Age of the Despots

AGE OF THE DESPOTS After the death of Frederick II. Italian affairs were managed by Manfred and by Charles of Anjou, the supreme captains of the parties, under whose orders acted the captains of the people in each city. The contest being carried on by warfare, it followed that the captains in the cities were chosen for their military skill, and warrior dynasties arose, in many cases descended from the old nobility absorbed into the bourgeoisie. Thus the Della Scala dynasty arose in Verona, and the Carraresi in Padua. The Estensi made themselves lords of Ferrara ; the Torriani headed the Guelphs of Milan. At Ravenna we find the Polenta family, at Rimini the Malatestas, at Parma the Rossi, at Piacenza the Scotti, at Faenza the Manfredi. In Tuscany, where the Guelph party was very strongly organized, and the commercial con stitution of Florence kept the nobility in check, the communes remained as yet free from hereditary masters. Yet generals from time to time arose, the Conte Ugolino della Gherardesca at Pisa, Uguccione della Faggiuola at Lucca, the Conte Guido da Monte feltro at Florence, who threatened the liberties of Tuscan cities with military despotism.

After the commencement of the 14th century, the civil wars decreased in fury, and at the same time it was perceived that their effect had been to confirm tyrants in their grasp upon free cities. Growing up out of the captain of the people or signore of the commune, the tyrant annihilated both parties for his own profit and for the peace of the state. In him, for the first time, the city attained self-consciousness; the blindly working forces of previous revolutions were combined in the will of a ruler. The tyrant's general policy was to favour the multitude at the expense of his own caste. He won favour by these means, and completed the levelling down of classes, which had been proceed ing ever since the emergence of the communes.

Decline of Civil War.

In 1309, Robert, grandson of Charles, the first Angevin sovereign, succeeded to the throne of Naples, and became the leader of the Guelphs in Italy. In the next year Henry VII. of Luxembourg crossed the Alps soon after his election to the empire, and raised the hopes of the Ghibellines.

Italy had entered on a new phase of her existence, and Dante's De monarchic represented a dream of the past which could not be realized. Henry established imperial vicars in the Lombard towns, confirming the tyrants, but gaining nothing for the empire in ex change for the titles he conferred. After receiving the crown in Rome, he died at Buonconvento, a little walled town south of Siena, in 1313. The profits of his inroad were reaped by despots.

From this epoch dates the supremacy of the Visconti of Milan. In Tuscany Castruccio Castracane, Uguccione's successor at Lucca, became formidable. In 1325 he defeated the Florentines at Alto Pascio, and carried home their carroccio as a trophy of his victory over the Guelphs. Louis the Bavarian, the next em peror, made a similar incursion in the year 1327, with even greater loss of imperial prestige. Equally contemptible in its political re sults and void of historical interest was the brief visit of John of Bohemia, son of Henry VII., whom the Ghibellines next invited to assume their leadership. He sold a few privileges, conferred a few titles, and recrossed the Alps in 1333. In spite of repeated efforts on the part of the Ghibellines, the imperialists gained no permanent advantage. The Italians were tired of fighting, and each city accepted a master to quench party strife, encourage trade, and make the handicraftsmen comfortable. Even the Florentines in 1342 submitted for a few months to the despotism of the duke of Athens, and had he not mismanaged matters, he might have held the city in his grasp. Italy was settling down and turning her attention to home comforts, arts and literature. Boccaccio, the contented bourgeois, succeeded to Dante, the fierce aristocrat.

The most marked proof of the change which came over Italy towards the middle of the 14th century is furnished by the com panies of adventure. The burghers no longer fought themselves, but played the game of warfare by the aid of mercenaries. Ec clesiastical overlords, prosperous republics, with plenty of money to spend but no leisure or inclination for camp-life; cautious tyrants courting popularity by exchanging conscription for taxa tion—all combined to favour the new system. Mercenary troops, originally foreign adventurers, soon appeared under their own captains, who hired them out to the highest bidder, or marched them on marauding expeditions up and down the less protected districts. As the companies grew in size and improved their dis cipline, it was seen by the Italian nobles that this kind of service offered a good career for men of spirit, who had learned the use of arms. To leave so powerful and profitable a calling in the hands of foreigners seemed both dangerous and uneconomical. Therefore, after the middle of the century, this profession fell into the hands of natives. The first Italian who formed an ex clusively Italian company was Alberico da Barbiano, a nobleman of Romagna, and founder of the Milanese house of Belgiojoso. In his school the great condottieri (q.v.), Braccio da Montone and Sforza Attendolo were formed ; and henceforth the battles of Italy were fought by Italian generals commanding native troops. But the new companies of adventure were in no sense patriotic. They sold themselves for money, irrespective of the cause which they upheld ; and, while changing masters, they had no care for any interests but their own. In the hands of able captains, like Francesco Sforza or Piccinino, these mercenary troops became moving despotisms, draining the country of its wealth, and always eager to fasten and found tyrannies upon the provinces they had been summoned to defend. Battles became all but bloodless; diplomacy and tactics superseded feats of arms and hard blows in pitched fields. In this way the Italians lost their military vigour, and the whole political spirit of the race was demoralized. The purely selfish bond between condottieri and their employers, whether princes or republics, involved in trigues and treachery which ended by making statecraft in Italy synonymous with perfidy.

It must further be noticed that the rise of mercenaries was synchronous with a change in the nature of Italian despotism. The tyrants, as we have already seen, established themselves as cap tains of the people, vicars of the empire, vicars for the Church, leaders of the Guelph and Ghibelline parties. They were accepted by a population eager for repose, who had merged old class distinctions in the conflicts of preceding centuries. As their tenure of power grew firmer, they advanced dynastic claims, assumed titles, and took the style of petty sovereigns. Their government became paternal ; and, though there was no limit to their cruelty when stung by terror, they used the purse rather than the sword. Thus was elaborated the type of despot which attained complete ness in Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Lorenzo de' Medici, who sub stituted cunning and corruption for violence. The lesser people tolerated him because he extended the power of their city and made it beautiful with public buildings. The bourgeoisie, pro tected in their trade, found it convenient to support him. The nobles, turned into courtiers, placemen, diplomatists and men of affairs, ended by preferring his authority to the alternative of democratic institutions. A lethargy of well-being, broken only by the pinch of taxation for war costs, or by occasional outbursts of cruelty, descended on the population of cities which had boasted of their freedom. Only Florence and Venice, at the close of the period upon which we are now entering, maintained their republi can independence. And Venice was ruled by a close oligarchy; Florence was passing from the hands of her oligarchs into the power of the Medicean merchants.

Between the year 1309, when Clement V. settled at Avignon, and the year when Nicholas V. re-established the papacy upon a solid basis at Rome, the Italians approximated more nearly to self-government than at any other epoch of their history. At the end of this century and a half, five principal powers divided the peninsula; and their confederated action during the next 45 years (1447-92) secured for Italy a season of peace and brilliant prosperity. These five powers were the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Milan, the republic of Florence, the republic of Venice and the papacy.

The Two Sicilies.

After the death of Joanna II. of Naples in who had had no children, the kingdom was f ought for between Rene of Anjou and Alfonso, surnamed the Magnanimous, king of Sicily, both of whom had been adopted by the late queen. During the war of succession which ensued, Alfonso was taken prisoner by the Genoese fleet in Aug. 1435, and was sent a prisoner to Filippo Maria at Milan, who supported Rene. Here he proved so incontestably the advantage which might ensue to the Visconti from his alliance, if he held the regno, that he obtained his release and recognition as king. Alfonso now reigned alone and un disturbed in Lower Italy, combining for the first time since the year 1282 the crowns of Sicily and Naples. When he died in 1458 he bequeathed Naples, which he had seized by conquest, to his natural son Ferdinand, while Sicily and Aragon passed to gether to his brother John, and so on to Ferdinand the Catholic.

The 23 years of Alfonso's reign were the most prosperous and splendid period of south Italian history. He had become an Italian in taste and sympathy, entering with enthusiasm into the humanistic ardour of the earlier Renaissance, encouraging men of letters at his court, administering his kingdom on the principles of an enlightened despotism, and lending his authority to establish that equilibrium in the peninsula upon which the politicians of his age fully believed that Italian independence might be based.

Milan.

Milan was ruled by the Visconti, and when in 1349, after the murder of Luchino, his brother John, archbishop of Milan, assumed the lordship of the city, he extended the power of the Visconti over Genoa and other parts of north Italy. He died in 1354, and his heritage was divided between three mem bers of his house, Matteo, Bernabo and Galeazzo. In the next year Matteo was assassinated by order of his brothers, who made an equal partition of their subject cities—Bernabo residing in Milan, Galeazzo in Pavia. Galeazzo married his daughter Violante to the English duke of Clarence, and his son Gian Galeazzo to a daughter of King John of France. When he died in 1378, this son murdered his uncle Bernal* and thus became the most formidable of Italian despots. Immured in his castle at Pavia, accumulating wealth by systematic taxation and methodical econ omy, he organized mercenary troops and threatened the whole of Italy with conquest. Gian Galeazzo, partly by force and partly by intrigue, pushed his dominion to the very verge of Venice, and, having subjected Lombardy to his sway, proceeded to attack Tuscany, when the plague suddenly cut short his career in 1402. Seven years before his death Gian Galeazzo bought the title of duke of Milan and count of Pavia from the emperor Wenceslaus, but no sooner was he dead than the essential weakness of an artificial state became apparent. The Visconti's own generals,

Facino Cane, Pandolfo Malatesta, Jacopo dal Verme, Gabrino Fondulo, Ottobon Terzo, seized several Lombard cities. In others the petty tyrants whom the Visconti had uprooted reappeared. The Estensi recovered their grasp upon Ferrara and the Gonzaga upon Mantua. Venice strengthened herself between the Adriatic and the Alps. Florence reassumed her Tuscan hegemony. Mean while Gian Galeazzo had left two sons, Giovanni Maria and Filippo Maria. Giovanni, a monster of cruelty and lust, was assassinated by some Milanese nobles in 1412 ; and now Filippo set about re building his father's duchy. Herein he was aided by the troops of Facino Cane, who, dying opportunely at this period, left con siderable wealth, a well-trained band of mercenaries, and a widow, Beatrice di Tenda. Filippo married and then beheaded Beatrice after a mock trial for adultery. He subsequently spent a long career in the attempt to carry out his schemes of Italian con quest. Venice and Florence offered a determined resistance ; nor was Filippo equal in ability to his father. In the course of his wars with Florence and Venice, the greatest generals of this age were formed—Francesco Carmagnola, who was beheaded at Venice in 1432; Niccolo Piccinino and Francesco Sforza. Sforza received the hand of Filippo's natural daughter, Bianca, and when the Vis conti dynasty ended by the duke's death in 1447, he pretended to espouse the cause of the Milanese republic, which was then re established; but he played his cards so subtly as to make himself, by the help of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence, duke de facto if not de iure. Once seated in the duchy of Milan, he displayed rare qualities as a ruler; for he not only entered into the spirit of the age, which required humanity and culture from a despot, but he also knew how to curb his desire for territory. The conception of confederated Italy found in him a vigorous supporter.

Florence.

After the expulsion of the duke of Athens in and the great plague of 1348, the Florentine proletariat rose up against the merchant princes, and in 1378, the Ciompi rebellion placed the city for a few years in the hands of the Lesser Arts. The revolution was but temporary, and the necessities of war and foreign affairs soon placed Florence in the power of an oligarchy headed by the great Albizzi family. They fought the bat tles of the republic with success against the Visconti, and widely extended the Florentine domain over the Tuscan cities. Pisa was then enslaved, and Florence gained access to the sea. However, throughout this period a powerful opposition was gathering strength. It was led by the Medici, who sided with the common people, and increased their political importance by the accumula tion and wise employment of vast commercial wealth. In the Albizzi and the Medici came to open strife. Cosimo de' Medici was exiled to Venice. In the next year he returned, and by a system of corruption and popularity-hunting, combined with the patronage of arts and letters, established himself as the real but unacknowledged dictator of the commonwealth. He sup ported Francesco Sforza in Milan, foreseeing that the dynastic future of his own family and the pacification of Italy might be secured by a balance of power in which Florence should rank on equal terms with Milan and Naples.

Venice.—The republic of Venice differed essentially from any other state in Italy. The constitution of the commonwealth had slowly matured itself through a series of revolutions. During the earlier days of the republic the doge had been a prince elected by the people, and answerable only to the popular assemblies. The several steps whereby the members of the grand council, formed in 1172, succeeded in eliminating the people from a share in the government, and reducing the doge to the position of their ornamental representative, cannot here be described. In 1297 an act was passed confining the grand council to a fixed number of privileged families, in whom the government was henceforth vested by hereditary right. The establishment in 1311 of the Council of Ten completed that famous constitution, which endured till the extinction of the republic in 1797. Meanwhile, throughout the middle ages, it had been the policy of Venice to confine her energies to commerce in the East. The first entry of any moment made by the Venetians into strictly Italian affairs was in 1336, when the republics of Florence and St. Mark allied themselves against Mastino della Scala, and Venice took possession of Treviso. After this, for 3o years, between 1352 and 1381, Venice and Genoa contested the supremacy of the Mediterranean. They fought their duel out upon the Bosporus, off Sardinia, and in the Morea, with various success. From the first great encounter, in 1355, Venice retired well-nigh exhausted, and Genoa was so crippled that she placed herself under the protection of the Vis conti. The second and decisive battle was fought upon the Adriatic. The Genoese fleet under Luciano Doria defeated the Venetians off Pola in 1379, and seized Chioggia. Thus the Vene tians found themselves blockaded in their own lagoons. Mean while a fleet was raised for their relief by Carlo Zeno in the Levant, and the admiral Vettor Pisani, who had been imprisoned after the defeat at Pola, was released to lead their forlorn hope from the city side. The Genoese in their turn were now blockaded in Chioggia, and forced by famine to surrender. The losses of men and money which the war of Chioggia entailed signed her naval ruin. During this second struggle with Genoa, the Venetians had been also at war with the Carraresi of Padua and the Scaligers of Verona. In 5406, of ter the extinction of these princely houses, they added Verona, Vicenza and Padua to their territories. Their career of conquest, and their new policy of directing Italian affairs were confirmed by the long dogeship of Francesco Foscari (1423-57). When Constantinople fell in the old ties be tween Venice and the Eastern empire were broken, and she now entered on a wholly new phase of her history. Ranking as one of the five Italian powers, she was also destined to defend Western Christendom against the encroachments of the Turk in Europe. (See VENICE: History.) The Papacy.—By their settlement in Avignon, the popes re linquished their protectorate of Italian liberties, and lost their position as Italian potentates. Rienzi's revolution in Rome 54), his establishment of a republic, and the rise of dynastic families in the cities of the Church, claiming the title of papal vicars, but acting in their own interests, weakened the authority of the Holy See. Although Cardinal Albornoz conquered Romagna and the March in 1364, the legates who resided in those districts were not long able to hold them against the local despots. At last Gregory XI. returned to Rome, and Urban VI., elected in 1378, put a final end to the Avignonian exile. But the Great Schism, which now distracted Western Christendom, so enfeebled the papacy, and kept the Roman pontiffs so engaged in ecclesias tical disputes, that they had neither power nor leisure to occupy themselves with their temporal affairs. The threatening presence of the two princely houses of Orsini and Colonna, alike dangerous as friends or foes, rendered Rome an unsafe residence. Even when the schism was nominally terminated in 1415 by the council of Constance, the next two popes held but a precarious grasp upon their Italian domains. At the same time, the growing con viction that a federation was necessary proved advantageous to the popes as sovereigns. They gradually assumed the style of despots and made use of the humanistic movement, then at its height, to place themselves in a new relation to Italy. The election of the distinguished humanist Thomas of Sarzana as Nicholas V. in 1447, opened a period of temporal splendour, which ended with the establishment of the popes as sovereigns. Soon after assuming the tiara, he found himself without a rival in the Church ; for the schism ended by Felix V.'s resignation in 1449. Nicholas began to rebuild and to fortify Rome, determin ing to render it once more a capital worthy of its high place in Europe.

Confederated Italy.

Italy was now for a brief space inde pendent. The humanistic movement had created a common cul ture, a common language and sense of common nationality. All political institutions tended towards despotism. The Medici be came yearly more indispensable to Florence, the Bentivoglio more autocratic in Bologna, the Baglioni in Perugia; and even Siena was ruled by the Petrucci. But this despotism was of a mild type. The princes were Italians ; they shared the common en thusiasms of the nation for art, learning, literature and science; they studied how to mask their tyranny with arts agreeable to the multitude. When Italy had reached this point, Constantinople was taken by the Turks. On all sides it was felt that the Italian alliance must be tightened ; and one of the last, best acts of Nicholas V.'s pontificate was the appeal in 1453 to the five great powers in federation. As regards their common opposition to the Turk, this appeal led to nothing; but it marked the growth of a new Italian consciousness.

Having become despots, the popes sought to establish their relatives in principalities. The word nepotism acquired new signif icance in the reigns of Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. But though the country was convulsed by no great struggle, the following years were marked by appalling increase of political crime; e.g., the revolt of the barons against Ferdinand I. of Naples the murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza at Milan (1476), and the plot of the Pazzi to destroy the Medici (1478). After Cosimo de' Medici's death in 1464, the leadership of the Florentine republic passed to his son Piero, who left it in 1469 to his sons Lorenzo and Giuliano. These youths assumed the style of princes, and it was against their lives that the Pazzi, with the sanction of Sixtus IV., made assault. Giuliano was murdered, but Lorenzo escaped to tighten his grasp upon the city, which now loved him and was proud of him. During the following 14 years he made himself absolute master of Florence. Apprehending the im portance of Italian federation, Lorenzo, by his personal tact and prudence, secured peace and a common intelligence between the five powers. His own family was fortified by the marriage of his daughter to a son of Innocent VIII., which procured his son Giovanni's elevation to the cardinalate, and involved two Medicean papacies and the future dependence of Florence upon Rome.