Chapter XIV: The “last Day of Italy” (2)

So important a modification of the constitution seemed to promise this republic a happier futurity. The friar Savonarola, who had exercised such influence in the council, evinced at the same time an ardent love of mankind, deep respect for the rights of all, great sensibility, and an elevated mind. Though a zealous reformer of the church, and in this respect a precursor of Luther, who was destined to begin his mission twenty years later, he did not quit the pale of orthodoxy; he did not assume the right of examining doctrine; he limited his efforts to the restoration of discipline, the reformation of the morals of the clergy, and the recall of priests, as well as other citizens, to the practice of the Gospel precepts: but his zeal was mixed with enthusiasm; he believed himself under the immediate inspiration of providence; he took his own impulses for prophetic revelations, by which he directed the politics of his disciples, the Piagnoni. He had predicted to the Florentines the coming of the French into Italy; he had represented to them Charles VIII as an instrument by which the Divinity designed to chastise the crimes of the nation; he had counselled them to remain faithful to their alliance with that king, the instrument of providence, even though his conduct, especially in reference to the affairs of Pisa, had been highly culpable.

This alliance however ranged the Florentines among the enemies of Pope Alexander VI, one of the founders of the league which had driven the French out of Italy; he accused them of being traitors to the church and to their country for their attachment to a foreign prince. Alexander, equally offended by the projects of reform and by the politics of Savonarola, denounced him to the church as a heretic, and interdicted him from preaching. The monk at first obeyed, and procured the appointment of his friend and disciple the Dominican friar, Buonvicino of Pescia, as his successor in the church of St. Mark; but on Christmas Day, 1497, he declared from the pulpit that God had revealed to him that he ought not to submit to a corrupt tribunal; he then openly took the sacrament with the monks of St. Mark, and afterwards continued to preach. In the course of his sermons, he more than once held up to reprobation the scandalous conduct of the pope, whom the public voice accused of every vice and every crime to be expected in a libertine so depraved--a man so ambitious, perfidious, and cruel--a monarch and a priest intoxicated with absolute power.

In the meantime, the rivalry encouraged by the court of Rome between the religious orders soon procured the pope champions eager to combat Savonarola: he was a Dominican--the general of the Augustines, that order whence Martin Luther was soon to issue. Friar Mariano di Ghinazzano signalised himself by his zeal in opposing Savonarola. He presented to the pope Friar Francis of Apulia, of the order of minor Observantines, who was sent to Florence to preach against the Florentine monk, in the church of Santa Croce. This preacher declared to his audience that he knew Savonarola pretended to support his doctrine by a miracle. “For me,” said he, “I am a sinner; I have not the presumption to perform miracles; nevertheless, let a fire be lighted, and I am ready to enter it with him. I am certain of perishing, but Christian charity teaches me not to withhold my life, if, in sacrificing it, I might precipitate into hell a heresiarch, who has already drawn into it so many souls.”

This strange proposition was rejected by Savonarola; but his friend and disciple, Friar Domenico Buonvicino, eagerly accepted it. Francis of Apulia declared that he would risk his life against Savonarola only. Meanwhile, a crowd of monks, of the Dominican and Franciscan orders, rivalled each other in their offers to prove by the ordeal of fire, on one side the truth, on the other the falsehood, of the new doctrine. Enthusiasm spread beyond the two convents; many priests and seculars, and even women and children, more especially on the side of Savonarola, earnestly requested to be admitted to the proof. The pope warmly testified his gratitude to the Franciscans for their devotion. The signoria of Florence consented that two monks only should devote themselves for their respective orders, and directed the pile to be prepared. The whole population of the town and country, to which a signal miracle was promised, received the announcement with transports of joy.

On the 7th of April, 1498, a scaffold, dreadful to look on, was erected in the public square of Florence: two piles of large pieces of wood, mixed with fagots and broom, which should quickly take fire, extended each eighty feet long, four feet thick, and five feet high; they were separated by a narrow space of two feet, to serve as a passage by which the two priests were to enter, and pass the whole length of the piles during the fire. Every window was full; every roof was covered with spectators; almost the whole population of the republic was collected round the place. The portico called the Loggia de’ Lanzi, divided in two by a partition, was assigned to the two orders of monks. The Dominicans arrived at their station chanting canticles, and bearing the holy sacrament. The Franciscans immediately declared that they would not permit the host to be carried amidst flames. They insisted that the friar Buonvicino should enter the fire, as their own champion was prepared to do, without this divine safeguard. The Dominicans answered, that they would not separate themselves from their God at the moment when they implored his aid. The dispute upon this point grew warm. Several hours passed away. The multitude, which had waited long, and begun to feel hunger and thirst, lost patience; a deluge of rain suddenly fell upon the city, and descended in torrents from the roofs of the houses--all present were drenched. The piles were so wet that they could no longer be lighted; and the crowd, disappointed of a miracle so impatiently looked for, separated, with the notion of having been unworthily trifled with. Savonarola lost all his credit; he was henceforth rather looked on as an impostor. Next day his convent was besieged by the Arabiati, eager to profit by the inconstancy of the multitude; he was arrested, with his two friends, Domenico Buonvicino and Silvestro Marruffi, and led to prison. The Piagnoni, his partisans, were exposed to every outrage from the populace--two of them were killed; their rivals and old enemies exciting the general ferment for their destruction. Even in the signoria the majority was against them, and yielded to the pressing demands of the pope. The three imprisoned monks were subjected to a criminal prosecution. Alexander VI despatched judges from Rome, with orders to condemn the accused to death. Conformably with the laws of the church, the trial opened with the torture. Savonarola was too weak and nervous to support it: he avowed in his agony all that was imputed to him; and, with his two disciples, was condemned to death. The three monks were burned alive, on the 23rd of May, 1498, in the same square where, six weeks before, a pile had been raised to prepare them a triumph.

THE FRENCH IN MILAN

[Sidenote: [1498-1499 A.D.]]

The expedition of Charles VIII against Naples had directed towards Italy the attention of all the western powers. The transalpine nations had learned that they were strong enough to act as masters, and if they pleased as robbers, in this the richest and most civilised country of the earth. All the powers on the confines henceforth aspired to subject some part of Italy to their dominion. They coveted their share of tribute from a land so fruitful of impost, from those cities in which industry employed such numbers, and accumulated so much capital. Cupidity put arms in their hands, and smothered every generous feeling. The commanders were rapacious; the soldiers thought only of pillage. They regarded the Italians as a race abandoned to their extortions, and vied with each other in the barbarous methods which they invented for extorting money from the vanquished, until at last they completely destroyed the prosperity which had provoked their envy.

Charles VIII died at Amboise, on the 7th of April, 1498, the day destined at Florence for the trial by fire of the doctrine of Savonarola. Louis XII, who succeeded that monarch, claimed, as grandson of Valentina Visconti, to be the legitimate heir to the duchy of Milan, although, according to the law acknowledged by all Italy, and confirmed by the imperial investure granted to the father of Valentina, females were excluded from all share in the succession. This monarch, at his coronation, took with the title of king of France those of duke of Milan and king of Naples and Jerusalem. It was to the duchy of Milan that he seemed particularly attached, apparently as having been the object of his ambition before he came to the throne. He preserved during his whole reign, as if he were simply duke of Milan, a feudal respect for the emperor as lord paramount, which was as fatal to France as to Italy.

After having thus announced to the world his pretensions to the duchy of Milan, Louis hastened to secure his possession of it by arms. He easily separated his antagonist, Lodovico Sforza, from all his allies. The emperor Maximilian had married the niece of Lodovico, to whom he had granted the investure of his duchy; but Maximilian forgot, with extreme levity, his promises and alliances. A new ambition, a supposed offence, even a whim, sufficed to make him abandon his most matured projects. The Swiss had just then excited his resentment; and to attack them the more effectually, he signed with Louis XII a truce, in which Lodovico Sforza was not included, and was therefore abandoned to his enemy. The Venetians were interested still more than the emperor in defending Lodovico, but were incensed against him; they accused him of having deceived them, as well in the war against Charles VIII as in that for the defence of Pisa. They suspected him of having suggested to Maximilian the claims which he had just made on all their conquests in Lombardy, as having previously appertained to the empire. They were obliged, moreover, to reserve all their resources to resist the most formidable of their enemies. Bajazet II had just declared war against them. Bands of robbers continually descended from the mountains of Turkish Albania to lay waste Venetian Dalmatia. The Turkish pashas offered their support to every traitor who attempted to take from the Venetians any of their stations in the Levant. Corfu very nearly fell into the hands of the Turks; at length hostilities openly began. The Turks attacked Zara; all the Venetian merchants established at Constantinople were put into irons, and Scander Pasha, sanjak of Bosnia, passed the Isonzo on the 29th of September, 1499, with seven thousand Turkish cavalry. He ravaged all the rich country which extends from that river to the Tagliamento, at the extremity of the Adriatic, and spread terror up to the lagunes which surround Venice. Invaded by an enemy so formidable, against whom they were destined to support, for seven years, a relentless war, the Venetians would not expose themselves to the danger of maintaining another war against the French. On the 15th of April, 1499, they signed, at Blois, with Louis, a treaty, by which they contracted an alliance against Lodovico Sforza and abandoned the conquest of the Milanese to the king of France, reserving to themselves Cremona and the Ghiara d’Adda.

[Sidenote: [1499-1500 A.D.]]

Lodovico Sforza found no allies in any other part of Italy. Since the execution of Savonarola at Florence, the faction of the Arabiati had succeeded that of the Piagnoni in the administration, without changing its policy. The republic continued to guard against the intrigues of the Medici, who entered into an alliance with every enemy of their country, in order to bring it back under their yoke. Florence continued her efforts to subdue Pisa; but, fearing to excite the jealousy of the kings of France and Spain, did not assemble for that purpose either a numerous army or a great train of artillery. She contented herself with ravaging the Pisan territory every year, in order to reduce that city by famine. Even these expeditions were suspended when those powerful monarchs found it convenient to make a show of peace. The cities of Siena, Lucca, and Genoa, actuated by their jealousy of Florence, sent succour to Pisa. Pope Alexander VI, who had been always the enemy of Charles VIII, now entered into an alliance with Louis XII; but on condition that Cesare Borgia, son of Alexander, should be made duke of Valentinois in France and of Romagna in Italy--the French king assisting him against the petty princes, feudatories of the holy see, who were masters of that province. The king of Naples, Frederick, who had succeeded his nephew Ferdinand on the 7th of September, 1496, was well aware that he should, in his turn, be attacked by France; but although he merited, by his talents and virtues, the confidence of his subjects, he had great difficulty in re-establishing some order in his kingdom, which was ruined by war, and had neither an army nor an exchequer to succour his natural ally, the duke of Milan.

A powerful French army, commanded by the sires De Ligny and D’Aubigny, passed the Alps in the month of August, 1499. On the 13th of that month they attacked and took by assault the two petty fortresses of Arazzo and Annone, on the borders of the Tanaro; putting the garrisons, and almost all the inhabitants, to the sword. This ferocious proceeding spread terror among the troops of Lodovico Sforza. His army, the command of which he had given to Galeazzo San Severino, dispersed; and the duke, not venturing to remain at Milan, sought for himself, his children, and his treasure refuge in Germany, with the emperor Maximilian. Louis XII, who arrived afterwards in Italy, made his entry into the forsaken capital of Lodovico on the 2nd of October. The trembling people, wishing to conciliate their new master, saluted him with the title of duke of Milan, and expressed their joy in receiving him as their sovereign. The rest of Lombardy also submitted without resistance; and Genoa, which had placed itself under the protection of the duke of Milan, passed over to that of the king of France.

Louis returned to Lyons before the end of the year; the fugitive hopes which he had excited already gave way to hatred. The insolence of the French, their violation of all national institutions, their contempt of Italian manners, the accumulation of taxes, and the irregularities in the administration rendered their yoke insupportable. Lodovico Sforza was informed of the general ferment, and of the desire of his subjects for his return. He was on the Swiss frontier, with a considerable treasure; a brave but disorderly crowd of young men, ready to serve anyone for pay, joined him. In a few days five hundred cavalry and eight thousand infantry assembled under his banner; and, in the month of February, 1500, he entered Lombardy at their head. Como, Milan, Parma, and Pavia immediately opened their gates to him: he next besieged Novara, which capitulated. Louis, meanwhile, displayed great activity in suppressing the rebellion: his general, Louis de la Trémouille, arrived before Novara, in the beginning of April, with an army in which were reckoned ten thousand Swiss. The men of that nation in the two hostile camps, opposed to each other for hire, hesitated, parleyed, and finally took a resolution more fatal to their honour than a battle between fellow-countrymen could have been. Those within Novara not only consented to withdraw themselves, but to give up to the French the Italian men-at-arms with whom they were incorporated, and who were immediately put to the sword or drowned in the river. They permitted La Trémouille to arrest in their ranks Lodovico Sforza and the two brothers San Severino, who attempted to escape in disguise. They received from the French the wages thus basely won, and afterwards, rendered reckless by the sense of their infamy, they in their retreat seized Bellinzona, which they ever after retained. Thus, even the weakest of the neighbours of Italy would have their share in her conquest. Lodovico Sforza was conducted into France, and there condemned to a severe captivity, which, ten years afterwards, ended with his life. The Milanese remained subject to the king of France from this period to the month of June, 1512.

The facility with which Louis had conquered the duchy of Milan must have led him to expect that he should not meet with much more resistance from the kingdom of Naples. Frederick also, sensible of this, demanded peace; and, to obtain it, offered to hold his kingdom in fief, as tributary to France. He reckoned, however, on the support of Ferdinand the Catholic, his kinsman and neighbour, who had promised him powerful aid and had given him a pledge of the future by sending into Sicily his best general, Gonsalvo de Cordova, with sixty vessels and eight thousand chosen infantry. But Ferdinand had previously proposed to Louis a secret understanding to divide between them the spoils of the unhappy Frederick. While the French entered on the north to conquer the kingdom of Naples, he proposed that the Spaniards should enter on the south to defend it; and that, on meeting, they, instead of giving battle, should shake hands on the partition of the kingdom--each remaining master of one-half. This was the basis of the Treaty of Granada, signed on the 11th of November, 1500. In the summer of 1501 the perfidious compact was executed by the two greatest monarchs of Europe.

THE FRENCH AND SPANIARDS IN NAPLES

[Sidenote: [1500-1504 A.D.]]

The French army arrived at Rome on the 25th of June, at the same time that the army of Gonsalvo de Cordova landed in Calabria. The former, from the moment they passed the frontier, treated the Neapolitans as rebels, and hanged the soldiers who surrendered to them. Arrived before Capua, they entered that city while the magistrates were signing the capitulation, and massacred seven thousand of the inhabitants. The treachery of Ferdinand inspired the unhappy Frederick with still more aversion than the ferocity of the French. Having retired to the island of Ischia, he surrendered to Louis, and was sent to France, where he died, in a captivity by no means rigorous, three years afterwards. The Spaniards and French advanced towards each other, without encountering any resistance. They met on the limits which the treaty of Granada had respectively assigned to them; but the moment the conquest was terminated, jealousy appeared. The duke de Nemours and Gonsalvo de Cordova disputed upon the division of the kingdom; each claimed for his master some province not named in the treaty.

Hostilities at last began between them on the 19th of June, 1502, at Atripalda. Louis, while the negotiation was pending, delayed sending reinforcements to his general. After a struggle, not without glory, and in which La Palisse and Bayard first distinguished themselves, D’Aubigny was defeated at Seminara on the 21st of April, and Nemours at Cerignola on the 28th of the same month, 1503. The French army was entirely destroyed, and the kingdom of Naples lost to Louis XII. Louis had sent off, during the same campaign, a more powerful army than the first, to recover it; but, on arriving near Rome, news was received of the death of Alexander VI, which took place on the 18th of August, 1503. The cardinal D’Amboise, prime minister of Louis, detained the army there to support his intrigues in the conclave: when it renewed its march, in the month of October, the rainy season had commenced. Gonsalvo de Cordova had taken his position on the Garigliano, the passage of which he defended, amidst inundated plains, with a constancy and patience characteristic of the Spanish infantry. During more than two months the French suffered or perished in the marshes: a pestilential malady carried off the flower of the army, and damped the courage and confidence of the remainder. Gonsalvo, having at last passed the river himself, on the 27th of December, attacked and completely destroyed the French army. On the 1st of January, 1504, Gaeta surrendered to him; and the whole kingdom of Naples was now, like Sicily, but a Spanish possession.

Thus the greater part of Italy had already fallen under the yoke of the nations which the Italians denominated barbarian. The French were masters of the Milanese and of the whole of Liguria; the Spaniards of the Two Sicilies; even the Swiss had made some small conquests along the Lago Maggiore; and this was the moment in which Louis XII called the Germans also into Italy. On the 22nd of September of the same year in which he lost Gaeta, his last hold in the kingdom of Naples, he signed the Treaty of Blois, by which he divided with Maximilian the republic of Venice, as he had divided with Ferdinand the kingdom of Naples. Experience ought to have taught him that Maximilian, like Ferdinand, would reserve for himself the conquests made in common. The future ought to have alarmed him; for Charles, the grandson and heir of Maximilian of Austria, and of Ferdinand of Aragon, of Mary of Burgundy, and of Isabella of Castile, was already born. It was foreseen that he would unite under his sceptre the greatest monarchies in Europe; and Louis, instead of guarding against his future greatness, had promised to give him his daughter in marriage. It was the thoughtlessness of Maximilian, and not the prudence of Louis, that delayed during four years the execution of the Treaty of Blois.

NORTHERN ITALY

[Sidenote: [1500-1509 A.D.]]

During this interval, Genoa--which had never ceased to consider herself a republic, although the signoria had been conferred first on Ludovico Sforza, and next on Louis XII, as duke of Milan--learned from experience that a foreign monarch was incapable of comprehending either her laws or liberty. According to the capitulation, one-half of the magistrates of Genoa should be noble, the other half plebeian. They were to be chosen by the suffrages of their fellow-citizens; they were to retain the government of the whole of Liguria and the administration of their own finances, with the reservation of a fixed sum payable yearly to the king of France. But the French could never comprehend that nobles were on an equality with villeins; that a king was bound by conditions imposed by his subjects; or that money could be refused to him who had force. All the capitulations of Genoa were successively violated; while the Genoese nobles ranged themselves on the side of a king against their country: they were known to carry insolently about them a dagger, on which was inscribed “Chastise villeins”; so impatient were they to separate themselves from the people, even by meanness and assassination. That people could not support the double yoke of a foreign master and of nobles who betrayed their country. On the 7th of February, 1507, they revolted, drove out the French, proclaimed the republic, and named a new doge; but time failed them to organise their defence. On the 3rd of April Louis advanced from Grenoble with a powerful army. He soon arrived before Genoa: the newly raised militia, unable to withstand veteran troops, were defeated. Louis entered Genoa on the 29th of April; and immediately sent the doge and the greater number of the generous citizens, who had signalised themselves in the defence of their country, to the scaffold.

Independent Italy now comprised only the states of the church, Tuscany, and the republic of Venice; and even these provinces were pressed by the transalpine nations on every side. The Spaniards and French alternately spread terror through Tuscany and the states of the church; the Germans and Turks held in awe the territories of Venice. The states of the church were at the same time a prey to the intrigues of the detestable Alexander, and his son Cesare Borgia. More murders, more assassinations, more glaring acts of perfidy were committed within a short space, than during the annals of the most depraved monarchies. Cesare Borgia, whom his father created duke of Romagna in 1501, had previously despoiled and put to death the petty princes who reigned at Pesaro, Rimini, Forlì, and Faenza. He had, in like manner, possessed himself of Piombino in Tuscany, the duchy of Urbino, and the little principalities of Camerino and Sinigaglia. He had caused to be strangled in this last city, on the 31st of December, 1502, four tyrants of the states of the church, who followed the trade of condottieri. These princes had served in his pay, and, alarmed by his intrigues, had taken arms against him; but, seduced by his artifices, they placed themselves voluntarily in his power. Cesare Borgia had made himself master of Città di Castello, and of Perugia; and was menacing Bologna, Siena, and Florence, when, on the 18th of August, 1503, he and his father drank, by mistake, a poison which they had prepared for one of their guests. His father died of it, and Borgia himself was in extreme danger. In thirteen months he lost all his sovereignties, the fruits of so many crimes. Attacked in turn by Pope Julius II, who had succeeded his father, and by Gonsalvo de Cordova, he was at last sent into Spain, where he died in battle, more honourably than he deserved.

In Tuscany, the republic of Florence found itself surrounded with enemies. The Medici, continuing exiles, had entered into alliances with all the tyrants in the pontifical states: they took part in every plot against their country; at the same time, they sought the friendship of the king of France, who was more disposed to favour a prince than a republic. Piero de’ Medici had accompanied the army sent, in 1508, against the kingdom of Naples, and lost his life at the defeat of the Garigliano. His death did not deliver Florence from the apprehension which he had inspired. His brothers Giovanni and Giuliano carried on their intrigues against their country. The war with Pisa, too, which still lasted, exhausted the finances of Florence. The Pisans had lost their commerce and manufactures; they saw their harvests, each year, destroyed by the Florentines: but they opposed to all these disasters a constancy and courage not to be subdued. The French, Germans, and Spaniards in turn sent them succour; not from taking any interest in their cause, but with the view of profiting by the struggle which they protracted. Lucca and Siena also, jealous of the Florentines, secretly assisted the Pisans; but only so far as they could do it without compromising themselves with neighbours whom they feared. Lucca fell, by degrees, into the hands of a narrow oligarchy. Siena suffered itself to be enslaved by Pandolfo Petrucci, a citizen, whom it had named captain of the guard, and who commanded obedience, without departing from the manners and habits of republican equality.

In the new position of Italy, continually menaced by absolute princes, whose deliberations were secret, and who united perfidy with force, the Florentines became sensible that their government could not act with the requisite discretion and secrecy, while it continued to be changed every two months. Their allies even complained that no secret could be confided to them, without becoming known, at the same time, to the whole republic. They accordingly judged it necessary to place at the head of the state a single magistrate, who should be present at every council, and who should be the depositary of every communication requiring secrecy. This chief, who was to retain the name of gonfalonier, was elected, like the doge of Venice, for life; he was to be lodged in the palace, and to have a salary of 100 florins a month. The law which created a gonfalonier for life was voted on the 16th of August, 1502; but it was not till the 22nd of September following that the grand council chose Pietro Soderini to fill that office. He was a man universally respected; of mature age, without ambition, without children; and the republic never had reason to repent its choice. The republic, at the same time, introduced the authority of a single man into the administration, and suppressed it in the tribunals. A law of the 15th of April, 1502, abolished the offices of podesta and of captain of justice, and supplied their places by the _ruota_; a tribunal composed of five judges, of whom four must agree in passing sentence: each, in his turn, was to be president of the tribunal for six months. This rotation caused the name of _ruota_ to be given to the supreme courts of law at Rome and Florence.

The most important service expected from Soderini was that of subjecting Pisa anew to the Florentine Republic: he did not accomplish this until 1509. That city had long been reduced to the last extremity: the inhabitants, thinned by war and famine, had no longer any hope of holding out; but Louis XII and Ferdinand of Aragon announced to the Florentines that they must be paid for the conquest which Florence was on the point of making. Pisa had been defended by them since 1507, but only to prevent its surrendering before the amount demanded was agreed on: it was at length fixed at 100,000 florins to be paid to the king of France, and 50,000 to the king of Aragon. This treaty was signed on the 13th of March; and on the 8th of June, 1509, Pisa, which had cruelly suffered from famine, opened its gates to the Florentine army: the occupying army was preceded by convoys of provisions, which the soldiers themselves distributed to the citizens. The signoria of Florence abolished all the confiscations pronounced against the Pisans since the year 1494; they restored to them all their property and privileges. They tried, in every way, to conciliate and attach that proud people; but nothing could overcome their deep resentment, and their regret for the loss of their independence. Almost every family, which had preserved any fortune, emigrated; and the population, already so reduced by war, was still further diminished after the peace.

The republic of Venice was condemned, by the war which it had to support against the Turkish Empire, from 1499 to 1503, to make no effort for maintaining the independence of Italy against France and Aragon. It had solicited the aid of all Christendom, as if for a holy war, against Bajazet II; and, in fact, alternately received assistance from the kings of France, Aragon, and Portugal, and from the pope: but these aids, limited to short services on great occasions, were of little real efficacy. They aggravated the misery of the Greeks among whom the war was carried on, caused little injury to the Turks, and were of but little service to the Venetians. The Mussulmans had made progress in naval discipline; the Venetian fleet could no longer cope with theirs; and Antonio Grimani, its commander, till then considered the most fortunate of the citizens of Venice, already father of a cardinal, and destined, long after, to be the doge of the republic, was, on his return to his country, loaded with irons. Lepanto, Pylos, Modon, and Coron, were successively conquered from the Venetians by the Turks; the former were glad at last to accept a peace negotiated by Andrea Gritti, one of their fellow-citizens, a captive at Constantinople. By this peace they renounced all title to the places which they had lost in the Peloponnesus, and restored to Bajazet the island of Santa Maura, which they had, on their side, conquered from the Turks. This peace was signed in the month of November, 1503.

[Sidenote: [1441-1509 A.D.]]

The period in which the republic of Venice was delivered from the terror of the Turks was also that of the death of Alexander VI, and of the ruin of his son, Cesare Borgia. The opportunity appeared to the signoria favourable for extending its possessions in Romagna. That province had been long the object of its ambition. Venice had acquired by treachery, on the 24th of February, 1441, the principality of Ravenna, governed for 166 years by the house of Polenta. In 1463, it had purchased Cervia, with its salt marshes, from Malatesta IV, one of the princes of Rimini; upon the death of Cesare Borgia, it took possession of Faenza, the principality of Manfredi; of Rimini, the principality of Malatesta; and of several fortresses. Imola and Forlì, governed by the Alidosi and the Ordelaffi, alone remained to be subdued, in order to make Venice mistress of the whole of Romagna. The Venetians offered the pope the same submission, the same annual tribute, for which those petty princes were acknowledged pontifical vicars. But Julius II, who had succeeded Borgia, although violent and irascible, had a strong sense of his duty as a pontiff and as an Italian. He was determined on preserving the states of the church intact for his successors. He rejected all nepotism, all aggrandisement of his family; and would have accused himself of unpardonable weakness, if he suffered others to usurp what he refused to give his family. He haughtily exacted the restitution of all that the Venetians possessed in the states of the church; and as he could not obtain it from them, he consented to receive it from the hands of Louis and Maximilian, who combined to despoil the republic. He, however, communicated to the Venetians the projects formed against them, and it was not till they appeared resolved to restore him nothing, that he concluded his compact with their enemies.

THE LEAGUE OF CAMBRAY

[Sidenote: [1504-1509 A.D.]]

The league against Venice, signed at Cambray, on the 10th of December, 1508, by Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian, and the cardinal d’Amboise, prime minister of Louis, was only the completion of the secret Treaty of Blois, of the 22nd of September, 1504. No offence had been given, to justify this perfidious compact. Maximilian, who detested Louis, had the same year endeavoured to attack him in the Milanese; but the Venetians refused him a passage; and after three months’ hostilities, the treaty between the emperor and the republic was renewed, on the 7th of June, 1508. Louis XII, whom the Venetians defended, and Maximilian, with whom they were reconciled, had no other complaint against them than that they had no king, and that their subjects thus excited the envy of those who had. The two monarchs agreed to divide between them all the Terra Firma of the Venetians, to abandon to Ferdinand all their fortresses in Apulia, to the pope the lordships in Romagna, to the houses of Este and Gonzaga the small districts near the Po; and thus to give all an interest in the destruction of the only state sufficiently strong to maintain the independence of Italy.

France was the first to declare war against the republic of Venice, in the month of January, 1509. Hostilities commenced on the 15th of April; on the 27th of the same month the pope excommunicated the doge and the republic. The Venetians had assembled an army of forty-two thousand men, under the command of the impetuous Bartolommeo d’Alviano and the cautious Pitigliano. The disagreement between these two chiefs, both able generals, caused the loss of the battle of Agnadello, fought on the 14th of May, 1509, with the French, who did not exceed thirty thousand. Half only, or less, of the Venetian army was engaged; but that part fought heroically, and perished without falling back one step. After this discomfiture, Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, and Cremona hastily surrendered to the conquerors, who planted their banners on the border of Ghiara d’Adda, the limits assigned by the treaty of partition. Louis signalised this rapid conquest by atrocious cruelties; he caused the Venetian governors of Caravaggio and of Peschiera to be hanged, and the garrison and inhabitants to be put to the sword; he ruined, by enormous ransoms, all the Venetian nobles who fell into his hands; seeking to vindicate to himself his unjust attack by the hatred which he studied to excite.

The French suspended their operations from the 31st of May; but the emperor, the pope, the duke of Ferrara, the marquis of Mantua, and Ferdinand of Aragon profited by the disasters of the republic to invade its provinces on all sides at once. The senate, in the impossibility of making head against so many enemies, took the generous resolution of releasing all its subjects from their oath of fidelity, and permitting them to treat with the enemy, since it was no longer in its power to defend them. In letting them feel the weight of a foreign yoke, the senate knew that it only rendered more dear the paternal authority of the republic; and, in fact, those citizens who had eagerly opened their gates to the French, Germans, and Spaniards, soon contrasted, in despair, their tyranny with the just and equal power which they had not had the courage to defend. The Germans, above all, no sooner entered the Venetian cities, than they plunged into the most brutal debauchery; offending public decency, and exercising their cruelty and rapacity on all those who came within their reach. Notwithstanding this, the native nobles joined them. They were eager to substitute monarchy for republican equality and freedom, but their insolence only aggravated the hatred which the Germans inspired. The army of the republic had taken refuge at Mestre, on the borders of the Lagune, when suddenly the citizen evinced a courage which the soldier no longer possessed. Treviso, in the month of June, and Padua on the 17th of July, drove out the imperialists; and the banners of St. Mark, which had hitherto constantly retreated, began once again to advance.

The war of the league of Cambray showed the Italians, for the first time, what formidable forces the transalpine nations could bring against them. Maximilian arrived to besiege Padua in the month of September, 1509. He had in his army, Germans, Swiss, French, Spaniards, Savoyards; troops of the pope, of the marquis of Mantua, and of the duke of Modena; in all more than one hundred thousand men, with one hundred pieces of cannon. He was, notwithstanding, obliged to raise the siege, on the 3rd of October, after many encounters, supported on each side with equal valour. But these barbarians, who came to dispute with the Italians the sovereignty of their country, did not need success to prove their ferocity. After having taken from the poor peasant, or captive, all that he possessed, they put him to the torture to discover hidden treasure, or to extort ransom from the compassion of friends. In this abuse of brute force, the Germans showed themselves the most savage, the Spaniards the most coldly ferocious. Both were more odious than the French; although the last mentioned had bands called flayers (_écorcheurs_), formed in the English wars, and long trained to grind the people.

[Sidenote: [1509-1511 A.D.]]

Pope Julius II soon began to hate his accomplices in the league of Cambray. Violent and irascible, he had often shown in his fits of passion that he could be as cruel as the worst of them. But he had the soul of an Italian. He could not brook the humiliation of his country, and its being enslaved by those whom he called barbarians. Having recovered the cities of Romagna, the subject of his quarrel with the Venetians, he began to make advances to them. At the end of the first campaign, he entered into negotiations; and on the 21st of February, 1510, granted them absolution. He was aware that he could never drive the barbarians out of Italy but by arming them against each other; and as the French were those whom he most feared, he had recourse to the Germans. It was necessary to begin with reconciling the Venetians to the emperor; but Maximilian, always ready to undertake everything, and incapable of bringing anything to a conclusion, would not relax in a single article of what he called his rights. As emperor, he considered himself monarch of all Italy; and although he was always stopped on its frontier, he refused to renounce the smallest part of what he purposed conquering. He asserted that the whole Venetian territory had been usurped from the empire; and before granting peace to the republic, demanded almost its annihilation.

It was with the aid of the Swiss that the pope designed to liberate Italy. He admired the valour and piety of that warlike people; he saw, with pleasure, that cupidity had become their ruling passion. The Italians, who needed the defence of the Swiss, were rich enough to pay them; and a wise policy conspired for once with avarice; for the Swiss republics could not be safe if liberty were not re-established in Italy. Louis XII, by his prejudice in favour of nobility, had offended those proud mountaineers, whom, even in his own army, he considered only as revolted peasants. Julius II employed the bishop of Sion, whom he afterwards made cardinal, to irritate them still more against France. In the course of the summer of 1510, the French, according to the plan which Julius had formed, were attacked in the Milanese by the Swiss, in Genoa by the Genoese emigrants, at Modena by the pontifical troops, and at Verona by the Venetians; but, notwithstanding the profound secrecy in which the pope enveloped his negotiations and intrigues, he could not succeed, as he had hoped, in surprising the French everywhere at the same time. The four attacks were made successively, and repulsed. The sire de Chaumont, lieutenant of Louis in Lombardy, determined to avenge himself by besieging the pope in Bologna, in the month of October. Julius feigned a desire to purchase peace at any price; but, while negotiating, he caused troops to advance; and, on finding himself the stronger, suddenly changed his language, used threats, and made Chaumont retire. When Chaumont had placed his troops in winter quarters, the pope, during the greatest severity of the season, attacked the small state of Mirandola, which had put itself under the protection of France, and entered its capital by a breach, on the 20th of January, 1511.

[Sidenote: [1511-1512 A.D.]]

The pope’s troops, commanded by the duke of Urbino, experienced in the following campaign a signal defeat at Casalecchio, on the 21st of May, 1511. It was called “the day of the ass-drivers,” because the French knights returned driving asses before them loaded with booty. The loss of Bologna followed; but Julius II was not discouraged. His legates laboured, throughout Europe, to raise enemies against France. They at last accomplished a league, which was signed on the 5th of October, and which was called “holy,” because it was headed by the pope. It comprehended the kings of Spain and England, the Swiss, and the Venetians. Louis XII, to oppose an ecclesiastical authority to that of the pontiffs, convoked, in concert with Maximilian, whom he continued to consider his ally, an œcumenical council. A few cardinals, who had separated from the pope, clothed it with their authority; and Florence dared not refuse to the two greatest monarchs of Europe the city of Pisa for its place of meeting, although the whole population beheld with dread this commencement of a new schism.[d]

The combined forces were to be placed under the command of Raymond de Cardona, viceroy of Naples, a person of polished and engaging address, but without the resolution or experience requisite to military success. The rough old pope sarcastically nicknamed him “Lady Cardona.” It was an appointment that would certainly never have been made by Queen Isabella. Indeed, the favour shown this nobleman on this and other occasions was so much beyond his deserts as to raise a suspicion in many that he was more nearly allied by blood to Ferdinand than was usually imagined.

THE BATTLE OF RAVENNA

[Sidenote: [1512 A.D.]]

Early in 1512, France, by great exertions and without a single confederate out of Italy, save the false and fluctuating emperor, got an army into the field superior to that of the allies in point of numbers, and still more so in the character of its commander. This was Gaston de Foix, duke of Nemours and brother of the queen of Aragon. Though a boy in years--for he was but twenty-two--he was ripe in understanding, and possessed consummate military talents. He introduced a severer discipline into his army, and an entirely new system of tactics. He looked forward to his results with stern indifference to the means by which they were to be effected. He disregarded the difficulties of the roads and the inclemency of the season, which had hitherto put a check on military operations. Through the midst of frightful morasses, or in the depth of winter snows, he performed his marches with a celerity unknown in the warfare of that age. In less than a fortnight after leaving Milan he relieved Bologna (February 5th), then besieged by the allies, made a countermarch on Brescia, defeated a detachment by the way, and the whole Venetian army under its walls, and, on the same day with the last event, succeeded in carrying the place by storm. After a few weeks’ dissipation of the carnival, he again put himself in motion, and, descending on Ravenna, succeeded in bringing the allied army to a decisive action under its walls. Ferdinand, well understanding the peculiar characters of the French and of the Spanish soldier, had cautioned his general to adopt the Fabian policy of Gonsalvo, and avoid a close encounter as long as possible.

This battle, fought with the greatest numbers, was also the most murderous which had stained the fair soil of Italy for a century (April 11th, 1512). No less than eighteen or twenty thousand, according to authentic accounts, fell in it, comprehending the best blood of France and Italy. The viceroy Cardona went off somewhat too early for his reputation. But the Spanish infantry, under the count Pedro Navarro, behaved in a style worthy of the school of Gonsalvo. During the early part of the day, they lay on the ground, in a position which sheltered them from the deadly artillery of Este, then the best mounted and best served of any in Europe. When at length, as the tide of battle was going against them, they were brought into the field, Navarro led them at once against a deep column of _lansquenets_ who, armed with the long German pike, were bearing down all before them. The Spaniards received the shock of this formidable weapon on the mailed panoply with which their bodies were covered, and, dexterously gliding into the hostile ranks, contrived with their short swords to do such execution on the enemy, unprotected except by corselets in front, and incapable of availing themselves of their long weapon, that they were thrown into confusion and totally discomfited. It was repeating the experiment more than once made during these wars, but never on so great a scale, and it fully establishes the superiority of the Spanish arms.

The Italian infantry, which had fallen back before the lansquenets, now rallied under cover of the Spanish charge; until at length the overwhelming clouds of French _gendarmerie_ headed by Ives d’Alègre, who lost his own life in the _mêlée_, compelled the allies to give ground. The retreat of the Spaniards, however, was conducted with admirable order, and they preserved their ranks unbroken, as they repeatedly turned to drive back the tide of pursuit. At this crisis, Gaston de Foix, flushed with success, was so exasperated by the sight of this valiant corps going off in so cool and orderly a manner from the field, that he made a desperate charge at the head of his chivalry, in hopes of breaking it. Unfortunately, his wounded horse fell under him. It was in vain his followers called out, “It is our viceroy, the brother of your queen!” The words had no charm for a Spanish ear, and he was despatched with a multitude of wounds. He received fourteen or fifteen in the face; “good proof,” says Bayard’s secretary and biographer, called the _loyal serviteur_,[j] “that the gentle prince had never turned his back.”

There are few instances in history, if indeed there be any, of so brief and at the same time so brilliant a military career as that of Gaston de Foix; and it well entitled him to the epithet his countrymen gave him of “the thunderbolt of Italy.” He had not merely given extraordinary promise, but in the course of a very few months had achieved such results as might well make the greatest powers of the peninsula tremble for their possessions. His precocious military talents, the early age at which he assumed the command of armies, as well as many peculiarities of his discipline and tactics, suggest some resemblance to the beginning of Napoleon’s career.

Unhappily, his brilliant fame is sullied by a recklessness of human life, the more odious in one too young to be steeled by familiarity with the iron trade to which he was devoted. It may be fair, however, to charge this on the age rather than on the individual, for surely never was there one characterised by greater brutality and more unsparing ferocity in its wars. So little had the progress of civilisation done for humanity. It is not until a recent period that a more generous spirit has operated; that a fellow-creature has been understood not to forfeit his rights as a man because he is an enemy; that conventional laws have been established, tending greatly to mitigate the evils of a condition which, with every alleviation, is one of unspeakable misery; and that those who hold the destinies of nations in their hands have been made to feel that there is less true glory, and far less profit, to be derived from war than from the wise prevention of it.

The defeat at Ravenna struck a panic into the confederates. The stout heart of Julius II faltered, and it required all the assurances of the Spanish and Venetian ministers to keep him staunch to his purpose. King Ferdinand issued orders to the great captain to hold himself in readiness for taking the command of forces to be instantly raised for Naples. There could be no better proof of the royal consternation.

The victory of Ravenna, however, was more fatal to the French than to their foes. The uninterrupted successes of a commander are so far unfortunate, that they incline his followers, by the brilliant illusion they throw around his name, to rely less on their own resources than on him whom they have hitherto found invincible; and thus subject their own destiny to all the casualties which attach to the fortunes of a single individual. The death of Gaston de Foix seemed to dissolve the only bond which held the French together. The officers became divided, the soldiers disheartened, and, with the loss of their young hero, lost all interest in the service.[g]

The ministers of Louis thought they might, after the battle of Ravenna, safely dismiss a part of their army; but Maximilian, betraying all his engagements, abandoned the French to their enemies. Without consenting to make peace with Venice, he gave passage through his territory to twenty thousand Swiss, who were to join the Venetian army, in order to attack the French. He, at the same time, recalled all the Germans who had enlisted under the banner of France. Ferdinand of Aragon and Henry VIII of England almost simultaneously attacked Louis, who, to defend himself, was obliged to recall his troops from Italy. In the beginning of June, they evacuated the Milanese; of which the Swiss took possession, in the name of Massimiliano Sforza, son of Lodovico il Moro (the Moor). On the 29th of the same month, a revolution drove the French out of Genoa; and the republic and a new doge were again proclaimed. The possessions of France were soon reduced to a few small fortresses in that Italy which the French thought they had subdued. But the Italians did not recover their liberty by the defeat of only one of their oppressors. From the yoke of France, they passed under that of the Swiss, the Spaniards, and the Germans; and the last they endured always seemed the most galling. To add to their humiliation, the victory of the Holy League enslaved the last and only republic truly free in Italy.