Therefore, when Frederick Barbarossa was elected in 1152, his first thought was to reduce the Garden of the Empire to order. Soon after his election he descended into Lombardy and formed two leagues among the cities of the North, the one headed by Pavia, the center of the abrogated kingdom, the other by Milan, who inherited the majesty of Rome and contained within her loins the future of Italian freedom. It is not necessary to follow in detail the conflict of the Lombard burghs with Frederick, so enthusiastically described by their historian, Sismondi, It is enough for our present purpose to remember that in the course of that contention both leagues made common cause against the Emperor, drew the Pope Alexander III. into their quarrel, and at last in 1183, after the victory of Legnano had convinced Frederick of his weakness, extorted by the Peace of Constance privileges whereby their autonomy was amply guaranteed and recognized. The advantages won by Milan who sustained the brunt of the imperial onslaughts, and by the splendor of her martyrdom surmounted the petty jealousies of her munic.i.p.al rivals, were extended to the cities of Tuscany. After the date of that compact signed by the Emperor and his insurgent subjects, the burghs obtained an a.s.sured position as a third power between the Empire and the Church. The most remarkable point in the history of this contention is the unanimous submission of the Communes to what they regarded as the just suzerainty of Caesar"s representative. Though they were omnipotent in Lombardy, they took no measures for closing the gates of the Alps against the Germans.
The Emperor was free to come and go as he listed; and when peace was signed, he reckoned the burghers who had beaten him by arms and policy, among his loyal va.s.sals. Still the spirit of independence in Italy had been amply a.s.serted. This is notably displayed in the address presented to Frederick, before his coronation, by the senate of Rome. Regenerated by Arnold of Brescia"s revolutionary mission, the Roman people a.s.sumed its antique majesty in these remarkable words: "Thou wast a stranger; I have made thee citizen; thou camest from regions from beyond the Alps; I have conferred on thee the princ.i.p.ality."[1] Presumptuous boast as this sounded in the ears of Frederick, it proved that the Italic nation had now sharply defined itself against the Church and the barbarians. It still accepted the Empire because the Empire was the glory of Italy, the crown that gave to her people the presidency of civilization. It still recognized the authority of the Church because the Church was the eldest daughter of Italy emergent from the wrecks of Roman society. But the nation had become conscious of its right to stand apart from either.
[1]: "Hospes eras, civem feci. Advena fuisti ex transalpinis partibus, principem const.i.tui. Quod meum jure fuit, tibi dedi." See _Ottonis Episcopi Frisingensis Chronicon_, De Rebus Gestis Frid. i.
Imp. Lib. ii. cap. 21. Basileae, 1569. The Legates appointed by the Senate met the Emperor at Sutri, and delivered the oration of which the sentence just quoted was part. It began: "Urbis legati nos, rex optime, ad tuam a Senatu, populoque Romano destinati sumus excellentiam," and contained this remarkable pa.s.sage: "Orbis imperium affectas, coronam praebitura gratanter a.s.surgo, jocanter occurro ... indebitum clericorum excussurus jugum." If the words are faithfully reported, the Republic separates itself abruptly from the Papacy, and claims a kind of precedence in honor before the Empire.
Frederick is said to have interrupted the Legates in a rage before they could finish their address, and to have replied with angry contempt. The speech put into his mouth is probably a rhetorical composition, but it may have expressed his sentiments. "Multa de Romanorum sapientia seu fort.i.tudine hactenus audivimus, magis tamen de sapientia. Quare satis mirari non possumus, quod verba vestra plus arrogantiae tumore insipida quam sale sapientiae condita sentimus.... Fuit, fuit quondam in hac Republica virtus. Quondam dico, atque o utinam tam veracitur quam libenter nunc dicere possemus," etc.
Strengthened by their contest with Frederick Barbarossa, recognized in their rights as belligerent powers, and left to their own guidance by the Empire, the cities were now free to prosecute their wars upon the remnants of feudalism. The town, as we have learned to know it, was surrounded by a serried rank of castles, where the n.o.bles held still undisputed authority over serfs of the soil. Against this cordon of fortresses every city with singular unanimity directed the forces it had formed in the preceding conflicts. At the same time the munic.i.p.al struggles of Commune against Commune lost none of their virulence. The Counts, pressed on all sides by the towns that had grown up around them, adopted the policy of pitting one burgh against another. When a n.o.ble was attacked by the township near his castle, he espoused the animosities of a more distant city, compromised his independence by accepting the captaincy or lieutenancy of communes hostile to his natural enemies, and thus became the servant or ally of a Republic. In his desperation he emanc.i.p.ated his serfs, and so the folk of the Contado profited by the dissensions of the cities and their feudal masters. This new phase of republican evolution lasted over a long and ill-defined period, a.s.suming different characters in different centers; but the end of it was that the n.o.bles were forced to submit to the cities. They were admitted to the burghership, and agreed to spend a certain portion of every year in the palaces they raised within the circuit of the walls.
Thus the Counts placed themselves beneath the jurisdiction of the Consuls, and the Italic population absorbed into itself the relics of Lombard, Frank, and German aristocracy. Still the gain upon the side of the republics was not clear. Though the feudal lordship of the n.o.bles had been destroyed, their wealth, their lands, and their prestige remained untouched. In the city they felt themselves but aliens. Their real home was still the castle on the neighboring mountain. Nor, when they stooped to become burghers, had they relinquished the use of arms.
Instead of building peaceable dwelling-houses in the city, they filled its quarters with fortresses and towers, whence they carried on feuds among themselves and imperiled the safety of the streets. It was speedily discovered that the war against the Castles had become a war against the Palaces, and that the arena had been transferred from the open Contado to the Piazza and the barricade. The authority of the consuls proved insufficient to maintain an equilibrium between the people and the n.o.bles. Accordingly a new magistrate started into being, combining the offices of supreme justiciary and military dictator. When Frederick Barbarossa attempted to govern the rebellious Lombard cities in the common interest of the Empire, he established in their midst a foreign judge, called Podesta _quasi habens potestatem Imperatoris in hac parte_. This inst.i.tution only served at the moment to inflame and imbitter the resistance of the Communes: but the t.i.tle of Podesta was subsequently conferred upon the official summoned to maintain an equal balance between the burghers and the n.o.bles. He was invariably a foreigner, elected for one year, intrusted with summary jurisdiction in all matters of dispute, exercising the power of life and death, and disposing of the munic.i.p.al militia. The old const.i.tution of the Commune remained to control this dictator and to guard the independence of the city. All the Councils continued to act, and the Consuls were fortified by the formation of a College of Ancients or Priors. The Podesta was created with the express purpose of effecting a synthesis between two rival sections of the burgh. He was never regarded as other than an alien to the city, adopted as a temporary mediator and controller of incompatible elements. The lordship of the burgh still resided with the Consuls, who from this time forward began to lose their individuality in the College of the _Signoria_--called _Priori_, _Anziani_, or _Rettori_, as the case might be in various districts.
The Italian republics had reached this stage when Frederick II. united the Empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It was a crisis of the utmost moment for Italian independence. Master of the South, Frederick sought to reconquer the lost prerogatives of the Empire in Lombardy and Tuscany; nor is it improbable that he might have succeeded in uniting Italy beneath his sway but for the violent animosity of the Church. The warfare of extermination carried on by the Popes against the house of Hohenstauffen was no proof of their partiality for the cause of freedom.
They dreaded the reality of a kingdom that should base itself on Italy and be the rival of their own authority. Therefore they espoused the cause of the free burghs against Frederick, and when the North was devastated by his Vicars, they preached a crusade against Ezzelino da Romano. In the convulsions that shook Italy from North to South the parties of Guelf and Ghibelline took shape, and acquired an ineradicable force. All the previous humors and discords of the nation were absorbed by them. The Guelf party meant the burghers of the consular Communes, the men of industry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, the friends of democratic expansion. The Ghibelline party included the naturalized n.o.bles, the men of arms and idleness, the advocates of feudalism, the politicians who regarded const.i.tutional progress with disfavor. That the banner of the Church floated over the one camp, while the standard of the Empire rallied to itself the hostile party, was a matter of comparatively superficial moment. The true strength of the war lay in the population, divided by irreconcilable ideals, each eager to possess the city for itself, each prepared to die for its adopted principles. The struggle is a social struggle, played out within the precincts of the Commune, for the supremacy of one or the other moiety of the whole people. A city does not p.r.o.nounce itself either Guelf or Ghibelline till half the burghers have been exiled. The victorious party organizes the government in its own interest, establishes itself in a Palazzo apart from the Commune, where it develops its machinery at home and abroad, and strengthens its finance by forced contributions and confiscations.[1] The exiles make common cause with members of their own faction in an adverse burgh; and thus, by the diplomacy of Guelfs and Ghibellines, the most distant centers are drawn into the network of a common dualism. In this way we are justified in saying that Italy achieved her national consciousness through strife and conflict; for the Communes ceased to be isolated, cemented by temporary leagues, or engaged in merely local conflicts. They were brought together and connected by the sympathies and antipathies of an antagonism which embraced and dominated the munic.i.p.alities, set Republics and Regno on equal footing, and merged the t.i.tular leaders of the struggle, Pope and Emperor, in the uncontrollable tumult. The issue was no vulgar one; no merely egotistic interests were at stake. Guelfs and Ghibellines alike interrogated the oracle, with perfect will to obey its inspiration for the common good; but they read the utterances of the Pythia in adverse senses. The Ghibelline heard Italy calling upon him to build a citadel that should be guarded by the lance and shield of chivalry, where the hierarchies of feudalism, ranged beneath the dais of the Empire, might dispense culture and civil order in due measure to the people. The Guelf believed that she was bidding him to multiply arts and guilds within the burgh, beneath the mantle of the Pope, who stood for Christ, the preacher of equality and peace for all mankind, in order that the beehive of industry should in course of time evolve a civil order and a culture representative of its own freely acting forces.
[1] It is enough to refer to the importance of the _Parte Guelfa_ in the history of Florence.
During the stress and storm of the fierce warfare carried on by Guelfs and Ghibellines, the Podesta fell into the second rank. He had been created to meet an emergency; but now the discord was too vehement for arbitration. A new functionary appears, with the t.i.tle of _Captain of the People_. Chosen when one or other of the factions gains supreme power in the burgh, he represents the victorious party, takes the lead in proscribing their opponents, and ratifies on his responsibility the changes introduced into the const.i.tution. The old magistracies and councils, meanwhile, are not abrogated. The Consiglio del Popolo, with the Capitano at its head, takes the lead; and a new member, called the Consiglio della Parte, is found beside them, watchful to maintain the policy of the victorious faction. But the Consiglio del Comune, with the Podesta, who has not ceased to exercise judicial functions, still subsists. The Priors form the signory as of old. The Credenza goes on working, and the Gran Consiglio represents the body of privileged burghers. The party does but tyrannize over the city it has conquered, and manipulates the ancient const.i.tution for its own advantage. In this clash of Guelf with Ghibelline the beneficiaries were the lower cla.s.ses of the people. Excluded from the Popolo of episcopal and consular revolutions, the trades and industries of the great cities now a.s.sert their claims to be enfranchised. The advent of the _Arti_ is the chief social phenomenon of the crisis.[1] Thus the final issue of the conflict was a new Italy, deeply divided by factions that were little understood, because they were so vital, because they represented two adverse currents of national energy, incompatible, irreconcilable, eternal in antagonism as the poles. But this discordant nation was more commercial and more democratic. Families of merchants rose upon the ruins of the old n.o.bility. Roman cities of industry reduced their military rivals of earlier or later origin to insignificance. The plain, the river, and the port a.s.serted themselves against the mountain fastness and the barrackburgh. The several cla.s.ses of society, triturated, shaken together, leveled by warfare and equalized by industry, presented but few obstacles to the emergence of commanding personalities, however humble, from their ranks. Not only had the hierarchy of feudalism disappeared; but the const.i.tution of the city itself was confused, and the Popolo, whether "primo" or "secondo or even "terzo," was diluted with recently franchised Contadini and all kinds of "novi homines."[2]
The Divine Comedy, written after the culmination of the Guelf and Ghibelline dissensions, yields the measure of their animosity. Dante finds no place in h.e.l.l Heaven, or Purgatory for the souls who stood aloof from strife, the angels who were neither Guelf nor Ghibelline in Paradise. His Vigliacchi, "wretches who never lived," because they never felt the pangs or ecstasies of partisanship, wander homeless on the skirts of Limbo, among the abortions and offscourings of creation. Even so there was no standing-ground in Italy outside one or the other hostile camp. Society was riven down to its foundation. Rancors dating from the thirteenth century endured long after the great parties ceased to have a meaning. They were perpetuated in customs, and expressed themselves in the most trivial details. Banners, ensigns, and heraldic colors followed the divisions of the factions. Ghibellines wore the feathers in their caps upon one side, Guelfs upon the other. Ghibellines cut fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs straight down. In Bergamo some Calabrians were murdered by their host, who discovered from their way of slicing garlic that they sided with the hostile party. Ghibellines drank out of smooth, and Guelfs out of chased, goblets. Ghibellines wore white, and Guelfs red, roses. Yawning, pa.s.sing in the street, throwing dice, gestures in speaking or swearing, were used as pretexts for distinguishing the one half of Italy from the other. So late as the middle of the fifteenth century, the Ghibellines of Milan tore Christ from the high-altar of the Cathedral at Crema and burned him because he turned his face to the Guelf shoulder. Every great city has a tale of love and death that carries the contention of its adverse families into the region of romance and legend. Florence dated her calamities from the insult offered by Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti to the Amidei in a broken marriage. Bologna never forgot the pathos of Imelda Lambertazzi stretched in death upon her lover Bonifazio Gieremei"s corpse. The story of Romeo and Juliet at Verona is a myth which brings both factions into play, the well-meaning intervention of peace-making monks, and the ineffectual efforts of the Podesta to curb the violence of party warfare.
[1] The history of Florence ill.u.s.trates more clearly than that of any other town the vast importance acquired by trades and guilds in politics at this epoch of the civil wars.
[2] This is the sting of Cacciaguida"s scornful lamentation over Florence Par. xvi.
Ma la cittadinanza, ch" e or mista Di Campi e di Certaldo e di Figghine, Pura vedeasi nell" ultimo artista.
Tal fatto e fiorentino, e cambia e merca, Che si sarebbe volto a Semifonti, La dove andava l" avolo alia cerca.
Sempre la confusione delle persone Principio fu del mal della cittade, Come del corpo il cibo che s" appone.
So deep and dreadful was the discord, so utter the exhaustion, that the distracted Communes were fain at last to find some peace in tyranny. At the close of their long quarrel with the house of Hohenstauffen, the Popes called Charles of Anjou into Italy. The final issue of that policy for the nation at large will be discussed in another portion of this work. It is enough to point out here that, as Ezzelino da Romano introduced despotism in its worst form as a party leader of the Ghibellines, so Charles of Anjou became a typical tyrant in the Guelf interest. He was recognized as chief of the Guelf party by the Florentines, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was conferred upon him as the price of his dictatorship. The republics almost simultaneously entered upon a new phase. Democratized by the extension of the franchise, corrupted, to use Machiavelli"s phrase, in their old organization of the Popolo and Commune, they fell into the hands of tyrants, who employed the prestige of their party, the indifference of the Vigliacchi, and the peace-loving instincts of the middle cla.s.s for the consolidation of their selfish autocracy.[1] Placing himself above the law, manipulating the machinery of the State for his own ends, subst.i.tuting the will of a single ruler for the clash of hostile pa.s.sions in the factions, the tyrant imposed a forcible tranquillity upon the city he had grasped. The Captaincy of the people was conferred upon him.[2] The Councils were suffocated and reduced to silence. The aristocracy was persecuted for the profit of the plebs. Under his rule commerce flourished; the towns were adorned with splendid edifices; foreign wars were carried on for the aggrandizement of the State without regard to factious rancors. Thus the tyrant marked the first emergence of personality supreme within the State, resuming its old forces in an autocratic will, superseding and at the same time consciously controlling the mute, collective, blindly working impulses of previous revolutions. His advent was welcomed as a blessing by the recently developed people of the cities he reduced to peace. But the great families and leaders of the parties regarded him with loathing, as a reptile sp.a.w.ned by the corruption and disease of the decaying body politic. In their fury they addressed themselves to the two chiefs of Christendom. Boniface VIII., answering to this appeal, called in a second Frenchman, Charles of Valois, with the t.i.tles of Marquis of Ancona, Count of Romagna, Captain of Tuscany, who was bidden to reduce Italy to order on Guelf principles. Dante in his mountain solitudes invoked the Emperor, and Italy beheld the powerless march of Henry VII.
Neither Pope nor Emperor was strong enough to control the currents of the factions which were surely whirling Italy into the abyss of despotism. Boniface died of grief after Sciarra Colonna, the terrible Ghibelline"s outrage at Anagni, and the Papal Court was transferred to Avignon in 1316. Henry VII. expired, of poison probably, at Buonconvento, in 1313. The parties tore each other to fragments. Tyrants were murdered. Whole families were extirpated. Yet these convulsions bore no fruit of liberty. The only exit from the situation was in despotism--the despotism of a jealous oligarchy as at Florence, or the despotism of new tyrants in Lombardy and the Romagna.[3]
[1] Not to mention the republics of Lombardy and Romagna, which took the final stamp of despotism at the beginning of the fourteenth century, it is noticeable that Pisa submitted to Uguccione da f.a.ggiuola, Lucca to Castruccio Castracane, and Florence to the Duke of Athens. The revolution of Pisa in 1316 delivered it from Uguccione; the premature death of Castruccio in 1328 destroyed the Tuscan duchy he was building up upon the bas.e.m.e.nt of Ghibellinism; while the rebellion of 1343 averted tyranny from Florence for another century.
[2] Machiavelli"s _Vita di Castruccio Castracane_, though it is rather a historical romance than a trustworthy biography, ill.u.s.trates the gradual advances made by a bold and ambitious leader from the Captaincy of the people, conferred upon him for one year, to the tyranny of his city.
[3] The Divine comedy is, under one of its aspects, the Epic of Italian tyranny, so many of its episodes are chosen from the history of the civil wars:
Che le terre d" Italia tutte piene Son di tiranni; ed un Marcel diventa Ogni villan che parteggiando viene.
Those lines occur in the apostrophe to Italy (_Purg._ vi.) where Dante refers to the Empire, idealized by him as the supreme authority in Europe.
Meanwhile the perils to which the tyrants were exposed taught them to employ cruelty and craft in combination. From the confused and spasmodic efforts of the thirteenth century, when Captains of the people and leaders of the party seized a momentary gust of power, there arose a second sort of despotism, more cautious in its policy, more methodic in its use of means to ends, which ended by metamorphosing the Italian cities and preparing the great age of the Renaissance. It would be sentimental to utter lamentations over this change, and unphilosophical to deplore the diminution of republican liberty as an unmixed evil. The divisions of Italy and the weakness of both Papacy and Empire left no other solution of the political problem. All branches of the munic.i.p.al administration, strained to the cracking-point by the tension of party conflict, were now isolated from the organism, abnormally developed, requiring the combining effort of a single thinker to reunite their scattered forces in one system or absorb them in himself. The indirect restraints which a calmer period of munic.i.p.al vitality had placed upon tyrannic ambition, were removed by the leveling of cla.s.ses and the presentation of an equal surface to the builder of the palace-dome of monarchy. Moreover, it must be remembered that what the Italians then understood by freedom was munic.i.p.al autonomy controlled by ruling houses in the interest of the few. These considerations need not check our sympathy with Florence in the warfare she carried on against the Milanese tyrants. But they should lead us to be cautious in adopting the conclusions of Sismondi, who saw Italian greatness only in her free cities. The obliteration of the parties beneath despotism was needed, under actual conditions, for that development of arts and industry which raised Italy to a first place among civilized nations. Of the manners of the Despots, and of the demoralization they encouraged in the cities of their rule, enough will be said in the succeeding chapters, which set forth the social conditions of the Renaissance in Italy. But attention should here be called to the general character of despotic authority, and to the influence the Despots exercised for the pacification of the country. We are not justified by facts in a.s.suming that had the free burghs continued independent, arts and literature would have risen to a greater height. Venice, in spite of an uninterrupted republican career, produced no commanding men of letters, and owed much of her splendor in the art of painting to aliens from Cadore, Castelfranco, and Verona.
Genoa remained silent and irresponsive to the artistic movement of Italy until the last days of the republic, when her independence was but a shadow. Pisa, though a burgh of Tuscany, displayed no literary talent, while her architecture dates from the first period of the Commune.
Siena, whose republican existence lasted longer even than that of Florence, contributed nothing of importance to Italian literature. The art of Perugia was developed during the ascendency of despotic families.
The painting of the Milanese School owed its origin to Lodovico Sforza, and survived the tragic catastrophes of his capital, which suffered more than any other from the brutalities of Spaniards and Frenchmen. Next to Florence, the most brilliant centers of literary activity during the bright days of the Renaissance were princely Ferrara and royal Naples.
Lastly, we might insist upon the fact that the Italian language took its first flight in the court of imperial Palermo, while republican Rome remained dumb throughout the earlier stage of Italian literary evolution. Thus the facts of the case seem to show that culture and republican independence were not so closely united in Italy as some historians would seek to make us believe. On the other hand it is impossible to prove that the despotisms of the fifteenth century were necessary to the perfecting of art and literature. All that can be safely advanced upon this subject, is that the pacification of Italy was demanded as a preliminary condition, and that this pacification came to pa.s.s through the action of the princes, checked and equilibrated by the oligarchies of Venice and Florence. It might further be urged that the Despots were in close sympathy with the ma.s.ses of the people, shared their enthusiasms, and promoted their industry. When the cla.s.sical revival took place at the close of the fourteenth century, they divined this movement of the Italic races to resume their past, and gave it all encouragement. To be a prince, and not to be the patron of scholarship, the pupil of humanists, and the founder of libraries, was an impossibility. In like manner they employed their wealth upon the development of arts and industries. The great age of Florentine painting is indissolubly connected with the memories of Casa Medici. Rome owes her magnificence to the despotic Popes. Even the pottery of Gubbio was a creation of the ducal house of Urbino.
After the death of Henry VII. and the beginning of the Papal exile at Avignon, the Guelf party became the rallying-point of munic.i.p.al independence, with its headquarters in Florence. Ghibellinism united the princes in an opposite camp. "The Guelf party," writes Giovanni Villani, "forms the solid and unalterable basis of Italian liberty, and is so antagonistic to all tyranny that, if a Guelf become a tyrant, he must of necessity become at the same moment Ghibelline." Milan, first to a.s.sert the rights of the free burghs, was now the chief center of despotism; and the events of the next century resume themselves in the long struggle between Florence and the Visconti. The chronicle of the Villani and the Florentine history of Poggio contain the record of this strife, which seemed to them the all-important crisis of Italian affairs. In the Milanese annals of Galvano Fiamma and Mussi, on the other hand, the advantages of a despotic sovereignty in giving national coherence, the crimes of the Papacy, which promoted anarchy in its ill-governed States, and the prospect of a comprehensive Italian tyranny under the great house of the Visconti, are eloquently pleaded. The terms of the main issue being thus clearly defined, we may regard the warfare carried on by Bertrand du Poiet and Louis of Bavaria in the interests of Church and Empire, the splendid campaigns of Egidio d"Albornoz, and the delirious cruelty of Robert of Geneva, no less than the predatory excursions of Charles IV., as episodical. The main profits of those convulsions, which drowned Italy in blood during nearly all the fourteenth century, accrued to the Despots, who held their ground in spite of all attempts to dispossess them. The greater houses, notably the Visconti, acquired strength by revolutions in which the Church and Empire neutralized each other"s action. The lesser families struck firm roots into cities, infuriated rather than intimidated by such acts of violence as the ma.s.sacres of Faenza and Cesena in 1377. The relations of the imperial and pontifical parties were confused; while even in the center of republican independence, at Florence, social changes, determined in great measure by the exhaustion of the city in its conflict, prepared the way for the Medicean tyranny. Neither the Church nor the Empire gained steady footing in Italy, while the prestige of both was ruined.[1] Munic.i.p.al freedom, instead of being enlarged, was extinguished by the ambition of the Florentine oligarchs, who, while they spent the last florin of the Commune in opposing the Visconti, never missed an opportunity of enslaving the sister burghs of Tuscany.
In a word, the destiny of the nation was irresistibly impelling it toward despotism.
[1] Machiavelli, in his _Istorie Fiorentine_ (Firenze, 1818, vol. i.
pp. 47, 48), points out how the compet.i.tion of the Church and Empire, during the Papacies of Benedict XII. and Clement VI. and the reign of Louis strengthened the tyrants of Lombardy, Romagna, and the March. Each of the two contending powers gave away what did not belong to them, bidding against each other for any support they might obtain from the masters of the towns.
In order to explain the continual prosperity of the princes amid the clash of forces brought to bear against them from so many sides, we must remember that they were the partisans of social order in distracted burghs, the heroes of the middle cla.s.ses and the mult.i.tude, the quellers of faction, the administrators of impartial laws, and the aggrandizers of the city at the expense of its neighbors. Ser Gorello, singing the praises of the Bishop Guido dei Tarlati di Pietra Mala, who ruled Arezzo in the first half of the fourteenth century, makes the Commune say:[1]
"He was the lord so valiant and magnificent, so full of grace and daring, so agreeable to both Guelfs and Ghibellines. He, for his virtue, was chosen by common consent to be the master of my people. Peace and justice were the beginning, middle, and end of his lordship, which removed all discord from the State. By the greatness of his valor I grew in territory round about. Every neighbor reverenced me, some through love and some through dread; for it was dear to them to rest beneath his mantle." These verses set forth the qualities which united the ma.s.s of the populations to their new lords. The Despot delivered the industrial cla.s.ses from the tyranny and anarchy of faction, subst.i.tuting a reign of personal terrorism that weighed more heavily upon the n.o.bles than upon the artisans or peasants. Ruling more by perfidy, corruption, and fraud than by the sword, he turned the leaders of parties into courtiers, brought proscribed exiles back into the city as officials, flattered local vanity by continuing the munic.i.p.al machinery in its functions of parade, and stopped the mouths of unruly demagogues by making it their pecuniary interest to preach his benefits abroad. So long as the burghers remained peaceable beneath his sway and refrained from attacking him in person, he was mild. But at the same moment the gallows, the torture-chamber, the iron cage suspended from the giddy height of palace-roof or church tower, and the dreadful dungeons, where a prisoner could neither stand nor lie at ease, were ever ready for the man who dared dispute his authority. That authority depended solely on his personal qualities of will, courage, physical endurance. He held it by intelligence, being as it were an artificial product of political necessities, an equilibrium of forces, subst.i.tuted without legal t.i.tle for the Church and Empire, and acc.u.mulating in his despotic individuality the privileges previously acquired by centuries of consuls, Podestas, and Captains of the people. The chief danger he had to fear was conspiracy; and in providing himself against this peril he expended all the resources suggested by refined ingenuity and heightened terror. Yet, when the Despot was attacked and murdered, it followed of necessity that the successful conspirator became in turn a tyrant.
"Cities," wrote Machiavelli,[2] "that are once corrupt and accustomed to the rule of princes, can never acquire freedom, even though the prince with all his kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to extinguish another; and the city has no rest except by the creation of a new lord, unless it chance that one burgher by his goodness and great qualities may during his lifetime preserve its temporary independence." Palace intrigues, therefore, took the place of Piazza revolutions, and dynasties were swept away to make room for new tyrants without material change in the condition of the populace.
[1] _Mur. Scr. R. It._ xv. 826. Compare what G. Merula wrote about Azzo Visconti: "He conciliated the people to him by equal justice without distinction of Guelf or Ghibelline."
[2] _Discorsi_. i. 17.
It was the universal policy of the Despots to disarm their subjects.
Prompted by considerations of personal safety, and demanded by the necessity of extirpating the factions, this measure was highly popular.
It relieved the burghers of that most burdensome of all public duties, military service. A tax on silver and salt was subst.i.tuted in the Milanese province for the conscription, while the Florentine oligarchs, actuated probably by the same motives, laid a tax upon the country. The effect of this change was to make financial and economical questions all-important, and to introduce a new element into the balance of Italian powers. The princ.i.p.alities were transformed into great banks, where the lords of cities sat in their bureau, counted their money, and calculated the cost of wars or the value of towns they sought to acquire by bargain. At first they used their mercenary troops like p.a.w.ns, buying up a certain number for some special project, and dismissing them when it had been accomplished. But in course of time the mercenaries awoke to the sense of their own power, and placed themselves beneath captains who secured them a certainty of pay with continuity of profitable service.
Thus the Condottieri came into existence, and Italy beheld the spectacle of moving despotisms, armed and mounted, seeking to effect establishment upon the weakest, worst-defended points of the peninsula. They proved a grave cause of disquietude alike to the tyrants and the republics; and until the settlement of Francesco Sforza in the Duchy of Milan, when the employers of auxiliaries had come to understand the arts of dealing with them by perfidy, secret a.s.sa.s.sination, and a system of elaborate counter-checks, the equilibrium of power in Italy was seriously threatened. The country suffered at first from marauding excursions conducted by piratical leaders of adventurous troops, by Werner of Urslingen, the Conte Lando, and Fra Moriale; afterwards from the discords of Braccio da Montone and Sforza Attendolo, incessantly plotting to carve duchies for themselves from provinces they had been summoned by a master to subdue. At this period gold ruled the destinies of Italy. The Despots, relying solely on their exchequer for their power, were driven to extortion. Cities became bankrupt, pledged their revenues, or sold themselves to the highest bidder.[1] Indescribable misery oppressed the poorer cla.s.ses and the peasants. A series of obscure revolutions in the smaller despotic centers pointed to a vehement plebeian reaction against a state of things that had become unbearable. The lower cla.s.ses of the burghers rose against the "popolani gra.s.si," and a new cla.s.s of princes emerged at the close of the crisis.
Thus the plebs forced the Bentivogli on Bologna and the Medici on Florence, and Baglioni on Perugia and the Petrucci on Siena.
[1] Perugia, for example, farmed out the tax upon her country population for 12,000 florins, upon her baking-houses for 7,266, upon her wine for 4,000, upon her lake for 5,200, upon contracts for 1,500. Two bankers accepted the Perugian loan at this price in 1388.
The emergence of the Condottieri at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the anarchy they encouraged for their own aggrandizement, and the financial distress which ensued upon the subst.i.tution of mercenary for civic warfare, completed the democratization of the Italian cities, and marked a new period in the history of despotism. From the date of Francesco Sforza"s entry into Milan as conqueror in 1450, the princes became milder in their exercise of power and less ambitious. Having begun by disarming their subjects, they now proceeded to lay down arms themselves, employing small forces for the protection of their person and the State, engaging more cautiously in foreign strife, and subst.i.tuting diplomacy, wherever it was possible, for warfare. Gold still ruled in politics, but it was spent in bribery. To the ambitious military schemes of Gian Galeazzo Visconti succeeded the commercial cynicism of Cosimo de" Medici, who enslaved Florence by astute demoralization.[1] The spirit of the age was materialistic and positive.
The Despots held their state by treachery, craft, and corruption. The element of force being virtually eliminated, intelligence at last gained undivided sway; and the ideal statecraft of Machiavelli was realized with more or less completeness in all parts of the peninsula. At this moment and by these means Italy obtained a brief but golden period of peace beneath the confederation of her great powers. Nicholas V. had restored the Papal court to Rome in 1447; where he a.s.sumed the manners of despotism and counted as one among the Italian Signori. Lombardy remained tranquil under the rule of Francesco Sforza, and Tuscany under that of the Casa Medici. The kingdom of Naples, conquered by Alfonso of Aragon in 1442, was equally ruled in the spirit of enlightened despotism, while Venice, who had so long formed a state apart, by her recent acquisition of a domain on terra firma, entered the community of Italian politics. Thus the country had finally resolved itself into five grand const.i.tuent elements--the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of S. Mark, Florence, Rome, and the kingdom of Naples--all of them, though widely differing in previous history and const.i.tutional peculiarities, now animated by a common spirit.[2] Politically they tended to despotism; for though Venice continued to be a republic, the government of the Venetian oligarchy was but despotism put into commission.
Intellectually, the same enthusiasm for cla.s.sical studies, the same artistic energy, and the same impulse to revive Italian literature brought the several centers of the nation into keener sympathy than they had felt before. A network of diplomacy embraced the cities; and round the leaders of the confederation were grouped inferior burghs, republican or tyrannical as the case might be, like satellites around the luminaries of a solar system. When Constantinople was taken by the Turks in 1453, Italy felt the need of suppressing her old jealousies, and Nicholas V. induced the four great powers to sign with him a treaty of peace and amity. The political tact and sagacity of Lorenzo de"
Medici enabled him to develop and substantiate the principle of balance then introduced into Italian politics; nor was there any apparent reason why the equilibrium so hardly won, so skillfully maintained, should not have subsisted but for Lodovico Sforza"s invitation to the French in 1494. Up to that date the more recent wars of Italy had been princ.i.p.ally caused by the encroachments of Venice and the nepotism of successive Popes. They raised no new enthusiasm hostile to the interests of peace.
The Empire was eliminated and forgotten as an obsolete antiquity. Italy seemed at last determined to manage her own affairs by mutual agreement between the five great powers.
[1] I have attempted to a.n.a.lyze Cosimo"s method in the article on "Florence and the Medici," _Studies and Sketches in Italy_.
[2] This centralization of Italy in five great powers was not obtained without the depression or total extinction of smaller cities. Ferrari counts seventeen towns, who died, to use his forcible expression, at the close of the civil wars. _Storia delle Rivoluzioni d" Italia_, iii. 239.
Still the ground beneath this specious fabric of diplomacy rung hollow.
The tyrannies represented a transient political necessity. They were not the product of progressive social growth, satisfying and regulating organic functions of the nation. Far from being the final outcome of a slow, deliberate accretion in the states they had absorbed, we see in them the climax of conflicting humors, the splendid cancers and imposthumes of a desperate disease. That solid basis of national morality which grounds the monarch firm upon the sympathies and interests of the people whom he seems to lead, but whom he in reality expresses, failed them. Therefore each individual despot trembled for his throne, while Italy, as in the ominous picture drawn by her historian, felt that all the elements were combining to devour her with a coming storm. The land of earthquakes divined a cataclysm, to cope with which she was unable. An apparently insignificant event determined the catastrophe. The Sforza appealed to France, and after the disastrous descent of Charles VIII. the whole tide of events turned. Instead of internal self-government by any system of balance, Italy submitted to a succession of invasions terminating in foreign tyranny.
The problem why the Italians failed to achieve the unity of a coherent nation has been implicitly discussed in the foregoing pages upon the history of the Communes and the development of despotism. We have already seen that their conception of munic.i.p.al independence made a narrow oligarchy of enfranchised burghers lords of the city, which in its turn oppressed the country and the subject burghs of its domain.
Every conquest by a republic reduced some village or center of civil life to the condition of serfdom. The voices of the inhabitants were no longer heard debating questions that affected their interests. They submitted to dictation from their masters, the enfranchised few in the ascendant commonwealth. Thus, as Guicciardini pointed out in his "Considerations on the Discourses of Machiavelli," the subjection of Italy by a dominant republic would have meant the extinction of numberless political communities and the sway of a close oligarchy from the Alps to the Ionian Sea.[1] The 3,200 burghers who const.i.tuted Florence in 1494, or the n.o.bles of the Golden Book at Venice, would by such unification of the country under a victorious republic have become sovereigns, administering the resources of the nation for their profit.
The dread of this catastrophe rendered Venice odious to her sister commonwealths at the close of the fifteenth century, and justified, according to Guicciardini"s views of history, the action taken by Cosimo de" Medici in 1450, when he rendered Milan strong by supporting her despot, Francesco Sforza.[2] In a word republican freedom, as the term is now understood, was unknown in Italy. Munic.i.p.al autonomy, implying the right of the munic.i.p.ality to rule its conquests for its own particular profit, was the dominant idea. To have advanced from this stage of thought to the highly developed conception of a national republic, centralizing the forces of Italy and at the same time giving free play to its local energies, would have been impossible. This kind of republican unity implies a previous unification of the people in some other form of government. It furthermore demands a system of representation extended to all sections of the nation. Their very nature, therefore, prevented the republican inst.i.tutions won by the Italians in the early Middle Ages from sufficing for their independence in a national republic.
[1] _Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 28.
[2] _Ib._ vol. iii. p. 8.
It may with more reason be asked in the next place why Italy did not become a monarchy, and again why she never produced a confederation, uniting the Communes as the Swiss Cantons were combined for mutual support and self-defense. When we attack the first of these two questions, our immediate answer must be that the Italians had a rooted disinclination for monarchical union.[1] Their most strenuous efforts were directed against it when it seemed to threaten them. It may be remembered that they were not a new people, needing concentration to secure their bare existence. Even during the great days of ancient Rome they had not been what we are wont to call a nation, but a confederacy of munic.i.p.alities governed and directed by the mistress of the globe.
When Rome pa.s.sed away, the fragments of the body politic in Italy, though rudely shaken, retained some portion of the old vitality that joined them to the past. It was to the past rather than the future that the new Italians looked; and even as they lacked initiative forces in their literature, so in their political systems they ventured on no fresh beginning. Though Rome herself was ruined, the shadow of the name of Rome, the mighty memory of Roman greatness, still abode with them.
Instead of a modern capital and a modern king, they had an idea for their rallying-point, a spiritual city for their metropolis. Nor was there any immediate reason why they should have sacrificed their local independence in order to obtain the security afforded by a sovereign. It was not till a later epoch that Italy learned by bitter experience that unity at any cost would be acceptable, face to face with the organized armies of modern Europe. But when the chance of securing that safeguard was offered in the Middle Ages, it must have been bought by subjection to foreigners, by toleration of feudalism, by the extinction of Roman culture in the laws and customs of barbarians. Thus it is not too much to say that the Italians themselves rejected it. Moreover, the problem of unifying Italy in a monarchy was never so practically simple as that of forming nations out of the Teutonic tribes. Not only was the instinct of clanship absent, but before the year 800 all attempts to establish a monarchical state were thwarted by the still formidable proximity of the Greek Empire and by the growing power of ecclesiastical Rome. We have seen how the Goths erred by submitting-to the Empire and merging their authority in a declining organization. We have seen again how the Lombards erred by adopting Catholic Christianity and thus entangling themselves in the policy of Papal Rome. Both Goths and Lombards committed the mistake of sparing the Eternal City; or it may be more accurate to say that neither of them were strong enough to lay hands of violence upon the sacred and mysterious metropolis and hold it as their seat of monarchy against the world. So long as Rome remained independent, neither Ravenna nor Pavia could head a kingdom in the peninsula. Meanwhile Rome lent her prestige to the advancement of a spiritual power which, subject to no dynastic weakness, with the persistent force of an idea that cannot die, was bent on subjugating Europe. The Papacy needed Italy as the basis of its operations, and could not brook a rival that might reduce the See of S. Peter to the level of an ordinary bishopric. Rome therefore, generation after generation, upheld the so-called liberties of Italy against all comers; and when she summoned the Franks, it was to break the growing power of the Lombard monarchs. The pact between the Popes and Charles the Great, however we may interpret its meaning, still further removed the possibility of a kingdom by dividing Italy into two sections with separate allegiances; and since the sway of neither Pope nor Emperor, the one unarmed, the other absent, was stringent enough to check the growth of independent cities, a third and all-important factor was added to the previous checks upon national unity.
[1] Guicciardini (_Op. Ined._ i. 29) remarks: "O sia per qualche fato d" Italia, o per la complessione degli uomini temperata in modo che hanno ingegno e forze, non e mai questa provincia stata facile a ridursi sotto uno imperio." He speaks again of her disunion as "quello modo di vivere che e piu secondo la antiquissima consuetudine e inclin.a.z.ione sua." But Guicciardini, with that defect of vision which rendered him incapable of appreciating the whole situation while he a.n.a.lyzed its details so profoundly, was reckoning without the great nations of Europe. See above, pp. 40, 41.
After 1200 the problem changes its aspect. We have now to ask ourselves why, when the struggle with the Empire was over, when Frederick Barbarossa had been defeated at Legnano, when the Lombard and the Tuscan Leagues were in full vigor before the Guelf and Ghibelline factions had confused the mainsprings of political activity, and while the national militia was still energetic, the Communes did not advance from the conception of local and munic.i.p.al independence to that of national freedom in a confederacy similar to the Swiss Bund. The Italians, it may be suggested, saw no immediate necessity for a confederation that would have limited the absolute autonomy of their several parcels. Only the light cast by subsequent events upon their early history makes us perceive that they missed an unique opportunity at this moment. What they then desired was freedom for expansion each after his own political type, freedom for the development of industry and commerce, freedom for the social organization of the city beloved by its burghers above the nation as a whole. Special difficulties, moreover, lay in the way of confederation. The Communes were not districts, like the Swiss Cantons, but towns at war with the Contado round them and at war among themselves. Mutually jealous and mistrustful, with a country population that but partially obeyed their rule, these centers of Italian freedom were in a very different position from the peasant communities of Schwytz, Uri, Untenvalden. Italy, moreover, could not have been federally united without the consent of Naples and the Church. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies, rendered definitely monarchical by the Norman Conquest, offered a serious obstacle; and though the Regno might have been defied and absorbed by a vigorous concerted movement from the North and center, there still remained the opposition of the Papacy. It had been the recent policy of the Popes to support the free burghs in their war with Frederick. But they did this only because they could not tolerate a rival near their base of spiritual power; and the very reasons which had made them side with the cities in the wars of liberation would have roused their hostility against a federative union.
To have encouraged an Italian Bund, in the midst of which they would have found the Church unarmed and on a level with the puissant towns of Lombardy and Tuscany, must have seemed to them a suicidal error. Such a coalition, if attempted, could not but have been opposed with all their might; for the whole history of Italy proves that Machiavelli was right when he a.s.serted that the Church had persistently maintained the nation in disunion for the furtherance of her own selfish ends. We have furthermore to add the prestige which the Empire preserved for the Italians, who failed to conceive of any civilized, human society whereof the representative of Caesar should not be the G.o.d-appointed head. Though the material power of the Emperors was on the wane, it still existed as a dominant idea. Italy was still the Garden of the Empire no less than the Throne of Christ on earth. After the burghs had wrung what they regarded as their reasonable rights and privileges from Frederick, they laid down their arms, and were content to flourish beneath the imperial shadow. To raise up a political a.s.sociation as a bulwark against the Holy Roman Empire, and by the formation of this defense to become an independent and united nation, instead of remaining an aggregate of scattered townships, would have seemed to their minds little short of sacrilege. Up to this point the Church and the Empire had been, theoretically at least, concordant. They were the sun and moon of a sacred social system which ruled Europe with light and might. But the Wars of Invest.i.ture placed them in antagonism, and the result of that quarrel was still further to divide the Italians, still further to remove the hope of national unity into the region of things unattainable. The great parties accentuated communal jealousies and gave external form and substance to the struggles of town with town. So far distant was the possibility of confederation on a grand scale that every city strove within itself to establish one of two contradictory principles, and the energies of the people were expended in a struggle that set neighbor against neighbor on the field of war and in the market-place. The confusion, exhaustion, and demoralization engendered by these conflicts determined the advent of the Despots; and after 1400 Italy could only have been united under a tyrant"s iron rule. At such an universal despotism Gian Galeazzo Visconti was aiming when the plague cut short his schemes. Cesare Borgia played his highest stakes for it.
Leo X. dreamed of it for his family. Machiavelli, at the end of the _Principe_, when the tragedy of Italy was almost accomplished, invoked it. But even for this last chance of unification it was now too late.