Chapter XIV: The “last Day of Italy” (3)

Florence was connected with France by a treaty concluded in concert with Ferdinand the Catholic. The republic continued to observe it scrupulously, even after Ferdinand had disengaged himself from it. Florence had fulfilled towards all the belligerent powers the duties of good neighbourhood and neutrality, and had given offence to none; but the league, which had just driven the French out of Italy, was already divided in interest, and undecided on the plan which it should pursue. It was agreed only on one point, that of obtaining money. The Swiss lived at discretion in Lombardy, and levied in it the most ruinous contributions: the Spaniards of Raymond de Cardona insisted also on having a province abandoned to their inexorable avidity; Tuscany was rich and not warlike. The victorious powers who had assembled in congress at Mantua proposed to the Florentines to buy themselves off with a contribution; but the Medici, who presented themselves at this congress, asked to be restored to their country, asserting that they could extract much more money by force, for the use of the Holy League, than a republican government could obtain from the people by gentler means. Raymond de Cardona readily believed them, and in the month of August, 1512, accompanied them across the Apennines, with five thousand Spanish infantry as inaccessible to pity as to fear. Raymond sent forward to tell the Florentines that, if they would preserve their liberty, they must recall the Medici, displace the gonfalonier Soderini, and pay the Spanish army 40,000 florins. He arrived at the same time before the small town of Prato, which shut its gates against him; it was well fortified, but defended only by the _ordinanza_, or country militia. On the 30th of August, the Spaniards made a breach in the wall, which these peasants basely abandoned. The city was taken by assault; the militia, which would have incurred less danger in fighting valiantly, were put to the sword; five thousand citizens were afterwards massacred, and others, divided among the victors, were put to lingering tortures, either to force them to discover where they had concealed their treasure, or to oblige their kinsmen to ransom them out of pity; the Spaniards having already pillaged all they could discover in holy as well as profane places.

The terror caused at Florence, by the news of the massacre of Prato, produced next day a revolution. A company of young nobles, belonging to the most illustrious families, who, under the title of Society of the Garden Ruccellai, were noted for their love of the arts, of luxury and pleasure, took possession, on the 31st of August, of the public palace; they favoured the escape of Soderini, and sent to tell Raymond de Cardona that they were ready to accept the conditions which he offered. But all treaties with tyrants are deceptions. Giuliano de’ Medici, the third son of Lorenzo, whose character was gentle and conciliatory, entered Florence on the 2nd of September, and consented to leave many of the liberties of the republic untouched. His brother, the cardinal Giovanni, afterwards Leo X, who did not enter till the 14th of the same month, forced the signoria to call a parliament on the 16th. In this pretended assembly of the sovereign people, few were admitted except strangers and soldiers: all the laws enacted since the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 were abolished. A balia, composed only of the creatures of that family, was invested with the sovereignty of the republic. This balia showed itself abjectly subservient to the cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, his brother Giuliano, and their nephew Lorenzo, who now returned to Florence after eighteen years of exile, during which they had lost every republican habit, and all sympathy with their fellow-citizens. None of them had legitimate children; but they brought back with them three bastards,--Giulio, afterwards Clement VII, Ippolito, and Alessandro,--who had all a fatal influence on the destiny of their country. Their fortune, formerly colossal, was dissipated in their long exile; and their first care, on returning to Florence, was to raise money for themselves, as well as for the Spaniards, who had re-established their tyranny.

[Sidenote: [1512-1513 A.D.]]

The three destructive wars--_viz._, that of the French and Swiss in the Milanese, that of the French and Spaniards in the kingdom of Naples, that of the French, Spaniards, Germans, and Swiss, in the states of Venice--robbed Italy of her independence. The country to which Europe was indebted for its progress in every art and science, which had imparted to other nations the medical science of Salerno, the jurisprudence of Bologna, the theology of Rome, the philosophy, poetry, and fine arts of Florence, the tactics and strategy of the Bracceschi and Sforzeschi schools, the commerce and banks of the Lombards, the process of irrigation, the scientific cultivation both of hills and plains--that country now belonged no more to its own inhabitants! The struggle between the transalpine nations continued, with no other object than that of determining to which of them Italy should belong; and bequeathed nothing to that nation but long-enduring, hopeless agonies. Julius II in vain congratulated himself on having expelled the French, who had first imposed a foreign yoke on Italy; he vowed in vain that he would never rest till he had also driven out all the barbarians; but he deceived himself in his calculations: he did not drive out the barbarians, he only made them give way to other barbarians; and the new-comers were ever the most oppressive and cruel. However, this project of national liberation, which the pope alone could still entertain in Italy with any prospect of success, was soon abandoned. Eight months after the expulsion of the French from the Milanese, and five months after the re-establishment of the Medici at Florence, Julius II, on the 21st of February, 1513, sank under an inflammatory disease. On the 11th of March, Giovanni de’ Medici succeeded him, under the name of Leo X--eleven months after the latter had been made prisoner by the French at the battle of Ravenna, and six months after the Spanish arms had given him the sovereignty of his country, Florence.

THE AGE OF LEO X

It has been the singular good fortune of Leo X to have his name associated with the most brilliant epoch of letters and the arts since their revival. He has thus shared the glory of all the poets, philosophers, artists, men of learning and science, his contemporaries. He has been held up to posterity as one who formed and raised to eminence men who were in fact his elders, and who had attained celebrity before the epoch of his power. His merit consisted in showering his liberality on those whose works and whose fame had already deserved it. His reign, on the other hand, which lasted nine years, was marked by fearful calamities, which hastened the destruction of those arts and sciences to which alone the age of Leo owes its splendour. The misfortunes which he drew down on his successor was still more dreadful. The pope was himself a man of pleasure, easy, careless, prodigal; who expended in sumptuous feasts the immense treasures accumulated by his predecessors. He had the taste to adorn his palace with the finest works of antiquity, and the sense to enjoy the society of philosophers and poets; but he had never the elevation of soul to comprehend his duties, or to consult his conscience. His indecent conversation and licentious conduct scandalised the church; his prodigality led him to encourage the shameful traffic in indulgences, which gave rise to the schism of Luther; his thoughtlessness and indifference to human suffering made him light up wars the most ruinous, and which he was utterly unable to carry on; he never thought of securing the independence of Italy, or of expelling the barbarians: it was simply for the aggrandisement of his family that he contracted or abandoned alliances with the transalpine nations: he succeeded, indeed, in procuring that his brother Giuliano should be named duke of Nemours, and he created his nephew duke of Urbino; but he endeavoured also to erect for the former a new state, composed of the districts of Parma, Piacenza, Reggio, and Modena; for the latter, another, consisting of the several petty principalities which still maintained themselves in the states of the church. His tortuous policy to accomplish the first object, his perfidy and cruelty to attain the second, deserved to be much more severely branded by historians.

The sovereign pontiff and the republic of Venice were the only powers in Italy which still preserved some shadow of independence. Julius II had succeeded in uniting Romagna, the Marches, the patrimony and campagna of Rome, to the holy see. Amongst all the vassals of the church, he had spared only his own nephew, Gian Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino. On the defeat of the French, he further seized Parma and Piacenza, which he detached from the Milanese, without having the remotest title to their possession, as he also took Modena from the duke of Ferrara, whom he detested. Leo X found the holy see in possession of all these states, and was at the same time himself all-powerful at Florence. Even the moment of his elevation to the pontificate was marked by an event which showed that every vestige of liberty had disappeared from that republic. The partisans of the Medici pretended to have discovered at Florence a conspiracy, of which they produced no other proofs than some imprudent speeches, and some wishes uttered for liberty. The most illustrious citizens were, nevertheless, arrested; and Macchiavelli, with several others, was put to the torture. Pietro Boscoli and Agostino Capponi were beheaded; and those who were called their accomplices exiled. The two republics of Siena and Lucca were in a state of trembling subjection to the pontiff; so that all central Italy, peopled with about four million inhabitants, was dependent on him: but the court of Rome, since it had ceased to respect the ancient municipal liberties, never extended its authority over a new province without ruining its population and resources. Law and order seemed incompatible with the government of priests: the laws gave way to intrigue and favour; commerce gave way to monopoly. Justice deserted the tribunals, foresight the councils, and valour the armies. It was proverbially said that the arms of the church had no edge. The great name of pope still moved Europe at a distance, but it brought no real force to the allies whom he adopted.

[Sidenote: [1513-1515 A.D.]]

The republic of Venice, with a smaller territory, and a far less numerous population, was in reality much more powerful than the church. Venetian subjects, if they did not enjoy liberty, had at least a government which maintained justice, order, and the law; their material prosperity was judiciously protected. They in return were contented, and proved themselves devotedly attached to their government; but the wars raised by the league of Cambray overwhelmed that republic with calamity. The city of Venice, secure amidst the waters, alone escaped the invasion of the barbarians; though, even there, the richest quarters had been laid waste by an accidental fire. The country and the provincial towns experienced in turn the ferocity of the French, Swiss, Germans, and Spaniards. Three centuries and a half had elapsed since this same Veronese march, the cradle of the Lombard League, had repelled the invasion of Frederick Barbarossa. But while the world boasted a continual progress, since that period, in civilisation,--while philosophy and justice had better defined the rights of men,--while the arts, literature, and poetry had quickened the feelings, and rendered man more susceptible of painful impressions,--war was made with a ferocity at which men in an age of the darkest barbarism would have blushed. The massacre of all the inhabitants of a town taken by assault, the execution of whole garrisons which had surrendered at discretion, the giving up of prisoners to the conquering soldiers in order to be tortured into the confession of hidden treasure, became the common practice of war in the armies of Louis XII, Ferdinand, and Maximilian. Kings were haughty in proportion to their power; they considered themselves at so much the greater distance above human nature: they were the more offended at all resistance, the more incapable of compassion for sufferings which they did not see or did not comprehend. The misery which they caused presented itself to them more as an abstraction; they regarded masses, not individuals; they justified their cruelties by the name of offended majesty; they quieted remorse by considering themselves, not as men, but as scourges in the hand of God. Centuries have elapsed, and civilisation has not ceased to march forward; the voice of humanity has continued to become more and more powerful; no one now dares to believe himself great enough to be dispensed from humanity; nevertheless, those who would shrink with horror from witnessing the putting to death of an individual do not hesitate to condemn whole nations to execution. The crimes which remain for us to relate do not merit more execration than those of which we are ourselves the witnesses at this day. Kings, in their detestation of freedom, let loose upon unhappy Italy, in the sixteenth century, famine, war, and pestilence; as, from the same motive in a later time, they loosed upon heroic Poland, famine, war, and the cholera.

Louis XII, after having lost the Milanese, through his infatuated ambition to reconquer the small province of the Cremonese, which he had himself ceded to the republic of Venice, felt anew the desire of being reconciled with that republic, his first ally in Italy. The Venetians, who knew that without their money, artillery, and cavalry, the Swiss could never have faced the French, much less have driven them out of Italy, saw that their allies did not appreciate their efforts and sacrifices. Maximilian, who in joining never granted them peace, but only a truce, reasserted his claims on Verona and Vicenza, and would not consent to allow the Venetians any states in terra firma but such as they purchased from him at an enormous price. The pope, to enforce the demands of Maximilian, threatened the Venetians with excommunication; and their danger after victory appeared as great as after defeat. Andrea Gritti, one of their senators,--made prisoner after the battle of Agnadello, and the same who, during his captivity at Constantinople, had signed the peace of his country with the Turks,--again took advantage of his captivity in France to negotiate with Louis. He reconciled the republic with that monarch, who had been the first to attack it; and a treaty of alliance was signed at Blois, on the 24th of March, 1513. This was, however, a source of new calamity to Venice. A French army, commanded by La Trémouille, entered the Milanese, and on its approach the Germans and Spaniards retired. The Swiss, who gloried in having re-established Massimiliano Sforza on the throne of his ancestors, were, however, resolved not to abandon him. They descended from their mountains in numerous bodies, on the 6th of June, 1513; attacked La Trémouille at the Riotta, near Novara; defeated him, and drove him back with all the French forces beyond the Alps. The Spaniards and the soldiers of Leo X next attacked the Venetians without any provocation: they were at peace with the republic, but they invaded its territory in the name of their ally Maximilian. They occupied the Paduan state, the Veronese, and that of Vicenza, from the 13th of June till the end of autumn. It was during this invasion the Spaniards displayed that heartless cruelty which rendered them the horror of Italy; that cupidity which multiplied torture, and which invented sufferings more and more atrocious, to extort gold from their prisoners. The Germans in the next campaign overran the Venetian provinces; and, notwithstanding the savage cruelties and numerous crimes of which the country had just been the theatre, yet the German commander found means to signalise himself by his ferocity.

_The Battle of Marignano; Last Years of Leo_

Francis I succeeded Louis XII on the 1st of January, 1515; on the 27th of June he renewed his predecessor’s treaty of alliance with Venice; and on the 15th of August entered the plains of Lombardy, by the marquisate of Saluzzo, with a powerful army. He met but little resistance in the provinces south of the Po; but the Swiss meanwhile arrived in great force to defend Massimiliano Sforza, whom, since they had reseated him on the throne, they regarded as their vassal. Francis in vain endeavoured to negotiate with them: they would not listen to the voice of their commanders; democracy had passed from their _landsgemeinde_ into their armies, popular orators roused their passions; and on the 13th of September they impetuously left Milan to attack Francis I at Marignano (Melegnano). Deep ditches lined with soldiers bordered the causeway by which they advanced; their commanders wished by some manœuvre to get clear of them, or make the enemy change his position; but the Swiss, despising all the arts of war, expected to command success by mere intrepidity and bodily strength.[d]

As soon as Francis I became aware that the Swiss were marching against him he made vigorous preparations to receive them. The duchy of Milan, which with prudent negotiation he hoped to obtain, could only be gained by a complete victory.

His army was drawn up on three lines on the road leading from Marignano to Milan; the advance-guard, commanded by the high constable of Bourbon, encamped in the village of San Giuliano, a short distance below San Donato; the main body of the army, the command of which the king had reserved for himself, was at Santa Brigitta, within bowshot of the high constable; the rear-guard, placed under the command of the duke of Alençon, was at about the same distance from the king’s main body. The army, thus disposed in echelons, held the highway of Milan on its left, and protecting its right by the river Lambro, occupied a territory covered with trenches and intersected with small irrigation canals, which would guard it from the sudden attacks of the Swiss infantry, and also sometimes be inconvenient for the deploying and the charges of its own cavalry, wherein lay a principal portion of its strength.

Francis I hastily made his arrangements to face the danger, and withstand the shock of an encounter with the Swiss army. As he himself said in the animated description of the battle he sent to his mother, the regent, he “placed his German foot-soldiers in order.” He had formed two corps of them, each nine thousand strong, and placed them on the sides of the avenue by which the Swiss were advancing, besides the picked corps of six thousand lansquenets of the Black Companies. The Gascon archers and the French adventurers, under Pedro Navarro, occupied, not far from there, a very strong position near the heavy artillery, which was ably led by the seneschal of Armagnac.

The Swiss then came up. They had made the distance between Milan and the French camp without stopping. “It is not possible,” says the king, “to advance with greater fury or more boldly.” The discharge of the artillery forced them to take shelter for a moment in a hollow. Then, with levelled pikes, they fell upon the French army. The high constable of Bourbon, and Marshal de la Palice at the head of the men-at-arms of the advance-guard, charged, but were not able to break through them. Thrown back themselves upon their infantry, they were pursued by the Swiss, who attacked the lansquenets with fury and put them to rout. The day was declining, and the battle, begun late (between four and five o’clock), was assuming the same appearance as at Navarre. The largest company of Swiss, having driven back the men-at-arms and overthrown the lansquenets, was marching upon the guns to seize them, turn them against the French army, and thus complete her defeat.

But there were braver hearts and more resolute spirits amongst those commanding at Marignano than at Navarre. Francis I, armed _cap-à-pie_, mounted on a great charger whose caparison was covered in fleur-de-lis and his initial, F, crowned, had flung himself in this victorious moment before the Swiss at the head of two hundred men-at-arms, as well as eight hundred horsemen. After having valiantly charged one of their companies and forced them to throw down their pikes, he had attacked a large company which he was not able to overcome but compelled to retreat. Then, proceeding in the direction of his threatened artillery, he there rallied five or six thousand lansquenets, and more than three thousand men-at-arms, with whom he made a firm stand against the largest detachment of the Swiss, who were not able to seize and remove the pieces of cannon as they intended. The better to impede these Swiss, Francis I discharged a charge of artillery upon them, which dislodged them and obliged them to return to a trench they had crossed and there take shelter.

The high constable, on his side, having rallied a large company of men-at-arms and the majority of the infantry, had attacked five or six thousand Swiss with much vigour, and had driven them back to their own places. Night fell whilst both sides were fighting thus--the Swiss without succeeding in carrying the French camps, the French unable to completely repulse the attacks of the Swiss. They continued fighting with pertinacity and no little confusion for several hours by the dim light of the moon, still veiled by the clouds of dust. The hostile troops had some difficulty in recognising each other in this vast and confused struggle. Towards eleven o’clock at night, the moonlight having failed them, darkness prevented their continuing this desperate conflict. The Swiss had had the advantage at the commencement of the battle, as they had broken through the French lines, but things had been less favourable to them at the finish, as they had been partly driven back to their own. In spite of their efforts, having attacked that day without vanquishing, they awaited the morrow to recommence the battle.

Both sides passed the night under arms in the position occupied at the cessation of action owing to the darkness, and not far from each other. Francis I, after many charges, had returned to the artillery, who, firing opportunely upon the Swiss battalions, had several times broken through them, and were shortly to prove to be of even more powerful assistance. Showing the foresight of a general after showing the intrepidity of a soldier, he caused Duprat, the chancellor, who had followed him on this campaign, to write three most important letters, which were confided to trusty messengers. The first was addressed to the Venetian general, Bartolommeo d’Alviano, whom he enjoined to set out immediately, and to come from Lodi with his customary promptitude, so as to join the forces he commanded to those of Francis on the following day. The second exhorted Louis d’Ars, who occupied Pavia, to carefully guard his stronghold which might, in case of disaster, serve as a point of retreat. In the third he warned Lautrec of the attack of the Swiss, and advised him not to remit or allow to be taken the money he carried about him, in execution of the violated treaty of Gallarate. These precautions taken, he “spent the rest of the night,” so he wrote after the battle, “in the saddle, his lance in hand, and his helmet on his head,” and only rested for a few moments, leaning on a gun-carriage.

An hour before dawn he prepared everything for the coming battle. He took up a position slightly in the rear, and more favourable than the one he had occupied the preceding day. Instead of leaving his army drawn up in three lines, he placed his men abreast in only one line. Remaining in the centre of his battle array, he called upon the high constable of Bourbon to form his right wing with the advance-guard, and his brother-in-law, the duke of Alençon, to form his left wing with the rear-guard. The guns, well placed and defended, were by well-directed firing, to harass the enemy on their march, and could only be approached by them with difficulty. It was in this order that Francis I awaited the attack of the Swiss.

The leaders of the allies had held a council of war during the night, to consult as to the next day’s battle and how to render it more decisive. At daybreak they closed up their huge battalions and set out somewhat ponderously. They seemed at first to be proceeding in a body towards the centre of the French army, but some discharges of artillery which pierced their ranks caused them to retreat in the direction of the positions they had occupied during the night. There they formed into three detachments which marched on the main body and the two wings of the French. The first detachment, supported by the six small guns of the Swiss, advanced towards Francis I, whose steadfast attitude and powerful artillery kept it at a certain distance. Whilst this detachment of eight hundred men faced and attacked the king, the two other detachments of about equal strength had flung themselves upon the two wings commanded by the high constable and the duke of Alençon, hoping to scatter them, so as to then surround, and thus easily overcome, the main body of the army. Whether the Swiss had less confidence than the day before, or whether they were met with even more courage and steadfastness, they saw their enemies facing their pikes as they had never done yet. The high constable with his lansquenets and men-at-arms, and Pedro Navarro with the Gascon archers and the adventurers, resisted the detachment attacking the right wing, and, after a sharp struggle, drove it back. In the left wing the duke of Alençon was at first less fortunate. Whilst the king stopped the advance of the central column of the Swiss, and the high constable victoriously drove back the left one, the right column had turned and assailed the forces of the duke of Alençon, which had been scattered and had retreated in confusion. In spite of the terror of the fugitives, who had precipitately fled from the field of battle, and were spreading along the road to Pavia the news of the victory of the Swiss, the conflict remained at this point.

D’Aubigny and Aymar de Prie, having rallied the troops, did their utmost to repair the disaster of the duke of Alençon, and bravely charged the enemy. They were struggling with them when Bartolommeo d’Alviano, who had started early from Lodi, arrived about ten o’clock from that side of the battle-field. At the head of his armed men and his light cavalry, he at once fell upon the Swiss with the cry of “Saint Mark!” This unexpected attack disconcerted them. They feared the whole Venetian army would be upon them, and they retreated. Closely pursued, they fell back towards the centre, where the allies’ battalions, placed opposite Francis I, had not been able to make any progress. They discharged and received cannon-shots during several hours, possibly awaiting the victorious issue of the two attacks of the right and left wings to attempt more securely to break through the main body of the army. They made one last and vigorous effort. A company of five thousand men were told off, and marched with the resolution of despair as far as the French lines. But, taken obliquely by the artillery, charged by Francis I and his men-at-arms, attacked with hatchets and pikes by the valiant lansquenets of the Black Company, stationed in the centre with the king, pierced by the arrows of the Gascon archers, who had hastened from the right side where they had gained the mastery, the Swiss company was cut to pieces and none escaped.

[Sidenote: [1515-1516 A.D.]]

The king, with a decisive movement, then bore down with his cavalry upon the other confederates, who abandoned their position and their guns. The Swiss, driven back or vanquished on every side, gave the signal for retreat, and retired from the battle-field, leaving from seven to eight thousand dead. Carrying their wounded, they retook the Milan road in fairly good order and without pursuit, and entered that town with a haughty demeanour, and not as a defeated army. They were beaten, nevertheless, for they had just lost at Marignano that prestige, which, since Sempach, Granson, and Morat, and as late as at Novara, had made them invincible.[h]

This horrible butchery, however, hastened the conclusion of the wars which arose from the league of Cambray. The Swiss were not sufficiently powerful to maintain their sway in Lombardy; eight of their cantons, on the 7th of November, signed, at Geneva, a treaty of peace with Francis I, who compensated with considerable sums of money all the claims which they consented to abandon. On the 29th of November the other cantons acceded to this pacification, which took the name of “_Paix perpétuelle_,” and France recovered the right of raising such infantry as she needed among the Swiss. Raymond de Cardona, alarmed at the retreat of the Swiss, evacuated Lombardy with the Spanish troops. The French recovered possession of the whole duchy of Milan. Massimiliano Sforza abdicated the sovereignty for a revenue of 30,000 crowns secured to him in France. Leo X, ranging himself on the side of the victors, signed, at Viterbo, on the 13th of October, a treaty, by which he restored Parma and Piacenza to the French.

In a conference held with Francis at Bologna, between the 10th and 15th of the following December, Leo induced that monarch to sacrifice the liberties of the Gallican church by the concordat, to renounce the protection he had hitherto extended to the Florentines and to the duke of Urbino, although the former had always remained faithful to France. The pope seized the states of the duke of Urbino, and conferred them on his nephew, Lorenzo II de’ Medici. Amidst these transactions, Ferdinand the Catholic died, on the 15th of January, 1516, and his grandson Charles succeeded to his Spanish kingdoms. On the 13th of August following, Charles signed, at Noyon, a treaty, by which Francis ceded to him all his right to the kingdom of Naples as the dower of a newborn daughter, whom he promised to Charles in marriage. From that time Maximilian remained singly at war with the republic of Venice and with France. During the campaign of 1516, his German army continued to commit the most enormous crimes in the Veronese march; but Maximilian had never money enough to carry on the war without the subsidies of his allies; remaining alone, he could no longer hope to be successful. On the 14th of December he consented to accede to the treaty of Noyon; he evacuated Verona, which he had till then occupied, and the Venetians were once more put by the French in possession of all the states of which the league of Cambray had proposed the partition: but their wealth was annihilated, their population reduced to one-half, their constitution itself shaken, and they were never after in a state to make those efforts for the defence of the independence of Italy, which might have been expected from them before this devastating war.

[Sidenote: [1516-1519 A.D.]]

Had Italy been allowed to repose after so many disasters, she might still have recovered her strength and population; and when the struggle should have recommenced with the transalpine nations, she would have been found prepared for battle; but the heartless levity and ambition of Leo did not give her time. While the family of the Medici was becoming extinct around him, he dreamed only of investing it with new dignities; he refused the Florentines permission to re-establish their republic, and offered his alliance to whatever foreign monarch would aid him in founding on its ruins a principality for the bastard Medici. His third brother Giuliano, duke of Nemours, whom he had at first charged with the government of Florence, died on the 17th of March, 1516. Lorenzo II, son of his eldest brother Piero, whom he had made duke of Urbino, and whom he sent to command at Florence after Giuliano, rendered himself odious there by his pride and by his contemptible incapacity--he too died only three years afterwards, on the 28th of April, 1519. Leo supplied his place by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VII. This prelate was the natural son of the first Giuliano killed in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478. He was considered the most able of the pope’s ministers, and the most moderate of his lieutenants. Giuliano II had also left an illegitimate son, Ippolito, afterwards cardinal; and Lorenzo II had a legitimate daughter, Catherine, afterwards queen of France, and an illegitimate son, Alexander, destined to be the future tyrant of Florence. Leo, whether desirous of establishing these descendants, or carried away by the restlessness and levity of his character, sighed only for war.

[Sidenote: [1519-1522 A.D.]]

The emperor Maximilian died on the 19th of January, 1519, leaving his hereditary states of Austria to his grandson Charles, already sovereign of all Spain, of the Two Sicilies, of the Low Countries, and of the county of Burgundy. Charles and Francis both presented themselves as candidates for the imperial crown; the electors gave it to the former, on the 28th of June, 1519; he was from that period named Charles V. Italy, indeed the whole of Europe, was endangered by the immeasurable growth of this young monarch’s power. The states of the church, over which he domineered by means of his kingdom of the Two Sicilies, could not hope to preserve any independence but through an alliance with France. Leo at first thought so, and signed the preliminary articles of a league with Francis; but, suddenly changing sides, he invited Charles V to join him in driving the French out of Italy. A secret treaty was signed between him and the emperor, on the 8th of May, 1521. By this the duchy of Milan was to be restored to Francesco Sforza, the second son of Louis the Moor. Parma, Piacenza, and Ferrara were to be united to the holy see: a duchy in the kingdom of Naples was to be secured to the bastard Alessandro de’ Medici. The pope united his army to that of the emperor in the kingdom of Naples; the command of it was given jointly to Prospero Colonna and the marquis Pescara: war was declared on the 1st of August, and the imperial and pontifical troops entered Milan on the 19th of November: but in the midst of the joy of this first success, Leo X died unexpectedly, on the 1st of December, 1521.

SUCCESSORS OF LEO; FRANCIS I AND CHARLES V

Death opportunely delivered Leo from the dangers and anxieties into which he had thoughtlessly precipitated himself. His finances were exhausted; his prodigality had deprived him of every resource; and he had no means of carrying on a war which he had only just begun. He left his successors in a state of distress which was unjustly attributed to them, and which rendered them odious to the people; for the war into which he had plunged them, without any reasonable motive, was the most disastrous of all those which had yet afflicted unhappy Italy. There remained no power truly Italian that could take any part in it for her defence. Venice was so exhausted by the war of the league of Cambray that she was forced to limit her efforts to the maintenance of her neutrality, and was hardly powerful enough to make even her neutral position respected. Florence remained subject to the cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. The republics of Siena and Lucca were tremblingly prepared to obey the strongest: all the rest depended on the transalpine power; for an unexpected election, on the 9th of January, 1522, had given a Flemish successor to Leo X, under the name of Adrian VI. This person had been the preceptor of Charles V, and had never seen Italy, where he was regarded as a barbarian. The kingdom of Naples was governed and plundered by the Spaniards. After the French had lost the duchy of Milan, Francesco Sforza, who had been brought back by the imperialists, possessed only the name of sovereign. He had never been for a moment independent; he had never been able to protect his subjects from the tyranny of the Spanish and German soldiers, who were his guards. Finally, the marquis de Montferrat and the duke of Savoy had allowed the French to become masters in their states, and had no power to refuse them passage to ravage oppressed Italy anew.

[Sidenote: [1522-1525 A.D.]]

The marshal Lautrec, whom Francis I had charged to defend the Milanese, and who still occupied the greater part of the territory, was forced by the Swiss, who formed the sinews of his army, to attack the imperialists on the 29th of April, 1522, at Bicocca. Prospero Colonna had taken up a strong position about three or four miles from Milan, on the road to Monza: he valued himself on making a defensive war--on being successful without giving battle. The Swiss attacked him in front, throwing themselves, without listening to the voice of their commander, into a hollow way which covered him, and where they perished, without the possibility of resistance. After having performed prodigies of valour, the remainder were repulsed with dreadful loss. In spite of the remonstrances of Lautrec, they immediately departed for their mountains; and he for his court, to justify himself. Lescuns, his successor in the command, suffered the imperialists to surprise and pillage Lodi; and was at last forced to capitulate at Cremona on the 6th of May, and evacuate the rest of Lombardy. Genoa was not comprehended in the capitulation, and remained still in possession of the French; but, on the 20th of May, that city was also surprised by the Spaniards, and pillaged with all the ferocity which signalised that nation. It was one of the largest depots of commerce in the West, and the ruin of so opulent a town shook the fortune of every merchant in Europe. The general of Charles then, judging Lombardy too much exhausted to support his armies, led them to live at discretion in the provinces of his ally, the pope. They raised among the states still calling themselves independent enormous subsidies to pay the soldiers, for which purpose Charles never sent money. The plague, breaking out at the same time at Rome and Florence, added to the calamities of Italy so much the more that Adrian VI abolished, as pagan superstition or acts of revolt against providence, all the sanitary measures of police which had been invented to stop the spread of contagion. The pope died on the 14th of September, 1523; and the Romans, who held him in horror, crowned his physician with laurel, as the saviour of his country.

The death of Adrian, however, saved no one. The cardinal Giulio de’ Medici was chosen his successor, on the 18th of November, under the name of Clement VII. This man had passed for an able minister under his cousin Leo X, because prosperity still endured, and the pontifical treasury was not exhausted; but when he had to struggle with a distress which he, however, had not caused, his ignorance in finance and administration, his sordid avarice, his pusillanimity, his imprudence, his sudden and ill-considered resolutions, his long indecisions, made him alike odious and contemptible. He was not strong enough to resist the tide of adversity. He found himself, without money and without soldiers, engaged in a war without an object; he was incapable of commanding, and nowhere found obedience.

The French were not disposed to abandon their title to Lombardy, the possession of which they had just lost. Before the end of the campaign, Francis sent thither another army, commanded by his favourite, the admiral Bonnivet. This admiral entered Italy by Piedmont; passed the Ticino on the 14th of September, 1523; and marched on Milan. But Prospero Colonna, who had chosen, among the great men of antiquity, Fabius Cunctator for his model, was admirable in the art of stopping an army, of fatiguing it by slight checks, and at last forcing it to retreat without giving battle. Bonnivet, who maintained himself on the borders of Lombardy, was forced, in the month of May following, to open himself a passage to France by Ivrea and Mont St. Bernard. The chevalier Bayard was killed while protecting the retreat of Bonnivet, in the rear-guard. The imperialists had been joined, the preceding year, by a deserter of high importance, the constable Bourbon, one of the first princes of the blood in France, who was accompanied by many nobles. Charles V put him, jointly with Pescara, at the head of his army, and sent him into Provence in the month of July; but, after having besieged Marseilles, he was soon constrained to retreat. Francis I, who had assembled a powerful army, again entered Lombardy, and made himself master of Milan: he next laid siege to Pavia, on the 28th of October. Some time was necessary for the imperialists to reassemble their army, which the campaign of Provence had disorganised. At length it approached Pavia, which had resisted through the whole winter. The king of France was pressed by all his captains to raise the siege, and to march against the enemy; but he refused, declaring that it would be a compromise of the royal dignity, and foolishly remained within his lines. He was attacked by Pescara on the 24th of February, 1525; and, after a murderous battle, made prisoner.

For several months, while Francis I was besieging Pavia, he appeared the strongest power in Italy; and the pope and the Venetians, alarmed at his proximity, had treated with him anew, and pledged themselves to remain neutral. The imperial generals, after their victory, declared that these treaties with the French were offences against their master, for which they should demand satisfaction. Always without money, and pressed by the avidity of their soldiers, they sought only to discover offenders, as a pretence to raise contributions, and to let their troops live at free quarters. The pope and the Venetians were at first disposed to join in a league for resisting these exactions; and they offered Louise of Savoy, regent of France, their aid to set her son Francis at liberty. But Clement VII had not sufficient courage to join this league; he preferred returning again to the alliance of the emperor and the duke of Milan, for which he paid a considerable sum. As soon as the imperial generals had received the money, they refused to execute the treaty which they had made with him, and the pope was obliged to go back to the Venetians and Louise of Savoy.

Meanwhile Girolamo Morone, chancellor of the duke of Milan, an old man regarded as the most able politician of his time, made overtures, which revived the hope of arming all Italy for her independence. Francesco Sforza found himself treated by the Germans and Spaniards with the greatest indignity in his own palace: his subjects were exposed to every kind of insult from an unbridled soldiery; and when he endeavoured to protect them, the officers took pleasure in making him witness aggravations of injustice and outrage. The man, however, who made the German yoke press most severely on him was the marquis Pescara, an Italian, but descended from the Catalonian house of Avalos, established in the kingdom of Naples for more than a century. He manifested a sort of vanity in associating himself with the Spaniards: he commanded their infantry; he adopted the manners as well as pride of that nation. Morone, nevertheless, did not despair of awakening his patriotism, by exciting his ambition. The kingdom of Naples, which had flourished under the bastard branch of the house of Aragon when the family of Avalos first entered it, had sunk, since it had been united to Spain, into a state of the most grievous oppression. Morone determined on offering Pescara the crown of Naples, if he would join his efforts to those of all the other Italians, for the deliverance of his country. Success depended on him: he could distribute the imperial troops, which he commanded, in such a manner as that they could oppose no resistance. The duke of Milan had been warned that Charles V intended taking his duchy from him to confer it on his brother Ferdinand of Austria. The kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan were ready to pass over from the emperor’s party to that of France, provided the French king would renounce all his claims to both, acknowledge Pescara king of Naples, Francesco Sforza duke of Milan; and restore to Italy her independence, after having delivered her from her enemies.

[Sidenote: [1525-1526 A.D.]]

This negotiation was at first successful; each of the governments to which the proposition of concurring in the independence of Italy was addressed, seemed to agree to it. France renounced all pretensions to Lombardy and the Two Sicilies; Switzerland promised to protect, on its side, the land of ancient liberty, and to furnish it with soldiers; Henry VIII of England promised money; Pescara coveted the crown, and Sforza was impatient to throw off a yoke which had become insupportable to him; but, unhappily, the negotiation was intrusted to too many cabinets, all jealous, perfidious, and eager to obtain advantages for themselves by sacrificing their allies. Clement was desirous of obtaining from the emperor a more advantageous treaty, by threatening him with France; the queen regent of France endeavoured to engage Charles to relax his rigour towards her son, by threatening him with Italy; Pescara, reserving the choice of either betraying his master or his allies, as should prove most profitable to him, had warned Charles that he was engaged in a plot which he would reveal as soon as he had every clew to it. The duchess of Alençon, sister of Francis, sent by her mother to negotiate at Madrid, spoke still more clearly. She offered Charles to abandon Italy, the project respecting which she disclosed, provided the emperor, in restoring her brother to liberty, would renounce his purpose of making him purchase it at the price of one of the provinces of France. Pescara, finding that his court knew more than he had told, determined on adopting the part of provocative agent instead of rebel; he had only to choose between them. On the 14th of October, 1525, he invited Morone to a last conference in the castle of Novara. After having made him explain all his projects anew, while Spanish officers hid behind the arras heard them, he caused him to be arrested, seized all the fortresses in the state of Milan, and laid siege to the castle, in which the duke had shut himself up. He denounced to the emperor as traitors the pope, and all the other Italians his accomplices; but while he played this odious part, he was attacked by a slow disease, of which he died on the 30th of November, 1525, at the age of thirty-six, abhorred by all Italy.

Charles, abusing the advantages which he had obtained, imposed on Francis the treaty of Madrid, signed on the 14th of January, 1526; by which the latter abandoned Italy and the duchy of Burgundy. He was set at liberty on the 18th of March following; and almost immediately declared to the Italians that he did not regard himself bound by a treaty extorted from him by force. On the 22nd of May, he joined a league for the liberty of Italy with Clement VII, the Venetians, and Francesco Sforza, but still did not abandon the policy of his mother: instead of thinking in earnest of restoring Italian independence, and thus securing the equilibrium of Europe, he had only one purpose--that of alarming Charles with the Italians; and was ready to sacrifice them as soon as the emperor should abandon Burgundy. At the same time, his supineness, love of pleasure, distrust of his fortune, and repugnance to violate the Treaty of Madrid, hindered him from fulfilling any of the engagements which he had contracted towards the Italians; he sent them neither money, French cavalry, nor Swiss forces. Charles, on the other hand, sent no supplies to pay his armies to Antonio de Leyva, the constable Bourbon, and Hugo de Monçada, their commanders. These troops were therefore obliged to live at free quarters, and the oppression of the whole country was still more dreadful than it had ever yet been.

[Sidenote: [1526-1527 A.D.]]

The defection of the duke of Milan, in particular, gave a pretence to Antonio de Leyva to treat the wretched Milanese with redoubled rigour, as if they could be responsible for what Leyva called the treachery of their master. The Spanish army was quartered on the citizens of Milan; and there was not a soldier who did not make his host a prisoner, keeping him bound at the foot of the bed, or in the cellar, for the purpose of having him daily at hand, to force him, by blows or fresh torture, to satisfy some new caprice. As soon as one wretched person died under his sufferings, or broke his bonds and ended his sufferings by voluntary death, either precipitating himself through a window or into a well, the Spaniard passed into another house to recommence on its proprietor the same torture.

The Venetians and the pope had united their forces, under the command of the duke of Urbino, who, exaggerating the tactics of Prospero Colonna, was ambitious of no other success in war than that of avoiding battle. He announced to the senate of Venice that he would not approach Milan till the French and Swiss, whose support he had been promised, joined him. His inaction, while witnessing so many horrors, reduced the Italians to despair. Sforza, who had been nine months blockaded in the castle of Milan, and who always hoped to be delivered by the duke of Urbino, whose colours were in sight, supported the last extremity of hunger before he surrendered to the Spaniards, on the 24th of July, 1526. The pope, meanwhile, was far from suspecting himself in any danger; but his personal enemy, Pompeo Colonna, took advantage of the name of the imperial party to raise in the papal state eight thousand armed peasants, with whom, on the 20th of September, he surprised the Vatican, pillaged the palace, as well as the temple of St. Peter, and constrained the pope to abjure the alliance of France and Venice. About the same time, George of Frundsberg, a German condottiere, entered Lombardy with thirteen thousand adventurers, whom he had engaged to follow him, and serve the emperor without pay, contenting themselves with the pillage of that unhappy country.

The constable Bourbon, to whom Charles had given chief command of his forces in Italy, determined to take advantage of this new army, and unite it to that for which at Milan he had now no further occasion; but it was not without great difficulty that he could persuade the Spaniards to quit that city where they enjoyed the savage pleasure of inflicting torture on their hosts. At length, however, he succeeded in leading them to Pavia. On the 30th of January, 1527, he joined Frundsberg, who died soon after of apoplexy. Bourbon now remained alone charged with the command of this formidable army, already exceeding twenty-five thousand men, and continually joined on its route by disbanded soldiers and brigands intent on pillage. The constable had neither money, equipments, nor artillery, and very few cavalry; every town shut its gates on his approach, and he was often on the point of wanting provisions. He took the road of southern Italy, and entered Tuscany, still uncertain whether he should pillage Florence or Rome. The marquis of Saluzzo, with a small army, retreated before him; the duke of Urbino followed in his rear, but always keeping out of reach of battle. At last, Bourbon took the road to Rome, by the valley of the Tiber. On the 5th of May, 1527, he arrived before the capital of Christendom. Clement had on the 15th of March signed a truce with the viceroy of Naples and dismissed his troops. On the approach of Bourbon the walls of Rome were again mounted with engines of war.[d]

CAPTURE AND SACK OF ROME

[Sidenote: [1527 A.D.]]