Nardi, p. 7, I should infer that they still formally subsisted. of any positive authority heightened the priors, become a mockery and pageant to * Ammirato, p. 145. Machiavel says, I. viii., that this was done ristringere il governo, e che le deliberazioni importanti si riducessero in minore numero. Mr. Roscoe, vol. ii., p. 53, is puzzled how to explain this decided breach of the people's rights by his hero. But though it rather appears from Ammirato's expressions that the two councils were now abolished, yet from M. Sismondi, t. xi., p. 186, who quotes an author I have not seen, and from * Cambi, a gonfalonier of justice, had, in concert with the priors, admonished some public officers for a breach of duty. Fu giudicato questo atto molto superbo, says Ammirato, che senza participazione di Lorenzo de' Medici, principe del governo, fosse seguito, che in Pisa in quel tempo si ritrovava, p. 184. The gonfalonier was fined for executing his constitutional functions. This was a downright confession that the republic was at an end; and all it provokes M. Sismondi to say is not too much, t. xi., p. 345. The vast expenditure of the Medici for the sake of political influence would of itself have absorbed all their profits. Cosmo is said by Guicciardini to have spent 400,000 ducats in building churches, monasteries, and other public works, 1. i., p. 91. The expenses of the family between 1434 and 1471 in buildings, charities, and taxes alone, amounted to 663.755 florins; equal in value, according to Sismondi, to 32,000,000 francs at present.-Hist. des Républ., t. x., p. 173. They seem to have advanced moneys imprudently, through their agents, to Edward IV., who was not the best of debtors.Comines, Mém. de Charles VIII., I. vii, c. 6, the cause of those unhappy revolutions | sidered its natural heads, as the German that speedily ensued, and which his fore- emperors were of the Ghibelins. The long sight would, it was imagined, have been English wars changed all views of the able to prevent; an opinion which, wheth- court of France to self-defence. But, in er founded in probability or otherwise, the fifteenth century, its plans of aggranattests the common sentiment about his dizement beyond the Alps began to recharacter. vive. Several times, as I have mention the dominion of France. The dukes of Savoy, possessing most part of Piedmont, and masters of the mountain-passes, were, by birth, intermarriage, and habitual policy, completely dedicated to the French interests. In the former wars of Ferdinand against the house of Anjou, Pope Pius II., a very enlightened statesman, foresaw the danger of Italy from the prevailing influence of France, and deprecated the introduction of her armies. But at that time the central parts of Lombardy were held by a man equally renowned as a soldier and a politician, Francesco Sforza. Conscious that a claim upon his own dominions subsisted in the house of Orleans, he maintained a strict alliance with the Aragonese dynasty at Naples, as having a common interest against France. But after his death the connexion between Milan and Naples came to be weakened. In the new system of alliances, Milan and Florence, sometimes including Venice, were combined against Ferdinand and Sixtus IV., an unprincipled and restless pontiff. Ludovico Sforza, who had usurped the guardianship of his nephew, the Duke of Milan, found, as that young man advanced to maturity, that one crime required to be completed by another. To If indeed Lorenzo de' Medici could noted, the republic of Genoa put itself under Pretensions of have changed the destinies of France upon Italy, however premature his Naples. death may appear, if we consider the ordinary duration of human existence, it must be admitted, that for his own welfare, perhaps for his glory, he had lived out the full measure of his time. An age of new and uncommon revolutions was about to arise, among the earliest of which the temporary downfall of his family was to be reckoned. The long-contested succession of Naples was again to involve Italy in war. The ambition of strangers was once more to desolate her plains. Ferdinand, king of Naples, had reigned for thirty years after the discomfiture of his competitor with success and ability; but with a degree of ill faith as well as tyranny towards his subjects that rendered his government deservedly odious. His son Alfonso, whose succession seemed now near at hand, was still more marked by these vices than himself.* Meanwhile, the pretensions of the house of Anjou had legally descended, after the death of old Regnier, to Regnier, duke of Lorraine, his grandson by a daughter; whose marriage into the house of Lorraine had, however, so displeased her father, that he bequeathed his Neapolitan title, along with his real patrimony, the county of Provence, to a count of Maine; by whose * Denina, Storia dell' Italia Occidentale, t. ii, testament they became vested in the passim. Louis XI. treated Savoy as a fief of crown of France. Louis XI., while he France; interfering in all its affairs, and even took possession of Provence, gave him- taking on himself the regency after the death of self no trouble about Naples. But Charles Philibert I., under pretence of preventing disorders, p. 185. The Marquis of Saluzzo, who posVIII., inheriting his father's ambition sessed considerable territories in the south of Piedwithout that cool sagacity which restrain-mont, had done homage to France ever since 1353 ed it in general from impracticable attempts, and far better circumstanced at home than Louis had ever been, was ripe for an expedition to vindicate his pretensions upon Naples, or even for more extensive projects. It was now two centuries since the kings of France had aimed, by intervals, at conquests in Italy. Philip the Fair and his successors were anxious to keep up a connexion with the Guelf party, and to be con * Comines, who speaks sufficiently ill of the father, sums up the son's character very concisely: Nul homme n'a este plus cruel que lui, ne plus mauvais, ne plus vicieux et plus infect, ne plus gourmand que lui, l. vii., c. 13. (p. 40), though to the injury of his real superior, the Duke of Savoy. This gave France another pretext for interference in Italy, p. 187. † Cosmo de' Medici, in a conference with Pius II. at Florence, having expressed his surprise that the pope should support Ferdinand: Pontifex haud ferendum fuisse ait, regem a se constitutum, Gallos, si regnum obtinuissent, Senas haud dubiè armis ejici, neque id Italiæ libertati conducere ; subacturos; Florentinos adversus lilia nihil acturos; Borsium Mutinæ ducem Gallis galliorem videri; Flaminia regulos ad Francos inclmare; Genuam Francis subesse, et civitatem Astensem; si pontifex Romanus aliquando Francorum amicus assumatur, nihil reliqui in Italiâ remanere quod non transeat in Gallorum nomen; tueri se Italiam, dum Ferdinandum tueretur.-Commentar. Pii Secundi, l. iv., p. 96. Spondanus, who led me to this passage, is very angry; but the year 1494 proved Pius II. to be a wary statesman. 1 depose and murder his ward was how-derstandings could render them, to perever a scheme that prudence, though not conscience, bade him hesitate to execute. He had rendered Ferdinand of Naples, and Piero de' Medici, Lorenzo's heir, his decided enemies. A revolution at Milan would be the probable result of his continuing in usurpation. [A. D. 1439.] In these circumstances, Ludovico Sforza excited the King of France to undertake the conquest of Naples.* So long as the three great nations of Europe were unable to put forth their natural strength through internal separation or foreign war, the Italians had so little to dread for their independence, that their policy was altogether directed to regulating the domestic balance of power among themselves. In the latter part of the fifteenth century, a more enlarged view of Europe would have manifested the necessity of reconciling petty animosities, and sacrificing petty ambition, in order to preserve the nationality of their governments; not by attempting to melt down Lombards and Neapolitans, principalities and republics, into a single monarchy, but by the more just and rational scheme of a common federation. The politicians of Italy were abundantly competent, as far as cool and clear un ceive the interests of their country. But it is the will of Providence, that the highest and surest wisdom, even in matters of policy, should never be unconnected with virtue. In relieving himself from an immediate danger, Ludovico Sforza overlooked the consideration that the presumptive heir of the King of France claimed by an ancient title that principality of Milan, which he was compassing by usurpation and murder. But neither Milan nor Naples was free from other claimants than France, nor was she reserved to enjoy unmolested the spoil of Italy. A louder and a louder strain of warlike dissonance will be heard from the banks of the Danube, and from the Mediterranean gulf. The dark and wily Ferdinand, the rash and lively Maximilian, are preparing to hasten into the lists; the schemes of ambition are assuming a more comprehensive aspect; and the controversy of Neapolitan succession is to expand into the long rivalry between the houses of France and Austria. But here, while Italy is still untouched, and before as yet the first lances of France gleam along the defiles of the Alps, we close the history of the Middle Ages. CHAPTER IV. THE HISTORY OF SPAIN TO THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA. Kingdom of the Visigoths.-Conquest of Spain by the Moors-Gradual Revival of the Spanish Nation-Kingdoms of Leon, Aragon, Navarre, and Castile, successively formed.-Chartered Towns of Castile.-Military Orders.-Conquest of Ferdinand III. and James of Aragon.-Causes of the delay in expelling the Moors.-History of Castile continued.-Character of the government. -Peter the Cruel.-House of Trastamare.John II.-Henry IV.-Constitution of Castile. National Assemblies or Cortes.-Their constituent parts.-Right of Taxation.-Legislation.Privy Council of Castile.-Laws for the protection of Liberty.-Imperfections of the Constitution.-Aragon.-Its history in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.-Disputed succession.-Constitution of Aragon.-Free spirit of its Aristocracy.-Privilege of Union.-Powers of the Justiza.-Legal Securities.-Illustrations.-Other Constitutional Laws.-Valencia and Catalonia. -Union of two Crowns by the Marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella.-Conquest of Granada. THE history of Spain during the middle ages ought to commence with the ⚫ Guicciardini, l. i. dynasty of the Visigoths; a na- Kingdom of tion among the first that assault- Visigoths in ed and overthrew the Roman Spain. Empire, and whose establishment preceded by nearly half a century the invasion of Clovis. Vanquished by that conqueror in the battle of Poitiers, the Gothic monarchs lost their extensive dominions in Gaul, and transferred their residence from Toulouse to Toledo. But I hold the annals of barbarians so unworthy of remembrance, that I will not detain the reader by naming one sovereign of that obscure race. The Merovingian kings of France were perhaps as deeply stained by atrocious crimes, but their history, slightly as I have noticed it, is the necessary foundation of that of Charlemagne, and illustrates the feudal system and constitutional antiquities of France. If those of Castile had been equally interesting to the historical student, I should have taken the same pains to trace their wards the Christian princes, but sometimes sought their alliance.* original in the Gothic monarchy. For not only relaxed their natural enmity tothat is at least as much the primary source of the old Castilian constitution, as the Anglo-Saxon polity of our own. It may, however, suffice to mention, that it differed in several respects from that of the Franks during the same period. The crown was less hereditary, or at least the regular succession was more frequently disturbed. The prelates had a still more commanding influence in temporal government. The distinction of Romans and barbarians was less marked, the laws more uniform, and approaching nearly to the imperial code. The power of the sovereign was perhaps more limited by an aristocratical council than in France, but it never yielded to the dangerous influence of mayors of the palace. Civil wars and disputed successions were very frequent, but the integrity of the kingdom was not violated by the custom of partition. The last attack, which seemed to endanger the reviving monarchy of Kingdom Spain, was that of Almanzor, the of Leon. illustrious vizier of Haccham II., towards the end of the tenth century, wherein the city of Leon, and even the shrine of Compostella, were burnt to the ground. For some ages before this transient reflux, gradual encroachments had been made upon the Saracens; and the kingdom, originally styled of Oviedo, the seat of which was removed to Leon in 914, had extended its boundary to the Duero, and even to the mountainous chain of the Guadarrama. The province of old Castile, thus denominated, as is generally supposed, from the castles erected, while it remained a march or frontier against the Moors, was governed by hereditary counts, elected originally by the provincial aristocracy, and virtually independent, it seems probable, of the kings of Leon, though commonly serving them in war, as brethren of the same faith and While the kings of Leon were thus occupied in recovering the western provinces, another race of Christian princes grew up silently under the shadow of the Pyrenean mountains. Nothing can be Kingdoms of more obscure than the begin- Navarre and Aragon. nings of those little states, which were formed in Navarre and the country of Soprarbe. They might perhaps be almost contemporaneous with the Moorish conquests. On both sides of the Pyrenees dwelt an aboriginal people; the last to undergo the yoke, and who had never acquired the language, of Rome. We know little of these intrepid mountaineers in the dark period which elapsed under the Gothic and Frank dynasties, till we find them cutting off the rearguard of Charlemagne in Roncesvalles, Spain, after remaining for nearly three Conquest centuries in the possession of the by the Visigoths, fell under the yoke of Saracens. the Saracens in 712. The fervid and irresistible enthusiasm which dis-nation.† tinguished the youthful period of Mahometanism, might sufficiently account for this conquest; even if we could not assign additional causes,-the factions which divided the Goths, the resentment of disappointed pretenders to the throne, the provocations of Count Julian, and the temerity that risked the fate of an empire on the chances of a single battle. It is more surprising, that a remnant of this ancient monarchy should not only have preserved its national liberty and name in the northern mountains, but waged for some centuries a successful, and generally an offensive warfare against the conquerors, till the balance was completely turned in its favour, and the Moors were compelled to maintain almost as obstinate and protracted a contest for a small portion of the peninsula. But the Arabian monarchs of Cordova found in their success and imagined security a pretext for indolence; even in the cultivation of science, and contemplation of the magnificent architecture of their mosques and palaces, they forgot their poor but daring enemies in the Asturias; while, according to the nature of despotism, the fruits of wisdom or bravery in one generation were lost in the follies and effeminacy of the next. Their kingdom was dismembered by successful rebels, who formed the states of Toledo, Huesca, Saragosa, and others less eminent; and these, in their own mutual contests, * Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne. According to Roderic of Toledo, one of the earliest Spanish historians, though not older than of Castile, in the reign of Froila, about the year the beginning of the thirteenth century, the nobles 924, sibi et posteris providerunt, et duos milites non de potentioribus, sed de prudentioribus elegerunt, quod et judices statuerunt, ut dissensiones patriæ et querelantium causæ suo judicio sopirentur, 1. v., c. 1. Several other passages in the same writer prove that the counts of Castile were nearly independent of Leon, at least from the time of Ferdiand Gonsalvo about the middle of the tenth century. Ex quo iste suscepit suæ patriæ comitatum, cessaverunt reges Asturiarum insolescere in Castellam, et a flumine Pisoricâ nihil amplius vindicarunt, I. v., c. 2. Marina, in his Ensayo Historico Critico, is disposed to controvert this fact. and maintaining at least their independ- which they began by pillaging, they graduence, though seldom, like the kings of ally possessed; their valour was heightAsturias, waging offensive war against ened by the customs of chivalry, and the Saracens. The town of Jaca, situa-inspired by the example of the Cid; and, ted among long narrow valleys that in- before the end of this age, Alonso VI. retersect the southern ridges of the Pyre- covered the ancient metropolis of the monnees, was the capital of a little free state, archy, the city of Toledo. This Capture of which afterward expanded into the mon- was the severest blow which the Toledo, archy of Aragon." A territory rather Moors had endured, and an unequivocal more extensive belonged to Navarre, the symptom of that change in their relative kings of which fixed their seat at Pam- strength which, from being so gradual, pelona. Biscay seems to have been di- was the more irretrievable. Calamities vided between this kingdom and that of scarcely inferior fell upon them in a difLeon. The connexion of Aragon or So-ferent quarter. The kings of Aragon (a prarbe and Navarre was very intimate, and they were often united under a single chief. At the beginning of the eleventh centuKingdom of ry, Sancho the Great, king of Castile. Navarre and Aragon, was enabled to render his second son, Ferdinand, count, or, as he assumed the title, King of Castile. This effectually dismembered that province from the kingdom of Leon; but their union soon became more complete than ever, though with a reversed supremacy. Bermudo III., king of Leon, fell in a battle with the new king of Castile, who had married his sister; and Ferdinand, in her right or in that of conquest, became master of the united monarchy. This cessation of hostilities between the Christian states enabled them to direct a more unremitting energy against their ancient enemies, who were now sensibly weakened by the various causes of decline to which I have already alluded. During the eleventh century, the Spaniards were almost always superior in the field; the towns, in * The Fueros, or written laws of Jaca, were perhaps more ancient than any local customary Europe. Alfonso HI. confirms them by name of the ancient usages of Jaca. They prescribe the descent of lands and moveables, as well as the election of municipal magistrates. The following law, which enjoins the rising in arms on a sudden emergency, illustrates, with a sort of romantic wildness, the manners of a pastoral but warlike people, and reminds us of a well-known passage in the Lady of the Lake. De appellitis ita statuimus. Cum homines de villis, vel qui stant in montanis cum suis ganatis [gregibus], audierint appellitum; omnes capiant arma, et dimissis ganatis, et omnibus aliis suis faziendis [negotiis] sequantur appellitum. Et si illi qui fuerint magis remoti, invenerint in villâ magis proximâ appellito [deest aliquid?] omnes qui nondum fuerint egressi tunc villam illam, quæ tardius secuta est appellitum, pecent [solvant] unam baccam [vaccam]; et unusquisque homo ex illis qui tardius secutus est appellitum, et quem magis remoti præcesserint, pecet tres solidos, quomodo nobis videbitur, partiendos. Tamen in Jacâ et in aliis villis, sint aliqui nominati et certi, quos elegerint consules, qui remaneant ad villas custodiendas et defendendas.-Bianca Commentaria in Schotti Hispania Illustrata, p. 595. title belonging originally to a little district upon the river of that name) had been cooped up almost in the mountains by the small Moorish states north of the Ebro, especially that of Huesca. About the middle of the eleventh century, they began to attack their neighbours with success; the Moors lost one town after another, till, in 1118, exposed and weakened by the reduction of all these places, the city of Saragosa, in which a And Saraline of Mahometan princes had gosa. flourished for several ages, became the prize of Alfonso I., and the capital of his kingdom. The southern parts of what is now the province of Aragon were successively reduced during the twelfth century; while all new Castile and Estremadura became annexed in the same gradual manner to the dominion of the descendants of Alfonso VI. quests. Although the feudal system cannot be said to have obtained in the Mode of setkingdoms of Leon and Castile, tling the their peculiar situation gave the new conaristocracy a great deal of the resulted in France and Germany from same power and independence which that institution. The territory successively recovered from the Moors, like waste lands reclaimed, could have no proprietor but the conquerors; and the prospect of such acquisitions was a constant incitement to the nobility of Spain, especially to those who had settled themselves on the Castilian frontier. In their new conquests, they built towns and invited Christian settlers, the Saracen inhabitants being commonly expelled, or voluntarily retreating to the safer provinces of the south. Thus Burgos was settled by a count of Castile about 880; another fixed his seat at Osma; a third at Sepulveda; a fourth at Salamanca. These cities were not free from incessant peril of a sudden attack till the union of the two kingdoms under Ferdinand I., and, consequently, the necessity of keeping in exercise a numerous and armed |