and broke the power of the Swiss, who held it for Massimiliano
Sforza, the titular duke. Leo for a while relied on Francis; for
the vast power of Charles V., who succeeded to the empire
in 1519, as in 1516 he had succeeded to the crowns of Spain
and Lower Italy, threatened the whole of Europe. It was
Leo’s nature, however, to be inconstant. In 1521 he changed
sides, allied himself to Charles, and died after hearing that the
imperial troops had again expelled the French from Milan.
During the next four years the Franco-Spanish war dragged on
in Lombardy until the decisive battle of Pavia in 1525, when
Francis was taken prisoner, and Italy lay open to the Spanish
armies. Meanwhile Leo X. had been followed by Adrian VI.,
and Adrian by Clement VII., of the house of Medici, who had
long ruled Florence. In the reign of this pope Francis was
released from his prison in Madrid (1526), and Clement hoped
that he might still be used in the Italian interest as a counterpoise
to Charles. It is impossible in this place to follow the tangled
intrigues of that period. The year 1527 was signalized by the
famous sack of Rome. An army of mixed German and Spanish
troops, pretending to act for the emperor, but which may
rather be regarded as a vast marauding party, entered Italy
under their leader Frundsberg. After his death, the Constable
de Bourbon took command of them; they marched slowly
down, aided by the marquis of Ferrara, and unopposed by the
duke of Urbino, reached Rome, and took it by assault. The
constable was killed in the first onslaught; Clement was imprisoned
in the castle of St Angelo; Rome was abandoned
to the rage of 30,000 ruffians. As an immediate result of this
catastrophe, Florence shook off the Medici, and established a
republic. But Clement, having made peace with the emperor,
turned the remnants of the army which had sacked Rome
against his native city. After a desperate resistance, Florence
fell in 1530. Alessandro de’ Medici was placed there with the
title of duke of Cività di Penna; and, on his murder in 1537,
Cosimo de’ Medici, of the younger branch of the ruling house,
was made duke. Acting as lieutenant for the Spaniards, he
subsequently (1555) subdued Siena, and bequeathed to his
descendants the grand-duchy of Tuscany.
VII. Spanish-Austrian Ascendancy.—It was high time, after the sack of Rome in 1527, that Charles V. should undertake Italian affairs. The country was exposed to anarchy, of which this had been the last and most disgraceful example. The Turks were threatening western Settlement of Italy by Spain. Europe, and Luther was inflaming Germany. By the treaty of Barcelona in 1529 the pope and emperor made terms. By that of Cambray in the same year France relinquished Italy to Spain. Charles then entered the port of Genoa, and on the 5th of November met Clement VII. at Bologna. He there received the imperial crown, and summoned the Italian princes for a settlement of all disputed claims. Francesco Sforza, the last and childless heir of the ducal house, was left in Milan till his death, which happened in 1535. The republic of Venice was respected in her liberties and Lombard territories. The Este family received a confirmation of their duchy of Modena and Reggio, and were invested in their fief of Ferrara by the pope. The marquessate of Mantua was made a duchy; and Florence was secured, as we have seen, to the Medici. The great gainer by this settlement was the papacy, which held the most substantial Italian province, together with a prestige that raised it far above all rivalry. The rest of Italy, however parcelled, henceforth became but a dependence upon Spain. Charles V., it must be remembered, achieved his conquest and confirmed his authority far less as emperor than as the heir of Castile and Aragon. A Spanish viceroy in Milan and another in Naples, supported by Rome and by the minor princes who followed the policy dictated to them from Madrid, were sufficient to preserve the whole peninsula in a state of somnolent inglorious servitude.
From 1530 until 1796, that is, for a period of nearly three centuries, the Italians had no history of their own. Their annals are filled with records of dynastic changes and redistributions of territory, consequent upon treaties signed by foreign powers, in the settlement of quarrels which no wise concerned the people. Italy only too often became the theatre of desolating and distracting wars. But these wars were fought for the most part by alien armies; the points at issue were decided beyond the Alps; the gains accrued to royal families whose names were unpronounceable by southern tongues. The affairs of Europe during the years when Habsburg and Bourbon fought their domestic battles with the blood of noble races may teach grave lessons to all thoughtful men of our days, but none bitterer, none fraught with more insulting recollections, than to the Italian people, who were haggled over like dumb driven cattle in the mart of chaffering kings. We cannot wholly acquit the Italians of their share of blame. When they might have won national independence, after their warfare with the Swabian emperors, they let the golden opportunity slip. Pampered with commercial prosperity, eaten to the core with inter-urban rivalries, they submitted to despots, renounced the use of arms, and offered themselves in the hour of need, defenceless and disunited to the shock of puissant nations. That they had created modern civilization for Europe availed them nothing. Italy, intellectually first among the peoples, was now politically and practically last; and nothing to her historian is more heart-rending than to watch the gradual extinction of her spirit in this age of slavery.
In 1534 Alessandro Farnese, who owed his elevation to his sister Giulia, one of Alexander VI.’s mistresses, took the tiara with the title of Paul III. It was his ambition to create a duchy for his family; and with this object he gave Parma and Piacenza to his son Pier Luigi. After Pontificate of Paul III. much wrangling between the French and Spanish parties, the duchy was confirmed in 1586 to Ottaviano Farnese and his son Alessandro, better known as Philip II.’s general, the prince of Parma. Alessandro’s descendants reigned in Parma and Piacenza till the year 1731. Paul III.’s pontificate was further marked by important changes in the church, all of which confirmed the spiritual autocracy of Rome. In 1540 this pope approved of Loyola’s foundation, and secured the powerful militia of the Jesuit order. The Inquisition was established with almost unlimited powers in Italy, and the press was placed under its jurisdiction. Thus free thought received a check, by which not only ecclesiastical but political tyrants knew how to profit. Henceforth it was impossible to publish or to utter a word which might offend the despots of church or state; and the Italians had to amuse their leisure with the polite triflings of academics. In 1545 a council was opened at Trent for the reformation of church discipline and the promulgation of orthodox doctrine. The decrees of this council defined Roman Catholicism against the Reformation; and, while failing to regenerate morality, they enforced a hypocritical observance of public decency. Italy to outer view put forth blossoms of hectic and hysterical piety, though at the core her clergy and her aristocracy were more corrupt than ever.
In 1556 Philip II., by the abdication of his father Charles V., became king of Spain. He already wore the crown of the Two Sicilies, and ruled the duchy of Milan. In the next year Ferdinand, brother of Charles, was elected emperor. The French, meanwhile, had not entirely Reign of Philip II. abandoned their claims on Italy. Gian Pietro Caraffa, who was made pope in 1555 with the name of Paul IV., endeavoured to revive the ancient papal policy of leaning upon France. He encouraged the duke of Guise to undertake the conquest of Naples, as Charles of Anjou had been summoned by his predecessors. But such schemes were now obsolete and anachronistic. They led to a languid lingering Italian campaign, which was settled far beyond the Alps by Philip’s victories over the French at St Quentin and Gravelines. The peace of Câteau Cambresis, signed in 1559, left the Spanish monarch undisputed lord of Italy. Of free commonwealths there now survived only Venice, which, together with Spain, achieved for Europe the victory of Lepanto in 1573; Genoa, which, after the ineffectual Fieschi revolution in 1547, abode beneath the rule of the great Doria family, and held a feeble sway in Corsica; and the two insignificant republics of Lucca and San Marino.
