in the scheme of policy which he framed for Florence, Naples, Milan, and Ferrara. But on the accession of Alexander, Franceschetto Cibo determined to get rid of Anguillara, Cervetri, and other fiefs, which he had taken with his father"s connivance from the Church. He found a purchaser in Virginio Orsini. Alexander complained that the sale was an infringement of his rights. Ferdinand supported the t.i.tle of the Orsini to his new acquisitions. This alienated the Pope from the King of Naples, and made him willing to join with Milan and Venice in a new league formed in 1493.
[1] Piero de" Medici was what the French call a _bel homme_, and little more. He was tall, muscular, and well-made, the best player at _pallone_ in Italy, a good horseman, fluent and agreeable in conversation, and excessively vain of these advantages.
Thus the old equilibrium was destroyed, and fresh combinations between the disunited powers of Italy took place. Lodovico, however, dared not trust his new friends. Venice had too long hankered after Milan to be depended upon for real support; and Alexander was known to be in treaty for a matrimonial alliance between his son Geoffrey and Donna Sancia of Aragon. Lodovico was therefore alone, without a firm ally in Italy, and with a manifestly fraudulent t.i.tle to maintain. At this juncture he turned his eyes towards France; while his father-in-law, the Duke of Ferrara, who secretly hated him, and who selfishly hoped to secure his own advantage in the general confusion which he antic.i.p.ated, urged him to this fatal course. Alexander at the same time, wishing to frighten the princes of Naples into a conclusion of the projected marriage, followed the lead of Lodovico, and showed himself at this moment not averse to a French invasion.
It was in this way that the private cupidities and spites of princes brought woe on Italy: Lodovico"s determination to secure himself in the usurped Duchy of Milan, Ercole d" Este"s concealed hatred, and Alexander"s unholy eagerness to aggrandize his b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, were the vile and trivial causes of an event which, however inevitable, ought to have been as long as possible deferred by all true patriots in Italy. But in Italy there was no zeal for freedom left, no honor among princes, no virtue in the Church. Italy, which in the thirteenth century numbered 1,800,000 citizens--that is, members of free cities, exercising the franchise in the government of their own states--could show in the fifteenth only about 18,000 such burghers:[1] and these in Venice were subject to the tyranny of the Council of Ten, in Florence had been enervated by the Medici, in Siena were reduced by party feuds and vulgar despotism to political imbecility. Amid all the splendors of revived literature and art, of gorgeous courts and refined societies, this indeed was the right moment for the Dominican visionary to publish his prophecies, and for the hunchback puppet of destiny to fulfill them.
Guicciardini deplores, not without reason, the bitter sarcasm of fate which imposed upon his country the insult of such a conqueror as Charles. He might with equal justice have pointed out in Lodovico Sforza the actor of a tragi-comic part upon the stage of Italy. Lodovico, called II Moro, not, as the great historian a.s.serts, because he was of dark complexion, but because he had adopted the mulberry-tree for his device,[2] was in himself an epitome of all the qualities which for the last two centuries had contributed to the degradation of Italy in the persons of the despots. Gifted originally with good abilities, he had so accustomed himself to petty intrigues that he was now incapable of taking a straightforward step in any direction. While he boasted himself the Son of Fortune and listened with complacency to a foolish rhyme that ran: _G.o.d only and the Moor foreknow the future safe and sure_, he never acted without blundering, and lived to end his days in the intolerable tedium of imprisonment at Loches. He was a thoughtful and painstaking ruler; yet he so far failed to win the affection of his subjects that they tossed up their caps for joy at the first chance of getting rid of him. He disliked bloodshed; but the judicial murder of Simonetta, and the arts by which he forced his nephew into an early grave, have left an ineffaceable stain upon his memory. His court was adorned by the presence of Lionardo da Vinci; but at the same time it was so corrupt that, as Corio tells us,[3] fathers sold their daughters, brothers their sisters, and husbands their wives there. In a word Lodovico, in spite of his boasted prudence, wrought the ruin of Italy and himself by his tortuous policy, and contributed by his private crimes and dissolute style of living no little to the general depravity of his country.[4]
[1] This is Sismondi"s calculation (vol. vii. p. 305). It must be taken as a rough one. Still students who have weighed the facts presented in Ferrari"s _Rivoluzioni d" Italia_ will not think the estimate exaggerated. In the munic.i.p.al and civil wars, free burghs were extinguished by the score.
[2] See Varchi, vol. i. p. 49. Also the _Elogia_ of Paulus Jovius, who remarks that the complexion of Lodovico was fair.
His surname, however, provoked puns. Me had, for example, a picture painted, in which Italy, dressed like a queen, is having her robe brushed by a Moorish page. A motto ran beneath, _Per Italia nettar d" ogni bruttura_. He adopted the mulberry because Pliny called it the most prudent of all trees, inasmuch as it waits till winter is well over to put forth its leaves, and Lodovico piqued himself on his sagacity in choosing the right moment for action.
[3] _L" Historia di Milano_, Vinegia, 1554, p. 448: "A quella (scola di Venere) per ogni canto vi si convenivan bellissimi giovani. I padri vi concedevano le figliuole, i mariti le mogliere, i fratelli le sorelle; e per sifatto modo senz" alcun riguardo molti concorreano all" amoroso ballo, che cosa stupendissima era riputata per qualunque l" intendeva."
[4] Guicciardini, _Storia d" Italia_, lib. iii. p. 35, sums up the character of Lodovico with masterly completeness.
Amid this general perturbation of the old political order the year 1494, marked in its first month by the death of King Ferdinand, began--"a year," to quote from Guicciardini, "the most unfortunate for Italy, the very first in truth of our disastrous years, since it opened the door to numberless and horrible calamities, in which it may be said that a great portion of the world has subsequently shared." The expectation and uneasiness of the whole nation were proportioned to the magnitude of the coming change. On every side the invasion of the French was regarded with that sort of fascination which a very new and exciting event is wont to inspire. In one mood the Italians were inclined to hail Charles as a general pacificator and restorer of old liberties.[1] Savonarola had preached of him as the _flagellum Dei_, the minister appointed to regenerate the Church and purify the font of spiritual life in the peninsula. In another frame of mind they shuddered to think what the advent of the barbarians--so the French were called--might bring upon them. It was universally agreed that Lodovico by his invitation had done no more than bring down, as it were, by a breath the avalanche which had been long impending. "Not only the preparations made by land and sea, but also the consent of the heavens and of men, announced the woes in store for Italy. Those who pretend either by art or divine inspiration to the knowledge of the future, proclaimed unanimously that greater and more frequent changes, occurrences more strange and awful than had for many centuries been seen in any part of the world, were at hand." After enumerating divers signs and portents, such as the pa.s.sing day after day in the region round Arezzo of innumerable armed men mounted on gigantic horses with a hideous din of drums and trumpets, the great historian resumes: "These things filled the people with incredible fear; for, long before, they had been terrified by the reputation of the power of the French and of their fierceness, seeing that histories are full of their deeds--how they had already overrun the whole of Italy, sacked the city of Rome with fire and sword, subdued many provinces of Asia, and at one time or another smitten with their arms all quarters of the world."
[1] This was the strictly popular as opposed to the aristocratic feeling. The common folk, eager for novelty and smarting under the bad rule of monsters like the Aragonese princes, expected in Charles VIII. a Messiah, and cried "Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini." See pa.s.sages quoted in a note below.
Among all the potentates of Italy, Alfonso of Naples had the most to dread; for against him the invasion was specially directed. No time was to be lost. He a.s.sembled his allies at Vicovaro near Tivoli in July and explained to them his theory of resistance. The allies were Florence, Rome, Bologna, and all the minor powers of Romagna.[1] For once the southern and the middle states of Italy were united against a common foe. After Alfonso, Alexander felt himself in greatest peril, for he dreaded the a.s.sembly of a Council which might depose him from the throne he had bought by simony. So strong was his terror that he had already sent amba.s.sadors to the Sultan imploring him for aid against the Most Christian King, and had entreated Ferdinand the Catholic, instead of undertaking a crusade against the Turk, to employ his arms in opposition to the French. But Bajazet was too far off to be of use; and Ferdinand was prudent. It remained for the allies to repel the invader by their una.s.sisted force. This might have been done if Alfonso"s plan had been adhered to. He designed sending a fleet, under his brother Don Federigo, to Genoa, and holding with his own troops the pa.s.ses of the Apennines to the North, while Piero de" Medici undertook to guard the entrances to Tuscany on the side of Lunigiana. The Duke of Calabria meanwhile was to raise Gian Galeazzo"s standard in Lombardy. But that absolute agreement which is necessary in the execution of a scheme so bold and comprehensive was impossible in Italy. The Pope insisted that attention should first be paid to the Colonnesi--Prospero and Fabrizio being secret friends of France, and their castles offering a desirable booty.
Alfonso, therefore, determined to occupy the confines of the Roman territory on the side of the Abruzzi, while he sent his son, with the generals Giovan Jacopo da Trivulzi and the Count of Pitigliano, into Lombardy. They never advanced beyond Cesena, where the troops of the Sforza, in conjunction with the French, held them at bay. The fleet under Don Federigo sailed too late to effect the desired rising in Genoa. The French, forewarned, had thrown 2,000 Swiss under the Baily of Dijon and the Duke of Orleans into the city, and the Neapolitan admiral fell back upon Leghorn. The forces of the league were further enfeebled and divided by the necessity of leaving Virginio Orsini to check the Colonnesi in the neighborhood of Rome. How utterly Piero de" Medici by his folly and defection ruined what remained of the plan will be seen in the sequel. This sluggishness in action and dismemberment of forces--this total inability to strike a sudden blow--sealed beforehand the success of Charles. Alfonso, a tyrant afraid of his own subjects, Alexander, a Pope who had bought the tiara to the disgust of Christendom, Piero, conscious that his policy was disapproved by the Florentines, together with a parcel of egotistical petty despots, were not the men to save a nation. Italy was conquered, not by the French king, but by the vices of her own leaders. The whole history of Charles"s expedition is one narrative of headlong rashness triumphing over difficulties and dangers which only the discord of tyrants and the disorganization of peoples rendered harmless. The Ate of the G.o.ds had descended upon Italy, as though to justify the common belief that the expedition of Charles was divinely sustained and guided.[2]
[1] Venice remained neutral. She had refused to side with Charles, on the pretext that the fear of the Turk kept her engaged. She declined to join the league of Alfonso by saying it was mad to save others at the risk of drawing the war into your own territory. Nothing is more striking than the want of patriotic sentiment or generous concurrence to a common end in Italy at this time. Florence, by temper and tradition favorable to France, had been drawn into the league by Piero de" Medici, whose sympathies were firm for the Aragonese princes.
[2] This, of course, was Savonarola"s prophecy. But both Guicciardini and De Comities use invariably the same language.
The phrase _Dieu monstroit conduire l"entreprise_ frequently recurs in the _Memoirs_ of De Comines.
While Alfonso and Alexander were providing for their safety in the South, Charles remained at Lyons, still uncertain whether he should enter Italy by sea or land, or indeed whether he should enter it at all.
Having advanced so far as the Rhone valley, he felt satisfied with his achievement and indulged himself in a long bout of tournaments and pastimes. Besides, the want of money, which was to be his chief embarra.s.sment throughout the expedition, had already made itself felt.[1] It was an Italian who at length roused him to make good his purpose against Italy--Giuliano della Rovere,[2] the haughty nephew of Sixtus, the implacable foe of Alexander, whom he was destined to succeed in course of time upon the Papal throne. Burning to punish the Marrano, or apostate Moor, as he called Alexander, Giuliano stirred the king with taunts and menaces until Charles felt he could delay his march no longer. When once the French army got under weigh, it moved rapidly.
Leaving Vienne on August 23, 1494, 3,600 men at arms, the flower of the French chivalry, 6,000 Breton archers, 6,000 crossbowmen, 8,000 Gascon infantry, 8,000 Swiss and German lances, crossed the Mont Genevre, debouched on Susa, pa.s.sed through Turin, and entered Asti on September 19.[3] Neither Piedmont nor Montferrat stirred to resist them. Yet at almost any point upon the route they might have been at least delayed by hardy mountaineers until the commissariat of so large a force had proved an insurmountable difficulty. But before this hunchback conqueror with the big head and little legs, the valleys had been exalted and the rough places had been made plain. The princes whose interest it might have been to throw obstacles in the way of Charles were but children. The Duke of Savoy was only twelve years old, the Marquis of Montferrat fourteen; their mothers and guardians made terms with the French king, and opened their territories to his armies.
[1] "La despense de ces navires estoit fort grande, et suis d"advis qu"elle cousta trois cens mille francs, et si ne servit de rien, et y alla tout l"argent contant que le Roy peut finer de ses finances: car comme j"ay dit, il n"estoit point pourveu ne de sens, ne d"argent, oy d"autre chose necessaire a telle entreprise, et si en vint bien a bout, moyennant la grace de Dieu, qui clairement le donna ainsi a cognoistre." De Comines, lib. vii.
[2] Guicciardini calls him on this occasion "fatale instrumento e allora e prima e poi de" mali d" Italia." Lib. i. cap. 3.
[3] I have followed the calculation of Sismondi (vol. vii. p.
383), to which should be added perhaps another 10,000 in all attached to the artillery, and 2,000 for sappers, miners, carpenters, etc. See Dennistoun, _Dukes of Urbino_, vol. i. p.
433, for a detailed list of Charles"s armaments by land and sea.
At Asti Charles was met by Lodovico Sforza and his father-in-law, Ercole d" Este. The whole of that Milanese Court which Corio describes[1]
followed in their train. It was the policy of the Italian princes to entrap their conqueror with courtesies, and to entangle in silken meshes the barbarian they dreaded. What had happened already at Lyons, what was going to repeat itself at Naples, took place at Asti. The French king lost his heart to ladies, and confused his policy by promises made to Delilahs in the ballroom. At Asti he fell ill of the small-pox, but after a short time he recovered his health, and proceeded to Pavia. Here a serious entanglement of interests arose. Charles was bound by treaties and engagements to Lodovico and his proud wife Beatrice d" Este; the very object of his expedition was to dethrone Alfonso and to a.s.sume the crown of Naples; yet at Pavia he had to endure the pathetic spectacle of his forlorn cousin[2] the young Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza in prison, and to hear the piteous pleadings of the beautiful Isabella of Aragon. Nursed in chivalrous traditions, incapable of resisting a woman"s tears, what was Charles to do, when this princess in distress, the wife of his first cousin, the victim of his friend Lodovico, the sister of his foe Alfonso, fell at his feet and besought him to have mercy on her husband, on her brother, on herself? The situation was indeed enough to move a stouter heart than that of the feeble young king. For the moment Charles returned evasive answers to his pet.i.tioners; but the trouble of his soul was manifest, and no sooner had he set forth on his way to Piacenza than the Moor resolved to remove the cause of further vacillation. Sending to Pavia, Lodovico had his nephew poisoned.[3] When the news of Gian Galeazzo"s death reached the French camp, it spread terror and imbittered the mistrust which was already springing up between the frank cavaliers and the plausible Italians with whom they had to deal.
[1] See above, p. 548.
[2] The mothers of Charles VIII. and Gian Galeazzo were sisters, princesses of Savoy.
[3] Sismondi does not discuss the fact minutely, but he inclines to believe that Gian Galeazzo was murdered. Michelet raises a doubt about it, though the evidence is such as he would have accepted without question in the case of a Borgia.
Guicciardini, who recounts the whole matter at length, says that all Italy believed the Duke had been murdered, and quotes Teodoro da Pavia, one of the royal physicians, who attested to having seen clear signs of a slow poison in the young man.
Pontano, _de Prudentia_, lib. 4, repeats the accusation.
Guicciardini only doubts Lodovico"s motives. He inclines to think the murder had been planned long before, and that Charles was invited into Italy in order that Lodovico might have a good opportunity for effecting it, while at the same time he had taken care to get the invest.i.ture of the Duchy from the Emperor ready against the event.
What was this beautiful land in the midst of which they found themselves, a land whose marble palaces were thronged with cut-throats in disguise, whose princes poisoned while they smiled, whose luxuriant meadows concealed fever, whose ladies carried disease upon their lips?
To the captains and the soldiery of France, Italy already appeared a splendid and fascinating Circe, arrayed with charms, surrounded with illusions, hiding behind perfumed thickets her victims changed to brutes, and building the couch of her seduction on the bones of murdered men. Yet she was so beautiful that, halt as they might for a moment and gaze back with yearning on the Alps that they had crossed, they found themselves unable to resist her smile. Forward they must march through the garden of enchantment, henceforth taking the precaution to walk with drawn sword, and, like Orlando in Morgana"s park, to stuff their casques with roses that they might not hear the siren"s voice too clearly. It was thus that Italy began the part she played through the Renaissance for the people of the North. _The White Devil of Italy_ is the t.i.tle of one of Webster"s best tragedies. A white Devil, a radiant daughter of sin and death, holding in her hands the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and tempting the nations to eat: this is how Italy struck the fancy of the men of the sixteenth century. She was feminine, and they were virile; but she could teach and they must learn. She gave them pleasure; they brought force. The fruit of her embraces with the nations was the spirit of modern culture, the genius of the age in which we live.
Two terrible calamities warned the Italians with what new enemies they had to deal. Twice at the commencement of the invasion did the French use the sword which they had drawn to intimidate the sorceress. These terror-striking examples were the ma.s.sacres of the inhabitants of Rapallo on the Genoese Riviera, and of Fivizzano in Lunigiana. Soldiers and burghers, even prisoners and wounded men in the hospitals, were butchered, first by the Swiss and German guards, and afterwards by the French, who would not be outdone by them in energy. It was thus that the Italians, after a century of bloodless battles and parade campaigning, learned a new art of war, and witnessed the first act of those Apocalyptic tragedies which were destined to drown the peninsula with French, Spanish, German, Swiss, and native blood.
Meanwhile the French host had reached Parma, traversing, all through the golden autumn weather, those plains where mulberry and elm are married by festoons of vines above a billowy expanse of maize and corn. From Parma, placed beneath the northern spurs of the Apennines, to Sarzana, on the western coast of Italy, where the marbles of Carrara build their barrier against the Tyrrhene Sea, there leads a winding barren mountain pa.s.s. Charles took this route with his army, and arrived in the beginning of November before the walls of Sarzana. Meanwhile we may well ask what Piero de" Medici had been doing, and how he had fulfilled his engagement with Alfonso. He had undertaken, it will be remembered, to hold the pa.s.ses of the Apennines upon this side. To have embarra.s.sed the French troops among those limestone mountains, thinly forested with pine and chestnut-trees, and guarded here and there with ancient fortresses, would have been a matter of no difficulty. With like advantages 2,000 Swiss troops during their wars of independence would have laughed to scorn the whole forces of Burgundy and Austria. But Piero, a feeble and false tyrant, preoccupied with Florentine factions, afraid of Lucca, and disinclined to push forward into the territory of the Sforza, had as yet done nothing when the news arrived that Sarzana was on the point of capitulation. In this moment of peril he rode as fast as horses could carry him to the French camp, besought an interview with Charles, and then and there delivered up to him the keys of Sarzana and its citadel, together with those of Pietra Santa, Librafratta, Pisa, and Leghorn. Any one who has followed the sea-coast between Pisa and Sarzana can appreciate the enormous value of these concessions to the invader. They relieved him of the difficulty of forcing his way along a narrow belt of land, which is hemmed in on one side by the sea and on the other by the highest and most abrupt mountain range in Italy. To have done this in the teeth of a resisting army and beneath the walls of hostile castles would have been all but impossible. As it was, Piero cut the Gordian knot by his incredible cowardice, and for himself gained only ruin and dishonor. Charles, the foe against whom he had plotted with Alfonso and Alexander, laughed in his face and marched at once into Pisa. The Florentines, whom he had hitherto engaged in ah unpopular policy, now rose in fury, expelled him from the city, sacked his palace, and erased from their memory the name of Medici except for execration. The unsuccessful tyrant, who had proved a traitor to his allies, to his country, and to himself, saved his life by flying first to Bologna and thence to Venice, where he remained in a sort of polite captivity--safe, but a slave, until the Doge and his council saw which way affairs would tend.
On the 9th of November Florence after a tyranny of fifty years, and Pisa after the servitude of a century, recovered their liberties and were able to reconst.i.tute republican governments. But the situation of the two states was very different. The Florentines had never lost the name of liberty, which in Italy at that period meant less the freedom of the inhabitants to exercise self-government than the independence of the city in relation to its neighbors. The Pisans on the other hand had been reduced to subjection by Florence: their civic life had been stifled, their pride wounded in the tenderest point of honor, their population decimated by proscription and exile. The great sin of Florence was the enslavement of Pisa: and Pisa in this moment of anarchy burned to obliterate her shame with bloodshed. The French, understanding none of the niceties of Italian politics, and ignorant that in giving freedom to Pisa they were robbing Florence of her rights, looked on with wonder at the citizens who tossed the lion of the tyrant town into the Arno and took up arms against its officers. It is sad to witness this last spasm of the long-suppressed pa.s.sion for liberty in the Pisans, while we know how soon they were reduced again to slavery by the selfish sister state, herself too thoroughly corrupt for liberty. The part of Charles, who espoused the cause of the Pisans with blundering carelessness, pretended to protect the new republic, and then abandoned it a few months later to its fate, provokes nothing but the languid contempt which all his acts inspire.
After the flight of Piero and the proclamation of Pisan liberty the King of France was hailed as saviour of the free Italian towns. Charles received a magnificent address from Savonarola, who proceeded to Pisa, and harangued him as the chosen vessel of the Lord and the deliverer of the Church from anarchy. At the same time the friar conveyed to the French king a courteous invitation from the Florentine republic to enter their city and enjoy their hospitality. Charles, after upsetting Piero de" Medici with the nonchalance of a horseman in the tilting yard, and restoring the freedom of Pisa for a caprice, remained as devoid of policy and indifferent to the part a.s.signed him by the prophet as he was before. He rode, armed at all points, into Florence on November 17, and took up his residence in the palace of the Medici. Then he informed the elders of the city that he had come as conqueror and not as guest, and that he intended to reserve to himself the disposition of the state.
It was a dramatic moment. Florence, with the Arno flowing through her midst, and the hills around her gray with olive-trees, was then even more lovely than we see her now. The whole circuit of her walls remained, nor had their crown of towers been leveled yet to make resistance of invading force more easy Brunelleschi"s dome and Giotto"s tower and Arnolfo"s Palazzo and the Loggie of Orcagna gave distinction to her streets and squares. Her churches were splendid with frescoes in their bloom, and with painted gla.s.s, over which as yet the injury of but a few brief years had pa.s.sed. Her palaces, that are as strong as castles, overflowed with a population cultivated, polished, elegant, refined, and haughty. This Florence, the city of scholars, artists, intellectual sybarites, and citizens in whom the blood of the old factions beat, found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war by flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed Germans, kilted Celts, and particolored Swiss. On the other hand these barbarians awoke in a terrestrial paradise of natural and aesthetic beauty. Which of us who has enjoyed the late gleams of autumn in Valdarno, but can picture to himself the revelation of the inner meaning of the world, incomprehensible yet soul-subduing, which then first dawned upon the Breton bowmen and the bulls of Uri? Their impulse no doubt was to pillage and possess the wealth before them, as a child pulls to pieces the wonderful flower that has surprised it on some mountain meadow. But in the very rudeness of desire they paid a homage to the new-found loveliness of which they had not dreamed before.
Charles here as elsewhere showed his imbecility. He had entered and laid hands on hospitable Florence like a foe. What would he now do with her--reform the republic--legislate--impose a levy on the citizens, and lead them forth to battle? No. He asked for a huge sum of money, and began to bargain. The Florentine secretaries refused his terms. He insisted. Then Piero Capponi s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper on which they were written, and tore it in pieces before his eyes. Charles cried: "I shall sound my trumpets." Capponi answered: "We will ring our bells."
Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but her somber streets, overshadowed by gigantic belfries and masked by grim brown palace-fronts, contained a menace that the French king could not face. Let Capponi sound the tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the streets would be barricaded with iron chains, every quarter would pour forth men by hundreds well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave way, covering with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt: _Ah, Ciappon, Ciappon, voi siete un mal Ciappon!_ The secretaries beat down his terms.
All he cared for was to get money.[1] He agreed to content himself with 120,000 florins. A treaty was signed, and in two days he quitted Florence.
Hitherto Charles had met with no serious obstacle. His invasion had fallen like the rain from heaven, and like rain, as far as he was concerned, it ran away to waste. Lombardy and Tuscany, the two first scenes in the pageant displayed by Italy before the French army, had been left behind. Rome now lay before them, magnificent in desolation; not the Rome which the Farnesi and Chigi and Barberini have built up from the quarried ruins of amphitheaters and baths, but the Rome of the Middle Ages, the city crowned with relics of a pagan past, herself still pagan, and holding in her midst the modern Antichrist. The progress of the French was a continued triumph. They reached Siena on the second of December. The Duke of Urbino and the lords of Pesaro and Bologna laid down their arms at their approach. The Orsini opened their castles: Virginio, the captain-general of the Aragonese army and grand constable of the kingdom of Naples, hastened to win for himself favorable terms from the French sovereign. The Baglioni betook themselves to their own rancors in Perugia. The Duke of Calabria retreated. Italy seemed bent on proving that cowardice and selfishness and incapacity had conquered her.
Viterbo was gained: the Ciminian heights were traversed: the Campagna, bounded by the Alban and the Sabine hills, with Rome, a bluish cloud upon the lowlands of the Tiber, spread its solemn breadth of beauty at the invader"s feet. Not a blow had been struck, when he reached the Porta del Popolo upon the 31st of December 1494. At three o"clock in the afternoon began the entry of the French army. It was nine at night before the last soldiers, under the flaring light of torches and flambeaux, defiled through the gates, and took their quarters in the streets of the Eternal City. The gigantic barbarians of the cantons, flaunting with plumes and emblazoned surcoats, the chivalry of France, splendid with silk mantles and gilded corselets, the Scotch guard in their wild costume of kilt and philibeg, the scythe-like halberds of the German lanz-knechts, the tangled elf-locks of stern-featured Bretons, stamped an ineffaceable impression on the people of the South. On this memorable occasion, as in a show upon some holiday, marched past before them specimens and vanguards of all those legioned races which were soon to be too well at home in every fair Italian dwelling-place. Nothing was wanting to complete the symbol of the coming doom but a representative of the grim, black, wiry infantry of Spain.
[1] The want of money determined all Charles"s operations in this expedition. Borrowing from Lodovico, laying requisitions on Piero and the Florentines, p.a.w.ning the jewels of the Savoy princesses, he pa.s.sed from place to place, bargaining and contracting debts instead of dictating laws and founding const.i.tutions. _La carestia dei danari_ is a phrase continually recurring in Guicciardini. Speaking of the jewels lent to Charles by the royal families of Savoy and Montferrat at Turin, de Comines exclaims: "Et pouvez voir quel commencement de guerre c"estoit, si Dieu n"eut guide l"oeuvre."
The Borgia meanwhile crouched within the Castle of S. Angelo. How would the Conqueror, now styled Flagellum Dei, deal with the abomination of desolation seated in the holy place of Christendom? At the side of Charles were the Cardinals Ascanio Sforza and Giuliano della Rovere, urging him to summon a council and depose the Pope. But still closer to his ear was Briconnet, the _ci-devant_ tradesman, who thought it would become his dignity to wear a cardinal"s hat. On this trifle turned the destinies of Rome, the doom of Alexander, the fate of the Church.
Charles determined to compromise matters. He demanded a few fortresses, a red hat for Briconnet, Cesare Borgia as a hostage for four months, and Djem, the brother of the Sultan.[1] After these agreements had been made and ratified, Alexander ventured to leave his castle and receive the homage of the faithful.
Charles staid* a month in Rome, and then set out for Naples. The fourth and last scene in the Italian pageant was now to be displayed. After the rich plain and proud cities of Lombardy, beneath their rampart of perpetual snow; after the olive gardens and fair towns of Tuscany; after the great name of Rome; Naples, at length, between Vesuvius and the sea, that first station of the Greeks in Italy, world-famed for its legends of the Sibyl and the sirens and the sorcerer Virgil, received her king.
The very names of Parthenope, Posilippo, Inarime, Sorrento, Capri, have their fascination. There too the orange and lemon groves are more luxuriant; the grapes yield sweeter and more intoxicating wine; the villagers are more cla.s.sically graceful; the volcanic soil is more fertile; the waves are bluer and the sun is brighter than elsewhere in the land. None of the conquerors of Italy have had the force to resist the allurements of the bay of Naples. The Greeks lost their native energy upon these sh.o.r.es and realized in the history of their colonies the myth of Ulysses" comrades in the gardens of Circe. Hannibal was tamed by Capua. The Romans in their turn dreamed away their vigor at Baiae, at Pompeii at Capreae, until the whole region became a byword for voluptuous living. Here the Saracens were subdued to mildness, and became physicians instead of pirates. Lombards and Normans alike were softened down, and lost their barbarous fierceness amid the enchantments of the southern sorceress.
[1] See above, p. 416, for the history of this unfortunate prince. When Alexander ceded Djem, whom he held as a captive for the Sultan at a yearly revenue of 40,000 ducats, he was under engagements with Bajazet to murder him. Accordingly Djem died of slow poison soon after he became the guest of Charles.
The Borgia preferred to keep faith with the Turk.
Naples was now destined to ruin for Charles whatever nerve yet remained to his festival army. The witch too, while brewing for the French her most attractive potions, mixed with them a deadly poison--the virus of a fell disease, memorable in the annals of the modern world, which was destined to infect the nations of Europe from this center, and to prove more formidable to our cities than even the leprosy of the Middle Ages.[1]
[1] Those who are curious to trace the history of the origin of syphilis, should study the article upon the subject in Von Hirsch, _Historisch-geographische Pathologie_ (Erlangen, 1860), and in Rosenbaum _Geschichte der l.u.s.tseuche im Alterthum_ (Halle, 1845). Some curious contemporary observations concerning the rapid diffusion of the disease in Italy, its symptoms, and its cure, are contained in Matarazzo"s _Cronaca di Perugia_ (_Arch. Stor. It._ vol. xvi. part ii. pp. 32-36), and in Portovenere (_Arch. St._ vol. vi. pt. ii. p. 338). The celebrated poem of Fracastorius deserves to be read both for its fine Latinity and for its information. One of the earliest works issued from the Aldine press in 1497 was the _Libellus de Epidemia quam vulgo morb.u.m Gallic.u.m vocant_. It was written by Nicolas Leoniceno, and dedicated to the Count Francesco de la Mirandola.
The kingdom of Naples, through the frequent uncertainty which attended the succession to the throne, as well as the suzerainty a.s.sumed and misused by the Popes, had been for centuries a standing cause of discord in Italy. The dynasty which Charles now hoped to dispossess was Spanish.
After the death of Joanna II. in 1435, Alfonso, King of Aragon and Sicily, who had no claim to the crown beyond what he derived through a b.a.s.t.a.r.d branch of the old Norman dynasty, conquered Naples, expelled Count Rene of Anjou, and established himself in this new kingdom, which he preferred to those he had inherited by right. Alfonso, surnamed the Magnanimous, was one of the most brilliant and romantic personages of the fifteenth century. Historians are never weary of relating his victories over Caldora and Francesco Sforza, the coup-de-main by which he expelled his rival Rene, and the fascination which he exercised in Milan, while a captive, over the jealous spirit of Filippo Maria Visconti.[1] Scholars are no less profuse in their praises of his virtues, the justice, humanity, religion, generosity, and culture which rendered him pre-eminent among the princes of that splendid period.[2]
His love of learning was a pa.s.sion. Whether at home in the retirement of his palace, or in his tent during war, he was always attended by students, who read aloud and commented on Livy, Seneca, or the Bible. No prince was more profuse in his presents to learned men. Bartolommeo Fazio received 500 ducats a year for the composition of his histories, and when, at their conclusion, the scholar asked for a further gift of 200 or 300 florins, the prince bestowed upon him 1,500. The year he died, Alfonso distributed 20,000 ducats to men of letters alone. This immoderate liberality is the only vice of which he is accused. It bore its usual fruits in the disorganization of finance.
[1] Mach. _Ist. Fior._ lib. v. cap. 5. Corio, pp. 332, 333, may be consulted upon the difficulties which Alfonso overcame at the commencement of his conquest. Defeated by the Genoese near the Isle of Ponza, and carried a prisoner to Milan, he succeeded in proving to Filippo Visconti that it was more to his interest to have him king of Naples than to keep the French there. Upon, this the Duke of Milan restored him with honor to his throne, and confirmed him in the conquest which before he had successfully opposed. It is a singular instance of the extent to which Italian princes were controlled by policy and reason.
[2] Vespasiano"s _Life of Alfonso_ (_Vite di Uomini Ill.u.s.tri_, pp. 48-72) is a model of agreeable composition and vivid delineation. It is written of course from the scholar"s more than the politician"s point of view. Compare with it Giovio, _Elogia_, and Ponta.n.u.s, _de Liberalitate_.
The generous humanity of Alfonso endeared him greatly to the Neapolitans. During the half-century in which so many Italian princes succ.u.mbed to the dagger of their subjects, he, in Naples, where, according to Pontano, "nothing was cheaper than the life of a man,"
walked up and down unarmed and unattended. "Why should a father fear among his children?" he was wont to say in answer to suggestions of the danger of this want of caution. The many splendid qualities by which he was distinguished were enhanced rather than obscured by the romance of his private life. Married to Margaret of Castile, he had no legitimate children; Ferdinand, with whom he shared the government of Naples in 1443, and whom he designated as his successor in 1458, was supposed to be his son by Margaret de Hijar. It was even whispered that this Ferdinand was the child of Catherine the wife of Alfonso"s brother Henry, whom Margaret, to save the honor of the king, acknowledged as her own. Whatever may have been the truth of this dark history, it was known for certain that the queen had murdered her rival, the unhappy Margaret de Hijar, and that Alfonso never forgave her or would look upon her from that day. Pontano, who was Ferdinand"s secretary, told a different tale.
He affirmed that the real father of the Duke of Calabria was a Marrano of Valentia. This last story is rendered probable by the brusque contrast between the character of Alfonso and that of Ferdinand.