III. PART I. ITALY. CHAP. republics implored him to reform their laws and to settle their differences. A general meeting was summoned in the plain of Paquara, upon the banks of the Adige. The Lombards poured themselves forth from Romagna and the cities of the March; Guelfs and Ghibelins, nobles and burghers, free citizens and tenantry of feudal lords, marshalled around their carroccios, caught from the lips of the preacher the illusive promise of universal peace. They submitted to agreements dictated by Fra Giovanni, which contain little else than a mutual amnesty; whether it were that their quarrels had been really without object, or that he had dexterously avoided to determine the real points of contention. But power and reputation suddenly acquired are transitory. Not satisfied with being the legislator and arbiter of Italian cities, he aimed at becoming their master; and abused the enthusiasm of Vicenza and Verona, to obtain a grant of absolute sovereignty. Changed from an apostle to an usurper, the fate of Fra Giovanni might be predicted; and he speedily gave place to those, who, though they made a worse use of their power, had, in the eyes of mankind, more natural pretensions to possess it.* * Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura, t. iv. p. 214. (a very well-written account.) Sismondi, t. ii. p. 484. PART II. State of Italy after the Extinction of the House of Swabia—Conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou―The Lombard Republics become severally subject to Princes or Usurpers— The Visconti of Milan-their Aggrandizement-Decline of the Imperial Authority over Italy-Internal State of Rome-Rienzi-Florence-her Forms of Government historically traced to the end of the fourteenth Century-Conquest of Pisa-Pisa-its Commerce, naval Wars with Genoa, and Decay-Genoa-her Contentions with Venice-War of Chioza-Government of Genoa-Venice-her Origin and Prosperity-Venetian Government-its Vices-Territorial Conquests of Venice-Military System of ItalyCompanies of Adventure—1. foreign; Guarnieri, Hawkwood—and 2. native; Braccio, Sforza-Improvements in Military Science-Arms, offensive and defensive—Invention of Gunpowder-Naples-First Line of Anjou-Joanna I.-Ladislaus-Joanna II.— Francis Sforza becomes Duke of Milan-Alfonzo king of Naples-State of Italy during the fifteenth Century-Florence-Rise of the Medici, and ruin of their Adversaries- Pretensions of Charles VIII. to Naples. FROM III. PART II. ITALY. ROM the death of Frederic II. in 1250, to the invasion of Charles CHAP. VIII. in 1494, a long and undistinguished period occurs, which it is impossible to break into any natural divisions. It is an age, in many respects, highly brilliant; the age of poetry and letters, of art and of continual improvement. Italy displayed an intellectual superiority in this period over the Transalpine nations, which certainly had not appeared since the destruction of the Roman empire. But her political history presents a labyrinth of petty facts, so obscure and of so little influence as not to arrest the attention; so intricate and incapable of classification, as to leave only confusion in the memory. The general events that are worthy of notice, and give a character to this long period, are the establishment of small tyrannies upon the ruins of republican government in most of the cities, the gradual rise of three considerable states, Milan, Florence, and Venice, the naval and commercial rivalry between the last city and Genoa, the final acquisition by the popes of their present territorial sovereignty, and CHAP. the revolutions in the kingdom of Naples under the lines of Anjou III. and afterwards of Aragon. PART II. ITALY. 1259 Naples. After the death of Frederic II. the distinctions of Guelf and Ghibelin became destitute of all rational meaning. The most odious crimes were constantly perpetrated, and the utmost miseries endured, for an echo and a shade, that mocked the deluded enthusiasts of faction. None of the Guelfs denied the nominal, but indefinite sovereignty of the empire; and beyond a name the Ghibelins themselves would have been little disposed to carry it. But the virulent hatreds attached to these words grew continually more implacable, till ages of ignominy and tyrannical government had extinguished every energetic passion in the bosoms of a degraded people. In the fall of the house of Swabia, Rome appeared to have consummated her triumph; and although the Ghibelin party was for a little time able to maintain itself, and even to gain ground in the north of Italy, yet two events that occurred not long afterwards, restored the ascendancy of their adversaries. The first of these was the fate of Eccelin da Romano, whose rapid successes in Lombardy appeared to threaten the establishment of a tremendous despotism, and induced a temporary union of Guelf and Ghibelin states, by which he was overthrown. The next, and far more important, was Affairs of the change of dynasty in Naples. This kingdom had been occupied, after the death of Conrad, by his illegitimate brother, Manfred, in 1254 the behalf, as he at first pretended, of young Conradin the heir, but in fact as his own acquisition. He was a prince of an active and firm mind, well fitted for his difficult post, to whom the Ghibelins looked up as their head, and as the representative of his father. It was a natural object with the popes, independently of their ill will towards. a son of Frederic II., to see a sovereign on whom they could better rely placed upon so neighbouring a throne. Charles, count of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, was tempted by them to lead a crusade (for as such all wars for the interest of Rome were now considered) 1266 against the Neapolitan usurper. The chance of a battle decided the fate of Naples, and had a striking influence upon the history of Charles of Anjou. III. PART II. ITALY. Europe for several centuries. Manfred was killed in the field; but CHAP. there remained the legitimate heir of the Frederics, a boy of seventeen years old, Conradin, son of Conrad, who rashly, as we say at least after the event, attempted to regain his inheritance. He fell into the hands of Charles; and the voice of those rude ages, as well 1268 as of a more enlightened posterity, has united in branding with everlasting infamy the name of that prince, who did not hesitate to purchase the security of his own title by the public execution of an honourable competitor, or rather, a rightful claimant of the throne he had usurped. With Conradin the house of Swabia was extinguished; but Constance the daughter of Manfred had transported his right to Sicily and Naples into the house of Aragon, by her marriage with Peter III. the Ghibelin This success of a monarch, selected by the Roman pontiffs as their Decline of particular champion, turned the tide of faction over all Italy. He party. expelled the Ghibelins from Florence, of which they had a few years before obtained a complete command by means of their memorable victory upon the river Arbia. After the fall of Conradin, that party was every where discouraged. Germany held out small hopes of support, even when the imperial throne, which had long been vacant, should be filled by one of her princes. The populace were, in almost every city, attached to the church, and to the name of Guelf; the king of Naples employed arms, and the popes helped with excommunications, so that for the remainder of the thirteenth century, the name of Ghibelin was a term of proscription in the majority of Lombard and Tuscan republics. Charles was constituted by the pope vicar-general in Tuscany. This was a new pretension of the Roman pontiffs, to name the lieutenants of the empire during its vacancy, which indeed could not be completely filled up without their consent. It soon, however, became evident, that he aimed at the sovereignty of Italy. Some of the popes themselves, Gregory X. and Nicolas IV., grew jealous of their own creature. At the congress of Cremona, in 1269, it was proposed to confer upon Charles CHAP. the seigniory of all the Guelf cities; but the greater part were pruIII. dent enough to chuse him rather as a friend than a master.* PART II. ITALY. bard cities become subject to lords. The cities of Lombardy, however, of either denomination, were no The Lom longer influenced by that generous disdain of one man's will, which is to republican governments what chastity is to women; a conservative principle, never to be reasoned upon, or subjected to calculations of utility. By force, or stratagem, or free consent, almost all the Lombard republics had already fallen under the yoke of some leading citizen, who became the lord (Signore) or, in the Grecian sense, tyrant of his country. The first instance of a voluntary delegation of sovereignty was that, above mentioned, of Ferrara, which placed itself under the lord of Este. Eccelin made himself truly the tyrant of the cities beyond the Adige; and such experience ought naturally to have inspired the Italians with more universal abhorrence of despotism. But every danger appeared trivial in the eyes of exasperated factions, when compared with the ascendancy of their adversaries. Weary of unceasing and useless contests, in which ruin fell with an alternate but equal hand upon either party, liberty withdrew from a people who disgraced her name; and the tumultuous, the brave, the intractable Lombards became eager to submit themselves to a master, and patient under the heaviest oppression. Or, if tyranny sometimes overstepped the limits of forbearance, and a seditious rising expelled the reigning prince, it was only to produce a change of hands, and transfer the impotent people to a different, and perhaps a worse, despotism. * Sismondi, t. iii. p. 417. Several however, including Milan, took an oath of fidelity to Charles the same year. ibid. In 1273, he was lord of Alessandria and Piacenza, and received tribute from Milan, Bologna and most Lombard cities. Muratori. It was evidently his intention to avail himself of the vacancy of the empire, and either to acquire that title himself, or at least to stand in the same relation as the emperors had done to the Italian states; which, according to the usage of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, In many cities, not a conspiracy left them in possession of every thing that we call independence, with the reservation. of a nominal allegiance. + See an instance of the manner in which one tyrant was exchanged for another, in the fate of Passerino Bonaccorsi, lord of Mantua, in 1328. Luigi di Gonzaga surprized him, rode the city (corse la città) with a troop of horse, crying, Viva il popolo, e muoja Messer Passerino e le sue gabelle! killed Passerino upon the spot, put his son to death in cold blood, e poi si fece signore della terra. Vil |