Chapter I: The Spanish Hegemony (1)

Italy in the Renaissance--The Five Great Powers--The Kingdom of
Naples--The Papacy--The Duchy of Milan--Venice--The Florentine
Republic--Wars of Invasion closed by the Sack of Rome in
1527--Concordat between Clement VII. and Charles V.--Treaty of
Barcelona and Paix des Dames--Charles lands at Genoa--His Journey
to Bologna--Entrance into Bologna and Reception by
Clement--Mustering of Italian Princes--Francesco Sforza replaced in
the Duchy of Milan--Venetian Embassy--Italian League signed on
Christmas Eve, 1529--Florence alone excluded--The Siege of Florence
pressed by the Prince of Orange--Charles's Coronation as King of
Italy and Holy Roman Emperor--The Significance of this Ceremony at
Bologna--Ceremony in S. Petronio--Settlement of the Duchy of
Ferrara--Men of Letters and Arts at Bologna--The Emperor's Use of
the Spanish Habit--Charles and Clement leave Bologna in March,
1530--Review of the Settlement of Italy effected by Emperor and
Pope--Extinction of Republics--Subsequent Absorption of Ferrara and
Urbino into the Papal States--Savoy becomes an Italian
Power--Period between Charles's Coronation and the Peace of Cateau
Cambresis in 1559--Economical and Social Condition of the Italians
under Spanish Hegemony--The Nation still Exists in Separate
Communities--Intellectual Conditions--Predominance of Spain and
Rome--Both Cosmopolitan Powers--Leveling down of the Component
Portions of the Nation in a Common Servitude--The Evils of Spanish
Rule.

In the first volume of my book on _Renaissance in Italy_ I attempted to set forth the political and social phases through which the Italians passed before their principal States fell into the hands of despots, and to explain the conditions of mutual jealousy and military feebleness which exposed those States to the assaults of foreign armies at the close of the fifteenth century.

In the year 1494, when Charles VIII. of France, at Lodovico Sforza's invitation, crossed the Alps to make good his claim on Naples, the peninsula was Independent. Internal peace had prevailed for a period of nearly fifty years. An equilibrium had been established between the five great native Powers, which secured the advantages of confederation and diplomatic interaction.

While using the word confederation, I do not, of course, imply that anything similar to the federal union of Switzerland or of North America existed in Italy. The contrary is proved by patent facts. On a miniature scale, Italy then displayed political conditions analogous to those which now prevail in Europe. The parcels of the nation adopted different forms of self-government, sought divers foreign alliances, and owed no allegiance to any central legislative or administrative body. I therefore speak of the Italian confederation only in the same sense as Europe may now be called a confederation of kindred races.

In the year 1630, when Charles V. (of Austria and Spain) was crowned Emperor at Bologna, this national independence had been irretrievably lost by the Italians. This confederation of evenly-balanced Powers was now exchanged for servitude beneath a foreign monarchy, and for subjection to a cosmopolitan elective priesthood.

The history of social, intellectual, and moral conditions in Italy during the seventy years of the sixteenth century which followed Charles's coronation at Bologna, forms the subject of this work; but before entering upon these topics it will be well to devote one chapter to considering with due brevity the partition of Italy into five States in 1494, the dislocation of this order by the wars between Spain and France for supremacy, the position in which the same States found themselves respectively at the termination of those wars in 1527, and the new settlement of the peninsula effected by Charles V. in 1529-30.

The five members of the Italian federation in 1494 were the kingdom of Naples, the Papacy, the Duchy of Milan, and the Republics of Venice and Florence. Round them, in various relations of amity or hostility, were grouped these minor Powers: the Republics of Genoa, Lucca, Siena; the Duchy of Ferrara, including Modena and Reggio; the Marquisates of Mantua and Montferrat; and the Duchy of Urbino. For our immediate purpose it is not worth taking separate account of the Republic of Pisa, which was practically though not thoroughly enslaved by Florence; or of the despots in the cities of Romagna, the March. Umbria, and the Patrimony of S. Peter, who were being gradually absorbed into the Papal sovereignty. Nor need we at present notice Savoy, Piemonte, and Saluzzo. Although these north-western provinces were all-important through the period of Franco-Spanish wars, inasmuch as they opened the gate of Italy to French armies, and supplied those armies with a base for military operations, the Duchy of Savoy had not yet become an exclusively Italian Power.

The kingdom of Naples, on the death of Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1458, had been separated from Sicily, and passed by testamentary appointment to his natural son Ferdinand. The bastard Aragonese dynasty was Italian in its tastes and interests, though unpopular both with the barons of the realm and with the people, who in their restlessness were ready to welcome any foreign deliverer from its oppressive yoke. This state of general discontent rendered the revival of the old Angevine party, and their resort to French aid, a source of peril to the monarchy. It also served as a convenient fulcrum for the ambitious schemes of conquest which the princes of the House of Aragon in Spain began to entertain. In territorial extent the kingdom of Naples was the most considerable parcel of the Italian community. It embraced the whole of Calabria, Apulia, the Abruzzi, and the Terra di Lavoro; marching on its northern boundary with the Papal States, and having no other neighbors. But though so large and so compact a State, the semifeudal system of government which had obtained in Naples since the first conquest of the country by the Normans, the nature of its population, and the savage dynastic wars to which it had been constantly exposed, rendered it more backward in civilization than the northern and central provinces.

The Papacy, after the ending of the schism and the settlement of Nicholas V. at Rome in 1447, gradually tended to become an Italian sovereignty. During the residence of the Popes at Avignon, and the weakness of the Papal See which followed in the period of the Councils (Pisa, Constance, and Basel), it had lost its hold not only on the immediate neighborhood of Rome, but also on its outlying possessions in Umbria, the Marches of Ancona, and the Exarchate of Ravenna. The great Houses of Colonna and Orsini asserted independence in their principalities. Bologna and Perugia pretended to republican government under the shadow of noble families; Bentivogli, Bracci, Baglioni. Imola, Faenza, Forli, Rimini, Pesaro, Urbino, Camerino, Citta di Castello, obeyed the rule of tyrants, who were practically lords of these cities though they bore the titles of Papal vicars, and who maintained themselves in wealth and power by exercising the profession of _condottieri_. It was the chief object of the Popes, after they were freed from the pressing perils of General Councils, and were once more settled in their capital and recognized as sovereigns by the European Powers, to subdue their vassals and consolidate their provinces into a homogeneous kingdom. This plan was conceived and carried out by a succession of vigorous and unscrupulous Pontiffs--Sixtus IV., Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X.--throughout the period of distracting foreign wars which agitated Italy. They followed for the most part one line of policy, which was to place the wealth and authority of the Holy See at the disposal of their relatives, Riarios, Delia Roveres, Borgias, and Medici. Their military delegates, among whom the most efficient captain was the terrible Cesare Borgia, had full power to crush the liberties of cities, exterminate the dynasties of despots, and reduce refractory districts to the Papal sway. For these services they were rewarded with ducal and princely titles, with the administration of their conquests, and with the investiture of fiefs as vassals of the Church. The system had its obvious disadvantages. It tended to indecent nepotism; and as Pope succeeded Pope at intervals of a few years, each bent on aggrandizing his own family at the expense of those of his predecessors and the Church, the ecclesiastical States were kept in a continual ferment of expropriation and internal revolution. Yet it is difficult to conceive how a spiritual Power like the Papacy could have solved the problem set before it of becoming a substantial secular sovereignty, without recourse to this ruinous method. The Pope, a lonely man upon an ill-established throne, surrounded by rivals whom his elevation had disappointed, was compelled to rely on the strong arm of adventurers with whose interests his own were indissolubly connected. The profits of all these schemes of egotistical rapacity eventually accrued, not to the relatives of the Pontiffs; none of whom, except the Delia Roveres in Urbino, founded a permanent dynasty at this period; but to the Holy See. Julius II., for example, on his election in 1503, entered into possession of all that Cesare Borgia had attempted to grasp for his own use. He found the Orsini and Colonna humbled, Romagna reduced to submission; and he carried on the policy of conquest by trampling out the liberties of Bologna and Perugia, recovering the cities held by Venice on the coast of Ravenna, and extending his sway over Emilia. The martial energy of Julius added Parma and Piacenza to the States of the Church, and detached Modena and Reggio from the Duchy of Ferrara. These new cities were gained by force; but Julius pretended that they formed part of the Exarchate of Ravenna, which had been granted to his predecessors by Pepin and Charles the Great. He pursued the Papal line of conquest in a nobler spirit than his predecessors, not seeking to advance his relatives so much as to reinstate the Church in her dominions. But he was reckless in the means employed to secure this object. Italy was devastated by wars stirred up, and by foreign armies introduced, in order that the Pope might win a point in the great game of ecclesiastical aggrandizement. That his successor, Leo X., reverted to the former plan of carving principalities for his relatives out of the possessions of their neighbors and the Church, may be counted among the most important causes of the final ruin of Italian independence.

Of the Duchy of Milan it is not necessary to speak at any great length, although the wars between France and Spain were chiefly carried on for its possession. It had been formed into a compact domain, of comparatively small extent, but of vast commercial and agricultural resources, by the two dynasties of Visconti and Sforza. In 1494 Lodovico Sforza, surnamed Il Moro, ruled Milan for his nephew, the titular Duke, whom he kept in gilded captivity, and whom he eventually murdered. In order to secure his usurped authority, this would-be Machiavelli thought it prudent to invite Charles VIII. into Italy. Charles was to assert his right to the throne of Naples. Lodovico was to be established in the Duchy of Milan. All his subsequent troubles arose from this transaction. Charles came, conquered, and returned to France, disturbing the political equilibrium of the Italian States, and founding a disastrous precedent for future foreign interference. His successor in the French kingdom, Louis XII., believed he had a title to the Duchy of Milan through his grandmother Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The claim was not a legal one; for in the investiture of the Duchy females were excluded. It sufficed, however, to inflame the cupidity of Louis; and while he was still but Duke of Orleans, with no sure prospect of inheriting the crown of France, he seems to have indulged the fancy of annexing Milan. No sooner had he ascended the French throne than he began to act upon this ambition. He descended into Lombardy, overran the Milanese, sent Lodovico Sforza to die in a French prison, and initiated the duel between Spain and France for mastery, which ended with the capture of Francis I. at Pavia, and his final cession of all rights over Italy to Charles V. by the Treaty of Cambray.

Of all the republics which had conferred luster upon Italy in its mediaeval period of prosperity Venice alone remained independent. She never submitted to a tyrant; and her government, though growing yearly more closely oligarchical, was acknowledged to be just and liberal. During the centuries of her greatest power Venice hardly ranked among Italian States. It had been her policy to confine herself to the lagoons and to the extension of her dominion over the Levant. In the fifteenth century, however, this policy was abandoned. Venice first possessed herself of Padua, by exterminating the despotic House of Carrara; next of Verona, by destroying the Scala dynasty. Subsequently, during the long dogeship of Francesco Foscari (1423-1457), she devoted herself in good earnest to the acquisition of territory upon the mainland. Then she entered as a Power of the first magnitude into the system of purely Italian politics. The Republic of S. Mark owned the sea coast of the Adriatic from Aquileia to the mouths of the Po; and her Lombard dependencies stretched as far as Bergamo westward. Her Italian neighbors were, therefore, the Duchy of Milan, the little Marquisate of Mantua, and the Duchy of Ferrara. When Constantinople fell in 1453, Venice was still more tempted to pursue this new policy of Italian aggrandizement. Meanwhile her growing empire seemed to menace the independence of less wealthy neighbors. The jealousy thus created and the cupidity which brought her into collision with Julius II. in 1508, exposed Venice to the crushing blow inflicted on her power by the combined forces of Europe in the war of the League of Cambray. From this blow, as well as from the simultaneous decline of their Oriental and Levantine commerce, the Venetians never recovered.

When we turn to the Florentines, we find that at the same epoch, 1494, their ancient republican constitution had been fatally undermined by the advances of the family of Medici towards despotism. Lorenzo de'Medici, who enjoyed the credit of maintaining the equilibrium of Italy by wise diplomacy, had lately died. He left his son Piero, a hot-headed and rash young man, to control the affairs of the commonwealth, as he had previously controlled them, with a show of burgherlike equality, but with the reality of princely power. Another of his sons, Giovanni, received the honor of the Cardinalship. The one was destined to compromise the ascendency of his family in Florence for a period of eighteen years, the other was destined to re-establish that ascendency on a new and more despotic basis. Piero had not his father's prudence, and could not maintain himself in the delicate position of a commercial and civil tyrant. During the disturbances caused by the invasion of Charles VIII. he was driven with all his relatives into exile. The Medici were restored in 1512, after the battle of Ravenna, by Spanish troops, at the petition of the Cardinal Giovanni. The elevation of this man to the Papacy in 1513 enabled him to plant two of his nephews, as rulers, in Florence, and to pave the way whereby a third eventually rose to the dignity of the tiara. Clement VII. finally succeeded in rendering Florence subject to the Medici, by extinguishing the last sparks of republican opposition, and by so modifying the dynastic protectorate of his family that it was easily converted into a titular Grand Duchy.

The federation of these five Powers had been artificially maintained during the half century of Italy's highest intellectual activity. That was the epoch when the Italians nearly attained to coherence as a nation, through common interests in art and humanism, and by the complicated machinery of diplomatic relations. The federation perished when foreign Powers chose Lombardy and Naples for their fields of battle. The disasters of the next thirty-three years (1494-1527) began in earnest on the day when Louis XII. claimed Milan and the Regno. He committed his first mistake by inviting Ferdinand the Catholic to share in the partition of Naples. That province was easily conquered; but Ferdinand retained the whole spoils for himself, securing a large Italian dependency and a magnificent basis of operations for the Spanish Crown. Then Louis made a second mistake by proposing to the visionary Emperor Maximilian that he should aid France in subjugating Venice. We have few instances on record of short-sighted diplomacy to match the Treaties of Granada and Blois (1501 and 1504), through which this monarch, acting rather as a Duke of Milan than a King of France, complicated his Italian schemes by the introduction of two such dangerous allies as the Austrian Emperor and the Spanish sovereign, while the heir of both was in his cradle--that fatal child of fortune Charles.

The stage of Italy was now prepared for a conflict which in no wise interested her prosperous cities and industrious population. Spain, France, Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, had been summoned upon various pretexts to partake of the rich prey she offered. Patriots like Machiavelli perceived too late the suicidal self-indulgence which, by substituting mercenary troops for national militia, and by accustoming selfish tyrants to rely on foreign aid, had exposed the Italians defenceless to the inroads of their warlike neighbors. Whatever parts the Powers of Italy might play, the game was really in the hands of French, Spanish, and German invaders. Meanwhile the mutual jealousies and hatreds of those Powers, kept in check by no tie stronger than diplomacy, prevented them from forming any scheme of common action. One great province (Naples) had fallen into Spanish hands; another (Milan) lay open through the passes of the Alps to France. The Papacy, in the center, manipulated these two hostile foreign forces with some advantage to itself, but with ever-deepening disaster for the race. As in the days of Guelf and Ghibelline, so now again the nation was bisected. The contest between French and Spanish factions became cruel. Personal interests were substituted for principles; cross-combinations perplexed the real issues of dispute; while one sole fact emerged into distinctness--that, whatever happened, Italy must be the spoil of the victorious duelist.

The practical termination of this state of things arrived in the battle of Pavia, when Francis was removed as a prisoner to Madrid, and in the sack of Rome, when the Pope was imprisoned in the Castle of S. Angelo. It was then found that the laurels and the profit of the bloody contest remained with the King of Spain. What the people suffered from the marching and countermarching of armies, from the military occupations of towns, from the desolation of rural districts, from ruinous campaigns and sanguinary battles, from the pillage of cities and the massacres of their inhabitants, can best be read in Burigozzo's _Chronicle of Milan_, in the details of the siege of Brescia and the destruction of Pavia, in the _Chronicle of Prato_, and in the several annals of the sack of Rome. The exhaustion of the country seemed complete; the spirit of the people was broken. But what soon afterwards became apparent, and what in 1527 might have been thought incredible, was that the single member of the Italian union which profited by these apocalyptic sufferings of the nation, was the Papacy. Clement VII., imprisoned in the Castle of S. Angelo, forced day and night to gaze upon his capital in flames and hear the groans of tortured Romans, emerged the only vigorous survivor of the five great Powers on whose concert Italian independence had been founded. Instead of being impaired, the position of the Papacy had been immeasurably improved. Owing to the prostration of Italy, there was now no resistance to the Pope's secular supremacy within the limits of his authorized dominion. The defeat of France and the accession of a Spanish monarch to the Empire guaranteed peace. No foreign force could levy armies or foment uprisings in the name of independence. Venice had been stunned and mutilated by the League of Cambray. Florence had been enslaved after the battle of Ravenna. Milan had been relinquished, out-worn, and depopulated, to the nominal ascendency of an impotent Sforza. Naples was a province of the Spanish monarchy. The feudal vassals and the subject cities of the Holy See had been ground and churned together by a series of revolutions unexampled even in the mediaeval history of the Italian communes. If, therefore, the Pope could come to terms with the King of Spain for the partition of supreme authority in the peninsula, they might henceforward share the mangled remains of the Italian prey at peace together. This is precisely what they resolved on doing. The basis of their agreement was laid in the Treaty of Barcelona in 1529. It was ratified and secured by the Treaty of Cambray in the same year. By the former of these compacts Charles and Clement swore friendship. Clement promised the Imperial crown and the investiture of Naples to the King of Spain. Charles agreed to reinstate the Pope in Emilia, which had been seized from Ferrara by Julius II.; to procure the restoration of Ravenna and Cervia by the Venetians; to subdue Florence to the House of Medici; and to bestow the hand of his natural daughter Margaret of Austria on Clement's bastard nephew Alessandro, who was already designated ruler of the city. By the Treaty of Cambray Francis I. relinquished his claims on Italy and abandoned his Italian supporters without conditions, receiving in exchange the possession of Burgundy. The French allies who were sacrificed on this occasion by the Most Christian to the Most Catholic Monarch consisted of the Republics of Venice and Florence, the Dukes of Milan and Ferrara, the princely Houses of Orsini and Fregosi in Rome and Genoa, together with the Angevine nobles in the realm of Naples. The Paix des Dames, as this act of capitulation was called (since it had been drawn up in private conclave by Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, the mother and the aunt of the two signatories), was a virtual acknowledgment of the fact that French influence in Italy was at an end.[1]

The surrender of Italy by Francis made it necessary that Charles V. should put in order the vast estates to which he now succeeded as sole master. He was, moreover, Emperor Elect; and he judged this occasion good for assuming the two crowns according to antique custom. Accordingly in July, 1529, he caused Andrea Doria to meet him at Barcelona, crossed the Mediterranean in a rough passage of fourteen days, landed at Genoa on August 12, and proceeded by Piacenza, Parma and Modena to Bologna, where Clement VII. was already awaiting him. The meeting of Charles and Clement at Bologna was so solemn an event in Italian history, and its results were so important for the several provinces of the peninsula, that I may be excused for enlarging at some length upon this episode.

[Footnote 1: It is significant for the future of Italy that both the ladies who drew up this agreement were connected with Savoy. Louise, Duchess of Angouleme, was a daughter of the house. Margaret, daughter of Maximilian, was Duchess Dowager of Savoy.]

With pomp and pageantry it closed an age of unrivaled intellectual splendor and of unexampled sufferings through war. By diplomacy and debate it prescribed laws for a new age of unexpected ecclesiastical energy and of national peace procured at the price of slavery. Illustrious survivors from the period of the pagan Renaissance met here with young men destined to inaugurate the Catholic Revival. The compact struck between Emperor and Pope in private conferences, laid a basis for that firm alliance between Spain and Rome which seriously influenced the destinies of Europe. Finally, this was the last occasion upon which a modern Caesar received the iron and golden crowns in Italy from the hands of a Roman Pontiff. The fortunate inheritor of Spain, the Two Sicilies, Austria and the Low Countries, who then assumed them both at the age of twenty-nine, was not only the last who wielded the Imperial insignia with imperial authority, but was also a far more formidable potentate in Italy than any of his predecessors since Charles the Great had been.[2]

[Footnote 2: In what follows regarding Charles V. at Bologna I am greatly indebted to Giordani's laboriously compiled volume: _Della Venuta e Dimora in Bologna del Sommo Pont. Clemente VII. etc._ (Bologna, 1832).]

That Charles should have employed the galleys of Doria for the transhipment of his person, suite, and military escort from Barcelona, deserves a word of comment. Andrea Doria had been bred in the service of the French crown, upon which Genoa was in his youth dependent. He formed a navy of decisive preponderance in the western Mediterranean, and in return for services rendered to Francis in the Neapolitan campaign of 1528, he demanded the liberation of his native city. When this was refused, Doria transferred his allegiance to the Spaniard, surprised Genoa and reinstated the republic, magnanimously refusing to secure its tyranny for himself or even to set the ducal cap upon his head. Charles invested him with the principality of Melfi and made him a Grandee of Spain. By this series of events Genoa was prepared to accept the yoke of Spanish influence and customs, which pressed so heavily in the succeeding century on Italy.

Charles had a body of 2000 Spaniards already quartered at Genoa, as well as strong garrisons in the Milanese, and a force of about 7000 troops collected by the Prince of Orange from the _debris_ of the army which had plundered Rome. While he was on his road from Genoa to Bologna, this force was already moving upon Florence. He brought with him as escort some 10,000 men, counting horse and infantry. The total of the troops which obeyed his word in Italy might be computed at about 27,000, including Spanish cavalry and foot-soldiers, German lansknechts and Italian mercenaries. This large army, partly stationed in important posts of defence, partly in movement, was sufficient to make every word of his a law. The French were in no position to interfere with his arrangements. His brother Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was engaged in a doubtful contest with Soliman before the gates of Vienna. He was himself the most considerable potentate in Germany, then distracted by the struggles of the Reformation. Italy lay crushed and prostrate, trampled down by armies, exhausted by impost and exactions, terrorized by brutal violence. That Charles had come to speak his will and be obeyed was obvious.

To greet the king on his arrival at Genoa, Clement deputed two ambassadors, the Cardinals Ercole Gonzaga and Monsignor Gianmatteo Giberti, Bishop of Verona. Gonzaga was destined to play a part of critical importance in the Tridentine Council. Giberti had made himself illustrious in the Church by the administration of his diocese on a system which anticipated the coming ecclesiastical reforms, and was already famous in the world of letters by his generous familiarity with students.[3] Three other men of high distinction and of fateful future waited on their imperial master. Of these the first was Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who succeeded Clement in the Papacy, opened the Tridentine Council, and added a new reigning family to the Italian princes. The others were the Pope's nephews, Alessandro de'Medici, Duke of Florence designate, and his cousin the Cardinal Ippolito de'Media. Six years later, Ippolito died at Itri, poisoned by his cousin Alessandro, who was himself murdered at Florence in 1537 by another cousin, Lorenzino de'Medici.

[Footnote 3: See _Ren. in It._, vol. v. p. 357.]

It had been intended that Charles should travel to Bologna from Parma through Mantua, where the Marquis Federigo Gonzaga had made great preparations for his reception. But the route by Reggio and Modena was more direct; and, yielding to the solicitations of Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, he selected this instead. One of the stipulations of the Treaty of Barcelona, it will be remembered, had been that the Emperor should restore Emilia--that is to say, the cities and territories of Modena, Reggio, and Rubbiera--to the Papacy. Clement regarded Alfonso as a contumacious vassal, although his own right to that province only rested on the force of arms by which Julius II. had detached it from the Duchy of Ferrara. It was therefore somewhat difficult for Charles to accept the duke's hospitality. But when he had once done so, Alfonso knew how to ingratiate himself so well with the arbiter of Italy, that on taking leave of his guest upon the confines of Bologna, he had already secured the success of his own cause.

Great preparations, meanwhile, were being made in Bologna. The misery and destitution of the country rendered money scarce, and cast a gloom over the people. It was noticed that when Clement entered the city on October 24, none of the common folk responded to the shouts of his attendants, _Viva Papa Clemente_! The Pope and his Court, too, were in mourning. They had but recently escaped from the horrors of the Sack of Rome, and were under a vow to wear their beards unshorn in memory of their past sufferings. Yet the municipality and nobles of Bologna exerted their utmost in these bad times to render the reception of the Emperor worthy of the luster which his residence and coronation would confer upon them. Gallant guests began to flock into the city. Among these may be mentioned the brilliant Isabella d'Este, sister of Duke Alfonso, and mother of the reigning Marquis of Mantua. She arrived on November 1 with a glittering train of beautiful women, and took up her residence in the Palazzo Manzoli. Her quarters obtained no good fame in the following months; for the ladies of her suite were liberal of favors. Jousts, masquerades, street-brawls, and duels were of frequent occurrence beneath her windows--Spaniards and Italians disputing the honor of those light amours. On November 3 came Andrea Doria with his relative, the Cardinal Girolamo of that name. About the same time, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggi, Bishop of Bologna, returned from his legation to England, where (as students of our history are well aware) he had been engaged upon the question of Henry VIII.'s divorce from Katharine of Aragon. Next day Charles arrived outside the gate, and took up his quarters in the rich convent of Certosa, which now forms the Campo Santo.

He was surrounded by a multitude of ambassadors and delegates from the Bolognese magistracy, by Cardinals and ecclesiastics of all ranks, some of whom had attended him from the frontier, while others were drawn up to receive him. November 5 was a Friday, and this day was reckoned lucky by Charles. He therefore passed the night of the 4th at the Certosa, and on the following morning made his solemn entry into the city. A bodyguard of Germans, Burgundians, Spaniards, halberdiers, lansknechts, men at arms, and cannoneers, preceded him. High above these was borne the captain-general of the imperial force in Italy, the fierce and cruel Antonio de Leyva, under whose oppression Milan had been groaning. This ruthless tyrant was a martyr to gout and rheumatism. He could not ride or walk; and though he retained the whole vigor of his intellect and will, it was with difficulty that he moved his hands or head. He advanced in a litter of purple velvet, supported on the shoulders of his slaves. Among the splendid crowd of Spanish grandees who followed the troops, it is enough to mention the Grand Marshal, Don Alvaro Osorio, Marquis of Astorga, who carried a naked sword aloft. He was armed, on horseback; and his mantle of cloth of gold blazed with dolphins worked in pearls and precious stones. Next came Charles, mounted on a bay jennet, armed at all points, and holding in his hand the scepter. Twenty-four pages, chosen from the nobles of Bologna, waited on his bridle and stirrups. The train was brought up by a multitude of secular and ecclesiastical princes too numerous to record in detail. Conspicuous among them for the historian were the Count of Nassau, Albert of Brandenburg, and the Marquis Bonifazio of Montferrat, the scion of the Eastern Paleologi. As this procession defiled through the streets of Bologna, it was remarked that Charles, with true Spanish haughtiness, made no response to the acclamations of the people, except once when, passing beneath a balcony of noble ladies, he acknowledged their salute by lifting the cap from his head.

Clement, surrounded by a troop of prelates, was seated to receive him on a platform raised before the church of San Petronio in the great piazza. The king dismounted opposite the Papal throne, ascended the steps beneath his canopy of gold and crimson, and knelt to kiss the Pontiff's feet. When their eyes first met, it was observed that both turned pale; for the memory of outraged Rome was in the minds of both; and Caesar, while he paid this homage to Christ's Vicar, had the load of those long months of suffering and insult on his conscience. Clement bent down, and with streaming eyes saluted him upon the cheek. Then, when Charles was still upon his knees, they exchanged a few set words referring to the purpose of their meeting and their common desire for the pacification of Christendom. After this the Emperor elect rose, seated himself for a while beside the Pope, and next, at his invitation, escorted him to the great portal of the church. On the way, he inquired after Clement's health; to which the Pope replied somewhat significantly that, after leaving Rome, it had steadily improved. He tempered this allusion to his captivity, however, by adding that his eagerness to greet his Majesty had inspired him with more than wonted strength and courage. At the doorway they parted; and the Emperor, having paid his devotions to the Sacrament and kissed the altar, was conducted to the apartments prepared for him in the Palazzo Pubblico. These were adjacent to the Pope's lodgings in the same palace, and were so arranged that the two potentates could confer in private at all times. It is worthy of remark that the negotiations for the settlement of Italy which took place during the next six months in those rooms, were conducted personally by the high contracting parties, and that none of their deliberations transpired until the result of each was made public.

The whole of November 5 had been occupied in these ceremonies. It was late evening when the Emperor gained his lodgings. The few next days were ostensibly occupied in receiving visitors. Among the first of these was the unfortunate ex-queen of Naples, Isabella, widow of Frederick of Aragon, the last king of the bastard dynasty founded by Alfonso. She was living in poverty at Ferrara, under the protection of her relatives, the Este family, On the 13th came the Prince of Orange and Don Ferrante Gonzaga, from the camp before Florence. The siege had begun, but had not yet been prosecuted with the strictest vigor. During the whole time of Charles's residence at Bologna, it must be borne in mind that the siege of Florence was being pressed. Superfluous troops detached from garrison duty in the Lombard towns were drafted across the hills to Tuscany. Whatever else the Emperor might decide for his Italian subjects, this at least was certain: Florence should be restored to the Medicean tyrants, as compensation to the Pope for Roman sufferings. The Prince of Orange came to explain the state of things at Florence, where government and people seemed prepared to resist to the death. Gonzaga had private business of his own to conduct, touching his engagement to the Pope's ward, Isabella, daughter and heiress of the wealthy Vespasiano Colonna.

Meanwhile, ambassadors from all the States and lordships of Italy flocked to Bologna. Great nobles from the South--Ascanio Colonna, Grand Constable of Naples; Alfonso d'Avalos, Marquis of Vasto; Giovanni Luigi Caraffa, Prince of Stigliano--took up their quarters in adjacent houses, or in the upper story of the Public Palace. The Marquis of Vasto arrests our graze for a moment. He was nephew to the Marquis of Pescara (husband of Vittoria Colonna), who had the glory of taking Francis prisoner at Pavia, and afterwards the infamy of betraying the unfortunate Girolamo Morone and his master the Duke of Milan to the resentment of the Spanish monarch. What part Pescara actually played in that dark passage of plot and counterplot remains obscure. But there is no doubt that he employed treachery, single if not double, for his own advantage. His arrogance and avowed hostility to the Italians caused his very name to be execrated; nor did his nephew, the Marquis of Vasto, differ in these respects from the more famous chief of his house. This man was also destined to obtain an evil reputation when he succeeded in 1532 to the government of Milan. Here too may be noticed the presence at Bologna of Girolamo Morone's son, who had been created Bishop of Modena in 1529. For him a remarkable fate was waiting. Condemned to the dungeons of the Inquisition as a heretic by Paul IV., rescued by Pius IV., and taken into highest favor at that Pontiff's Court, he successfully manipulated the closing of the Tridentine Council to the profit of the Papal See.

Negotiations for the settlement of Italian affairs were proceeding without noise, but with continual progress, through this month. The lodgings of ambassadors and lords were so arranged in the Palazzo Pubblico that they, like their Imperial and Papal masters, could confer at all times and seasons. Every day brought some new illustrious visitor. On the 22nd arrived Federigo Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who took up his quarters in immediate proximity to Charles and Clement. His business required but little management. The house of Gonzaga was already well affected to the Spanish cause, and counted several captains in the imperial army. Charles showed his favor by raising Mantua to the rank of a Duchy. It was different with the Republic of Venice and the Duke of Milan. The Emperor elect had reasons to be strongly prejudiced against them both--against Venice as the most formidable of the French allies in the last war; against Francesco Maria Sforza, as having been implicated, though obscurely, in Morone's conspiracy to drive the Spaniards from Italy and place the crown of Naples on Pescara's head. Clement took both under his protection. He had sufficient reasons to believe that the Venetians would purchase peace by the cession of their recent acquisitions on the Adriatic coast, and he knew that the pacification of Italy could not be accomplished without their aid. In effect, the Republic agreed to relinquish Cervia and Ravenna to the Pope, and their Apulian ports to Charles, engaging at the same time to pay a sum of 300,000 ducats and stipulating for an amnesty to all their agents and dependents. It is not so clear why Clement warmly espoused the cause of Sforza. That he did so is certain. He obtained a safe-conduct for the duke, and made it a point of personal favor that he should be received into the Emperor's grace. This stipulation appears to have been taken into account when the affairs of Ferrara were decided at a later date against the Papal interests.

Francesco Maria Sforza appeared in Bologna on the 22nd. This unfortunate bearer of one of the most coveted titles in Europe had lately lived a prisoner in his own Castello, while the city at his doors and the fertile country round it were being subjected to cruelest outrage and oppression from Spanish, French, Swiss, and German mercenaries. He was a man ruined in health as well as fortune. Six years before this date, one of his chamberlains, Bonifazio Visconti, had given him a slight wound in the shoulder with a poisoned dagger. From this wound he never recovered; and it was pitiable to behold the broken man, unable to move or stand without support, dragging himself upon his knees to Caesar's footstool. Charles appears to have discerned that he had nothing to fear and much to gain, if he showed clemency to so powerless a suitor. Franceso was the last of his line. His health rendered it impossible that he should expect heirs; and although he subsequently married a princess of the House of Denmark, he died childless in the autumn of 1535. It was therefore determined, in compliance with the Pope's request, that Sforza should be confirmed in the Duchy of Milan. Pavia, however, was detached and given to the terrible Antonio de Leyva for his lifetime. The garrisons of Milan and Como were left in Spanish hands; and the duke promised to wring 400,000 ducats as the price of his investiture, with an additional sum of 500,000 ducats to be paid in ten yearly instalments, from his already blood-sucked people. It will be observed that money figured largely in all these high political transactions. Charles, though lord of many lands, was, even at this early stage of his career, distressed for want of cash. He rarely paid his troops, but commissioned the captains in his service to levy contributions on the provinces they occupied. The funds thus raised did not always reach the pockets of the soldiers, who subsisted as best they could by marauding. Having made these terms, Francesco Maria Sforza was received into the Imperial favor. He returned to Milan, in no sense less a prisoner than he had previously been, and with the heart-rending necessity of extorting money from his subjects at the point of Spanish swords. In exchange for the ducal title, he thus had made himself a tax-collector for his natural enemies. Secluded in the dreary chambers of his castle, assailed by the execrations of the Milanese, he may well have groaned, like Marlowe's Edward--

But what are Kings, when regiment is gone,
But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?
My foemen rule; I bear the name of King;
I wear the crown; but am controlled by them.

When he died he bequeathed his duchy to the crown of Spain. It was detached from the Empire, and became the private property of Charles and of his son, Philip II.

During the month of December negotiations for the terms of peace in Italy went briskly forward. On the part of Venice, two men of the highest distinction arrived as orators. These were Pietro Bembo and Gasparo Contarini, both of whom received the honors of the Cardinalate from Paul III. on his accession. Of Bembo's place in Italian society, as the dictator of literature at this epoch, I have already sufficiently spoken in another part of my work on the Renaissance. Contarini will more than once arrest our notice in the course of this volume. Of all the Italians of the time, he was perhaps the greatest, wisest, and most sympathetic. Had it been possible to avert the breach between Catholicism and Protestantism, to curb the intolerance of Inquisitors and the ambition of Jesuits, and to guide the reform of the Church by principles of moderation and liberal piety, Contarini was the man who might have restored unity to the Church in Europe. Once, indeed, at Regensburg in 1541, he seemed upon the very point of effecting a reconciliation between the parties that were tearing Christendom asunder. But his failure was even more conspicuous than his momentary semblance of success. It was not in the temper of the times to accept a Concordat founded on however philosophical, however politic, considerations. Contarini will be remembered as a 'beautiful soul,' born out of the due moment, and by no means adequate to cope with the fierce passions that raged round him. Among Protestants he was a Catholic, and they regarded his half measures with contempt. Among Catholics he passed for a suspected Lutheran, and his writings were only tolerated after they had been subjected to rigorous castration at the hands of Papal Inquisitors.[4]

On Christmas eve the ambassadors and representatives of the Italian powers met together in the chambers of Cardinal Gattinara, Grand Chancellor of the Empire, to subscribe the terms of a confederation and perpetual league for the maintenance of peace. From this important document the Florentines were excluded, as open rebels to the will of Charles and Clement. There was no justice in the rigor with which Florence was now treated. Her republican independence had hitherto been recognized, although her own internal discords exposed her to a virtual despotism. But Clement stipulated and Charles conceded, as a _sine qua non_ in the project of pacification, that Florence should be converted into a Medicean duchy. For the Duke of Ferrara, whom the Pope regarded as a contumacious vassal, and whose affairs were still the subject of debate, a place was specially reserved in the treaty. He, as I have already observed, had been taken under the Imperial protection; and a satisfactory settlement of his claims was now a mere question of time. On the evening of the same day, the Pope bestowed on Charles the Sword of the Spirit, which it was the wont of Rome to confer on the best-beloved of her secular sons at this festival. The peace was publicly proclaimed, amid universal plaudits, on the last day of the year 1529.

[Footnote 4: See Ranke, vol. i. p. 153, note.]

The chief affairs to be decided in the new year were the reduction of Florence to submission and the coronation of the Emperor. The month of January was passed in jousts and pastimes; ceremonial privileges were conferred on the University of Bologna; magnificent embassies from the Republic of S. Mark, glowing in senatorial robes of crimson silk, were entertained; and a singular deputation from the African court of Prester John obtained audience of the Roman Pontiff. Amid these festivities there arrived, on January 16, three delegates from Florence, who spent some weeks in fruitless efforts to obtain a hearing from the arbiters of Italy. Clement refused to deal with them, because their commonwealth was still refractory. Charles repelled them, because he wished to gratify the Pope, and knew that Florence remained staunch in her devotion to the French crown. The old proverb, 'Lilies with lilies,' the white lily of Florence united with the golden fleur-de-lys of France, had still political significance in this day of Italian degradation. Meanwhile Francis I. treated his faithful allies with lukewarm tolerance. The smaller fry of Italian potentates, worshipers of the rising sun of Spain, curried favor with their masters by insulting the republic's representatives. On their return to Florence, the ambassadors had to report a total diplomatic failure. But this, far from breaking the untamable spirit of the Signory and people, prompted them in February to new efforts of resistance and to edicts of outlawry against citizens whom they regarded as traitors to the State. Among the proscribed were Francesco Guicciardini, Roberto Acciaiuoli, Francesco Vettori, and Baccio Valori. Of these men Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco Vettori, and Baccio Valori were attendant at Bologna upon the Pope. They all adhered with fidelity to the Medicean party at this crisis of their country's fate, and all paid dearly for their loyalty. When Cosimo I., by their efforts, was established in the duchy, he made it one of his first cares to rid himself of these too faithful servants. Baccio Valori was beheaded after the battle of Montemurlo in 1537 for practice with the exiles of Filippo Strozzi's party. Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco Vettori, and Roberto Acciaiuoli died in disgrace before the year 1543--their only crime being that they had made themselves the ladder whereby a Medici had climbed into his throne, and which it was his business to upset when firmly seated. For the heroism of Florence at this moment it would be difficult to find fit words of panegyric. The republic stood alone, abandoned by France to the hot rage of Clement and the cold contempt of Charles, deserted by the powers of Italy, betrayed by lying captains, deluged on all sides with the scum of armies pouring into Tuscany from the Lombard pandemonium of war. The situation was one of impracticable difficulty. Florence could not but fall. Yet every generous heart will throb with sympathy while reading the story of that final stand for independence, in which a handful of burghers persisted, though congregated princes licked the dust from feet of Emperor and Pontiff.

Charles had come to assume the iron and the golden crowns in Italy. He ought to have journeyed to Monza or to S. Ambrogio at Milan for the first, and to the Lateran in Rome for the second of these investitures. An Emperor of the Swabian House would have been compelled by precedent and superstition to observe this form. It is true that the coronation of a German prince as the successor of Lombard kings and Roman Augusti, had always been a symbolic ceremony rather than a rite which ratified genuine Imperial authority. Still the ceremony connoted many mediaeval aspirations. It was the outward sign of theories that had once exerted an ideal influence. To dissociate the two-fold sacrament from Milan and from Rome was the same as robbing it of its main virtue, the virtue of a mystical conception. It was tantamount to a demonstration that the belief in Universal Monarchy had passed away. By breaking the old rules of his investiture, Charles notified the disappearance of the mediaeval order, and proclaimed new political ideals to the world. When asked whether he would not follow custom and seek the Lombard crown in Monza, he brutally replied that he was not wont to run after crowns, but to have crowns running after him. He trampled no less on that still more venerable _religio loci_ which attached imperial rights to Rome. Together with this ancient piety, he swept the Holy Roman Empire into the dust-heap of archaic curiosities. By declaring his will to be crowned where he chose, he emphasized the modern state motto of _L'etat, c'est moi_, and prepared the way for a Pope's closing of a General Council by the word _L'Eglise, c'est moi_. Charles had sufficient reasons for acting as he did. The Holy Roman Empire ever since the first event of Charles the Great's coronation, when it justified itself as a diplomatical expedient for unifying Western Christendom, had existed more or less as a shadow. Charles violated the duties which alone gave the semblance of a substance to that shadow. As King of Italy, he had desolated the Lombard realm of which he sought the title. As Emperor elect, he had ravished his bride, the Eternal City. As suitor to the Pope for both of his expected crowns, he stood responsible for the multiplied insults to which Clement had been so recently exposed. No Emperor had been more powerful since Charles the Great than this Charles V., the last who took his crowns in Italy. It was significant that he man in whose name Rome had suffered outrage, and who was about to detach Lombardy from the Empire, was by his own will invested at Bologna. The citizens of Monza were accordingly bidden to send the iron crown to Bologna. It arrived on February 20, and on the 22nd Charles received it from the hands of Clement in the chapel of the palace. The Cardinal who performed the ceremony of unction was a Fleming, William Hencheneor, who in the Sack of Rome had bought his freedom for the large sum of 40,000 crowns. On this auspicious occasion he cut off half the beard which he still wore in sign of mourning!

The Duke and Duchess of Urbino made their entrance into Bologna on the same day. Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, Prefect of Rome, and Captain General of the armies of the Church, was one of the most noted warriors of that time. Yet victory had rarely crowned his brows with laurels. Imitating the cautious tactics of Braccio, and emulating the fame of Fabius Cunctator, he reduced the art of war to a system of manoeuvres, and rarely risked his fortune in the field. It was chiefly due to his dilatory movements that the disaster of the Sack of Rome was not averted. He had been expelled by Leo X. from his duchy to make room for Lorenzo de'Medici, and report ran that a secret desire to witness the humiliation of a Medicean Pontiff caused him to withhold his forces from attacking the tumultuary troops of Bourbon. Francesco Maria was a man of violent temper; nineteen years before, he had murdered the Pope's Legate, Cardinal Francesco Alidosi, with his dagger, in the open streets of Bologna. His wife, Eleanora Ippolita Gonzaga, presided with grace over that brilliant and cultivated Court which Castiglione made famous by his _Cortegiano_. The Duke and Duchess survive to posterity in two masterpieces of portraiture by the hand of Titian which now adorn the Gallery of the Uffizzi.