua was made a duchy; and Florence was

secured, as we have seen, to the Medici. The great gainer by this

settlement was the papacy, which held the most substantial Italian

province, together with a prestige that raised it far above all rivalry.

The rest of Italy, however parcelled, henceforth became but a dependence

upon Spain. Charles V., it must be remembered, achieved his conquest and

confirmed his authority far less as emperor than as the heir of Castile

and Aragon. A Spanish viceroy in Milan and another in Naples, supported

by Rome and by the minor princes who followed the policy dictated to

them from Madrid, were sufficient to preserve the whole peninsula in a

state of somnolent inglorious servitude.

From 1530 until 1796, that is, for a period of nearly three centuries,

the Italians had no history of their own. Their annals are filled with

records of dynastic changes and redistributions of territory, consequent

upon treaties signed by foreign powers, in the settlement of quarrels

which no wise concerned the people. Italy only too often became the

theatre of desolating and distracting wars. But these wars were fought

for the most part by alien armies; the points at issue were decided

beyond the Alps; the gains accrued to royal families whose names were

unpronounceable by southern tongues. The affairs of Europe during the

years when Habsburg and Bourbon fought their domestic battles with the

blood of noble races may teach grave lessons to all thoughtful men of

our days, but none bitterer, none fraught with more insulting

recollections, than to the Italian people, who were haggled over like

dumb driven cattle in the mart of chaffering kings. We cannot wholly

acquit the Italians of their share of blame. When they might have won

national independence, after their warfare with the Swabian emperors,

they let the golden opportunity slip. Pampered with commercial

prosperity, eaten to the core with inter-urban rivalries, they submitted

to despots, renounced the use of arms, and offered themselves in the

hour of need, defenceless and disunited to the shock of puissant

nations. That they had created modern civilization for Europe availed

them nothing. Italy, intellectually first among the peoples, was now

politically and practically last; and nothing to her historian is more

heart-rending than to watch the gradual extinction of her spirit in this

age of slavery.

Pontificate of Paul III.

In 1534 Alessandro Farnese, who owed his elevation to his sister Giulia,

one of Alexander VI.'s mistresses, took the tiara with the title of Paul

III. It was his ambition to create a duchy for his family; and with this

object he gave Parma and Piacenza to his son Pier Luigi. After much

wrangling between the French and Spanish parties, the duchy was

confirmed in 1586 to Ottaviano Farnese and his son Alessandro, better

known as Philip II.'s general, the prince of Parma. Alessandro's

descendants reigned in Parma and Piacenza till the year 1731. Paul

III.'s pontificate was further marked by important changes in the

church, all of which confirmed the spiritual autocracy of Rome. In 1540

this pope approved of Loyola's foundation, and secured the powerful

militia of the Jesuit order. The Inquisition was established with almost

unlimited powers in Italy, and the press was placed under its

jurisdiction. Thus free thought received a check, by which not only

ecclesiastical but political tyrants knew how to profit. Henceforth it

was impossible to publish or to utter a word which might offend the

despots of church or state; and the Italians had to amuse their leisure

with the polite triflings of academics. In 1545 a council was opened at

Trent for the reformation of church discipline and the promulgation of

orthodox doctrine. The decrees of this council defined Roman Catholicism

against the Reformation; and, while failing to regenerate morality, they

enforced a hypocritical observance of public decency. Italy to outer

view put forth blossoms of hectic and hysterical piety, though at the

core her clergy and her aristocracy were more corrupt than ever.

Reign of Philip II.

In 1556 Philip II., by the abdication of his father Charles V., became

king of Spain. He already wore the crown of the Two Sicilies, and ruled

the duchy of Milan. In the next year Ferdinand, brother of Charles, was

elected emperor. The French, meanwhile, had not entirely abandoned their

claims on Italy. Gian Pietro Caraffa, who was made pope in 1555 with the

name of Paul IV., endeavoured to revive the ancient papal policy of

leaning upon France. He encouraged the duke of Guise to undertake the

conquest of Naples, as Charles of Anjou had been summoned by his

predecessors. But such schemes were now obsolete and anachronistic. They

led to a languid lingering Italian campaign, which was settled far

beyond the Alps by Philip's victories over the French at St Quentin and

Gravelines. The peace of Câteau Cambresis, signed in 1559, left the

Spanish monarch undisputed lord of Italy. Of free commonwealths there

now survived only Venice, which, together with Spain, achieved for

Europe the victory of Lepanto in 1573; Genoa, which, after the

ineffectual Fieschi revolution in 1547, abode beneath the rule of the

great Doria family, and held a feeble sway in Corsica; and the two

insignificant republics of Lucca and San Marino.

The future hope of Italy, however, was growing in a remote and hitherto

neglected corner. Emmanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, represented the

oldest and not the least illustrious reigning house in Europe, and his

descendants were destined to achieve for Italy the independence which no

other power or prince had given her since the fall of ancient Rome. (See

SAVOY, HOUSE OF.)

When Emmanuel Philibert succeeded to his father Charles III. in 1553, he

was a duke without a duchy. But the princes of the house of Savoy were a

race of warriors; and what Emmanuel Philibert lost as sovereign he

regained as captain of adventure in the service of his cousin Philip II.

The treaty of Câteau Cambresis in 1559, and the evacuation of the

Piedmontese cities held by French and Spanish troops in 1574, restored

his state. By removing the capital from Chambéry to Turin, he completed

the transformation of the dukes of Savoy from Burgundian into Italian

sovereigns. They still owned Savoy beyond the Alps, the plains of

Bresse, and the maritime province of Nice.

Emmanuel Philibert was succeeded by his son Charles Emmanuel I., who

married Catherine, a daughter of Philip II. He seized the first

opportunity of annexing Saluzzo, which had been lost to Savoy in the

last two reigns, and renewed the disastrous policy of his grandfather

Charles III. by invading Geneva and threatening Provence. Henry IV. of

France forced him in 1601 to relinquish Bresse and his Burgundian

possessions. In return he was allowed to keep Saluzzo. All hopes of

conquest on the transalpine side were now quenched; but the keys of

Italy had been given to the dukes of Savoy; and their attention was

still further concentrated upon Lombard conquests. Charles Emmanuel now

attempted the acquisition of Montferrat, which was soon to become vacant

by the death of Francesco Gonzaga, who held it together with Mantua. In

order to secure this territory, he went to war with Philip III. of

Spain, and allied himself with Venice and the Grisons to expel the

Spaniards from the Valtelline. When the male line of the Gonzaga family

expired in 1627, Charles, duke of Nevers, claimed Mantua and Montferrat

in right of his wife, the only daughter of the last duke. Charles

Emmanuel was now checkmated by France, as he had formerly been by Spain.

The total gains of all his strenuous endeavours amounted to the

acquisition of a few places on the borders of Montferrat.

Extinction of old ducal families.

Not only the Gonzagas, but several other ancient ducal families, died

out about the date which we have reached. The legitimate line of the

Estensi ended in 1597 by the death of Alfonso II., the last duke of

Ferrara. He left his domains to a natural relative, Cesare d'Este, who

would in earlier days have inherited without dispute, for bastardy had

been no bar on more than one occasion in the Este pedigree. Urban VIII.,

however, put in a claim to Ferrara, which, it will be remembered, had

been recognized a papal fief in 1530. Cesare d'Este had to content

himself with Modena and Reggio, where his descendants reigned as dukes

till 1794. Under the same pontiff, the Holy See absorbed the duchy of

Urbino on the death of Francesco Maria II., the last representative of

Montefeltro and Della Rovere. The popes were now masters of a fine and

compact territory, embracing no inconsiderable portion of Countess

Matilda's legacy, in addition to Pippin's donation, and the patrimony of

St Peter. Meanwhile Spanish fanaticism, the suppression of the Huguenots

in France and the Catholic policy of Austria combined to strengthen

their authority as pontiffs. Urban's predecessor, Paul V., advanced so

far as to extend his spiritual jurisdiction over Venice, which, up to

the date of his election (1605), had resisted all encroachments of the

Holy See. Venice offered the single instance in Italy of a national

church. The republic managed the tithes, and the clergy acknowledged no

chief above their own patriarch. Paul V. now forced the Venetians to

admit his ecclesiastical supremacy; but they refused to readmit the

Jesuits, who had been expelled in 1606. This, if we do not count the

proclamation of James I. of England (1604), was the earliest instance of

the order's banishment from a state where it had proved disloyal to the

commonwealth.

Decline of Venice and Spain.

Venice rapidly declined throughout the 17th century. The loss of trade

consequent upon the closing of Egypt and the Levant, together with the

discovery of America and the sea-route to the Indies, had dried up her

chief source of wealth. Prolonged warfare with the Ottomans, who forced

her to abandon Candia in 1669, as they had robbed her of Cyprus in 1570,

still further crippled her resources. Yet she kept the Adriatic free of

pirates, notably by suppressing the sea-robbers called Uscocchi

(1601-1617), maintained herself in the Ionian Islands, and in 1684 added

one more to the series of victorious episodes which render her annals so

romantic. In that year Francesco Morosini, upon whose tomb we still may

read the title Peloponnesiacus, wrested the whole of the Morea from the

Turks. But after his death in 1715 the republic relaxed her hold upon

his conquests. The Venetian nobles abandoned themselves to indolence and

vice. Many of them fell into the slough of pauperism, and were saved

from starvation by public doles. Though the signory still made a brave

show upon occasions of parade, it was clear that the state was rotten to

the core, and sinking into the decrepitude of dotage. The Spanish

monarchy at the same epoch dwindled with apparently less reason.

Philip's Austrian successors reduced it to the rank of a secondary

European power. This decline of vigour was felt, with the customary

effects of discord and bad government, in Lower Italy. The revolt of

Masaniello in Naples (1647), followed by rebellions at Palermo and

Messina, which placed Sicily for a while in the hands of Louis XIV.

(1676-1678) were symptoms of progressive anarchy. The population, ground

down by preposterous taxes, ill-used as only the subjects of Spaniards,

Turks or Bourbons are handled, rose in blind exasperation against their

oppressors. It is impossible to attach political importance to these

revolutions; nor did they bring the people any appreciable good. The

destinies of Italy were decided in the cabinets and on the battlefields

of northern Europe. A Bourbon at Versailles, a Habsburg at Vienna, or a

thick-lipped Lorrainer, with a stroke of his pen, wrote off province

against province, regarding not the populations who had bled for him or

thrown themselves upon his mercy.

Wars of Succession.

This inglorious and passive chapter of Italian history is continued to

the date of the French Revolution with the records of three dynastic

wars, the war of the Spanish succession, the war of the Polish

succession, the war of the Austrian succession, followed by three

European treaties, which brought them respectively to diplomatic

terminations. Italy, handled and rehandled, settled and resettled, upon

each of these occasions, changed masters without caring or knowing what

befell the principals in any one of the disputes. Humiliating to human

nature in general as are the annals of the 18th-century campaigns in

Europe, there is no point of view from which they appear in a light so

tragi-comic as from that afforded by Italian history. The system of

setting nations by the ears with the view of settling the quarrels of a

few reigning houses was reduced to absurdity when the people, as in

these cases, came to be partitioned and exchanged without the assertion

or negation of a single principle affecting their interests or rousing

their emotions.

Spanish Succession.

In 1700 Charles II. died, and with him ended the Austrian family in

Spain. Louis XIV. claimed the throne for Philip, duke of Anjou. Charles,

archduke of Austria, opposed him. The dispute was fought out in

Flanders; but Lombardy felt the shock, as usual, of the French and

Austrian dynasties. The French armies were more than once defeated by

Prince Eugene of Savoy, who drove them out of Italy in 1707. Therefore,

in the peace of Utrecht (1713), the services of the house of Savoy had

to be duly recognized. Victor Amadeus II. received Sicily with the title

of king. Montferrat and Alessandria were added to his northern

provinces, and his state was recognized as independent. Charles of

Austria, now emperor, took Milan, Mantua, Naples and Sardinia for his

portion of the Italian spoil. Philip founded the Bourbon line of Spanish

kings, renouncing in Italy all that his Habsburg predecessors had

gained. Discontented with this diminution of the Spanish heritage,

Philip V. married Elisabetta Farnese, heiress to the last duke of Parma,

in 1714. He hoped to secure this duchy for his son, Don Carlos; and

Elisabetta further brought with her a claim to the grand-duchy of

Tuscany, which would soon become vacant by the death of Gian Gastone de'

Medici. After this marriage Philip broke the peace of Europe by invading

Sardinia. The Quadruple Alliance was formed, and the new king of Sicily

was punished for his supposed adherence to Philip V. by the forced

exchange of Sicily for the island of Sardinia. It was thus that in 1720

the house of Savoy assumed the regal title which it bore until the

declaration of the Italian kingdom in the last century. Victor Amadeus

II.'s reign was of great importance in the history of his state. Though

a despot, as all monarchs were obliged to be at that date, he reigned

with prudence, probity and zeal for the welfare of his subjects. He took

public education out of the hands of the Jesuits, which, for the future

development of manliness in his dominions, was a measure of incalculable

value. The duchy of Savoy in his days became a kingdom, and Sardinia,

though it seemed a poor exchange for Sicily, was a far less perilous

possession than the larger and wealthier island would have been. In 1730

Victor Amadeus abdicated in favour of his son Charles Emmanuel III.

Repenting of this step, he subsequently attempted to regain Turin, but

was imprisoned in the castle of Rivoli, where he ended his days in 1732.

Polish Succession.

The War of the Polish Succession which now disturbed Europe is only

important in Italian history because the treaty of Vienna in 1738

settled the disputed affairs of the duchies of Parma and Tuscany. The

duke Antonio Farnese died in 1731; the grand-duke Gian Gastone de'

Medici died in 1737. In the duchy of Parma Don Carlos had already been

proclaimed. But he was now transferred to the Two Sicilies, while

Francis of Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, took Tuscany and

Parma. Milan and Mantua remained in the hands of the Austrians. On this

occasion Charles Emmanuel acquired Tortona and Novara.

Austrian Succession.

Worse complications ensued for the Italians when the emperor Charles

VI., father of Maria Theresa, died in 1740. The three branches of the

Bourbon house, ruling in France, Spain and the Sicilies, joined with

Prussia, Bavaria and the kingdom of Sardinia to despoil Maria Theresa of

her heritage. Lombardy was made the seat of war; and here the king of

Sardinia acted as in some sense the arbiter of the situation. After war

broke out, he changed sides and supported the Habsburg-Lorraine party.

At first, in 1745, the Sardinians were defeated by the French and

Spanish troops. But Francis of Lorraine, elected emperor in that year,

sent an army to the king's support, which in 1746 obtained a signal

victory over the Bourbons at Piacenza. Charles Emmanuel now threatened

Genoa. The Austrian soldiers already held the town. But the citizens

expelled them, and the republic kept her independence. In 1748 the

treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which put an end to the War of the Austrian

Succession, once more redivided Italy. Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla

were formed into a duchy for Don Philip, brother of Charles III. of the

Two Sicilies, and son of Philip V. of Spain. Charles III. was confirmed

in his kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The Austrians kept Milan and

Tuscany. The duchy of Modena was placed under the protection of the

French. So was Genoa, which in 1755, after Paoli's insurrection against

the misgovernment of the republic, ceded her old domain of Corsica to

France.

Forty-four years' peace.

From the date of this settlement until 1792, Italy enjoyed a period of

repose and internal amelioration under her numerous paternal despots. It

became the fashion during these forty-four years of peace to encourage

the industrial population and to experimentalize in economical reforms.

The Austrian government in Lombardy under Maria Theresa was

characterized by improved agriculture, regular administration, order,

reformed taxation and increased education. A considerable amount of

local autonomy was allowed, and dependence on Vienna was very slight and

not irksome. The nobles and the clergy were rich and influential, but

kept in order by the civil power. There was no feeling of nationality,

but the people were prosperous, enjoyed profound peace and were placidly

content with the existing order of things. On the death of Maria Theresa

in 1780, the emperor Joseph II. instituted much wider reforms. Feudal

privileges were done away with, clerical influence diminished and many

monasteries and convents suppressed, the criminal law rendered more

humane and torture abolished largely as a result of G. Beccaria's famous

pamphlet _Dei delitti e delle pene_. At the same time Joseph's

administration was more arbitrary, and local autonomy was to some extent

curtailed. His anti-clerical laws produced some ill-feeling among the

more devout part of the population. On the whole the Austrian rule in

pre-revolutionary days was beneficial and far from oppressive, and

helped Lombardy to recover from the ill-effects of the Spanish

domination. It did little for the moral education of the people, but the

same criticism applies more or less to all the European governments of

the day. The emperor Francis I. ruled the grand-duchy of Tuscany by

lieutenants until his death in 1765, when it was given, as an

independent state, to his second son, Peter Leopold. The reign of this

duke was long remembered as a period of internal prosperity, wise

legislation and important public enterprise. Leopold, among other useful

works, drained the Val di Chiana, and restored those fertile upland

plains to agriculture. In 1790 he succeeded to the empire, and left

Tuscany to his son Ferdinand. The kingdom of Sardinia was administered

upon similar principles, but with less of geniality. Charles Emmanuel

made his will law, and erased the remnants of free institutions from his

state. At the same time he wisely followed his father's policy with

regard to education and the church. This is perhaps the best that can be

said of a king who incarnated the stolid absolutism of the period. From

this date, however, we are able to trace the revival of independent

thought among the Italians. The European ferment of ideas which preceded

the French Revolution expressed itself in men like Alfieri, the fierce

denouncer of tyrants, Beccaria, the philosopher of criminal

jurisprudence, Volta, the physicist, and numerous political economists

of Tuscany. Moved partly by external influences and partly by a slow

internal reawakening, the people was preparing for the efforts of the

19th century. The papacy, during this period, had to reconsider the

question of the Jesuits, who made themselves universally odious, not

only in Italy, but also in France and Spain. In the pontificate of

Clement XIII. they ruled the Vatican, and almost succeeded in embroiling

the pope with the concerted Bourbon potentates of Europe. His successor,

Clement XIV. suppressed the order altogether by a brief of 1773.

(J. A. S.)

D. ITALY IN THE NAPOLEONIC PERIOD, 1796-1814

The campaign of 1796 which led to the awakening of the Italian people to

a new consciousness of unity and strength is detailed in the article

NAPOLEONIC CAMPAIGNS. Here we can attempt only a general survey of the

events, political, civic and social, which heralded the _Risorgimento_

in its first phase. It is desirable in the first place to realize the

condition of Italy at the time when the irruption of the French and the

expulsion of the Austrians opened up a new political vista for that

oppressed and divided people.

Influence of the French Revolution.

Bonaparte in Italy.

For many generations Italy had been bandied to and fro between the

Habsburgs and the Bourbons. The decline of French influence at the close

of the reign of Louis XIV. left the Habsburgs and the Spanish Bourbons

without serious rivals. The former possessed the rich duchies of Milan

(including Mantua) and Tuscany; while through a marriage alliance with

the house of Este of Modena (the Archduke Ferdinand had married the

heiress of Modena) its influence over that duchy was supreme. It also

had a few fiefs in Piedmont and in Genoese territory. By marrying her

daughter, Maria Amelia, to the young duke of Parma, and another

daughter, Maria Carolina, to Ferdinand of Naples, Maria Theresa

consolidated Habsburg influence in the north and south of the peninsula.

The Spanish Bourbons held Naples and Sicily, as well as the duchy of

Parma. Of the nominally independent states the chief were the kingdom

of Sardinia, ruled over by the house of Savoy, and comprising Piedmont,

the isle of Sardinia and nominally Savoy and Nice, though the two

provinces last named had virtually been lost to the monarchy since the

campaign of 1793. Equally extensive, but less important in the political

sphere, were the Papal States and Venetia, the former torpid under the

obscurantist rule of pope and cardinals, the latter enervated by luxury

and the policy of unmanly complaisance long pursued by doge and council.

The ancient rival of Venice, Genoa, was likewise far gone in decline.

The small states, Lucca and San Marino, completed the map of Italy. The

worst governed part of the peninsula was the south, where feudalism lay

heavily on the cultivators and corruption pervaded all ranks. Milan and

Piedmont were comparatively well governed; but repugnance to Austrian

rule in the former case, and the contagion of French Jacobinical

opinions in the latter, brought those populations into increasing

hostility to the rulers. The democratic propaganda, which was permeating

all the large towns of the peninsula, then led to the formation of

numerous and powerful clubs and secret societies; and the throne of

Victor Amadeus III., of the house of Savoy, soon began to totter under

the blows delivered by the French troops at the mountain barriers of his

kingdom and under the insidious assaults of the friends of liberty at

Turin. Plotting was rife at Milan, as also at Bologna, where the memory

of old liberties predisposed men to cast off clerical rule and led to

the first rising on behalf of Italian liberty in the year 1794. At

Palermo the Sicilians struggled hard to establish a republic in place of

the odious government of an alien dynasty. The anathemas of the pope,

the bravery of Piedmontese and Austrians, and the subsidies of Great

Britain failed to keep the league of Italian princes against France

intact. The grand-duke of Tuscany was the first of the European

sovereigns who made peace with, and recognized the French republic,

early in 1795. The first fortnight of Napoleon's campaign of 1796

detached Sardinia from alliance with Austria and England. The enthusiasm

of the Italians for the young Corsican "liberator" greatly helped his

progress. Two months later Ferdinand of Naples sought for an armistice,

the central duchies were easily overrun, and, early in 1797, Pope Pius

VI. was fain to sign terms of peace with Bonaparte at Tolentino,

practically ceding the northern part of his states, known as the

Legations. The surrender of the last Habsburg stronghold, Mantua, on the

2nd of February 1797 left the field clear for the erection of new

political institutions.

The Cispadane Republic.

Already the men of Reggio, Modena and Bologna had declared for a

democratic policy, in which feudalism and clerical rule should have no

place, and in which manhood suffrage, together with other rights

promised by Bonaparte to the men of Milan in May 1796, should form the

basis of a new order of things. In taking this step the Modenese and

Romagnols had the encouragement of Bonaparte, despite the orders which

the French directory sent to him in a contrary sense. The result was the

formation of an assembly at Modena which abolished feudal dues and

customs, declared for manhood suffrage and established the Cispadane

Republic (October 1796).

The Cisalpine Republic.

The close of Bonaparte's victorious campaign against the Archduke

Charles in 1797 enabled him to mature those designs respecting Venice

which are detailed in the article NAPOLEON. On a far higher level was

his conduct towards the Milanese. While the French directory saw in that

province little more than a district which might be plundered and

bargained for, Bonaparte, though by no means remiss in the exaction of

gold and of artistic treasures, was laying the foundation of a friendly

republic. During his sojourn at the castle of Montebello or Mombello,

near Milan, he commissioned several of the leading men of northern Italy

to draw up a project of constitution and list of reforms for that

province. Meanwhile he took care to curb the excesses of the Italian

Jacobins and to encourage the Moderates, who were favourable to the

French connexion as promising a guarantee against Austrian domination

and internal anarchy. He summed up his conduct in the letter of the 8th

of May 1797 to the French directory, "I cool the hot heads here and warm

the cool ones." The Transpadane Republic, or, as it was soon called, the

Cisalpine Republic, began its organized life on the 9th of July 1797,

with a brilliant festival at Milan. The constitution was modelled on

that of the French directory, and, lest there should be a majority of

clerical or Jacobinical deputies, the French Republic through its

general, Bonaparte, nominated and appointed the first deputies and

administrators of the new government. In the same month it was joined by

the Cispadane Republic; and the terms of the treaty of Campo Formio

(October 17, 1797), while fatal to the political life of Venice, awarded

to this now considerable state the Venetian territories west of the

river Adige. A month later, under the pretence of stilling the civil

strifes in the Valtelline, Bonaparte absorbed that Swiss district in the

Cisalpine Republic, which thus included all the lands between Como and

Verona on the north, and Rimini on the south.

End of the Venetian Republic.

Early in the year 1798 the Austrians, in pursuance of the scheme of

partition agreed on at Campo Formio, entered Venice and brought to an

end its era of independence which had lasted some 1100 years. Venice

with its mainland territories east of the Adige, inclusive of Istria and

Dalmatia, went to the Habsburgs, while the Venetian isles of the

Adriatic (the Ionian Isles) and the Venetian fleet went to strengthen

France for that eastern expedition on which Bonaparte had already set

his heart. Venice not only paid the costs of the war to the two chief

belligerents, but her naval resources also helped to launch the young

general on his career of eastern adventure. Her former rival, Genoa, had

also been compelled, in June 1797, to bow before the young conqueror,

and had undergone at his hands a remodelling on the lines already

followed at Milan. The new Genoese republic, French in all but name, was

renamed the Ligurian Republic.

French occupation of Rome.

Before he set sail for Egypt, the French had taken possession of Rome.

Already masters of the papal fortress of Ancona, they began openly to

challenge the pope's authority at the Eternal City itself. Joseph

Bonaparte, then French envoy to the Vatican, encouraged democratic

manifestations; and one of them, at the close of 1797, led to a scuffle

in which a French general, Duphot, was killed. The French directory at

once ordered its general, Berthier, to march to Rome: the Roman

democrats proclaimed a republic on the 15th of February 1798, and on

their invitation Berthier and his troops marched in. The pope, Pius VI.,

was forthwith haled away to Siena and a year later to Valence in the

south of France, where he died. Thus fell the temporal power. The

"liberators" of Rome thereupon proceeded to plunder the city in a way

which brought shame on their cause and disgrace (perhaps not wholly

deserved) on the general left in command, Masséna.

Naples.

The Parthenopaean Republic.

These events brought revolution to the gates of the kingdom of Naples,

the worst-governed part of Italy, where the boorish king, Ferdinand IV.

(_il rè lazzarone_, he was termed), and his whimsical consort, Maria

Carolina, scarcely held in check the discontent of their own subjects. A

British fleet under Nelson, sent into the Mediterranean in May 1798

primarily for their defence, checkmated the designs of Bonaparte in

Egypt, and then, returning to Naples, encouraged that court to adopt a

spirited policy. It is now known that the influence of Nelson and of the

British ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, and Lady Hamilton precipitated

the rupture between Naples and France. The results were disastrous. The

Neapolitan troops at first occupied Rome, but, being badly handled by

their leader, the Austrian general, Mack, they were soon scattered in

flight; and the Republican troops under General Championnet, after

crushing the stubborn resistance of the lazzaroni, made their way into

Naples and proclaimed the Parthenopaean Republic (January 23, 1799). The

Neapolitan Democrats chose five of their leading men to be directors,

and tithes and feudal dues and customs were abolished. Much good work

was done by the Republicans during their brief tenure of power, but it

soon came to an end owing to the course of events which favoured a

reaction against France. The directors of Paris, not content with

overrunning and plundering Switzerland, had outraged German sentiment in

many ways. Further, at the close of 1798 they virtually compelled the

young king of Sardinia, Charles Emmanuel IV., to abdicate at Turin. He

retired to the island of Sardinia, while the French despoiled Piedmont,

thereby adding fuel to the resentment rapidly growing against them in

every part of Europe.

Suvarov in Italy.

The outcome of it all was the War of the Second Coalition, in which

Russia, Austria, Great Britain, Naples and some secondary states of

Germany took part. The incursion of an Austro-Russian army, led by that

strange but magnetic being, Suvarov, decided the campaign in northern

Italy. The French, poorly handled by Schérer and Sérurier, were

everywhere beaten, especially at Magnano (April 5) and Cassano (April

27). Milan and Turin fell before the allies, and Moreau, who took over

the command, had much difficulty in making his way to the Genoese

coast-line. There he awaited the arrival of Macdonald with the army of

Naples. That general, Championnet's successor, had been compelled by

these reverses and by the threatening pressure of Nelson's fleet to

evacuate Naples and central Italy. In many parts the peasants and

townsfolk, enraged by the licence of the French, hung on his flank and

rear. The republics set up by the French at Naples, Rome and Milan

collapsed as soon as the French troops retired; and a reaction in favour

of clerical and Austrian influence set in with great violence. For the

events which then occurred at Naples, so compromising to the reputation

of Nelson, see NELSON and NAPLES. Sir William Hamilton was subsequently

recalled in a manner closely resembling a disgrace, and his place was

taken by Paget, who behaved with more dignity and tact.

Meanwhile Macdonald, after struggling through central Italy, had

defeated an Austrian force at Modena (June 12, 1799), but Suvarov was

able by swift movements utterly to overthrow him at the Trebbia (June

17-19). The wreck of his force drifted away helplessly towards Genoa. A

month later the ambitious young general, Joubert, who took over Moreau's

command and rallied part of Macdonald's following, was utterly routed by

the Austro-Russian army at Novi (August 15) with the loss of 12,000 men.

Joubert perished in the battle. The growing friction between Austria and

Russia led to the transference of Suvarov and his Russians to

Switzerland, with results which were to be fatal to the allies in that

quarter. But in Italy the Austrian successes continued. Melas defeated

Championnet near Coni on the 4th of November; and a little later the

French garrisons at Ancona and Coni surrendered. The tricolour, which

floated triumphantly over all the strongholds of Italy early in the

year, at its close waved only over Genoa, where Masséna prepared for a

stubborn defence. Nice and Savoy also seemed at the mercy of the

invaders. Everywhere the old order of things was restored. The death of

the aged Pope Pius VI. at Valence (August 29, 1799) deprived the French

of whatever advantage they had hoped to gain by dragging him into exile;

on the 24th of March 1800 the conclave, assembled for greater security

on the island of San Giorgio at Venice, elected a new pontiff, Pius VII.

Campaign of Marengo.

Treaty of Lunéville.

Such was the position of affairs when Bonaparte returned from Egypt and

landed at Fréjus. The contrast presented by his triumphs, whether real

or imaginary, to the reverses sustained by the armies of the French

directory, was fatal to that body and to popular institutions in France.

After the _coup d'état_ of Brumaire (November 1799) he, as First Consul,

began to organize an expedition against the Austrians (Russia having now

retired from the coalition), in northern Italy. The campaign culminating

at Marengo was the result. By that triumph (due to Desaix and Kellermann

rather than directly to him), Bonaparte consolidated his own position in

France and again laid Italy at his feet. The Austrian general, Melas,

signed an armistice whereby he was to retire with his army beyond the

river Mincio. Ten days earlier, namely on the 4th of June, Masséna had

been compelled by hunger to capitulate at Genoa; but the success at

Marengo, followed up by that of Macdonald in north Italy, and Moreau at

Hohenlinden (December 2, 1800), brought the emperor Francis to sue for

peace which was finally concluded at Lunéville on the 9th of February

1801. The Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics (reconstituted soon after

Marengo) were recognized by Austria on condition that they were

independent of France. The rule of Pius VII. over the Papal States was

admitted; and Italian affairs were arranged much as they were at Campo

Formio: Modena and Tuscany now reverted to French control, their former

rulers being promised compensation in Germany. Naples, easily worsted by

the French, under Miollis, left the British alliance, and made peace by

the treaty of Florence (March 1801), agreeing to withdraw her troops

from the Papal States, to cede Piombino and the Presidii (in Tuscany) to

France and to close her ports to British ships and commerce. King

Ferdinand also had to accept a French garrison at Taranto, and other

points in the south.

Napoleon's reorganization of Italy.

Other changes took place in that year, all of them in favour of France.

By complex and secret bargaining with the court of Madrid, Bonaparte

procured the cession to France of Louisiana, in North America, and

Parma; while the duke of Parma (husband of an infanta of Spain) was

promoted by him to the duchy of Tuscany, now renamed the kingdom of

Etruria. Piedmont was declared to be a military division at the disposal

of France (April 21, 1801); and on the 21st of September 1802,

Bonaparte, then First Consul for life, issued a decree for its

definitive incorporation in the French Republic. About that time, too,

Elba fell into the hands of Napoleon. Piedmont was organized in six

departments on the model of those of France, and a number of French

veterans were settled by Napoleon in and near the fortress of

Alessandria. Besides copying the Roman habit of planting military

colonies, the First Consul imitated the old conquerors of the world by

extending and completing the road-system of his outlying districts,

especially at those important passes, the Mont Cenis and Simplon. He

greatly improved the rough track over the Simplon Pass, so that, when

finished in 1807, it was practicable for artillery. Milan was the

terminus of the road, and the construction of the Foro Buonaparte and

the completion of the cathedral added dignity to the Lombard capital.

The Corniche road was improved; and public works in various parts of

Piedmont, and the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics attested the

foresight and wisdom of the great organizer of industry and quickener of

human energies. The universities of Pavia and Bologna were reopened and

made great progress in this time of peace and growing prosperity.

Somewhat later the Pavia canal was begun in order to connect Lake Como

with the Adriatic for barge-traffic.

The personal nature of the tie binding Italy to France was illustrated

by a curious incident of the winter of 1802-1803. Bonaparte, now First

Consul for life, felt strong enough to impose his will on the Cisalpine

Republic and to set at defiance one of the stipulations of the treaty of

Lunéville. On the pretext of consolidating that republic, he invited 450

of its leading men to come to Lyons to a _consulta_. In reality he and

his agents had already provided for the passing of proposals which were

agreeable to him. The deputies having been dazzled by fêtes and reviews,

Talleyrand and Marescalchi, ministers of foreign affairs at Paris and

Milan, plied them with hints as to the course to be followed by the

_consulta_; and, despite the rage of the more democratic of their

number, everything corresponded to the wishes of the First Consul. It

remained to find a chief. Very many were in favour of Count Melzi, a

Lombard noble, who had been chief of the executive at Milan; but again

Talleyrand and French agents set to work on behalf of their master, with

the result that he was elected president for ten years. He accepted that

office because, as he frankly informed the deputies, he had found no one

who "for his services rendered to his country, his authority with the

people and his separation from party has deserved such an office."

Melzi was elected vice-president with merely honorary functions. The

constitution comprised a _consulta_ charged with executive duties, a

legislative body of 150 members and a court charged with the maintenance

of the fundamental laws. These three bodies were to be chosen by three

electoral colleges consisting of (a) landed proprietors, (b) learned men

and clerics, (c) merchants and traders, holding their sessions

biennially at Milan, Bologna and Brescia respectively. In practice the

_consulta_ could override the legislature; and, as the _consulta_ was

little more than the organ of the president, the whole constitution may

be pronounced as autocratic as that of France after the changes brought

about by Bonaparte in August 1802. Finally we must note that the

Cisalpine now took the name of the Italian Republic, and that by a

concordat with the pope, Bonaparte regulated its relations to the Holy

See in a manner analogous to that adopted in the famous French concordat

promulgated at Easter 1802 (see CONCORDAT). It remains to add that the

Ligurian Republic and that of Lucca remodelled their constitutions in a

way somewhat similar to that of the Cisalpine.

Kingdom of Italy.

Bonaparte's ascendancy did not pass unchallenged. Many of the Italians

retained their enthusiasm for democracy and national independence. In

1803 movements in these directions took place at Rimini, Brescia and

Bologna; but they were sharply repressed, and most Italians came to

acquiesce in the Napoleonic supremacy as inevitable and indeed

beneficial. The complete disregard shown by Napoleon for one of the

chief conditions of the treaty of Lunéville (February 1801)--that

stipulating for the independence of the Ligurian and Cisalpine

Republics--became more and more apparent every year. Alike in political

and commercial affairs they were for all practical purposes dependencies

of France. Finally, after the proclamation of the French empire (May 18,

1804) Napoleon proposed to place his brother Joseph over the Italian

state, which now took the title of kingdom of Italy. On Joseph

declining, Napoleon finally decided to accept the crown which Melzi,

Marescalchi, Serbelloni and others begged him to assume. Accordingly, on

the 26th of May 1805, in the cathedral at Milan, he crowned himself with

the iron crown of the old Lombard kings, using the traditional formula,

"God gave it me: let him beware who touches it." On the 7th of June he

appointed his step-son, Eugène Beauharnais, to be viceroy. Eugène soon

found that his chief duty was to enforce the will of Napoleon. The

legislature at Milan having ventured to alter some details of taxation,

Eugène received the following rule of conduct from his step-father:

"Your system of government is simple: the emperor wills it to be thus."

Republicanism was now everywhere discouraged. The little republic of

Lucca, along with Piombino, was now awarded as a principality by the

emperor to Elisa Bonaparte and her husband, Bacciocchi.

In June 1805 there came a last and intolerable affront to the emperors

of Austria and Russia, who at that very time were seeking to put bounds

to Napoleon's ambition and to redress the balance of power. The French

emperor, at the supposed request of the doge of Genoa, declared the

Ligurian Republic to be an integral part of the French empire. This

defiance to the sovereigns of Russia and Austria rekindled the flames of

war. The third coalition was formed between Great Britain, Russia and

Austria, Naples soon joining its ranks.

Joseph Bonaparte in Naples.

For the chief events of the ensuing campaigns see Napoleonic Campaigns.

While Masséna pursued the Austrians into their own lands at the close of

1805, Italian forces under Eugène and Gouvion St Cyr (q.v.) held their

ground against allied forces landed at Naples. After Austerlitz

(December 2, 1805) Austria made peace by the treaty of Pressburg, ceding

to the kingdom of Italy her part of Venetia along with the provinces of

Istria and Dalmatia. Napoleon then turned fiercely against Maria

Carolina of Naples upbraiding her with her "perfidy." He sent Joseph

Bonaparte and Masséna southwards with a strong column, compelled the

Anglo-Russian forces to evacuate Naples, and occupied the south of the

peninsula with little opposition except at the fortress of Gaeta. The

Bourbon court sailed away to Palermo, where it remained for eight years

under the protection afforded by the British fleet and a British army of

occupation. On the 15th of February 1806 Joseph Bonaparte entered Naples

in triumph, his troops capturing there two hundred pieces of cannon.

Gaeta, however, held out stoutly against the French. Sir Sidney Smith

with a British squadron captured Capri (February 1806), and the peasants

of the Abruzzi and Calabria soon began to give trouble. Worst of all was

the arrival of a small British force in Calabria under Sir John Stuart,

which beat off with heavy loss an attack imprudently delivered by

General Réynier on level ground near the village of Maida (July 4). The

steady volleys of Kempt's light infantry were fatal to the French, who

fell back in disorder under a bayonet charge of the victors, with the

loss of some 2700 men. Calabria now rose in revolt against King Joseph,

and the peasants dealt out savage reprisals to the French troops. On the

18th of July, however, Gaeta surrendered to Masséna, and that marshal,

now moving rapidly southwards, extricated Réynier, crushed the Bourbon

rising in Calabria with great barbarity, and compelled the British force

to re-embark for Sicily. At Palermo Queen Maria Carolina continued to

make vehement but futile efforts for the overthrow of King Joseph.

It is more important to observe that under Joseph and his ministers or

advisers, including the Frenchmen Roederer, Dumas, Miot de Melito and

the Corsican Saliceti, great progress was made in abolishing feudal laws

and customs, in reforming the judicial procedure and criminal laws on

the model of the _Code Napoléon_, and in attempting the beginnings of

elementary education. More questionable was Joseph's policy in closing

and confiscating the property of 213 of the richer monasteries of the

land. The monks were pensioned off, but though the confiscated property

helped to fill the empty coffers of the state, the measure aroused

widespread alarm and resentment among that superstitious people.

The peace of Tilsit (July 7, 1807) enabled Napoleon to press on his

projects for securing the command of the Mediterranean, thenceforth a

fundamental axiom of his policy. Consequently, in the autumn of 1807 he

urged on Joseph the adoption of vigorous measures for the capture of

Sicily. Already, in the negotiations with England during the summer of

1806, the emperor had shown his sense of the extreme importance of

gaining possession of that island, which indeed caused the breakdown of

the peace proposals then being considered; and now he ordered French

squadrons into the Mediterranean in order to secure Corfu and Sicily.

His plans respecting Corfu succeeded. That island and some of the

adjacent isles fell into the hands of the French (some of them were

captured by British troops in 1809-10); but Sicily remained

unassailable. Capri, however, fell to the French on the 18th of October

1808, shortly after the arrival at Naples of the new king, Murat.

Murat, King of Naples.

This ambitious marshal, brother-in-law of Napoleon, foiled in his hope

of gaining the crown of Spain, received that of Naples in the summer of

1808, Joseph Bonaparte being moved from Naples to Madrid. This

arrangement pleased neither of the relatives of the emperor; but his

will now was law on the continent. Joseph left Naples on the 23rd of May

1808; but it was not until the 6th of September that Joachim Murat made

his entry. A fortnight later his consort Caroline arrived, and soon

showed a vigour and restlessness of spirit which frequently clashed with

the dictates of her brother, the emperor and the showy, unsteady policy

of her consort. The Spanish national rising of 1808 and thereafter the

Peninsular War diverted Napoleon's attention from the affairs of south

Italy. In June 1809, during his campaign against Austria, Sir John

Stuart with an Anglo-Sicilian force sailed northwards, captured Ischia

and threw Murat into great alarm; but on the news of the Austrian defeat

at Wagram, Stuart sailed back again.

Central Italy.

It is now time to turn to the affairs of central Italy. Early in 1808

Napoleon proceeded with plans which he had secretly concerted after the

treaty of Tilsit for transferring the infanta of Spain who, after the

death of her consort, reigned at Florence on behalf of her young son,

Charles Louis, from her kingdom of Etruria to the little principality of

Entre Douro e Minho which he proposed to carve out from the north of

Portugal. Etruria reverted to the French empire, but the Spanish

princess and her son did not receive the promised indemnity. Elisa

Bonaparte and her husband, Bacciocchi, rulers of Lucca and Piombino,

became the heads of the administration in Tuscany, Elisa showing decided

governing capacity.

Napoleon and the Papacy.

Annexation of the Papal States.