A. H. Johnson

“ Thus, at the age of thirty-one, ended the career of the man whom Machiavelli in his Prince holds up as a pattern, in all but his ill-fortune, to him who would attempt to form a united kingdom of Italy. No doubt Cæsar had many of the qualities requisite for success. Clever and versatile in conception, rapid and resolute in action, and a master of diplomacy, he had in a high degree the quality of ‘virtù,’ that compound of force and intellect, which we find praised not only by Machiavelli, but by Commines and other writers of the day, as the essential characteristic of the ruler. ”

“ As a Queen, she was angered at ‘the great and strange contempt’ of her subject who had dared accept the ‘absolute’ government without her leave; as a woman, she was jealous of her favourite who looked for honours from other hands than hers; as a diplomatist, she feared that this rash act of Leicester would destroy her game, and that Philip would strike at England. She therefore peremptorily commanded him to make ‘public and open resignation’ of his office. For two months the Queen was implacable. ”

“ Don Louis de Requesens, Grand Commander of Santiago, arrived at Brussels. Alva left the country, as he bitterly complained, without having gained the approbation of the King, while he had incurred universal detestation ‘of Catholics as well as Protestants, of the clergy as well as the laity.’ The tyranny and ferocity of his rule almost surpass belief. Every form of torture which ingenuity could devise had been exercised on his unfortunate victims, and he will ever remain in history as the incarnation of fiendish cruelty. ”

“ It is sometimes said that Charles, in despair, left the negotiations to Ferdinand, and let things go as they would. Nothing is further from the truth. At no time of his life are the tenacity and obstinacy of his character better illustrated than at this moment, especially when we remember how ill he was. Unwilling to abandon his darling scheme of restoring unity to the Church, and supremacy to the imperial authority, he fought each concession clause by clause; ever dreaming of revenge, he laboured to gain time while he intrigued and tried to organise an opposition on every side. ”

“ Too equally balanced to allow of the supremacy of one, too jealous of each other and too divergent in the character of their peoples and the form of their governments to unite in a federal bond, they lost all sense of common national interest. The existence of numerous petty states between their frontiers, which could only hope to survive by dexterous intrigue, excited their cupidity and thickened the thread of treacherous diplomacy which was now to call the foreigner into Italy. ”

“ Thus the policy of L’Hôpital seemed to have triumphed. The Huguenots were given a legal recognition, and ceased to be outlaws. But the appearances were delusive, and the Edict of January really only precipitated civil war. L’Hôpital himself had confessed, at the opening of the States-General, that ‘It was folly to hope for peace between persons of different religions. A Frenchman and an Englishman,’ he said, ‘who are of the same religion have more affection for one another than citizens of the same city, or vassals of the same lord, who hold to different creeds.’ Nor was this all. ”

“ Yet, to the last, he tried to maintain a moderate line of policy, and hoped to find a place for the protestant churches without breaking up the Empire, or departing from the obedience of the Emperor. With no remarkable intellectual gifts—corpulent and somewhat slow-witted,—the simplicity and honesty of his character, and the courage with which he clung to his convictions, make him something of a hero; and there is, perhaps, no one to whom Luther and the Protestants of Germany owe more than to this plain and single-hearted man. ”

“ She wished to maintain the independence of the country against the designs of Spain, as well as the authority of the crown which was threatened by the internal factions; if a Catholic, she was certainly no bigot, and would probably have granted at least a contemptuous toleration to the Huguenots. But when power was denied her, and her position was threatened, like a true Medici she betook herself to intrigue—so often the resource of the weak—and pursued a policy of balance which was all the more fatal because it did not succeed. ”

“ He did not understand the man with whom he had to deal. Nothing is more remarkable than the tenacity, often amounting to obstinacy, with which Charles clung to a decision once made. He looked upon his claims to Artois and Burgundy as just; Burgundy especially was the cradle of his race, and had been wrongly taken from his grandmother, Mary of Burgundy; it should be restored to him. In vain Francis and the French envoys pleaded for some abatement of his demands. Charles remained unmoved: he even refused to see the King of France until a serious attack of fever threatened the prisoner’s life. ”

“ If his chivalrous spirit demanded war, the renewed attempt of Maximilian to regain Burgundy and the lands on the west of Flanders, which he still claimed as the heritage of his son, the Archduke Philip, would have fully justified Louis in taking the offensive, and adding Franche-Comté to his dominions. But his eyes, like those of Charles, were dazzled with the fair skies and plains of Italy, and Italy alone would satisfy French ambitions. Milan, however, and not Naples, was the first object of Louis’ attack.
The invasion of Charles VIII. should have taught the Italians the necessity of union. ”

“ Hitherto the opposition for the most part had been confined to the higher nobility, men who held some office, and who had something to lose; now the lesser nobility began to move. These, like the smaller nobility in France, had previously found occupation in the wars, where they furnished a famous force of cavalry. The peace had destroyed this occupation, and many had returned to their homes with a turbulent spirit, a love of extravagance and of licence engendered of the war, and ready for any opportunity of repairing their shattered fortunes. ”

“ In states like Milan and Naples, where all political liberty had been destroyed, the only weapons of the oppressed were those the tyrant had taught them—intrigue and assassination. In cities like Florence, where constitutional forms remained but the spirit had fled, and where the state was torn by deadly feuds which vented themselves in cruel proscription and exile of the defeated, the people were inspired by mutual suspicion and deep political hatreds. ”

“ Francis, misled by Bonnivet, now rashly left his strong entrenchments, and determined to accept the offer of battle. The open ground at first favoured his artillery, and the movements of the men-at-arms. The Imperialists wavered in the first assault, and the King, assured of victory, cried, ‘To-day I will call myself Duke of Milan.’ But Pescara reformed his Spanish infantry; the German landsknechts under Frundsberg supported them, and the French men-at-arms were driven back. ”

“ Poverty increased, and the aristocracy of Venice was weakened by internal feuds. The rich monopolised the administration, while the less fortunate, with a majority in the Great Council, were ever attempting to overthrow their power by agitation, or by intrigues and plots, often with foreigners. Thus Venice, which had long been the admiration of Europe for the stability of her government, and the honour and patriotism of her nobility, became the victim of selfishness, corruption, and conspiracy. ”

“ If the Huguenots may be charged with reviving feudalism at one moment, and of being republicans at another, the Guises at first fought for political as well as religious tyranny, and latterly masqueraded as the champions of pure democracy. Finally, the cause of the Huguenots, although that of a minority—and, it must be confessed, an unpopular minority—was yet the cause of national independence, which was threatened by the ever-tightening alliance of the Guises with Philip of Spain. ”

“ Indeed, if we confine our view to the domestic policy, we should not perhaps be wrong in holding that the popularity was well earned. If Louis had only refrained from the Italian wars, his reign might have been a turning-point in the history of his country, and in a few years she might have become the richest and most powerful country in Europe.
But if the internal history of France during the period we have covered is uneventful, far different is the case of Spain and Germany. ”

“ The Reformation was the outcome of two forces, independent in origin, and never wholly in agreement: the Renaissance, and the desire for reform in dogma and practice.The Renaissance and the Reformation. Of these, the first owes its birth to Italy. The Italians, despairing of political unity or stability, yet excelling other people in material prosperity and comfort, betook themselves to the study of the past for which their unbroken connection with the language and memories of Rome well fitted them. ”

“ A good captain of a division, rather than a general: a pleasant, clever, but wicked man, and a bad King, ‘Le roi galant homme’ left behind him an absolute monarchy, unchecked and unsupported by any constitutional system, an encumbered revenue, a heavy debt, a corrupt government, an immoral court, a factious nobility, and a nation flushed with the lust of war, and disturbed by religious discord. ”

“ Henceforth until the disappearance of the Spanish line in 1700, the House of Hapsburg was divided into two branches, of which the Austrian ruled over the family territories in South Germany, and secured the elective throne of the Empire; while the Spanish ruled over Italy, Franche-Comté, the Netherlands, and the conquests in the New World. It would probably have been well for Spain if she had never had a German Emperor as her King; while the Netherlands, all that now remained to her of the patrimony of the Archduke Philip, was yet to prove a source of weakness and humiliation. ”

“ The rivalries between Castile and Aragon were of old standing, and no sharper contrast is to be found in Europe than that which existed between the primitive and poverty-stricken population of the Asturias, the proud Castilian noble, and the busy trader of Barcelona, the democratic capital of Catalonia. Nor was there more unity within the separate kingdoms themselves. The social divisions were deepest in Castile. There the nobles enjoyed numerous exclusive privileges, notably that of freedom from taxation. ”

“ But at least, Maximilian was not self-deceived. In his epic of ‘Teuerdank,’ the adventurous knight of ‘glorious thoughts,’ who sets out to seek his bride and finally wars against the Turk, he depicts himself, and introduces us to self-conceit and the desire of adventure as the two great dangers which, with envious intrigue, beset him. This attractive, lovable, impracticable, exasperating man of dreams, of nervous, though ill-directed energy, is a fit representative of that period of transition which may be said to be covered by his reign. ”

“ Nevertheless, the cause of religious independence was now so closely identified with that of territorial independence, and the unity of the Church so intimately connected in Charles’ mind with that of the Empire, that the religious and political issues could no longer be distinguished. The question at stake was this: should Germany be forced to accept the mediæval system of one Empire and one Church, or should the princes vindicate their rights to political and religious autonomy? ”

“ He left a widow Bona of Savoy, who ruled in the name of her infant son Gian Galeazzo, aided by her husband’s wisest counsellor, Francesco Simonetta. Three years later, 1479, Ludovico ‘Il Moro,’ uncle of the young Gian, overthrew her rule, caused Simonetta to be executed, and assumed the regency. Ludovico, though ambitious, unscrupulous, and a lover of intrigue, was not wantonly cruel as many of his predecessors had been, and, if his rule was a despotic one, he was a liberal patron of the arts and kept his dominions contented and at peace. ”

“ Charles was determined to be master in Italy; for that, not only the Lutheran question, but even the war against the Turk must wait, threatening though the attitude of Solyman was at this moment. Adrian, on the contrary, was not anxious to see the Emperor too powerful in Italy, and yearned to free the Papacy from the political trammels in which late Popes had involved it. To bring about a reconciliation between the two rivals, and then rally all Christendom in a crusade against the Turk, this was Adrian’s dream. ”

“ Henceforth the main interest of European history will no longer lie in Italy. The struggle for her fair plains is not indeed over. The papacy will still demand our attention, in its relations to the Reformation and to the Empire. But Italy falls back into a subordinate position. The Mediterranean ceases to be the highway of commerce between east and west. Our gaze is directed north of the Alps to follow the great struggle between the Hapsburg and Valois houses, and the momentous issues which were involved in the Reformation. ”