READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE : A.D. 1453-1900

CHAPTER V

WARS OF CHARLES VIII AND LOUIS XII IN ITALY. PONTIFICATE OF ALEXANDER VI. INTERVENTION OF FERDINAND THE CATHOLIC IN ITALY

THE weak mind of Charles VIII of France was filled with visions of glory and conquest; he deemed himself a paladin, and christened his firstborn son Roland after the hero of Roncesvalles. Louis XI had prudently declined to prosecute the claims to Naples bequeathed to him by Charles du Maine; in the mind of his son the conquest of that Kingdom was to be only the stepping-stone to the Empire of the East and the expulsion of the Turks from Constantinople. Charles assumed the title of King of Jerusalem, and received without a smile the homage paid him by his courtiers as Greek Emperor; which title he had bought from Andrew Palaeologus. His impolitic enterprise against Naples was warmly opposed by his sister, the late Regent, and by all the old statesmen of the school of Louis XI; but nothing could divert him from what he called his “voyage d'Italie”, in contemplation of which he made friends with his neighbors by three disadvantageous treaties; and he was supported in his scheme by interested politicians, as Etienne de Vese, formerly his valet de chambre, but now first president of the Chambre des Comtes, and by Briçonnet, Bishop of St. Malo, who expected to gain a Cardinal’s hat.

In the spring of 1494 Charles VIII dispatched ambassadors to some of the principal Italian States to beg their assistance in recovering Naples. King Ferdinand had died January 25th, and the Kingdom had devolved to his son Alfonso II, who was still more odious and unpopular than himself, for, with all his harshness and cruelty, Ferdinand possessed some good qualities. He loved and encouraged literature and art; he patronized Laurentius Valla, and Antonio Panormita, and his own letters and speeches, which have been published, display both eloquence and erudition. But Alfonso was nothing but a rough unlettered soldier. Charles VIII found slight encouragement from the Italians, except Ludovico il Moro, with whom he had a secret engagement. Ludovico undertook to provide him with troops and money, on condition of receiving the protection of the French and the Principality of Taranto, after the conquest of Naples should have been accomplished. The Venetians, alleging their danger from the Turks, declared that they should remain neutral. The Florentines, agreeably to their ancient traditions, would have sided with the French, but Peter de' Medici, who had entered into a treaty with Alfonso, while protesting his affection for France, gave the French ambassadors an evasive answer. Pope Alexander VI, though, as we have said, at first inclined to France, had begun to perceive that the establishment of a great foreign Power in Italy would defeat his plans for the aggrandizement of his family. Alfonso, too, after the death of his father, had courted the Pope’s friendship, and an intimate alliance had sprung up between them, cemented by the marriage of their natural children, Sancia, daughter of Alfonso, and Alexander's son Geoffrey. The Pope had therefore exhorted Charles to submit his claims to the decision of the Holy See, and subsequently, as Lord Paramount of Naples, had invested Alfonso II with that Kingdom.

The conduct of the French King displayed little of the vigor requisite for the great enterprise in which he had embarked. Although the French army had assembled at the foot of the Alps, he wasted his time at Lyon in tournaments, festivals, and amours, and when he was at length driven from that city by a pestilence ho found that he had squandered all his money. The undertaking seemed on the point of being abandoned, when a loan of 50,000 ducats from a Milanese merchant enabled the army to resume its march. Charles crossed Mont-Génèvre September 2nd, 1494, and passing through Susa and Turin, was met at Asti by Ludovico Sforza with a brilliant retinue, including many ladies. Charles now renewed the follies of Lyon, and contracted a disorder by his debaucheries which detained him at Asti till the 6th of October. He was still so poor that he was compelled to borrow, and he pledged the jewels of the Duchess Dowager of Savoy and the widowed Marchioness of Montferrat in order to proceed. Ludovico, who had accompanied the King as far as Piacenza, was recalled to Milan by the death of his nephew, the dispossessed Duke Gian Galeazzo, who expired in the Castle of Pavia, October 22nd, at the age of twenty-five. His death was universally ascribed to poison administered to him by order of his uncle, and the proceedings of Ludovico strongly confirm this suspicion. Gian Galeazzo had left an infant son; but Ludovico, on pretense that the times were too dangerous for a minority, caused himself to be elected Duke by a body of his partisans; and his title was afterwards confirmed by a diploma which he obtained from the Emperor Maximilian. The widowed Duchess Isabella was confined with her two infant children in the Castle of Pavia. . 

At Piacenza Charles held a council respecting the route to be adopted. The union of Tuscany with the Pope and the King of Naples seemed to impose an impenetrable barrier to his advance; but it was known that there was a strong party in Florence opposed to the Medici; and though Charles had driven from France all the agents of that family, he had respected the privileges of the other Florentine houses of commerce. Pisa also expected her liberation from the Florentine yoke at the hands of the French. It was resolved to proceed through Florence and Rome. No sooner did the French enter Tuscany than the lurking discontent against Peter de’ Medici exploded. Conscious of his danger he hastened to Sarsanella to deprecate the anger of the French King, and without even consulting his fellow-citizens, agreed to give Charles immediate possession of all the Tuscan fortresses, including Leghorn and Pisa, on condition that they should be restored after the conquest of Naples. He also undertook to supply Charles with a loan of 200,000 florins, in consideration of which Florence was to be taken under protection of France; and it was agreed that a treaty to this effect should be executed at Florence.

The facility with which Peter de’ Medici made these large concessions excited the astonishment and ridicule even of the French themselves. Very different were the feelings of the Florentines, who, however much they desired the French alliance, were indignant at Peter’s pusillanimous submission. On his return he found the gates of the Public Palace closed and guarded, the interview which he requested with the magistrates was refused, and symptoms of tumult appeared among the people. In vain did the young Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici proceed with his servants and retainers through some of the principal streets shouting Palle! Palle!—the well-known rallying cry of the family—not a voice responded. At the Porta St. Gallo, Peter and his brother Julian also attempted to excite a movement in their favor by distributing money among the populace, but they were answered only with threats; and alarmed by the sound of the tocsin they fled to the Apennines, where they were soon joined by the Cardinal in the disguise of a Franciscan. The Signory now declared the Medici traitors, confiscated their possessions, and offered a reward for their heads; at the same time Charles allowed the Pisans to expel the Florentine magistrates and to become free; and the Lion of Florence was flung into the Arno amid cries of Viva Francia!

This revolution placed a remarkable man at the head of the Florentine Republic, Girolamo Savonarola. Born at Ferrara in 1452, of a respectable Paduan family settled in that town, Savonarola’s temperament was marked by a nervous sensibility, heightened, it is said, by a disappointment in love. He viewed with disgust the crimes and profligacy then prevalent in Italy; hence he was inclined to renounce the world, and at the age of twenty-three he took the monastic vows in a Dominican convent at Bologna. His learning was considerable. He had been a deep student of the scholastic philosophy, and of the works of Thomas Aquinas; from the former he acquired a tendency to subtlety and sophistry, from the latter, combined with an assiduous reading of the Old Testament and the Apocalypse, his religious exaltation was much augmented. He began to fancy that the dreams to which he had been subject from childhood were visions and inspirations, and he spent whole nights in prayer and contemplation. In 1489 he proceeded to Florence and entered the Dominican convent of St. Mark, of which he became Prior in 1491. At Florence he began to advocate a reformation of the Church, which was, indeed, very much needed. He was also the champion of civil liberty; and while as a religious reformer the wicked lives of the Popes supplied him abundantly with topics, so as a political one he denounced the tyrannical domination of the Medici. He regarded Lorenzo de’ Medici as the destroyer of his country’s freedom; he would neither visit him nor show him any mark of respect; though Lorenzo, struck by the friar’s reputation, courted his friendship and even sent for him on his deathbed to hear his confession. But the highly dramatic scene which is said to have ensued between them, described by Villari and other biographers, in which the friar refused to give Lorenzo absolution unless he restored the liberty of the people, seems hardly to be true.

Savonarola appears to have gained his great influence by means of his sermons. These were not in the old scholastic method, but original both in matter and language, and highly dramatic; filled with apostrophes and interrogations, and delivered with great fire and vehement gesticulation. We are not surprised to hear that he often made his hearers weep; a more astounding effect was, that they are said to have caused several merchants and bankers to refund their ill-gotten gains. In this case, if it be true, he certainly worked a miracle. Through his ministry the whole aspect of the city was changed. Luxury and show were abandoned; the songs of the carnival gave place to hymns; and the Bible and the works of the Frate formed almost the only reading of the people.

Such a character was most formidable to a ruler like Peter de’ Medici. Savonarola seized the moment to overthrow him, and at the head of a Florentine embassy appeared before Charles VIII at Lucca, where he addressed that monarch in the style of a prophet, and promised him victory in this world, Paradise in the next, provided he protected Florence. Charles replied with vague protestations, and entering Florence November 17th, took up his residence in the palace of the Medici. The wealth of the city was tempting, and Charles imagined that it lay at his disposal he intimated his intention of recalling Peter de’ Medici, of appointing him his lieutenant, and of imposing a fine upon the citizens. But he had miscalculated his own strength and the disposition of the Florentines. The solid lofty towers and palaces of Florence, with small windows at great height from the ground and secured by massive bars of iron, have the air of prisons and the strength of fortresses, for which indeed they often served in the factious wars of the Republic. These the wary Florentines had filled with armed men, and they had also given notice to the surrounding peasantry to hasten to the town's help at the first sound of the tocsin. When the citizens energetically protested against Charles's intentions, he exclaimed:

“Then I shall bid my trumpets sound”.

“Sound them!” replied Pietro Capponi, the intrepid leader of the people: “they shall be answered by our tocsin!” and with these words he snatched from the King’s Secretary the royal ultimatum and tore it into shreds. Charles was thunderstruck. Fresh negotiations were entered into; the French King abandoned the Medici, and contented himself with a subsidy of 20,000 ducats and military occupation of some of the principal Tuscan towns. During their stay at Florence, the French pillaged the palace of the Medici in the Via Larga, when all its rich collections of art and literature were scattered and lost.

STORY OF ZIZIM.

Charles now resumed his march. Pope Alexander VI, alarmed at his approach, anxiously debated whether he should fly with his Cardinals, or endure a siege, or submit to the French. At length he decided to resist, and allowed Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, to enter Rome with a division of the Neapolitan army; but symptoms of insurrection in the city obliged the Pope again to negotiate. Charles refused to treat till he had entered Rome, into which he was admitted December 31st; the Neapolitans defiling through the southern gate of St. Sebastian while the French were entering by the northern Porta del Popolo. Their van began to enter the gate at three in the afternoon, and it was nine before the rear had passed by torchlight. In front marched serried battalions of Swiss and other German lance-knights, whose robust and warlike figures wore displayed to advantage by their tight jackets and pantaloons of variegated and brilliant colors. Their arms were long pikes, enormous halberds, arquebuses, and two-handed swords. The first rank of each battalion wore helmets and cuirasses; and to every 1,000 men was assigned a company of 100 fusiliers. Then came the French light infantry and crossbow-men, mostly Gascons, and remarkable for agility rather than strength. These were followed by long columns of the compagnies d'ordonnance, about 1,600 lances, or 9,600 horsemen. The King himself came next, surrounded by 100 gentlemen and 400 archers, in magnificent costumes, forming his household guard. He was clad in gilt armor adorned with jewels, and wore his crown. An eyewitness describes him as the ugliest man he ever saw, but is loud in praising the appearance of his troops. The rear was brought up by thirty-six brass cannons, with a number of culverins and falconets. The lightness of this artillery, which was drawn by horses instead of oxen, and the rapidity with which the guns were maneuvered, excited the surprise of the Italians. The infantry had also adopted many new evolutions in maneuvering and fighting. The whole French army, including camp followers, amounted to between 50,000 and 60,000 men. Alexander VI had shut himself up in the Castle of St. Angelo. His fears were not groundless, for he had many active enemies in the King's suite, and especially Cardinal Julian della Rovere, who advised Charles to call a Council, depose the Pope, and reform the Church. The Cardinal had in his possession proofs of certain negotiations into which Alexander had entered with Sultan Bajazet, who well knew that the views of the French King extended to Constantinople. Such was the friendship of the heads of Islam and of Christendom, that the Pope was said to make Bishops and Cardinals at the nomination of the Sultan. Their alliance was cemented by a singular circumstance.

After the death of Mahomet II in 1481, his Grand Vizier, Mahomet Mischani, wishing to secure the succession for the Sultan’s younger son Dschem, or Zizim, to the prejudice of Bajazet, the elder, for some time concealed the death of Mahomet till Zizim should arrive in Constantinople. But the secret got wind; the Janissaries with wild cries broke into the Seraglio, demanding to see their master, and when they beheld the Sultan's corpse, cut down his faithless Vizier. Parading the streets of Constantinople with Mischani’s head on a lance, they shouted for “Sultan Bajazet and double pay!” and when the new Sultan at length arrived in the capital from his government of Amasia, he found himself obliged to comply with their demand. Zizim, who was in Caramania at the time of his father’s death, succeeded in seizing Prusa; but he was defeated by Bajazet in a decisive battle on the plains of Jenischer, and fled into Egypt, where he was honorably received by the Egyptian Sultan; and after another unsuccessful attempt to wrest the scepter from his brother, he found an asylum among the Knights of Rhodes, with only thirty attendants. To secure so valuable a pledge, the Knights, with the consent of Pope Sixtus IV, sent Zizim to France (1483), where he was kept several years in different fortresses belonging to them in that Kingdom. Bajazet II cultivated a good understanding with the Knights as the keepers of his brother, allowed them 45,000 ducats yearly for his maintenance, and made them the costly present of the right hand of St. John the Baptist, one of the most precious relics in St. John’s Church at Rhodes. At length in 1489, Pope Innocent VIII, by granting extraordinary privileges to the Order, and making their Grand-Master a Cardinal, induced them to deliver up Zizim, who was brought to Rome. In the following year, Innocent, finding all his attempts to get up a crusade abortive, negotiated a treaty with Bajazet, from whom he received the arrears of Zizim’s pension, together with some rich presents. He had previously refused the much higher offers of the Sultan of Egypt; which included 400,000 ducats for Zizim’s ransom, the re-erection of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and in case of success against Bajazet, the abandonment of all the Turkish possessions in Europe.

Under Pope Alexander VI Zizim became the victim of the most detestable policy. In Alexander’s negotiations with the Sultan with a view to obtain the latter’s assistance against the French invaders, it was represented to be Charles’s object to get possession of Zizim’s person, in order to make use of him in his designs upon the Turkish Empire; and at the same time the payment of the yearly pension was strongly pressed. Bajazet promised the desired assistance, and in his letter to the Pope expressed without circumlocution the great pleasure it would afford him if his Holiness would as quickly as possible release his brother from all the troubles of this wicked and transitory world. When this service should have been performed and proved by the receipt of Zizim’s body, then the Sultan was ready to pay 300,000 ducats wherewith to purchase any territories that Alexander might desire for his sons. It is not clear how far Alexander was inclined to accede to Bajazet’s offers; and the negotiations were still going on when Charles VIII appeared in Italy.

It would not have been difficult to frame an accusation against Alexander; his crimes were only too many and too notorious. Cardinal Ascanio Sforza and several of his colleagues charged him truly with having bought the Pontificate, forgetting, however, that they themselves had been the sellers! But among his numerous enemies he had at least one friend who enjoyed the ear of Charles—Briçonnet, Bishop of St Malo, who had been gained with a Cardinal’s hat. He and a few other courtiers spoke in favor of Alexander; and Charles declined the magnificent part of reforming the Church. On January 11th, 1495, a treaty was concluded between him and the Pope, by which Alexander agreed to leave Cività Vecchia, Terracina, and Spoleto in French hands till the conquest of Naples should have been effected, and to deliver Zizim into Charles's hands for six months; for which the French King was to pay down 20,000 ducats, and to procure the security of Venetian and Florentine merchants for the restoration of Zizim at the expiration of the stipulated period; but Alexander would not promise Charles the investiture of Naples, except “with reservation of the rights of others”. He consented, however, that his bastard son, the Cardinal of Valencia, should follow the French King to Naples, with the title of Legate, but in reality as a hostage. This was the notorious Caesar Borgia, who, according to the remark of Guicciardini, seemed to be born only that a man might be found wicked enough to execute the designs of his father.

Charles conducted himself while at Rome as master, except that he submitted to perform in St. Peter’s the degrading ceremonial invented by the pride of the Roman Pontiffs. He quitted Rome January 28th, 1495, carrying with him Caesar Borgia and Zizim. But Caesar escaped the following day, and Zizim did not long survive. He was already attacked with a lingering disorder, of which he died, February 28th, at the age of thirty-five. It was very generally believed that a slow poison had been administered to him before he left Rome by order of Pope Alexander: who was willing either to earn the Sultan’s blood-money, or at least to frustrate Charles’s plans, which the possession of Zizim’s person would have helped to forward. The unfortunate Zizim is described as having something noble and royal in his aspect; his mind had been cultivated by the study of Arabic literature; his address was polite and engaging, and he had borne his misfortunes at once with dignity and modesty.

At Velletri Charles was overtaken by Don Juan de Albion and Antonio de Fonseca, ambassadors of Ferdinand and Isabella, who were instructed to declare that their Sovereigns would not permit the Aragonese dominion in Naples to be overthrown. Alexander VI, in order to obtain the interference of the Spanish Sovereigns in this matter, had granted them several important privileges; among them the title of “Catholic” (1494), in consideration of their eminent virtues, and their zeal in defense of the true faith, as shown by the subjugation of the Moors, the extirpation of the Jewish infidelity, and other acts. The Spanish ambassadors now exhorted Charles to submit his claims to the Pope’s arbitration; and affirmed that if he declined this method the treaty of Barcelona recognized their masters’ right to interfere in defense of the Church. Ferdinand had, indeed, sent an ambassador to Charles at Vienne, before he crossed the Alps, to protest against any attempt upon Naples. But the French put quite a different interpretation on the treaty, and at Velletri Charles and his generals attacked the ambassadors in the most furious terms, reproaching them with the perfidy of their masters. Fonseca replied to these remarks by publicly tearing up the treaty.

This Spanish protest did not arrest the advance of Charles. Two little towns in the Campagna which resisted were taken by storm, and the garrisons barbarously put to the sword—a manner of war-making which greatly alarmed the Italians, accustomed to their own almost bloodless combats. A French corps had penetrated into the Abruzzi, and as they advanced the people everywhere rose in their favor, such had been the revolting despotism of Alfonso and his father. Although Alfonso had displayed considerable military talent, he was struck with terror at the approach of the French. As soon as his son, the Duke of Calabria, returned from Rome, Alfonso abdicated in his favor, and the former, now aged twenty-five, ascended the Neapolitan throne with the title of Ferdinand II. The abdicated monarch, who is said to have been haunted with constant visions of the nobles he had put to death, retired into Sicily, where he died a few months after in a convent at Mazzara.

Ferdinand II, in order to prevent the French from entering the Terra di Lavoro, had posted himself with all his forces in the defiles of San Germano, near the river Garigliano; but on the approach of the French the Neapolitan infantry disbanded, and Ferdinand retired with his gens d'armes to Capua, with the view of disputing the passage of the Volturno. The rumor of a riot, however, called him to Naples, and when he returned to Capua he found the gates closed against him, Gian Giacopo Trivulzio, one of his principal commanders, having treacherously entered into a capitulation with the French and gone over to the service of Charles. Ferdinand now hastened back to Naples, and found it in insurrection; wherefore, leaving some troops to hold the castles, and burning or sinking all the vessels which he could not carry off, he retired to Ischia, and afterwards sailed to Sicily with about fifteen ships. Charles now entered Naples (February 22nd, 1495) amid the acclamations of the populace: a few days after the castles capitulated; and in a few weeks the whole Kingdom had submitted, with exception of five or six towns and a few fortresses.

All Europe was struck with amazement at this sudden and unexpected conquest. But the very facility of Charles’s success was fatal to its permanence. The Italians became objects of contempt to him and his young courtiers; and instead of securing the places which still held out, he plunged headlong into luxury and dissipation. He alienated the hearts even of those Neapolitan nobles who had favored his cause, by depriving them of their offices, which he bestowed on his own courtiers and favorites; and he offended Ludovico Sforza by refusing him the promised Principality of Taranto. Ludovico now began to repent of having called the French into Italy; he knew that they detested him for his conduct towards his nephew; he had neither foreseen nor desired their rapid success; and the neighborhood of the Duke of Orleans, the sole legitimate descendant of the Visconti, who had been detained at Asti by illness, and who openly proclaimed Ludovico a usurper, filled him with apprehension and alarm. With these feelings he turned towards those States which were also averse to see French domination established in Italy, and especially Venice, which became the center of agitation against the French. Envoys of various Powers assembled there, as if by common consent, whose conferences were conducted by night, and with such secrecy, that Comines, the French ambassador, was astounded when ho at length heard of them. The Italians naturally turned their eyes towards the Emperor and the Spanish King. Maximilian was still smarting under the insults and wrongs he had received at the hands of Charles VIII, while Ferdinand of Spain was averse to see the bastard branch of the house of Aragon driven from Naples, and the French established in such near proximity to his own Kingdom of Sicily. Under these circumstances a treaty of alliance was signed at Venice, March 31st, 1495, by the Emperor, the Spanish King, the Pope, the Venetian Republic, and the Duke of Milan. Although Sultan Bajazet II was no party to the treaty, his ambassador had taken part in the negotiations, and he offered to help the Venetians with all his force against the French. Florence refused to join the league.

The treaty of Venice is remarkable as the first example in modern history of extensive combinations among European potentates. To all appearance the alliance was merely defensive; but the contracting parties had secretly agreed to help Ferdinand II against the French, and to make a diversion on the territory of France. Its fruits soon began to show themselves. The Pope refused Charles VIII the investiture of Naples; a Venetian fleet appeared on the coast of Apulia; and a Spanish army landed in Sicily. When Charles found that he could expect neither coronation nor investiture at the Pope’s hand he resolved to dispense with both, and to supply their place by the ceremony of a solemn entry into Naples. This he accordingly performed, May 12th, 1495, in the costume of Eastern Roman Emperor—a scarlet mantle trimmed with ermine, a crown closed in front, a golden globe in his right hand, a scepter in his left.

Although Charles had perhaps determined to abandon his new conquest before he heard of the league which had been formed against him, the intelligence of it certainly quickened his movements. The French character seems scarcely to have altered since those days. The Court of Charles diverted itself with little interludes, or soties, in which the parties to the coalition were turned into ridicule. But the laughter was mingled with alarm. Nothing could be worse advised than the course pursued by Charles in this conjuncture. He should either have evacuated Naples entirely, or resolved to hold it against all comers; instead of which, he divided his army, starting himself from Naples, May 20th, at the head of 1,000 lances (or 6,000 horse), and 5,000 foot, leaving the rest of his army under command of Colonna and Savelli, two Ghibelin Roman nobles, who subsequently repaid his confidence and favor by deserting him. The arrangements made by Charles for the conduct of the government were equally imprudent. His cousin, Gilbert of Bourbon, Count of Montpensier, who seldom quitted his bed till noon, was named Viceroy; while Etienne do Vese, whose solo merit consisted in having advised the expedition, and who had been made Duke of Nola and Governor of Gaeta, was entrusted with the finances. There was, however, neither money in the treasury nor provisions or ammunition in the fortresses. The only good appointment was that of Robert Stuart, a Scot of noble birth, and in France Lord of Aubigny, who was made Constable of Naples and Governor of Calabria. D'Aubigny had led the French van, and proved himself a good soldier. The French returned through the Roman States without molestation. The Pope had fled with his troops to Perugia, nor could Charles’s protestations of friendship induce him to return.

In Florence many changes had been effected since the French King passed through it. The expulsion of the Medici had necessitated a new form of government. The chief counselors on this occasion were two doctors of laws, Paoloantonio Soderini and Guidantonio Vespucci. Soderini, who had been ambassador at Venice, proposed as a model, the constitution of that Republic; and the Florentines, comparing its stability with the frequent changes in their own government, were for the most part inclined to adopt his views. He proposed to abolish the Councils of the Commune and of the People, and to substitute for them a Consiglio Maggiore, or Greater Council, like the Venetian Gran Consiglio, in which the people should elect magistrates and pass laws; and a smaller Council of Ottimati, or chief men, forming a kind of Senate, like the Venetian Pregati. He was for retaining the Signoria, or executive government, the Otto, or Eight, the Dieci, or Ten, and the Gonfaloniers. The only opposition to these plans regarded the two Councils, and especially the greater one. Vespucci, and those of the aristocratic party who were unfriendly to the Medici, and desired a restoration of the government which had prevailed under the Albizzi, objected that the great Council of Venice was composed of gentlemen; that the Venetians had had from the earliest times a numerous and powerful aristocracy, which had never been seen at Florence; that the Medici had destroyed what little difference once subsisted between the various orders, and reduced all to a dead level, which admitted only an absolute democracy or an absolute tyranny; and that even the Venetian populace were more serious and tranquil then the Florentine. To which it was replied, that the Venetian people had not, like the Florentines, the right of citizenship, which rendered a plebeian of Florence equal to a noble of Venice. It was further urged that the establishment of too narrow a government would breed discontent and riot, and thus produce either an unbridled license or the return of the Medici.

This last reason apart, it can hardly be doubted that abstractedly the view of Vespucci and his party was the wiser one; for experience has shown that no free constitution can for any lengthened period maintain itself without a considerable admixture of aristocracy. Proofs of this may be seen on the one side in the histories of Rome, Venice, and England; on the other, in those of Florence, Genoa, and France. But Soderini’s views prevailed, chiefly through the preaching of Savonarola, whose sermons at this period were almost entirely political. The monk of St. Mark’s threw himself vehemently into the popular party; but his aims were not altogether those of Soderini. His wish was to convert Florence into a theocracy, of which Christ was to be Head and King; that is, in other words, Savonarola himself and his monks. He did not, indeed, seek any actual share in the government; he was only to be the Prophet of the Republic; but we may see by the example of Calvin at Geneva that the spiritual head of a theocratic State is absolute. To enforce his views, he assumed the prophetic character which he had gained by one or two lucky predictions; and his pretensions were aided by the superstition and the belief in the supernatural which then prevailed. Hence he did not scruple to proclaim from the pulpit that the Virgin Mary counseled the new constitution, and that the Lord commanded the abolition of Parliaments! It should also be stated that the services which he had rendered to Florence in its transactions with the French, had naturally given him some influence with the more sober politicians, and they were not averse from employing his influence in favor of their views.

Florence now became divided into three parties, first: those who supported the new constitution and Savonarola. These were called Frateschi (followers of the friar) and Bianchi (or Whites). At a later period they got from their adversaries the name of Piagnoni, or weepers. Secondly, those who favored the new order of things, but were not followers of Savonarola. They were mostly rich and powerful men, who hated the Medici. From their violence, they obtained the name of Arrabiati, or raving madmen; and later, from their love of good cheer, that of Compagnacci, jolly companions, or Libertines. The chief of this party was Pietro Capponi, a man of ancient family, whose defiance of the French King has been related. A brave soldier and good captain, he got the name of “the Arm of the Republic”; but he was better in the field than in the council-chamber. He had little faith in Savonarola. Lastly, there was a third party, which secretly were partisans of the Medici. These were called Bigi, or Greys. The chief supporters of Savonarola were Soderini and Francesco Valori, afterwards called “the Florentine Cato”, a man of more heart than head.

Such was the political state of Florence, when in 1495 Charles VIII again marched through Tuscany on his retreat from Naples. Savonarola went out to meet him at Poggibonsi, where, assuming his sacred and prophetical character, he reproached the King both with his negligence in reforming the Church and the breach of his engagements with Florence: and he warned Charles that if he did not alter his conduct the hand of God would lie heavy upon him. The Prophet, however, was not blind to the temporal interests of his country. He insisted that Charles should restore Pisa to the Florentines, which city had formed a coalition with Siena and Lucca. Charles faltered out an ambiguous answer, postponing his decision; but in point of fact he decided for the Pisans, as he left a French garrison in that city, as well as in the other maritime places.

BATTLE OF FORNOVO

Charles resumed his march for Lombardy, June 23rd. That land had already become the theatre of war. Ludovico Sforza had summoned Louis, Duke of Orleans, to evacuate Asti and renounce his pretensions to Milan; but the troops sent to enforce this summons were repulsed by the Duke of Orleans, who, following up his success, surprised Novara (June 11th), which was delivered to him by a party unfriendly to Sforza. Ludovico would probably have been overthrown had Louis marched straight to Milan; but be had not courage enough for so bold a step, and his delay enabled Ludovico to procure a number of lance-knights from Germany, besides other reinforcements. With part of these he blockaded the Duke of Orleans in Novara, and the rest were dispatched to the neighborhood of Parma, where the Venetian army, under Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, was assembling, to arrest the progress of Charles. Their force was reckoned at 35,000 combatants, among whom were 2,600 lances, and from 2,000 to 3,000 Stradiots, a sort of irregular light cavalry levied by the Venetians in their Greek and Albanian dominions, whose mode of fighting somewhat resembled that of the Arabs. The numerical superiority of the Allies seems to have inspired them with a contempt for the French, whom they suffered to pass unmolested the defiles of the Apennines, between the Lunigiana and the Parmesan, through which the infantry were obliged to drag their guns during five days of assiduous and exhausting toil. At length the French army stood on the plains of Lombardy (July 5th), at the village of Fornovo on the Taro. The sight of the numberless tents which covered the hills above that stream struck Charles and his generals with alarm, and he tried to negotiate with the two Venetian Proveditori—functionaries who generally accompanied the Venetian armies to act as a check upon the commanders. He merely requested a free passage, and repudiated any intention of attacking the Duke of Milan or his Allies. The Venetians, however, decided for a battle.

Charles when he entered Italy had been obliged to raise money by pawning ladies’ jewels; but now on his return his army of 10,000 men was accompanied and impeded by a baggage train of 6,000 beasts of burden: a strong proof of the rich spoil they were carrying away. Besides this booty a great many works of art, as sculptures, bronze gates, architectural ornaments, &c, had been seized at Naples and shipped for France, but were recaptured by a Biscayan and Genoese fleet. After the French had crossed the Taro, this enormous baggage train, which had been placed in the rear for safety, naturally drew the attention of the Allies, whose first attack was directed to that quarter; and the King himself, hastening with his household troops to defend the baggage, precipitated himself into a danger from which he escaped only by the fleetness of his horse. But the hope of plunder proved a snare to the Allies. The Stradiots, instead of charge the French gens d'armes, as they were ordered, made towards the baggage to share the spoil, and were soon followed by other troops; meanwhile the main body of the French came up, and easily overthrow the disordered ranks of the Allies (July 6th).

The battle of Fornovo, which lasted only an hour or two, cost the Italians between 3,000 and 4,000 men, whilst the loss of the French was only about 200. The safety of their army was now assured, which arrived before Asti without further molestation, July 10th. The Italians proceeded to join the Duke of Milan, who, as we have said, was blockading the Duke of Orleans in Novara. Meanwhile the careless Charles was solacing himself in his camp at Asti with a new mistress, Anna Soleri, regardless of the pressing solicitations for help which he received from the Duke of Orleans; and it was not till September 11th that he moved forward to Vercelli on the road to Novara. Negotiations for peace had however been entered into with Sforza and the Venetians, through the mediation of the Duchess of Savoy, and on the 10th of October a treaty was signed at Vercelli, by which it was agreed that Novara should be evacuated. Lodovico Sforza engaged to acknowledge himself the vassal of the French King for Genoa, and to permit that city to fit out armaments for the service of France; he agreed to remain in the Venetian league only so long as nothing was meditated against France; to allow the French a passage through his territories, and even to accompany Charles to Naples, if he returned into Italy in person. Charles on his side promised not to support the pretensions of the Duke of Orleans to Milan, and Lodovico agreed to pay 50,000 ducats to that Prince, and to cancel a debt of the King’s of 80,000. The Venetians would not directly accede to this treaty; but they declared that they had no war with the King of France on their own account, and that they had merely seconded the Duke of Milan as their ally. Charles also cultivated the good will of the Florentines by sacrificing to them the Pisans, though an amnesty was stipulated in their favor. Without waiting for the execution of these arrangements, he hastened back to France, leaving a corps at Asti under command of Trivulzio; and reaching Lyon, November 9th, after fourteen months’ absence, he again abandoned himself to pleasure, from which not even the death of his only son Roland could snatch him.

Charles had not quitted Naples a week when his competitor, Ferdinand II, landed at Reggio with an army composed of Spanish and Sicilian troops. We have already mentioned the protest of Ferdinand of Aragon against Charles’s enterprise; and he had now sent a body of Spaniards to aid the Neapolitan King, under command of Gonsalvo de Cordova; but that commander was completely defeated at Seminara by Stuart d'Aubigny with a small body of French and Swiss, and compelled to re-embark for Sicily. Thus Gonsalvo was unsuccessful in his first battle; but it was the only one he ever lost. Ferdinand II, however, did not despair. His party in Naples was daily increasing, and speedily returning with a mere handful of soldiers, he ventured to land within a mile of that city. Montpensier, who went out to oppose him with nearly all his garrison, had scarcely left the town when his ears were saluted with the sound of alarm bells from all the churches. At this signal for insurrection the Viceroy hastened back; an obstinate fight ensued in the streets, in which the French were worsted and obliged to shut themselves up in the Castle of St. Elmo, the Castello Nuovo, and the Castello d'Uovo, whilst Ferdinand entered the city amid the acclamations of the multitude. This happened on July 7th, a day after the battle of Fornovo. Nearly the whole of the southern coast now raised the banner of Ferdinand II, and the Venetians assisted in recovering several towns on the Adriatic.

The French at Naples were soon starved into surrender. Montpensier, in violation of a capitulation which he had entered upon, had previously quitted the castles with 2,500 men, with whom he succeeded in embarking, and landed at Salerno. The French might still have supported themselves in Italy had they received any assistance from Charles VIII; but for this, with exception of a small body of infantry landed at Gaeta, they looked in vain. The sensual Charles, sunk in indolence and luxury, which had produced a bad state of health, was completely governed by Cardinal Briçonnet, who had been bribed, it is supposed, by the Pope and the Duke of Milan; and he threw so many obstacles in the way of a second Italian expedition that Charles gave it up in disgust. Montpensier, aided by some Roman and Neapolitan barons, continued the war, till he was shut up by Ferdinand and his allies at Atella in the Basilicata; when, being deserted by his Swiss and other German mercenaries, he was forced to make a second capitulation (July 20th, 1496), by which he surrendered most of the places held by the French, on condition of their being allowed to return to France with their personal effects. The French troops were cantoned at Baie and the neighborhood to await transport, where an epidemic broke out which carried off great numbers of them, including Montpensier himself. It is said that Ferdinand II had purposely selected these unhealthy quarters. Soon after the fall of Atella, Gonsalvo de Cordova defeated D'Aubigny in Calabria, and compelled him also to retire to France.

The Kingdom of Naples, or of Sicily this side the Faro, was thus again brought under obedience to Ferdinand II, who, however, did not long live to enjoy his success. Having contracted an incestuous marriage with his aunt, Joanna, who was of much the same age as himself, he retired for the honeymoon to the Castle of La Somma, at the foot of Vesuvius, where he shortly after died, September 7th, 1496, at the age of twenty-seven. He was succeeded without opposition by his uncle Frederick II, a popular and able Prince. Frederick soon compelled the French garrisons in Gaeta, Venosa, and Taranto, which had been excepted from Montpensier’s capitulation, to evacuate those places, and embark with the body of the French army. Thus before the close of 1496 all trace of Charles’s rapid conquest had disappeared. Its effects, however, remained: especially it had inspired the more warlike, or less thinking, portion of the French people with a blind ardor for distant conquests; and the like passion had also been roused in the Germans and Spaniards who served in these wars. Italy, prostrate by its own quarrels, seemed to offer an easy prey to the foreigner; nor did this foretaste of danger suffice to reunite its peoples.

War had continued to rage in Tuscany, where Lucca, Siena, and Pisa still resisted the domination of the Florentines. The French generals had neglected to carry out the arrangement of Charles with the Florentines, and Leghorn alone had been restored to them. At Pisa, the French commandant, Entraigues, infatuated by love for a Pisan belle, had been persuaded by her to give up the citadel to the inhabitants instead of to the Florentines, whilst other French officers sold Sarzana and Pietra Santa to the Genoese and Lucchese. Pisa, protected by Lodovico Sforza and the Venetians, retained its independence fourteen years. Ludovico persuaded the Emperor Maximilian to undertake the siege of Leghorn in person, at the head of the allied forces; but the enterprise proved a ridiculous failure.

At the beginning of 1947 Charles VIII made a feeble attempts to revenge himself on Sforza for the loss of Naples. Some 1.200 men under Trivulzio and Cardinal Julian Della Rovere made an attack upon Genoa, which entirely failed; and a truce of six months was then agreed upon between France and the allies. A blow struck at Milan might probably have been successful; but the Duke of Orleans, now, by the death of the Dauphin Roland, heir presumptive of the French Crown, had incurred the jealousy of Charles, who felt no inclination to support his claims to the Milanese. On the expiration of the truce in October, it was renewed only between France and Spain. Ferdinand the Catholic, who had no more regard for the bonds of kinship than for the faith of treaties, had already begun to harbor designs against the dominions of his Neapolitan cousin, which were to be carried out in conjunction with France.

SPANISH MARRIAGES. 

During Charles VIII’s brief stay at Naples, the Spanish Sovereigns had negotiated some marriages for their children, which were destined to have an important influence on the future fortunes of Europe. The expedition of Charles had had great effect in opening out wider views and a larger policy among Princes. Hitherto the marriages of Spanish Kings had been mostly confined to the Peninsula; but an important marriage treaty was now negotiated with the House of Austria. It was arranged that Don John, Prince of Asturias, the heir apparent of Spain, should marry Margaret, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, and that the latter's son, the Archduke Philip, heir of the Netherlands in right of his mother, should espouse Joanna, second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. In the following year (October, 1496), a marriage, which had been arranged as early as 1489, was also contracted between Catharine, youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and Arthur, Prince of Wales, son of our Henry VII. Towards the autumn of 1495, a large Spanish fleet conveyed Joanna to Flanders, and she was married to Philip at Lille. In the ensuing winter, the same fleet carried Margaret to Spain, who was united to Don John at Burgos, April 3rd, 1497; but the youthful bridegroom did not long survive. Soon after this marriage was celebrated that of Isabella, eldest daughter of the Spanish Sovereigns, with Emanuel, King of Portugal, who had succeeded to the Portuguese throne on the death of his cousin, John II, in 1495. Isabella was the widow of Emanuel’s kinsman, Alfonso. Bred up in all the bigotry of the Spanish Courts, Isabella stipulated, as the price of her hand, that Emanuel should banish the Jews from his dominions; and that otherwise enlightened monarch, blinded by the passion which he had conceived for Isabella during her residence in Portugal, consented to a measure which in his heart he disapproved. On the death of Don John, the only male heir to Castile (October 4th, 1497), the succession devolved to Isabella, who, however, also died in giving birth to a son, August, 1408. This child died in his second year, and thus Joanna, Isabella’s next sister, became the heiress of the Spanish Crowns.

But to return to the affairs of Italy Alexander VI, in whom Savonarola inspired a kind of terror, and who had long hesitated to attack the Florentine prophet, at length prohibited him from preaching; but Savonarola continued to thunder against the corruption of Rome and to invoke the vengeance of heaven upon that City. His asceticism took every day a more rigid form, and at length began to breed dissension in Florence. On Shrove Tuesday, 1497, he caused to be burnt in the public place a pile of books, pictures, musical instruments, &c, obtained from their possessors either voluntarily or by compulsion; but the charge that rare manuscripts and valuable works of art were destroyed on this occasion seems to be unfounded, or at all events exaggerated.

It was from the midst of orgies, which might vie in filthiness with those of the worst and most shameless of the heathen Roman Emperors, that the Pope launched against his Florentine censor the most awful of his spiritual weapons. The wickedness and crimes of the Papal family were this year more than usually conspicuous. Julia Farnese, the Pope’s mistress, called from her beauty Julia Bella, with whom he lived in open sacrilegious adultery, and who was accustomed to parade herself with unblushing effrontery in all Church festivals, bore him a son in the month of April. Nor was the stain of blood wanting. In July, Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s eldest and favorite son, having supped with his brother Caesar, Cardinal of Valencia, at the house of their mother Vannozza near the Church of St. Peter in Vinculis, they rode home together on their mules, but parted company on the way. The Duke was never more seen alive; but his body, bearing nine wounds, was found next evening in the Tiber, into which it had been thrown, at a place where it was usual to discharge into the river all the filth of the City. Contemporary testimony points almost unanimously to his brother the Cardinal as the murderer. It was in fact, as Michelet well expresses it, a change of reign—the accession of Caesar Borgia. With a few inches of steel the Cardinal of Valencia had achieved much. He had made himself the eldest son—the heir; and compelled his father to unfrock him, to make him a layman, in order that he might found the fortunes of the House, as we shall presently have to tell. But the stroke fell upon Alexander like a thunderbolt. He confessed his sins in open Consistory, and announced his intention of amending his life. His repentance, however, was of short duration. In a few days he resumed his old habits, transferred to the murderer all the affection he had felt for the victim, and recompensed himself for his short abstinence by a new outbreak of debauchery and cruelty. It was about this time also that Alexander pronounced a divorce between his daughter Lucretia and her husband, Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, from whose protection she had withdrawn herself.

With all his enthusiasm, Savonarola was not yet prepared for schism; he submitted for a while to the Pope and abstained from preaching. During the carnival of 1498, however, he remounted the pulpit with fresh vigor; and, being now resolved to venture everything upon the struggle, he openly attacked the infallibility of the Pope, and wrote letters to the principal Sovereigns of Europe, urging them to call a General Council and depose him. Enraged by the monk's contumacy, Alexander threatened the Florentines with interdict unless they prohibited him from preaching. An interdict would have injured their trade, and a Pratica, or extraordinary council, forbade Savonarola to mount the pulpit; and at this juncture an incident occurred which put an end to his labors and his life.

The supremacy of the Dominicans had long excited the jealousy and envy of the other mendicant orders, and the declining fortunes of Savonarola seemed to offer an opportunity for his destruction. Francesco di Puglia, a Franciscan friar of Stª Croce, had in his sermons often denounced Savonarola as a heretic and false prophet, and he now proposed that to prove the truth of their respective doctrines both should enter the fire. Savonarola took no notice of this challenge; but there was in St. Mark’s one Fra Domenico da Peseia, who had recently had a violent personal dispute with Francesco about his Prior’s teaching; and being of a warm and fanatical temper, and a devoted disciple of Savonarola, he signified he willingness to accept the proof proposed. With this view he published his master’s three “Conclusions”:—

1. The Church of God wants renovation: it will be scourged and renewed.

2. Florence, also, after the scourging, will be renewed and prosper.

3. The Infidels will be converted to Christ. And he invited all to subscribe them who were willing to maintain their truth or falsehood by the ordeal of fire.

Francesco declined to enter the flames with Domenico, but offered to do so with Savonarola; who, however, would not sign his own propositions. The party of the Compagnacci, or Libertines, at this time prevailed in the Signory; they thought it a good opportunity to ruin Savonarola, and fomented the quarrel by again publishing the “Conclusions” and inviting signatures. The trial now seemed to be inevitable. Savonarola had often told the people that his words would be confirmed by supernatural signs, and the time seemed to be come. The Piagnoni were as desirous of the trial as the Compagnacci, for they were confident that their Prophet would enter the fire and work a miracle. As to Savonarola himself, though he disliked the experiment in his own person, yet he was inwardly satisfied with Domenico’s ardor, and with seeing that fate concurred to make the trial necessary. Domenico, he reasoned, could not be so ardent unless inspired by God; and he thought it natural enough that the Lord should work a miracle to confound his adversaries. One Fra Silvestro, too, in whose visions he believed, had seen the angels both of Domenico and Savonarola, who had told him that Domenico would come out unharmed. As to himself, Savonarola alleged several reasons why he should not enter into such "miserable contests"; and he even somewhat abated his pretensions to prophecy.

“For myself”, he declared, “I reserve myself for a greater work, for which I shall always be ready to give my life”. A pretty plain confession that he thought he should be burnt on this occasion.

EXECUTION OF SAVONAROLA

The Signory had fixed a day for the trial; and they decreed that if Domenico should perish in it, Savonarola must leave Florence within three hours. Several Dominican and Franciscan friars, and many lay people of both sexes, had signed the challenge; but the champions selected were Fra Domenico and Fra Giuliano Rondinelli, a brother of Francesco di Puglia. The Dieci had still remained friendly to Savonarola, who, on the morning of the trial, sent them a message to take care that neither of the champions should be able to get out and leave his opponent in the fire; and with this view he suggested that the pile should be lit at one end before the monks went in, and at the other directly they had entered!

On the morning of the 7th April, 1498, the Dominican friars of St. Mark, in number about 200, marched in solemn procession to the Piazza della Signoria, the place appointed for this singular ordeal. Domenico went first, having a cope of flame-colored velvet, and in his hand a cross; his head was erect, his countenance serene. Savonarola, clothed in white and carrying the Sacrament, followed the champion of his doctrines. The Procession was closed by the rest of his community, chanting with sonorous voices the psalm, “Exurgat Deus et dissipentur inimici ejus”. Thus they proceeded to the Loggia de Lanzi, where also the Franciscans had arrived. The Loggia had been divided by a partition in the middle; the side nearest the Palace was assigned to the Dominicans, the further one was occupied by the Franciscans. Before the Loggia was stationed a guard of 300 men, while 500 more were arrayed before the Palace, and an equal number under the opposite Tetto dei Pisani. In the middle of the piazza, from the marble lion called Marzocco near the Palace, towards the Tetto dei Pisani, stretched the pile, composed of wood intermixed with resin and other combustible materials, and having a narrow lane in the middle for the champions.

Various feelings agitated the motley crowd in the piazza. Weepers and Libertines, Dominicans and Franciscans, jostled one another in anxious expectation, while a few more indifferent spectators waited quietly as for some scene in a play. Savonarola, excited by the number of beholders, by the chants of his monks, and by the enthusiasm of Domenico, was anxious to obviate all delay; but Francesco and his brother Giuliano had not appeared in the Loggia, and when Savonarola pressed them to make haste and not keep the people waiting, they began to find various pretexts for delay.

They objected that Fra Domenico’s red cope might be enchanted by Savonarola, they made the same objection to the frock with which he had exchanged it, and when this was doffed, offered other objections of the same kind, which were all complied with. The people, who had been waiting many hours, began to murmur at these delays, and seditious cries were raised. Their discontent was augmented by a heavy shower, which, however, did not disperse them. But fresh objections were started.

The Franciscans demanded that Fra Domenico should lay aside his crucifix, to which he assented; but he insisted on entering the fire with the Sacrament. Hereupon a long theological dispute: the Franciscans alleging that the consecrated Host would be burnt, while Savonarola and Domenico maintained, quoting the authority of many doctors, that though the accidents might be destroyed the substance could not. The Signory now lost all patience, and directed that the trial should not take place. It is said that the whole affair was nothing but a trick, concerted between the Signory and the Franciscans, in order to ruin Savonarola; but this improbable allegation seems to rest only on a suspicion of Fra Benedetto, the biographer and devoted partisan of Savonarola. However this may be, the indignation of the people at the almost ludicrous result is indescribable.

Savonarola was abandoned even by his own followers, who exclaimed that he ought to have entered the fire alone, and thus at last have given an indisputable proof of those supernatural powers which he so loudly claimed. To unprejudiced minds, this opinion will probably appear to be not far from the truth. If such was the judgment of Savonarola’s friends, we may imagine the triumphant fury of his enemies at the discovery of his imposture. It was with difficulty that he and Fra Domenico regained their convent in safety, escorted by a few troops under their friend Marcuccio Salviati. Here they had to endure a siege from the Libertines and Weepers combined, in which some lives were lost; but Savonarola with Fra Domenico at last surrendered themselves into the hands of the officers of the Signory. They were conducted to the Palace, and imprisoned in separate chambers. Fra Silvestro, who had concealed himself in the convent, was captured on the following day. The Pope, delighted at these events, gave the Florentines his absolution and benediction, and permitted the Signory to try the captive monks. Savonarola was examined under torture, during which he now asserted, now retracted, his doctrines. Fra Domenico showed more courage and constancy, and would make no retraction. Fra Silvestro, weak both in head and heart, sought only to save his life, confessed anything that was desired, renounced his tenets, and traduced the character of Savonarola. In this extremity of misfortune, Savonarola was deserted even by the monks of St. Mark. In a letter to the Pope, they affirmed that they had been deceived by Savonarola's cunning and simulated devotion, but at the same time they testified to the purity of his life. Alexander absolved them, and empowered the Archbishop of Florence to give absolution for all crimes, even homicide, committed to procure Savonarola’s ruin.

In a letter of congratulation to the Signory, the Pope requested them to put Savonarola into his hands alive. This was refused as inconsistent with the dignity of the Republic; but they allowed Alexander to send two Apostolic Commissaries to Florence to try him. They entered Florence amidst shouts from the populace of “Death to the Frate”; which was, indeed, predetermined. The forms of a trial, again accompanied with torture, were repeated, and the three captive monks were condemned to death. Fra Domenico retained his courage and fanaticism to the last, and requested, as a favor, to be burnt alive. On the 23rd of May, the three monks were led forth to execution. On the Ringhiera, a sort of platform in front of the Palace, were erected three tribunals; at that nearest the gate sat the Bishop of Vasona; at the middle one were the Apostolic Commissaries; while the third, close to the Marzocco of Donatelli, was occupied by the Gonfalonier and the Eight. From the Marzocco, as in the former trial, a pile of wood and combustibles extended towards the Tetto dei Pisani; but now, at the further end of it, was a huge stake with a transverse beam, on which the condemned were to be hanged before their bodies were committed to the flames. As they descended the staircase of the Palace they were stripped of their monastic habit, by some friars of their own order belonging to St. Maria Novella; but their frocks were replaced in order to be again taken off by the Bishop of Vasona, when he delivered over the condemned to the secular arm. Next, before the Apostolic Commissaries, they heard their sentence as heretics and schismatics; finally, at the third tribunal, their civil condemnation was pronounced. Savonarola was hanged the last, amid the jeers and insults of the populace. The bodies of the monks, when life was extinct, were cut down and burnt; their relics were collected and thrown from the Ponte Vecchio into the Arno.

The aims of Savonarola to reform the Church and to restore civil liberty were laudable; but he failed in the means which he adopted to achieve them, and through a weakness of character which disqualified him from becoming a great reformer. His chief failing was spiritual pride, engendered by seeing the most cultivated people in Europe hang upon his lips and regard him as a prophet. This pride caused his fall, by inducing him to advance pretensions which were untenable, and which, when brought to the test, he had not the courage to support. His conduct was guided by sentiment rather than by reason. He had not the intellectual power of Luther or Calvin. He thought that the Church might be reformed by what he called a flagellation, and still retain its ancient doctrines and practices; and he did not proceed to inquire whether the abuses in it were founded on a wrong view of religion and a misinterpretation of Scripture. In short, he desired a reformation within the Church; which, as we shall see further on, was tried and found wanting. Luther, as ho advanced in life, flung off monasticism, while Savonarola clung closer and closer to his Dominican frock and his convent of St. Mark. Hence his influence never extended beyond his immediate hearers and the walls of Florence. He let fall, indeed, some expressions which subsequently induced the Protestants to claim his authority, and Luther published in Germany, in 1523, one of his tracts, in a preface to which he declares Savonarola to be the precursor of his doctrine of justification by faith alone. But though Savonarola may have let fall some words which seem to support that view, in others he expressly repudiates the doctrine. In fact, he does not seem to have had any very clear notions on the subject, and perhaps did not understand the metaphysical question which underlies it, as to the nature of the will. It is at all events certain that he never contemplated separation from the Church of Rome.

ACCESSION OF LOUIS XII IN FRANCE.

A few days after the execution of Savonarola, a letter arrived from the King of France to request his pardon. That King, however, was no longer Charles VIII, but Louis XII. A remarkable change had been observed in the conduct of Charles towards the close of his life, the result probably of declining health. He was no longer the trifling dissipated creature of his earlier days; his conversation had become graver, and he had renounced his disorderly life. His expedition to Italy had inspired him with a certain degree of taste, which he displayed at the Castle of Amboise, where he took up his residence early in 1498. Here he began to build on a large scale, and employed sculptors and painters whom he had brought with him from Naples—the first indication of the introduction of Italian art into France. He was meditating another expedition into Italy, and, being sensible of his former mistakes, he resolved to take measures for assuring a permanent conquest. On the 7th of April, 1498, as he was proceeding from his chamber with Anne of Brittany, his consort, to see a game of tennis, in passing through a dark gallery he struck his head against a door. Although a little stunned by the blow he passed on, conversing cheerfully with those around him, when he was suddenly struck with apoplexy, and, being carried to an adjoining garret, expired in a few hours. He had not yet completed his twenty-eighth year.

With Charles VIII was extinguished the direct line of the House of Valois. The Crown was now transferred to the collateral branch of Orleans, and Louis, Duke of Orleans, descended from the second son of King Charles V and his consort Valentina Visconti, of the ducal House of Milan, succeeded Charles VIII with the title of Louis XII.

The new King, feeble both in body and mind, was one of those characters to which the absence of strong passions or opinions lends the appearance of good nature, and even of virtue. He was naturally formed to be governed, and with him ascended the throne a prelate who had long been his director, George d’Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen.

Amboise was the first in that series of Cardinal-ministers whose reign in France lasted a century and a half; for though Cardinals Balue and Briconnet had been members of the Council, they did not enjoy the high post and the influence of Amboise. A man severed by his vocation from the world, without wife or children, and having no family to found, must, it was concluded, be necessarily devoid of avarice and ambition! Yet the clerical profession was precisely that which offered in those days the easiest avenue to wealth combined with the distant prospect of a diadem. The views both of Louis XII and of his minister were directed towards Italy. The King’s heart was set on the conquest of the Duchy of Milan and the recovery of the Kingdom of Naples; the Archbishop wanted to be Pope, and his best chance of attaining that dignity lay in the success of his master's projects. The El Dorado of both lying beyond the Alps, they could afford to be moderate in France.

The disinterested Amboise could never be persuaded to accept a second benefice, yet left at his death an enormous fortune, wrung for the most part from the Italians. In pursuance of his schemes, it was necessary that Franco should be contented and quiet; and the domestic government of Louis XII was accordingly mild and equitable. One of his first cares was to banish all fear lest he should remember former wrongs when a partisan chief in the war of Brittany, and he hastened to announce as his maxim, “that it would ill become a King of France to avenge the quarrels of the Duke of Orleans”. In accordance with it, among other instances, Louis de la Trémouille, the famous captain who had made Louis prisoner at St. Aubin, was confirmed in all his honors and pensions; and Madame Anne of France, with her husband, Peter, Duke of Bourbon, was invited to Blois, and loaded with favors. While the higher ranks were thus propitiated, the middle classes were conciliated by some useful reforms in the administration of justice, and by a government founded on order and economy.

One of the first affairs that engaged the attention of the new King brought him into near connection with the Court of Rome, and decided the color of his future Italian policy. By the marriage contract between Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany, that Duchy reverted to his widow upon his death, and was thus again severed from the Crown of France. It was, indeed, provided by that instrument that Anne should contract no second marriage, except with Charles's successor or the heir to the throne: but this clause seemed defeated by the circumstance that Louis XII was already married, and was without issue. He determined, however, to remove this obstacle by procuring a divorce from his ugly and deformed wife Jeanne, daughter of Louis XI.

We have before adverted to the mistake of those who hold that a mutual passion had long existed between Louis XII and Anne; the Emperor Maximilian, to whom she had been affianced, alone possessed Anne's heart. She had even lived on ill terms with Louis during the life of Charles VIII, but her choice was now restricted to him, and whatever might be her affection for Brittany, the dignity of a Queen of France was not to be despised. She had displayed a somewhat theatrical grief on the death of Charles VIII; yet in little more than four months after that event she signed a promise of marriage with Louis XII, insisting, however, on much more favorable conditions as to her Duchy of Brittany than she had obtained under her former contract, and which infinitely multiplied the chances of Brittany being again separated from France. Thus Louis, to procure a divorce, stood in urgent need of the Pope’s services, just at the time when the latter had withdrawn his son Caesar, the Cardinal of Valencia, from the ecclesiastical profession, and had determined to make him a great temporal Prince. With this view Alexander had already demanded for Caesar the hand of a daughter of King Frederick of Naples; and being nettled by a refusal, he resolved to throw himself into the arms of the French party. The disgraceful alliance between Louis and the Borgias was thus cemented by their mutual wants, and Caesar Borgia was dispatched into France.

George d'Amboise and his master could not have been ignorant of the strange history of Caesar Borgia—it was only too notorious. He was, however, well received at the French Court, where his handsome person, sumptuous dress, and magnificent suite attracted general attention. He came provided with the necessary bull for the divorce, and was determined to sell it at the highest possible rate. It was a sale in open market of a solemn function of the Church. The Archbishop of Rouen was gained by a Cardinal’s hat and the prospect of the tiara. A bargain was soon struck. Caesar, who had his father under his thumb, could make and unmake as many Cardinals as should be necessary to secure Amboise’s election after Alexander VI’s death; in return for which he was to be helped by the French arms in recovering the territories claimed by the Church, and converting them into a Principality or Kingdom for himself. Louis also engaged to renounce all attempts upon Naples, except in favor of the House of Borgia; a circumstance from which it appears that the Pope had even then formed designs upon that Kingdom. The divorce was soon granted, though on pleas the most frivolous and unjust; Jeanne defended herself but feebly, and retired to Bourges, where she became the foundress of a religious order. Caesar Borgia was made Duke of Valentinois in Dauphine, received in money 30,000 gold ducats, with a pension of 20,000 livres, and the Order of St. Michael. Above all, he was appointed to a company of one hundred lances; and the French flag being thus put into his hands, he assumed the style of Caesar Borgia “of France”. The title was afterwards confirmed by a matrimonial connection with the French royal family, and in May, 1490, he espoused Charlotte, daughter of Alan d'Albret, a near kinsman of Louis XII; but the young bride remained in France.

Before these negotiations were completed, Caesar Borgia exhibited a touch of his Italian arts. In hope of extorting further concessions from Louis, he had delayed producing the bull of dispensation for affinity; but the Bishop of Cette, one of the Papal Commissaries, having informed the King that it had been signed by the Pope, and was in Caesar’s hands, Louis caused the ecclesiastical judges to pronounce his divorce. A few days after, the Bishop of Cette died of poison! The King’s marriage with Anne of Brittany was celebrated January 7th, 1499.

Louis’s designs on Milan were supported by the Venetians, whom Ludovico Sforza had offended by thwarting their views on Pisa; and in February, 1499, they contracted an alliance with France against the Duke of Milan; the French King agreeing to assign to them Cremona and the Ghiara d'Adda, or the country between the Adda, the Po, and the Oglio. The state of Europe seemed to favor the enterprise of Louis XII. In England, Henry VII, occupied in strengthening himself upon the throne, paid little heed to the affairs of the continent. Maximilian bore more ill-will to France, but had less power to show it. As Emperor, he was without revenue or soldiers, nay almost without jurisdiction; his hereditary lands alone afforded him some resources.

Towards the end of Charles VIII’s reign he had been preparing an expedition against France, in order to force Charles to restore Burgundy, and some towns in Artois, which latter, by the treaty of Senlis, were to revert to his son Philip as soon as the latter should come of age, and should do homage for them to the King of France. But although Philip had long since assumed the government of his provinces, and offered to perform the required homage, yet France had on different pretexts deferred fulfilling the stipulations of the treaty. Soon after Louis XII’s accession, Maximilian penetrated into Burgundy with a considerable army, which, however, he was soon obliged to dismiss for want of the necessary funds to maintain it. But the desire of Louis to enter upon his Italian campaign led him soon after to restore the towns in question to Philip, and to consent that his claims on Burgundy should be referred to arbitration.

The Empire, whose States cared more about the Swiss League than the German claims in Italy, soon afterwards engaged in a war with the Swiss, whom Maximilian was striving to reduce under the authority of the newly created Imperial Chamber; and it was in vain that the Duke of Milan sought his assistance. Of all European States, Spain alone had the power and the will for active interference in the affairs of Italy; and Louis XII had secured the neutrality of that country by the treaty of Marcoussis, August 5th, 1498, by which all the differences between France and Spain had been arranged. Nay, Ferdinand the Catholic probably beheld with pleasure an expedition from which he might eventually hope for some benefit to himself. The only Italian ally of Ludovico Sforza was King Frederick of Naples, who could spare no troops for his assistance; the only foreign Power whose aid he could invoke was the Turkish Sultan, and his application to Bajazet II was supported by the Neapolitan King. The ravages, however, which the Turkish hordes consequently inflicted on the Venetian province of Friuli, and even as far as the neighborhood of Vicenza, did not arrest the progress of the French, and only served to cast odium upon the Duke of Milan as the ally of the Moslem Infidels.

THE FRENCH INVADE ITALY.

The preparations for the Italian expedition were completed about the end of July, 1499. Louis, who did not himself intend to pass the Alps, reviewed his army at Lyon, which consisted of about 23,000 men, with fifty-eight guns. The command was entrusted to three experienced captains, of whom two might be called foreigners; namely, Robert Stuart d'Aubigny, and Trivulzio, by birth a Milanese noble; the third was Louis, Count of Ligui, the patron and master in the art of war of the illustrious Bayard. Lodovico’s general, Galeazzo di San Severino, did not venture to oppose the French in the field, and shut himself up in Alessandria; whence, having probably been bribed, he stole away one night to Milan. As soon as his soldiers became aware of his flight, they evacuated Alessandria in confusion, and were pursued and dispersed by the French gens d'armes. On the other side, the Venetians had entered all the towns between the Adda and the Oglio without striking a blow. But, what was worse, symptoms of disaffection appeared in Milan itself. The citizens had resolved not to endure a siege, and the Duke's treasurer was murdered in the streets while attempting to levy money. Sforza, feeling that he was no longer safe in his capital, set off for Tyrol to seek aid from Maximilian. Milan now declared for the French (September 14th); the other towns followed the example of the capital, and thus the conquest of the Milanese duchy was achieved in less than a month. Delighted at this brilliant success, Louis crossed the Alps to enjoy his triumph, and entered Milan, October 5th, amid cries of Viva Francia! His first acts were popular. The citizens were gratified by the promise of a reduction in taxes; but as this could not be effected to any great extent, Louis soon lost the brief popularity he had acquired. After a few weeks’ sojourn, he returned to France, having appointed Trivulzio his Lieutenant in the Milanese. Genoa, which after the submission of Milan had again placed itself under the French, was entrusted to the command of Philip of Cleres, Lord of Ravenstein, assisted by Tiattistino Fregoso, the head of the French party in that city.

The French soon became unpopular in Milan. Trivulzio exercised the government entrusted to him in the most tyrannical manner, while the French soldiers made themselves hated and suspected by their extortions, their brusquerie, and their amours. The party of the exiled Duke rapidly revived, and an extensive plot was laid to effect his restoration. Sforza had been received by Maximilian at Innsbruck with magnificent promises; but in fact the Emperor had no power to serve him, and was so poor that he even wanted to borrow what money the Duke had succeeded in retaining. Sforza, however, was of opinion that he had better employ it himself; and in spite of the treaty between the French and Swiss, he succeeded in engaging 8,000 or 9,000 of the latter in his service. At the news of his approach by the Lake of Como a general insurrection broke out at Milan (January 25th, 1500); Trivulzio and the Count of Ligni, leaving a garrison in the citadel of Milan, retired to Novara, and thence to Mortara; where they shut themselves up to await reinforcements from France. The capture of Novara had been facilitated by the treachery of the Swiss garrison in the French service, who finding their countrymen better paid and fed by Sforza, passed over to his ranks, The great competition for the hiring of the Swiss, and the consequent influx of money among them, bad introduced a lament­able change in their manners. They were become a people of mercenary adventurers, ever ready to sell their blood for gold, which was spent in brutal debauchery; and treachery of course followed, of which we shall have to narrate numerous instances.

The Duke of Milan was naturally very anxious to detach the Venetians from France; but though he begged them to dictate the conditions of a peace, and though secretly they were not displeased at the reverses of the French, they were not yet prepared to violate their treaty with Louis. Both the French and the Milanese armies had been largely recruited when they met near Novara, April 5th, 1500. The infantry on both sides was almost entirely composed of Swiss; those in the French army, however, had been furnished by the Common League, and marched under the banners of their several Cantons; while those in the ranks of the Duke had been hired without the sanction of their government. The Swiss Diet had issued an order that Swiss should not engage one another, a breach of which would have rendered those in Lodovico’s service guilty of treason; and the latter, in consequence, when the French, after a short cannonade were about to charge, withdrew into Novara, and were followed by the rest of the army. In the ensuing night Lodovico’s Swiss began to parley with the French, and engaged to evacuate the country on receiving a safe-conduct. As a pretest for their desertion, they clamorously demanded their arrears of pay; and all they would allow the victim of their perfidy was, that he should conceal himself in their ranks when they evacuated the town. On the following morning, Sforza, now old and feeble, put on the frock of a Cordelier, to pass himself off for chaplain of the Swiss mercenaries, and might have escaped in this disguise had not a Swiss soldier betrayed him for a reward of 200 crowns. He was seized and taken to the Castle of Novara. The Swiss in their retreat perfidiously seized Bellinzona, at which Louis XII was forced to connive; and they thus secured an entrance into the Milanese Duchy.

Consternation reigned at Milan. When Cardinal d'Amboise returned thither accompanied by Trivulzio, a long procession of men and women, with bare heads, and clothed in white, repaired to the town-hall to deprecate his anger for their “accursed rebellion”. D'Amboise, however, did not abuse his victory. Only four of the ringleaders were put to death at Milan, and the other rebellious towns were amerced in moderate sums for the costs of the war. Charles d'Amboise, a nephew of the Cardinal's, was substituted for Trivulzio, as Governor of Milan. But Louis XII did not extend to his Italian rivals the same generosity which he had previously displayed towards his French opponents. Ludovico Sforza was carried into France, and Louis caused him to be confined in the great tower of Loches, where he, like Cardinal Balue, was shut up in an iron cage eight feet long and six broad. It was only towards the close of his life, which was prolonged ten years, that the hardship of his captivity was mitigated, and the whole Castle laid open to him. Ludovico Sforza had been one of the ablest of Italian Princes. His administration and system of police wore excellent; Milan in his hands became the city which it is at present; and it was he who completed the admirable network of Milanese irrigation, by making the gigantic canal which connects its rivers. Leonardo da Vinci, the loftiest and most universal genius of the age, chose Ludovico for his master, and quitted Florence to live at Milan. Besides Ludovico, four or five other members of the Sforza family, including his brother, the Cardinal Ascanio, had fallen into the hands of the French King; who caused Ascanio to be confined in the same tower at Bourges where he himself had been two years a prisoner, and doomed three sons of Galeazzo Maria Sforza to languish in an obscure dungeon. Duke Lodovico’s two sons, Maximilian and Francis, found refuse with the Emperor.

AMBITION AND CRIMES OF BORGIA.

The war between Florence and Pisa still continued. In consequence of his alliance with the Florentines Louis XII sent in June, 1500, a body of troops to aid them in reducing Pisa. The Pisans professed their willingness to submit to the French King but declared their determination to resist the Florentines to the last gasp. It is said that they received an attack of the French with shouts of Viva Francia! which rendered it impossible to bring the French troops a second time to the assault; and it became necessary to raise the siege. The assistance of Louis was of more service to the Borgia family. Alexander VI and his children hastened to avail themselves of the presence of the French in Italy, in order to push their schemes of ambition and aggrandizement. Lucretia Borgia, who, after her divorce from Giovanni Sforza, had been married to Alfonso, Duke of Biseglia, a natural son of Alfonso II of Naples, and had been declared perpetual Governess of the Duchy of Spoleto, was now further invested with Sermoneta, wrested from the House of Gaetani. At the urgent entreaty of Pope Alexander, Louis also lent a small force to Caesar Borgia, to assist the Papal troops in reducing the Lords of Romagna and the March; as Sforza of Pesaro, Malatesta of Rimini, the Riarii of Imola and Forli, and others. Forli was obstinately defended by Catharine Sforza, widow of Jerome Riario, but was at length taken by assault, and Catharine sent prisoner to the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome. By the spring of 1501 all the small principalities of Romagna and its neighborhood had been reduced; Caesar Borgia entered Rome in triumph, under the mingled banners of France and the Pope, and twelve new Cardinals were created in order that he might be declared Duke of Romagna and Gonfalonier of the Church. Thus was the French flag prostituted in order to promote the designs of the Pope and his insatiable bastard son. Louis even notified to all the Italian Powers that he should regard any opposition to the conquests of Caesar Borgia as an injury done to himself; a policy disapproved by all the French council except D'Amboise, to whom Borgia held out the hope of the tiara.

During these proceedings the Pope’s family displayed all their characteristic crimes and wickedness. After the capture of Faenza, Astorre Manfredi, its youthful, handsome, and amiable Lord, was murdered, after having been first subjected to the most unnatural and disgusting treatment by Borgia. The Duke of Biseglia, Lucretia’s third husband, was stabbed on the steps of St. Peter’s (June, 1500,) by a band of assassins hired by her brother, who were safely escorted out of the city, and all pursuit after them forbidden. The Duke, whose wound was not mortal, was conveyed to a chamber in the Pope's palace, where he was tended by his sister and by his wife. The Pope placed a guard to defend his son-in-law against his son, a precaution which Caesar Borgia derided. “What is not done at noon”, he said, “may be done at night”. He was as good as his word. Before Biseglia had recovered from his wounds, Caesar burst into his chamber, drove out his wife and sister, and caused him to be strangled. Borgia's motives for this murder have been variously ascribed to his incestuous passion for his sister and to his hatred of the House of Aragon. Some modern writers have supposed that the crime was perpetrated in order to make room for Lucretia’s fourth marriage with Alfonso d'Este, future Duke of Ferrara; a supposition little probable, and founded apparently on a mistake of dates, as this marriage did not take place till towards the end of 1501, instead of a few weeks after the murder. It was accomplished by bringing the influence of France to bear on the House of Este; Alfonso was persuaded that it would secure him from the ambition and the arms of Caesar Borgia. Lucretia became the idol of the poets and literary men who swarmed in the Court of Ferrara, and especially of Cardinal Bembo. Caesar Borgia, strong in the support of France, was now aiming to establish a Kingdom in central Italy. His projects were aided by the Florentines, who, however, soon became themselves the objects of his attacks, and were compelled to purchase his goodwill by giving him command of a division of their army, with a pension of 3,600 ducats.

In the spring of 1501 the French army was ready to pursue its march to Naples. King Frederick, alarmed at the gathering storm, had some months before renewed the propositions formerly made by his father Ferdinand I to Charles VIII; namely, to acknowledge himself a feudatory of France, to pay an annual tribute, and to pledge several maritime towns as security for the fulfillment of these conditions. Louis, however, would not hear of these liberal offers, although Ferdinand the Catholic undertook to guarantee the payment of the tribute proffered by Frederick, and strongly remonstrated against the contemplated expedition of the French King.

Ferdinand, finding that he could not divert Louis from his project, proposed to him to divide Naples between them, and a partition was arranged by a treaty concluded between the two monarchs at Granada, November 11th, 1500. Naples, the Terra di Lavoro, and the Abruzzi were assigned to Louis, with the title of King of Naples and Jerusalem; while Ferdinand was to have Calabria and Apulia with the title of Duke. The duplicity of Ferdinand towards his kinsman Frederick in this transaction is very remarkable. For months after the signing of the treaty he left the King of Naples in expectation of receiving succors from him; and it was not till the eleventh hour (April, 1501,) that he announced to Frederick his inability to help him in case of a French invasion. The contemplated confiscation of his dominions was of course still kept in the background, and meanwhile the forces of Ferdinand, under Gonsalvo de Cordova, were admitted into the Neapolitan fortresses.

Frederick opened to them without suspicion his ports and towns, and thus became the instrument of his own ruin. He had in vain looked around for assistance. He had paid the Emperor Maximilian 40,000 ducats to make a diversion in his favor by attacking Milan, but Maximilian was detached from the Neapolitan alliance by a counter bribe, and consented to prolong the truce with France. Frederick had then had recourse to Sultan Bajazet II, with as little effect; and this application only served to throw odium on his cause. The recent capture of Modon by the Turks (August, 1500), and the massacre of its Bishop and Christian population, had excited a feeling of great indignation in Europe. Frederick’s application to Bajazet was alleged against him in the treaty of Granada; and Ferdinand and Louis took credit to themselves for the desire of rescuing Europe from that peril by partitioning his dominions. Thus religion was as usual the pretext for spoliation and robbery. Nor did Ferdinand’s hypocrisy stop there. He made the atrocities at Modon a pretense for getting up a crusade, which served to conceal his preparations for a very different purpose. The armament under command of Gonsalvo de Cordova, the “Great Captain”, as he was called after his Italian campaign, did indeed help the Venetians to reduce St. George in Cephalonia; but it returned to the ports of Sicily early in 1501, where it was in readiness to execute the secret designs of the Spanish King. Gonsalvo, the faithful servant of a perfidious master, the ready tool of all his schemes, acted his part well in this surprise of friendship. Alexander VI had been induced to proclaim the crusade with a view to fill his own coffers. He drove a brisk trade in indulgences, which he now extended to the dead; for he was the first Pope who claimed the power of extricating souls from Purgatory. To carry out the farce, Louis XII signed a treaty of alliance against the Turks with Wladislaus King of Hungary and Bohemia, and with John Albert King of Poland, brother of that Prince.

The French army, which did not exceed 13,000 men, began its march towards Naples about the end of May, 1501, under command of Stuart d'Aubigny, with Caesar Borgia for his lieutenant. When it arrived before Rome, June 25th, the French and Spanish ambassadors acquainted the Pope with the treaty of Granada, and the contemplated partition of Naples, in which the suzerainty of this Kingdom was guaranteed to the Holy See; a communication which Alexander received with more surprise than displeasure, and he proceeded at once to invest the Kings of France and Aragon with the provinces which they respectively claimed. Attacked in front by the French, in the rear by Gonsalvo, Frederick did not venture to take the field. He cantoned his troops in Naples, Aversa, and Capua, of which the last alone made any attempt at defense. It was surprised by the French while in the act of treating for a capitulation (July 24th), and was subjected to the most revolting cruelty; 7,000 of the male inhabitants were massacred in the streets; the women were outraged; and forty of the handsomest reserved for Caesar Borgia’s harem at Rome; where they were in readiness to amuse the Court at the extraordinary and disgusting fête given at the fourth marriage of Lucretia. Rather than expose his subjects to the horrors of a useless war, Frederick entered into negotiations with D'Aubigny, with the view of surrendering himself to Louis XII, whom he naturally preferred to his traitorous kinsman, Ferdinand; and in October, 1501, he sailed for France with the small squadron which remained to him. In return for his abandonment of the provinces assigned to the French King, he was invested with the County of Maine and a life pension of 80,000 ducats, on condition that he should not attempt to quit France; a guard was set over him to enforce the latter proviso, and this excellent Prince died in exile in 1504.

Meanwhile Gonsalvo de Cordova was proceeding with the reduction of Calabria and Apulia. At the commencement of the war Frederick had sent his son Don Ferrante to Taranto, of which place Don Giovanni di Ghevara, Count of Potenza, the young Prince’s governor, was commandant. After a long siege, Taranto was reduced to capitulate by a stratagem of Gonsalvo’s. A lake which lay at the back of the town seeming to render it inaccessible, it had been left unfortified in that quarter, and Gonsalvo, by transporting twenty of his smaller ships over a tongue of land into the lake, had the place at his mercy. The conduct of Gonsalvo towards the young Prince illustrates both the political morality of those times and the convenient religion by which it was supported. The Great Captain had taken an oath upon the Holy Sacrament that the young Prince should be permitted to retire whithersoever he pleased; but Don Ferrante had scarcely left Taranto when he was arrested and sent to Spain. Gonsalvo was released from his oath by a casuistical confessor, on the ground that, as he had sworn for Ferdinand, who was absent and ignorant of the matter, that Sovereign was not bound by it. Thus the devout superstition of the Spaniards could be rendered as flexible in cases of conscience as the atheism of the Italians. The Spaniard entered Taranto, March 1st, 1502; the other towns of southern Italy were soon reduced, and the Neapolitan branch of the House of Aragon fell for ever, after reigning sixty-five years.

In the autumn of 1501, Louis had entered into negotiations with the Emperor, in order to obtain formal investiture of the Duchy of Milan. With this view, Louis’s daughter Claude, then only two years of age, was betrothed to Charles, grandson of Maximilian, the infant child of the Archduke Philip and Joanna of Spain. A treaty was subsequently signed at Trent, October 13th, 1501, by Maximilian and the Cardinal d’Amboise, to which the Spanish Sovereigns and the Archduke Philip were also parties. By this instrument Louis engaged, in return for the investiture of Milan, to recognize the pretensions of the House of Austria to Hungary and Bohemia, and to second Maximilian in an expedition which he contemplated against the Turks. It was at this conference that schemes against Venice began to be agitated, which ultimately produced the League of Cambray.

The treaty between Louis and Ferdinand for the partition of Naples was so loosely drawn, that it seemed purposely intended to produce the quarrels which ensued. The ancient division of the realm into four provinces, though superseded by a more modern one, had been followed in the treaty; disputes arose as to the possession of the Principato and Capitanata; Gonsalvo occupied the former with his troops; and some negotiations which ensued on the subject having failed, Louis instructed the Duke of Nemours to drive them out. In the course of 1502 the Spaniards were deprived of everything, except Barletta and a few towns near Bari. It was in the combats round this place that Bayard, by his deeds of courage and generosity, won his reputation as the model of chivalry and became the idol of the French soldiery. While France was thus winning Naples with her arms, she was preparing the loss of it by her negotiations. Towards the end of 1501, the Austrian Archduke Philip and his consort Joanna, passing through France on their way to Spain, in order to receive the homage of the Spanish States as their future Sovereigns, were magnificently entertained by Louis XII, and experienced such a reception from that monarch as quite won Philip’s heart, and made him forget all the former injuries inflicted by the French Court upon his father. Philip and Joanna reached Toledo in the spring of 1502, where they received the homage of the Cortes of Castile; and a few months after Ferdinand also persuaded the punctilious States of Aragon to swear fealty to Joanna, which they had previously refused to do to his eldest daughter Isabella. But the ceremonious formality of the Castilian Court was irksome to Philip and as he felt little or no affection for his consort, who was both plain in person and weak in mind, he set off in December for the Netherlands, leaving Joanna behind, who was too far advanced in pregnancy to accompany him. On March 10th, 1503, she gave birth to her second son, Ferdinand. Joanna, who repaid Philip's coolness with a doting and jealous affection, was inconsolable at his departure, and fell into a deep dejection, from which nothing could rouse her.

As Philip was to return through France, Ferdinand commissioned him to open negotiations with Louis; and by the treaty of Lyon it was agreed that both Louis and Ferdinand should renounce their shares of the Neapolitan dominions in favor of the recently affianced infants Charles of Austria and Claude of France. Till the marriage should be accomplished, Louis XII was to hold in pledge the Terra di Lavoro and the Abruzzi; Ferdinand, Apulia, and the Calabrias; and the contested provinces were to be jointly administered by the Archduke Philip, as procurator for his son, and by a French commissary (April, 1503).

This treaty was evidently in favor of Ferdinand, or rather perhaps of the Archduke Philip, who seems to have exceeded his instructions. Cardinal d'Amboise was entrapped into it by an artifice too gross for any eyes except those blinded by ambition. Ferdinand and Maximilian engaged to assist D'Amboise in attaining the tiara, and they agreed with Louis that a General Council should be summoned for the purpose of deposing Pope Alexander VI. But the King of Aragon, at least, so far from having any intentions to help the French minister to the Papal throne, did not oven mean to observe the treaty of Lyon. He had warned Gonsalvo not to attend to any instructions from the Archduke Philip unless they were confirmed by himself, and he continued to send that general reinforcement after reinforcement; while Louis XII, relying on the treaty, had ordered the Duke of Nemours to cease hostilities. Gonsalvo suddenly resumed the offensive with extraordinary vigor and rapidity, and within a week, two decisive battles were fought. On the 21st April, 1503, the Spanish captain Andrades defeated Stuart d'Aubigny at Seminara in Calabria, and compelled him to retire into the fortress of Angitola, where he soon afterwards surrendered. On the 28th of April, the Great Captain himself defeated the Duke of Nemours at Cerignola, near Barletta, when the French army was dispersed and almost destroyed, and the Viceroy was killed in the engagement. The remnant of the French retired on the Garigliano and to Gaeta; most of the Neapolitan towns, including the capital, opened their gates to the conqueror; Gonsalvo entered Naples May 14th, 1503; and the French garrisons in the castles of that city were soon afterwards reduced, chiefly by the famous engineer, Pedro Navarro. By the end of July the French had completely evacuated the Neapolitan territory, which thus fell into Ferdinand’s possession.

Nothing could exceed the grief and anger of Louis at this intelligence. Philip shared his resentment, and intimated to Ferdinand that he would not quit the French Court till the treaty of Lyon had been ratified; but the Catholic King, regardless of the reproaches addressed to him, pretended that Philip had exceeded his powers and refused to sign. Louis dismissed the Spanish envoys, and resolved not only to attempt the recovery of Naples, but also to attack the Spanish frontier. The Sire d'Albret and the Marshal do Gié were directed to cross the Bidasoa and advance towards Fuenterabia with 400 lances and 5,000 Swiss and Gascon foot; while the Marshal de Rieux attacked Rousillon with 800 lances and 8,000 infantry. Another army under Louis de la Trémouille, the best general of France, was dispatched across the Alps, and was to be reinforced in Italy by large bodies of Swiss and Lombards, and by troops contributed by the Tuscan Republics and the little Princes of central Italy.

Among these Princes Caesar Borgia could no longer be counted upon, who had repaid the benefits of Louis by conspiring against him with the Spaniards. Caesar Borgia had usurped the Duchy of Urbino, the Lordship of Perugia, and several other places, the possession of most of which he obtained by means of the basest treachery, or by those arts of address and persuasion in which this consummate villain is said to have been a master. He obtained Urbino by requesting the Duke, as a friend, to lend him his artillery, with which he entered the town as a conqueror. Machiavelli regards the bringing together of so many small States as a political benefit, which should not only lead us to overlook the crimes of Borgia in effecting it, but even to accord him our admiration; yet Pope Alexander in vain endeavored to persuade the College of Cardinals to unite these conquests into a Kingdom of Romagna in favor of his son. Borgia, however, as will appear in the sequel, was unwittingly laboring not for himself but for the Holy See.

Louis XII had resolved to break with Caesar Borgia; yet it was necessary to prevent Alexander VI from throwing himself into the arms of Spain, and the French Court was negotiating with that Pontiff when news was unexpectedly brought of his death. Alexander seems to have fallen a victim to his own infernal machinations. He regarded the Cardinalate as a means for raising the enormous sums required to maintain the luxury of the Pontifical court, the armies of Caesar Borgia, the profligate extravagance of Lucretia, and the establishments of his other bastards and nephews. With this view he sold the dignity of Cardinal at prices varying from 10,000 to 30,000 florins; he entrusted these venal Princes of the church with employments which enriched them, and then caused them to be poisoned in order to seize their property, and resell their benefices and dignities. Altogether he created forty-three Cardinals, scarce one of which appointments was gratuitous. But he was at length caught in his own trap. He had invited Cardinal Adrian of Corneto to a little banquet at his vineyard, the Belvedere, near the Vatican, and an attendant was instructed to serve the guest with poisoned wine. The man, however, mistook the bottles; the fatal draught was administered to Alexander himself and his son, as well as to their intended victim, and all three were seized with a violent illness which in a week put an end to the Pope’s life at the age of seventy-two (August I8th, 1503). Caesar Borgia and Adrian ultimately recovered. Thus perished through his own machinations one of the greatest monsters who ever sullied the Pontifical throne. Alexander VI first established the ecclesiastical censorship of books, which has contributed to support the abuses of the Papacy against the attacks of reason and true religion. It was in his Pontificate that the mole of Hadrian was fortified by the architects Giuliano and Antonio da S. Gallo in the manner in which it still exists as the Castle of St. Angelo.

The moment was now arrived when Cardinal d'Amboise hoped to realize all those dreams of ambition which had led him to connive at and encourage the crimes of Caesar Borgia. He hastened to Rome, and the march of the French army was arrested at Nepi, in order to support his election by its presence. But D'Amboise had a formidable though unknown competitor in Cardinal Julian della Rovere, who had hitherto appeared the warm ally of France. He was also deceived by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, whom he had delivered from prison and loaded with benefits, and who had sworn to use his influence in favor of his benefactor. But Ascanio retained at heart a deep hatred for the overthrowers of his family, and he used D'Amboise's confidence only to betray him. He borrowed of D'Amboise 100,000 ducats, under pretense of buying “the voice of the Holy Ghost” while he was secretly arranging D'Amboise's defeat with Cardinal Julian.

Julian, after saluting D'Amboise as future Pontiff, represented, that in order to the validity of his election, and to prevent future schism, the French troops ought to be withdrawn from the neighborhood of Rome, and that such a proof of moderation would only secure him more votes. D'Amboise assented, against the advice of Caesar Borgia; the Conclave, which had been delayed on various pretexts, was then assembled, and was easily convinced by Cardinals Julian and Ascanio that the election of a French or Spanish Pope would involve Rome in a war. D'Amboise, perceiving that he should not be able to carry his election, transferred his votes to Francesco Piccolomini, Cardinal of Siena, a nephew of Pius II, who was elected September 21st, and took the title of Pius III. The virtues of that Pontiff rendered him worthy of the tiara, which, however, he owed to his infirmities. At the time of his election he was laboring under a mortal disease, which carried him off in less than a month. During his short Pontificate he had meditated assembling a General Council for the reform of ecclesiastical discipline; and some Roman Catholic writers are sanguine enough to suppose that such a step might have averted the Reformation.

D'Amboise soon perceived unequivocal symptoms of another defeat. The Romans to a man were against him, and he found it prudent to retire in favor of Cardinal Julian della Rovere, who had long pretended an attachment to the cause of France. It is said that Julian gained Caesar Borgia, who still commanded the votes of the Spanish Cardinals, by assuring him that he was the son, not of Alexander, but of himself. Borgia had no filial weakness, and the known character of his mother Vannozza might lend an air of probability to a story which it was not his interest to reject. It was a grand thing, as Michelet observes, to be the son of two successive Popes! However this may be, the Conclave speedily decided. Cardinal Julian was elected on the first scrutiny, October 31st, and D'Amboise had the mortification of kissing the toe of his former protégé and rival, now Pope Julius II. Like his predecessor, Julius had sworn to restore the ancient luster of ecclesiastical discipline, to call a General Council, and not to make war without the consent of two-thirds of the Sacred College. We shall see in the sequel how he kept his word.

MARGARET GOVERNS THE NETHERLANDS.

After Philip’s death, Maximilian set up pretensions to the regency both of Castile and the Netherlands, as natural guardian of his youthful grandson Charles. In the former of these claims he had little or no chance of success, and after some vain attempts to raise a party in Castile, and some empty threats of invasion, he quietly abandoned all his designs in that quarter. Charles was at this time residing in the Netherlands; for Maximilian had rejected Ferdinand’s demand to send that young Prince into Spain in order that he might become habituated to the language and manners of his future subjects. The States of the Netherland Provinces also, at first refused Maximilian’s claims to be guardian of his grandson and to conduct the government of the country; and they appointed a Council of Regency under the auspices of Louis XII as Lord Paramount of West Flanders. After a short period, however, being disturbed by internal commotions, and by the incursions of the Duke of Guelderland, who had broken loose during Philip’s absence, the Netherlanders, at the instance of the Lords of Croy and Chimay, to whom Philip had entrusted his son Charles, voluntarily submitted to the regency of Maximilian. The Emperor being at that time engaged in the affairs of Italy, appointed his daughter Margaret to be Governess of the Netherlands, who, after having been married to John, Prince of the Asturias, and afterwards to Duke Philibert II, of Savoy, was now again a widow. One of the first acts of Margaret was to bring about the celebrated League of Cambray; and as her father played a leading part in that unjust and impolitic transaction, it will be necessary here to take a brief review of the circumstances which occasioned that policy, and of the causes which prevented Maximilian from carrying it out successfully.

Although Maximilian was much more active and enterprising than his father Frederick III, yet he had if possible still less real power. By his marriage with the daughter of Charles the Bold, he had indeed added much to the future grandeur of the House of Austria; but the same circumstance served rather to diminish than increase his authority as Emperor. The Netherlands, as well as the Austrian dominions of the House of Habsburg, were subject to frequent commotions and revolts; and as the German Princes were called upon to help the reigning house in quarrels which did not concern them, they considered themselves all the more entitled to assert their own views with regard to Germany. One of the most important concessions obtained from Maximilian was a reform of the supreme tribunal of the Empire, according to a promise extorted from him by the States assembled at Nuremberg in 1489, when he was in want of their aid against Hungary. This promise Maximilian had faithfully performed at the Diet of Worms, in 1495, the first held after his accession. Under Frederick III, the members of the tribunal in question were named by the Emperor, and followed him wherever he went. But in 1495 its composition was entirely altered. The Emperor now nominated only the President, or Kammerrichter, and the Assessors were appointed by the States. Thus the tribunal, from a mere Kaiserliches-Gerricht, or court of the Emperor, became a Reichs-Kammer-Gerricht, or court of the Empire. It no longer followed the Emperor, but sat on appointed days at a fixed place, at first Frankfort, afterwards Spires, and finally at Wetzlar. Another most important alteration was that the President was allowed to pronounce the ban of the Empire in the Emperor’s name. The same Diet of Worms also established a perpetual public peace, or Landfriede. The previous ones had only been for terms of years. But though Faustrecht, literally Fist-right, or the right of private war, was forbidden under heavy penalties, the prohibition did not prove effectual, and at an advanced period of the sixteenth century we still find the Sickingens, the Huttens, and the Götz von Berlichingens retaining their lawless habits. The Diet of Augsburg, in 1500, made perhaps a still more important alteration in the constitution of the Empire by insisting on the establishment of a permanent Council for the administration of political affairs. This Council was in fact nothing more than a permanent committee of the States, in which the three Colleges of Electors, Princes, and Free Cities were represented; and the only privilege reserved to the Emperor was that of presiding in person, or naming the President. In order to regulate the representation of the Princes, Germany was now divided into six circles, which were at first called “provinces” of the German nation; viz., Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, Upper Rhine, Westphalia, and Lower Saxony. Each of these circles sent a Count and a Bishop to the Council; to which were added two deputies from Austria and the Netherlands. Two deputies were also named alternately by the chief Cities. Each of the Electors was represented, and one of them was always present in person.

DIET OF CONSTANCE, 1507.

The state of Maximilian’s foreign relations had compelled him to make these concessions, which were virtually an abdication of the Imperial power in favor of the States, or rather of the College of Electors, whose power would be predominant in the Council; and the matter was regarded in this light by Contarini, the Venetian ambassador to the King of the Romans at that period. The whole administration of affairs, foreign and domestic, was in fact vested in the Council, who assumed the title of the Reichs-Regiment, or Council of Regency. They negotiated of their own mere authority with Louis XII; and as they seemed willing to invest him with Milan, Maximilian anticipated them by himself bestowing it upon Louis as already related. As it was soon found, however, that neither the members of this Council nor the Assessors of the Kammer-Gericht, or Imperial Chamber, could obtain payment of their salaries, nor carry through any of their measures, they dissolved themselves, and returned to their homes; and Maximilian recovered for a while all his former power, and was again regarded as the fountain of justice.

In consequence of this state of things, the Electors held a solemn meeting at Gelnhausen, in June, 1502, and pledged themselves to stand by one another for the maintenance of the rights of the Empire. Maximilian, however, was supported by a party among the Princes; and he had also wonderfully recovered his authority by his conduct in the war of the Bavarian succession, to which we have already adverted. At length, at the Diet of Constance, in 1507, a sort of compromise was made between the Imperial and Electoral authority, and the chief institutions of the Empire were settled on a permanent basis. The Kammer-Gericht, or Imperial Chamber, was again established according to the model laid down by the Diet of Worms, though with a few modifications. The Reichs-Regiment, or Council of Regency, appears, however, to have remained in abeyance during the reign of Maximilian, but was reestablished by the first Diet held by Charles V at Worms, in 1521, though with some few alterations in favor of the Emperor's authority; but its power was again broken in the Diet of 1524, by a combination between the Emperor and the Free Cities.

Another important point established by the Diet of Constance was the system of taxation. There were two methods of assessment in Germany, the Roll, or Register (Matrikel), and the Common Penny (der gemeine Pfennig). The first of these was levied on the separate States of Germany, according to a certain roll or list; the second, which was a mixture of a poll-tax and a property-tax, was collected by parishes, without any regard to the division of States. The Diet of Constance, by finally establishing the Matrikel, recognized a very important principle; since that system contemplated the contributors as the subjects of the different local States into which Germany was divided, while that of the Common Penny considered them as the subjects of a common Empire. By this decision, therefore, the independence of the different States was recognized; while, on the other hand, the Imperial Chamber established the principle of the unity of the Empire.

These two institutions, the Matrikel and the Imperial Chamber, lasted three centuries. The fame of having founded them has been attributed to Maximilian: but in fact he did all in his power to oppose them—they were forced upon him by the Electors and States, and chiefly by the exertions of Berthold, Count Henneberg, Elector of Metz. They were warmly opposed by certain parties in the Empire, and especially by the knightly and ecclesiastical orders. The Knights, attached to the old feudal system, objected to paying a money tax; they protested that as free Franks they were dutifully ready to shed their blood for the Emperor, but that a tax was an innovation, and an encroachment on their liberty; while the Prelates demurred to acknowledge the authority of a tribunal so completely temporal as the Imperial Chamber. Maximilian at this Diet virtually recognized the independence of the Swiss Confederates, by declaring them free from the jurisdiction of all the Imperial tribunals, as well as from the Matrikel, or States tax. He had then need of Swiss troops, but those which he raised among them received a stipend.

We have before adverted to the hostile demonstration of this Diet of Constance against Louis XII, when that King was preparing his expedition against Genoa. Pope Julius II, who was also alarmed by the same preparations, and who was exceedingly jealous of the influence which the French were acquiring in Italy, importuned Maximilian to cross the Alps with an army; and his appeals were seconded by the Venetians, who offered a free passage for the German troops through their territories. Maximilian had been already meditating an expedition into Italy. He wished to establish the rights of the Empire in the Italian lands, to help Pisa against the Florentines, and also to march to Rome, in order to receive the Imperial Crown from the hands of the Pope. He therefore listened to these applications; and in an animated address to the Diet he exhorted them to resist the ambitious and encroaching spirit of the French King, who, he said, had already alienated some of the Imperial fiefs in Italy, and whose design he represented it to be even to avert from him the Imperial Crown itself. These topics, enforced with that eloquence and those powers of persuasion which Maximilian possessed in a high degree, made a great impression on the assembly. With an extraordinary burst of patriotism the Diet voted an army of 90,000 men, to be further increased by 12,000 Swiss; and measures were taken for raising this large force with an alacrity quite unusual. Alarmed by these mighty preparations, Louis, after finishing his Genoese expedition, quietly disbanded his army, and applied himself through his agents to tranquillize the minds of the Germans. This policy was quite successful, and had a result very mortifying to Maximilian. The Diet demanded that the Italian expedition should be conducted in their name, that they should appoint the generals, and that the conquests should belong to the whole Germanic body: which conditions being rejected by Maximilian, they reduced the forces voted to 12,000 men. Maximilian in vain endeavored to persuade the Venetians, who had altered their views, to join with him in a partition of the Milanese. They united with Chaumont, the French Governor of the Milanese, to oppose the passage of Maximilian, notified to him that he should be received with all honor in their territories if he came with an unarmed retinue on his way to Rome, but that they could not permit the passage of an army; while Pope Julius II also announced through his Legate that he had reconciled himself with Louis, and dissuaded Maximilian from his contemplated journey.

But he was not to be diverted from his project. He now resolved to turn his arms against the Venetians, at whose conduct he was highly incensed; and in January, 1508, he began an expedition into Italy with what troops he could collect. One division of his army was directed against Roveredo; another against Friuli; he himself advanced with a third to Trent, where he assumed the title of “Roman Emperor Elect”. Having erected an Imperial tribunal, he dispatched a herald to Venice with an absurd message, summoning before him the Doge Leonardo Loredano and the whole Senate, and on their refusal to appear, he published against them the ban of the Empire.

At first Maximilian’s arms were attended with success, and several places were taken; but he soon began to feel that want of means which commonly rendered all his enterprises abortive and ridiculous; and he was obliged to return into Germany, in order if possible to obtain fresh troops and more money. Meanwhile the Venetians, aided by the French, not only recovered the lost places, but even captured several Austrian towns; and Trent itself would have fallen into their hands had not Trivulzio, the French general, from a feeling of jealousy, withdrawn from them his support. Maximilian, finding no hope of succor, was compelled in May to abandon his ill-judged enterprise; and the Venetians, disgusted by the desertion of the French, entered into a separate armistice with him for a term of three years. As a kind of salve for his honor, Maximilian published a bull of Pope Julius II, by which the title of “Emperor Elect” (that is, Emperor chosen, but not yet crowned) was granted to him. (This event marks the severance of Germany from Rome. From Ferdinand I, brother of Charles V, downwards, this title of “Roman Emperor Elect” “Romanorum Imperator Electus”, was taken by all Maximilian’s successors in the Holy Roman Empire, immediately upon their German coronation. But the word “Elect” was soon dropped, and the German Sovereign, even on formal occasions, was never called anything but “Emperor”).

This miscarriage, after such magnificent pretensions, and especially the insolent and even childish manner in which the Venetians celebrated their success, inflicted a deep wound on the Emperor’s vanity. Alviano, the Venetian commander, was gratified with a sort of Roman triumph for his victories over the Austrian general, Sixt von Trautson, in the Friuli: and he made a solemn entry into Venice, with a long train of German prisoners. At the same time, what was perhaps still more provoking, Maximilian and the Empire were abused and ridiculed throughout the Venetian dominions in caricatures, farces, and satirical songs.

CHAPTER VI

AFFAIRS OF ITALY, SPAIN AND THE EMPIRE, DOWN TO THE LEAGUE OF CAMBRAY