Maximilian I
In 1493 Maximilian, the son of Frederick III, succeeded his father as emperor. He was the first who took the title of emperor without waiting to go to Rome to be crowned by the pope. Up to this time the German overlord had only been styled king of the Romans until crowned by the pope. But Italy was at this time full of war, and the journey to Rome was one of difficulty and danger. So in 1508 Maximilian announced that he intended to take the title of emperor.
The pope, Julius II, was anxious to have Maximilian on his side in his Italian wars, so he gave his consent. After this all the emperors took the title on their election, and only one (Charles V) went to Rome to be crowned.
In his own time Maximilian was one of the best loved of German emperors. Yet he never did anything for the Empire. He was constantly at war, and nearly always defeated.
He has been called the last of the knights, yet he did more than any other Continental ruler to kill knighthood, for he was one of the first to follow the example of England and organize foot soldiers for his army to take the place of the splendid but useless mounted knights.
He was vainglorious and vacillating, and succeeded in little. Yet through him great European complications were to arise. In 1477, long before he became emperor, he married Mary of Burgundy, the daughter of Charles the Bold, who fought the Swiss. Through her he became possessed of Burgundy and the Netherlands. When Maximilian became emperor he gave the government of the Netherlands to his son Philip. This son married Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and thus Spain and the Netherlands became united. All this had important results for Europe.
List of Emperors
Rudolf I of Hapsburg, 1273-1291.
Albert I of Hapsburg, 1298-1308.
Henry VII of Luxemburg, 1308-1313.
Lewis IV of Bavaria, 1314-1347.
Frederick the Fair of Hapsburg, 1314-1330.
Charles IV of Luxemburg, 1347-1378.
Wenzel of Luxemburg, 1378-1400.
Rupert of the Palatinate, 1400-1410.
Sigismund of Luxemburg, 1410-1438.
Albert II of Hapsburg, 1438-1439.
Frederick III of Hapsburg, 1440-1493.
Maximilian I of Hapsburg, 1493-1519.
CHAPTER XXXVI
The Beginning of Italian Unity Shattered
ALL the states of which we have so far heard had, by the end of the fifteenth century, passed through the formative stage. They had all consolidated into nationality except Germany, which was still a conglomeration of states, and Italy, which was yet without nationality, unity, or central government.
This was chiefly do to the efforts of Germany to impose German rule upon the Italians. Frederick II, who was Italian rather than German, was the last, and almost the only, German emperor who had in this any chance of success (see Chapter XXVII). He failed, and after him the emperors interfered little, and always with disastrous results, in the affairs of Italy.
Yet Italy found no peace, and until the middle of the fourteenth century it was torn by civil wars. Princely families rose and fell, while more than one despot schemed in vain to draw the whole country under his rule. The rival factions were still called Guelph and Ghibeline, but the real struggle was no longer between the pope and emperor. It was rather between feudalism and commerce, between inaction and progress.
Out of this welter of warfare there arose in Italy, towards the middle of the fifteenth century, five chief powers. Thy largest of these was the kingdom of Naples. This included the whole southern portion of the peninsula as well as the island of Sicily. Then, like a wedge across the centre of the peninsula lay the papal states. North of these were the republics of Florence and of Venice and the Duchy of Milan.
ITALY OF THE RENAISSANCE
Florence and Venice were termed republics, but the rule in them, as in all Italian states, tended to despotism. And despotism brought in its train the usual crop of plots and murders. Yet, in spite of this tendency towards despotism Italy had made some advance towards freedom and nationality in that her despots were all Italian, and not imposed upon her by an alien power. Even Alfonso, king of Naples, a Spaniard by birth, was Italian in his sympathies.
The five states, moreover, had a common language, a common literature, and love of art, and through these there began to dawn among them a feeling of common nationality. Thus in Italy it was through a love of learning and of art that the sense of nationality awoke, and not as in other nations through war and a necessity for combining against a common foe.
Politically, however, in the fifteenth century there were as yet no Italians. There were merely Venetians, Florentines, Genoese, Neapolitans, and so on. Still for a time there was a sort of peaceful federation among the five greatest states, and between the years 1447 and 1492 Italy was more free, and more at rest from foreign domination, than it had been for many generations. Had this time of peace been allowed to last, had the country been left free from pernicious alien interference, unity might have been attained much earlier.
As it was Italy was still centuries away from unity. It was still for centuries to be torn to pieces, and subjected to the tyranny of foreign princes.
In 1266 Charles of Anjou, on the invitation of the popes Urban IV and Clement VI, had taken possession of the kingdom of Naples, which included Sicily. The French domination was very irksome to the Sicilians, and in 1282 the rebellion known as the Sicilian Vespers broke out. The French were massacred wholesale, and driven from the island. Then the Sicilians called Peter of Aragon, who had married the daughter of Tancred (see Chapter XIV) to the throne.
After this the house of Anjou ruled in Naples, the house of Aragon in Sicily. But in 1435 the Angevin dynasty died outwith Joanna II, and the kingdom passed, not without bloodshed, to the king of Sicily, Alfonso of Aragon, surnamed the Magnanimous. Thus Spanish domination on the mainland was begun.
Charles VIII. The French in Italy
When Louis XI, king of France, died in 1483 he was succeeded by his son Charles VIII, a boy of thirteen. Charles was a throw-back into mediævalism. He was full of romantic ideas, sighing for picturesque wars and victories, and all the splendours of an outworn feudalism. As an Angevin he claimed the throne of Naples, and when invited to invade Italy by a would-be duke of Milan, Ludovico the Moor, he joyfully accepted.
Like a knight of old, he laid his lance in rest, and with banners waving in the breeze and trumpets sounding, he rode into Italy surrounded by all the pomp of a feudal army. Yet this apparently feudal pomp was purely theatrical. Charles, however much he wished it, could not turn back the hands of time, and in reality his army was mostly made up of mercenaries.
His progress was a pageant rather than a campaign, and without drawing a sword he passed through Italy to Naples. Alfonso fled at his coming, and almost without opposition Charles was crowned, assuming, besides that of King of Naples, the empty titles of Emperor of the East and King of Jerusalem.
But while in Naples Charles played at Empire, Ferdinand, King of Spain, Maximilian I, Emperor of Germany, together with some of the Italian princes (among them that same Duke of Milan who had invited him to invade Italy), joined in a league against him. Hurriedly then the pageant emperor beat a retreat. But at Fornova he found the armies of the allies barring the way. With the courage of desperation he faced his foes. The result was a bare victory for the French, but it secured their return to France.
Having reached his own land again in safety all recollection of his short-lived triumph in Italy seemed to pass from the mind of Charles, and he never renewed his claim to the throne of Naples.
At first sight this campaign seems of small importance. Charles had done little but ride through Italy and ride back again. But it had great results. It meant the discovery of Italy by the rest of Europe, and a French writer declares that this discovery of Italy had more effect on the sixteenth century than the discovery of America. With it began a long and disastrous interference of France in the affairs of Italy, an interference preju
dicial alike to both countries. The folly of France, in thus wasting her energies in an unjust war of aggression, prevented her from taking a higher place among the nations of Europe, and shattered the beginning of Italian unity.
Rodrigo Borgia and Savonarola
Meanwhile, although the French were driven out of Italy, there was no peace for the unhappy land. The infamous Rodrigo Borgia was pope. He had taken the title of Alexander VI, and never had Italy more cause to be ashamed of her pontiff and her priesthood. For Alexander was one of the worst popes who ever sat upon the papal throne. Courteous, magnificent, and a great lover of art, he was yet wicked and cruel, and so greedy of wealth and power, both for himself and his family, that he cared not if he plunged the whole of Italy into war to gain his ends.
He cared nothing for his sacred office, and never did the Church sink so low as under his rule. But already the day of reform was dawning. In Florence a monk named Girolamo Savonarola raised his voice against the evil living of the great prince of the Church. He was austere as a Hebrew prophet, and spoke with such fierce eloquence that the pleasure-loving Florentines were shaken out of their careless paganism. At his bidding they made bonfires of their works of art, and all such "vanities"; they cast away their splendid garments of silk, their ornaments of gold, and dressed with the simplicity of monks and nuns.
Savonarola was a reformer before the Reformation. But he was not a reformer as we have come to understand the word. He preached not schism but righteousness, and to the day of his death he believed with all his heart in the teaching of the Church.
It was the coming of Charles VIII that brought Savonarola to the front in Italian politics. It seemed to him that Charles was the instrument of God's vengeance upon Italy for her sins. To resist him was to resist God, and out of his own enthusiasm he endowed the frivolous French monarch with all the attributes of a divine messenger and minster of justice. Yet, when the tyrant Piero de Medici had been expelled from Florence, it was Savonarola who persuaded Charles to move southward, and leave the republic in peace to reframe her constitution.
Savonarola took a great part in the reframing of this constitution, and for a time the Florentines followed him whither he led them with a passionate devotion. But if Savonarola saw in Charles Italy's great hope others regarded him and his army merely as barbarians, to be driven from the land as speedily as might be. Many of the northern states, therefore, joined with the king of Spain and the emperor in the League of Venice against France. Florence, however, under Savonarola's guidance, refused to join.
This refusal roused the wrath of the pope, for he, more than all the other princes, wanted to be rid of Charles. And as Savonarola would not yield, he swore his downfall. First, however, he bribed him with the promise of a cardinal's hat. Savonarola refused it scornfully. He would have no red hat, he said, save the red crown of a martyr.
As this pestilent friar would not hear reason Alexander VI excommunicated him. Gradually then troubles thickened about him. He lost influence, his beloved Florentines fell away from him, his enemies increased in number and power. At length he was seized and condemned to death for schism and heresy. On May 23, 1498, he was hanged, and his body was afterwards burned.
Savonarola was a great, pure-minded man, hating sin and loving with a great tenderness the sinful and the weak. Whether he was a perfect patriot can scarcely be decided without a perfect knowledge of the troublous times in which he lived. It was not possible for him to be a great reformer and a great politician at one and the same time. So, passionately earnest, fiercely righteous and noble-minded although he was, he failed. His chief failure, it may be, lay in that he trusted to outside aid, instead of bidding his people be strong in themselves. Yet for good or evil his spirit lived after him, and no one can think of the struggles of Italy at this time without taking Savonarola into account.
CHAPTER XXXVII
The Struggle between France and Spain for Supremacy in Italy
THE same year in which Savonarola was put to death Louis XII succeeded Charles VIII upon the throne of France. Under him the history of France is little more than the history of Italian campaigns. For Louis XII laid claim not only to Naples but to the Duchy of Milan. Warned, however, by the fate of Charles VIII, before entering upon his campaign he arranged for the concurrence of the other chief rulers in Europe.
Louis was supported by the pope, who was not unwilling to increase the papal states at the expense of the rest of Italy, and with little trouble he conquered Milan, and made it a province of France. Then he turned his thoughts to Naples. Here he feared the opposition of Spain, so he made an alliance with Ferdinand, King of Spain, who promised him aid in return for a share of the spoils.
The conquest of Naples was an easy matter, but when it was accomplished the royal robbers quarrelled over the division of the spoil. Louis found that he had been merely Ferdinand's cat's-paw and was obliged to resign to him the whole of Naples, and content himself with Milan, which he had conquered without his aid.
While Louis and Ferdinand were quarrelling, the pope, Alexander VI, used them in turn for his own ends. He cared not at all for Italy but desired to increase the papal states in the hope of bequeathing them to his cruel and unscrupulous son, Cæsar Borgia. So while the north and the south of the peninsula were given over to foreigners, he tried to make a solid kingdom in the centre.
Alexander seemed to be succeeding admirably when he suddenly died. Then all the states which he had gathered with such guile and wile reverted to the Church, and not to Borgia, who soon fell from power and shortly left Italy.
Julius II and the Papal States
The next pope, Julius II, set himself also to strengthen the papal states. He did this, however, to increase the power of the Church rather than that of his own family.
He was a statesman and a soldier more than a pastor, and was eager to drive the barbarians out of Italy. But he wanted to be sure that when they were gone the papal states would be stronger than any other state in Italy.
To secure this he desired to crush Venice first. So in 1508 he persuaded the Emperor Maximilian, Louis XII of France, and Ferdinand of Spain to join him in the League of Cambray against Venice. In the ensuing war Louis was again merely a cat's-paw, and when with his help Venice was sufficiently crushed, the pope made peace with the republic. He then formed a new League called the Holy League. This was much the same as the League of Cambray, only now the place of France was taken by Venice, and King Henry VIII of England was also included. The armies of this League were soon turned against Louis, and the French were driven beyond the Alps.
Julius would now willingly have turned the Spaniards out of Italy also. But with this he was not so successful, and in 1513 he died, leaving them still strongly entrenched in the south. Louis also did not lightly give up his ambitions; and shortly after the death of Julius he became reconciled to the Venetians, and with their aid once more made an effort to conquer Milan. But the campaign ended in disaster, and the French were once more driven from Italy.
Under these repeated defeats France seemed crushed, and it appeared to her many enemies the moment to attack her. The Swiss invaded the east, Spaniards threatened the south, while Henry VIII landed with twenty thousand men at Calais. He was soon joined by the Emperor Maximilian, and the French were defeated at the battle of Guinegate.
Louis was now utterly weary of the wars which had filled his reign. He longed for peace, and made overtures to the pope. Fortunately for France Leo X had none of the war-like ambitions of Julius or Alexander, and he became reconciled. By degrees the League was dissolved, and peace made with its various members.
In 1515 Louis XII died. In spite of the many foreign wars during his reign, and that of Charles VIII, France had progressed. For the wars for the most part had been carried on without her borders, and the nobles had no longer the right of private war wherewith to disturb the public peace. Feudalism had disappeared, and the feudal lords had been transformed into courtiers. The king's authority was
greater than it had ever been, and he was more able to enforce obedience to his will. And in the short periods when he was not absorbed in his wars of aggression, Louis had used his power well. He had protected the people, encouraged agriculture and commerce, so that the general wealth of the nation was increased.
Francis I and Charles V
Francis I succeeded Louis XII, and he, too, was bitten with desire of conquest in Italy, and almost at once began to make preparations for an invasion. By the victory of Marignano he regained Milan. It was, however, now no longer a question of conquering the Italians, but of fighting the Spaniards. It was, in fact, a Franco-Spanish war fought in Italy, and in 1525 at Pavia Francis was utterly defeated. He lost everything which France claimed in Italy, and was himself taken prisoner, and Italy became the prey of Spain.
Before this a great change had taken place in the balance of power in Europe. For in 1516 Ferdinand of Spain died. He was succeeded by his grandson Charles, the son of his daughter Joanna. Through her Charles inherited all Spain, and all the Spanish conquests in Italy, as well as the vast Empire which Spain now claimed in the New World.
In 1519 the Emperor Maximilian died. Charles was also his grandson, his father being Philip, the son of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. From his grandfather Maximilian he inherited all the Austrian possessions of the Hapsburgs; from his grandmother Mary he inherited the Netherlands, comprising roughly the present kingdoms of Holland and Belgium.
Added to this Charles was elected emperor with the title of Charles V. So apart from his actual possessions he was suzerain of the German states and claimed with the title of emperor a vague lordship over the whole of Italy. He held Europe, it was said, by the four corners; and in days when wars of aggression were the right of the strong, the accumulation of so much power in the hands of one man threatened the freedom and peace of the continent.
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