Part 11

“Pope Julius II. soon began to hate his accomplices in the league of Cambray. Violent and irascible, he had often shown in his fits of passion that he could be as cruel as the worst of them. But he had the soul of an Italian. He could not brook the humiliation of his country and its being enslaved by those whom he called barbarians. Having recovered the cities of Romagna, the subject of his quarrel with the Venetians, he began to make advances to them. At the end of the first campaign, he entered into negotiations, and on the 21st of February, 1510, granted them absolution. He was aware that he could never drive the barbarians out of Italy but by arming them against each other; and as the French were those he most feared, he had recourse to the Germans. It was necessary to begin with reconciling the Venetians to the emperor; but Maximilian, always ready to undertake everything, and incapable of bringing anything to a conclusion, would not relax in a single article of what he called his rights. As emperor, he considered himself monarch of all Italy, and although he was always stopped on its frontier, he refused to renounce the smallest part of what he had purposed conquering. He asserted that the whole Venetian territory had been usurped from the empire; and before granting peace to the republic, demanded almost its annihilation.”

War, of course, was continued, and in the course of three years the French were driven from Italy, and an alliance formed between Venice and France, for the purpose of driving out the Germans. This alliance was inherited, or renewed by Francis I., who encountered the enemy at Marignano, in the battle of which Marshal Trivulzio declared that every other of the eighteen pitched battles he had seen seemed to him children’s play in comparison. At this battle of the giants, as he termed it, 20,000 dead were left on the field. “This horrible butchery hastened the conclusion of the wars which arose from the league of Cambray. On the 15th of January, 1516, a peace was signed between France and Spain, and Maximilian alone remained at war with the republic. During the campaign of that year, his German army continued to commit the most enormous crimes in the Veronese March. Want of money, however, in the end, compelled Maximilian to consent to the treaty of Noyon, already signed by the French king. He evacuated Verona on the 14th of December, and the Venetians were once more put by the French in possession of all the states of which the league of Cambray had proposed the partition; but their wealth was annihilated, their population reduced to one half, their constitution itself broken; and they were never after in a state to make those efforts for the independence of Italy, which might have been expected from them before this devastating war.”

When Maximilian died, January 19th, 1519, leaving his hereditary states of Austria to his grandson Charles, already sovereign of Spain, the two Sicilies, the Low Countries and Burgundy, Italy, indeed the whole of Europe, was endangered by the immeasurable growth of this young monarch’s power. “Leo X. therefore made preliminaries for an alliance with Francis I., in order to strengthen himself against him. But suddenly, with characteristic want of reflection, changing sides, he signed a secret treaty with Charles V. to engage him to drive the French out of Italy. The question for Italy was now no longer the distribution of its provinces between different potentates, but its very existence. Foreign nations for the future were to fight their battles on its ground, and at its expense. Leo’s inconsiderate action compromised the independence even of the States of the Church, where perhaps yet remained a germ of the individuality of Italy among the nations. Of all the misfortunes that ever came upon Italy, none was so terrible in its instant barbarity, or so hopeless for its future, (for it sealed its ruin,) as this war in Italy of Charles V. against Francis I. As our purpose is more especially to illustrate the character of Charles, as a member of the House of Hapsburgh, it is of no consequence that the object aimed at in this instance was the aggrandizement of Spain, rather than of the archduchy of Austria, which was now ceded to Ferdinand I. We are obliged, from this time, to look in two directions for the crimes of the family. While Ferdinand, in the East of Europe, was destroying Bohemian liberties, and encroaching upon Hungary, Charles began his successes in Lombardy with the siege of Pavia, which ended in the defeat of the French, and the imprisonment of Francis I.; and soon Italy fully comprehended that it was at the mercy of the conqueror.

It is not possible, in this slight work of ours, to explain intelligibly, to those not familiar with the history of this period, how it was, that at this moment all things concurred to put Italy so much into the power of a single man. Sismondi, in his larger work on the Italian republics, makes it perfectly clear. We must content ourselves with stating the fact; and alas for the country that had no hope for its rights but in the mercy and the justice of a member of the House of Hapsburgh!

“The evil destiny of Italy was accomplished by Charles V., although it was the French Charles VIII., who, by invading the country thirty-six years before, had opened its gates to the transalpine nations. They inflicted on her calamities beyond example in history; calamities so much the more keenly felt, as the sufferers were more civilized, the authors more barbarous. The French invasion ended in giving to the greatest enemies of France the dominion of that country, so rich, so industrious, and of which the possession was sought ardently by all. Never would the House of Austria have achieved the conquest of Italy, if Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I., had not previously destroyed the wealth and military organization of the nation; if they had not themselves introduced the Spaniards into the kingdom of Naples, and the Germans into the states of Venice; forgetful that both must soon after be subject to Charles V.”

We must, however, go back from these generalities, to a statement of the facts which we shall take from Sismondi’s Italian Republics.

“The secret treaty between Leo and the Emperor Charles V. was signed on May 8th, 1521.” “The Pope united his army to that of the Emperor in the kingdom of Naples; the command of it was given jointly to Prospero Colonna and the marquis Pescara: war was declared on the 1st of August, and the imperial and pontifical troops entered Milan on the 19th November: but in the midst of the joy of this first success, Leo X. died,” leaving “his successors in a state of distress, which was unjustly attributed to them, and which rendered them odious to the people; for the war into which he had plunged them, without any reasonable motive, was the most disastrous of all those which had yet afflicted unhappy Italy. There remained no power truly Italian that could take any part in it for her defence. Venice was so exhausted by the war of the league of Cambray, that she was forced to limit her efforts to the maintenance of her neutrality, and was hardly powerful enough to make even her neutral position respected. Florence remained subject to Giulio de’ Medici. The republics of Sienna and Lucca were tremblingly prepared to obey the strongest.” “The kingdom of Naples was governed and plundered by the Spaniards. After the French had lost the duchy of Milan, Francesco Sforza, who had been brought back by the imperialists, possessed only the name of sovereign. He had never been for a moment independent; he had never been able to protect his subjects from the tyranny of the Spanish and German soldiers, who were his guards. Finally, the marquis de Montferrat and the duke of Savoy had allowed the French to become masters in their states, and had no power to refuse them passage to ravage oppressed Italy anew.”

The first hostilities resulted in the French General’s evacuating Lombardy, partly through the defection of his Swiss allies. The next year Francis I. made himself master of Milan, and attempted the siege of Pavia, where he was attacked by Pescara, and, after a murderous battle, made prisoner. These transactions occupied more than two years, during which time the imperial army, unpaid and unprovisioned by Charles, lived at free quarters upon unhappy Lombardy. In the course of the year 1525, there was much negotiation with respect to the ransom of Francis, and efforts, nearly successful, were made by Jerome Molone of Milan, to arm all Italy in vindication of her independence; these were frustrated through the duplicity and treason of Pescara, who died on the 30th of November, 1525 at the age of thirty-six, abhorred by all Italy.

“Charles, abusing the advantages which he had obtained, imposed on Francis the treaty of Madrid, signed on the 14th of January, 1526, by which the latter abandoned Italy and the duchy of Burgundy. He was set at liberty on the 18th of March following, and almost immediately declared to the Italians that he did not regard himself bound by a treaty extorted from him by force. On the 22nd of May, he signed a league for the liberty of Italy with Clement VII., the Venetians, and Francesco Sforza, but still did not abandon the policy of his mother; instead of thinking in earnest of restoring Italian independence, and thus securing the equilibrium of Europe, he had only one purpose, that of alarming Charles with the Italians; and was ready to sacrifice them as soon as the emperor should abandon Burgundy. At the same time his supineness, love of pleasure, distrust of his fortune, and repugnance to violate the treaty of Madrid, hindered him from fulfilling any of the engagements which he had contracted towards the Italians; he sent them neither money, French cavalry, nor Swiss forces. Charles, on the other hand, sent no supplies to pay his armies to Antonio de Leyva, the constable Bourbon, and Hugo de Monçada, their commanders. These troops were therefore obliged to live at free quarters, and the oppression of the whole country was still more dreadful than it had ever been.

“The defection of the duke of Milan, in particular, gave a pretence to Antonio de Leyva to treat the wretched Milanese with redoubled rigour, as if they could be responsible for what Leyva called the treachery of their master. The Spanish army was quartered on the citizens of Milan; and there was not a soldier who did not make his host a prisoner, keeping him bound at the foot of the bed, or in the cellar, for the purpose of having him daily at hand, to force him, by blows or fresh torture, to satisfy some new caprice; as soon as one wretched person died of his sufferings, or broke his bond and ended his sufferings by a voluntary death, either precipitating himself through a window or into a well, the Spaniard passed into another house to recommence on its proprietor the same torture. The Venetians and the Pope had united their forces, under the command of the duke of Urbino, who, exaggerating the tactics of Prospero Colonna, was ambitious of no other success in war than that of avoiding battle. He announced to the Senate of Venice, that he would not approach Milan till the French and Swiss, whose support he had been promised, joined him. This inaction, while witnessing so many horrors, reduced the Italians to despair. Sforza, who had been nine months blockaded in the castle of Milan, and who always hoped to be delivered by the duke of Milan, whose colours were in sight, supported the last extremity of hunger before he surrendered to the Spaniard, on the 24th of July, 1526. The Pope, meanwhile, was far from suspecting himself in any danger, but his personal enemy, Pompeo Colonna, took advantage of the name of the Imperial party to raise in the papal state 8000 armed peasants, with whom, on the 20th of September, he surprised the Vatican, pillaged the palace, as well as the temple of St. Peter, and constrained the Pope to abjure the alliance of France and Venice. About the same time, George de Frundsberg, a German condottiere, entered Lombardy with 13,000 adventurers, whom he had engaged to follow him, and serve the emperor without pay, contenting themselves with the pillage of that unhappy country.

The constable Bourbon, to whom Charles had given the chief command of his forces in Italy, determined to take advantage of this new army, and unite it to that for which at Milan he had now no further occasion; but it was not without great difficulty that he could persuade the Spaniards to quit that city, where they had enjoyed the savage pleasure of inflicting torture on their hosts. At length, however, he succeeded in leading them to Pavia. On the 30th of January, 1527, he joined Frundsberg, who died soon after of apoplexy. Bourbon now remained alone charged with the command of this formidable army, already exceeding 25,000 men, and continually joined on its route by disbanded soldiers and brigands intent on pillage. The constable had neither money, equipments, nor artillery, and very few cavalry; every town shut its gates on his approach, and he was often on the point of wanting provisions. He took the road of Southern Italy, and entered Tuscany, still uncertain whether he should pillage Florence or Rome. The marquis of Saluzzo, with a small army, retreated before him; the duke of Urbino followed in his rear, but always keeping out of reach of battle. At last, Bourbon took the road to Rome, by the valley of the Tiber. On the 5th of May, 1527, he arrived before the Capital of Christendom. Clement, long alarmed at his march, had, on the 15th of March, signed a truce of eight months with the viceroy of Naples, and dismissed his troops, never imagining that one of the emperor’s lieutenants would not respect the engagements of the other. On the approach of Bourbon, however, the walls of Rome were again mounted with the engines of war. The next day, the 6th of May, this renegade prince led his troops to the assault of the city. He was killed near the Janiculum, while mounting the first scaling ladder. His fall did not stop the terrific band of robbers which he led. The victorious army scaled the walls, which were ill defended, and spread terror through the quarters of the Borgo, Vatican, and Trastevere. In a few hours they were masters of the whole city, Clement having neglected to destroy the bridges of the Tiber.

“The capital of Christendom was then abandoned to a pillage unparalleled in that most calamitous period of the first triumph of barbarism over civilization: neither Alaric the Goth, nor Genseric the Vandal, had treated it with like ferocity. Not only was all that could be seized in every house and every shop carried off, but the peasants of the fiefs of Colonna took possession of the heavy furniture which did not tempt the cupidity of the soldier. From the day when these barbarians entered the city, all personal protection was withdrawn; women were abandoned to the outrages of the victors; and sanctuaries, enriched by the veneration of Christendom for twelve centuries, were devoted to spoliation. Men, women, and children were seized, whenever their captors could flatter themselves that they had concealed some treasure, or that there was any one sufficiently interested for them to pay their ransom. Every house resounded with the cries and lamentations of wretched persons thus subjected to the torture; and this dreadful state of crime and agony lasted not merely days, _but was prolonged for more than_ NINE _months_: it was not till the 17th of February, 1528, that the prince of Orange, one of the French lords, who had accompanied Bourbon in his rebellion, finally withdrew from Rome all of this army that vice and disease had spared. The Germans, indeed, after the first few days, had sheathed their swords to plunge into drunkenness and the most cruel debauchery; but the Spaniards, up to the last hour of their stay in Rome, indefatigable in their cold-blooded cruelty, continued to invent fresh torture to extort new ransoms from all who fell into their hands; even the plague, the consequence of so much suffering, moral and physical, which broke out amidst all these horrors, did not make the rapacious Spaniard loose his prey.

“A struggle between the Italians, feebly seconded by the French, and the generals of Charles V., was prolonged yet more than two years after the sack of Rome; but it only added to the desolation of Italy, and destroyed alike in all the Italian provinces, the last remains of prosperity.” “The banditti whom Charles V. called his soldiers, whom he never paid, and who showed no disposition to obedience, were cantoned at Milan, Rome, and the principal cities of Italy: they divided their time between debauchery, and the infliction of torture on their hosts; their officers were unable to induce them to leave the towns, and advance towards the enemy. The people, in the excess of suffering, met every change with eagerness, and received Lantrec (the French commander) as a deliverer.” He passed the Tronto on the 10th of February, 1528; lost valuable time in Apulia, where he took and sacked Melfi on the 23d of March, and did not arrive till the 1st of May before Naples.

“The prince of Orange had just entered the city with the army which had sacked Rome, but of which the greater part had been carried off by a dreadful mortality, the consequence and punishment of its vices and crimes. Instead of vigorously attacking them, Lantrec, in spite of the warm remonstrances of his officers, persisted in reducing Naples by blockade; thus exposing his army to the influence of a destructive climate.”... “The inhabitants of Naples experienced the most cruel privations, and sickness soon made great havoc amongst them: but a malady not less fatal broke out in the French camp.” “In the middle of June, the French reckoned 25,000 men; by the 2d of August not 4000 were left fit for service.” “Lantrec himself died on the 15th of August, and almost all his officers.” The marquis de Saluces, on whom the command devolved, felt the necessity of a retreat, but knew not how to secure it in presence of such a superior force. He tried to escape from the imperialists, by taking advantage of a tremendous storm in the night of the 29th of August: but was soon pursued and overtaken at Aversa, where, on the 30th, he was forced to capitulate. The magazines and hospitals at Capua were, at the same time, given up to the Spaniards. The prisoners and the sick were crowded together in the stables of the Magdalen, where contagion acquired new force. The Spaniards foresaw it, and watched with indifference the agony and death of all; for nearly all of that brilliant army perished—a few invalids only ever returned to France.

“During this campaign, another French army, conducted by François de Bourbon, Count de St. Pol, had entered Lombardy, at the moment when Henry, duke of Brunswick, led thither a German army. Henry, finding nothing more to pillage, announced that his mission was to punish a rebellious nation, and put to the sword ALL _the inhabitants_ of the villages through which he passed. Milan was at once a prey to famine and the plague, aggravated by the cupidity and the cold-blooded ferocity of Leyva, who seized ALL the provisions brought in from the country; and to profit by the general misery, resold them at an enormous price.”

“The winter passed in suffering and inaction. The following year, Leyva surprised the Count de St. Pol, at Landriano, on the 21st of June, 1529, and made him prisoner with all his principal officers. This was the last military incident of this dreadful war.”

“Peace was ardently desired on both sides; negotiations were actively carried on; but every potentate sought to deceive his ally, in order to obtain better conditions from his adversary. Margaret of Austria, the sister of the emperor’s father, and Louisa of Savoy, the mother of the king of France, met at Cambray; and in a conference, to which no witnesses were admitted, arranged what was called “Le traité des dames.” Clement VII. had, at the same time, a nuncio at Barcelona, who negotiated with the emperor. The latter was impatient to arrange the affairs of Italy, in order to pass into Germany. On the 20th of June, 1529, Charles signed at Barcelona a treaty of perpetual alliance with the Pope: by it he engaged to sacrifice the republic of Florence to the Pope’s vengeance, and to place in the service of Clement, in order to accomplish it, all the brigands who had previously devastated Italy. Florence was to be given in sovereignty to the bastard Alexander de’ Medici, who was to marry an illegitimate daughter of Charles V. On the 5th of August following, Louis and Margaret signed the treaty of Cambray, by which Francis abandoned, without reserve, all his Italian allies to the caprices of Charles; who, on his side, renounced Burgundy, and restored to Francis his two sons, who had been retained as hostages. Charles arrived at Genoa, on board the fleet of Andrea Doria, on the 12th of August. The Pope awaited him at Bologna, into which he made his entry on the 5th of November. He summoned thither all the princes of Italy, or their deputies, and treated them with more moderation than might have been expected after the shameful abandonment of them by France. As he knew the health of Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, to be in a declining state, which promised but few years of life, he granted him the restitution of his duchy, for the sum of 900,000 ducats, which Sforza was to pay at different times; they had not all fallen due when that prince died, on the 24th of October, 1535, without issue, and his estates escheated to the emperor. On the 23d of December, 1529, Charles granted peace to the Venetians, who restored him only some places in Apulia, and gave up Ravenna and Cernia to the Pope.

“On the 20th of March, Alphonso d’Este also signed a treaty, by which he referred his differences with the Pope to the arbitration of the emperor. Charles did not pronounce on them till the following year. He conferred on Alphonso the possession of Modena, Reggio, and Rubbiera, as fiefs of the empire; and he made the Pope give him the investiture of Ferrara. On the 15th of March, 1530, a diploma of the emperor raised the marquisate of Mantua to a duchy, in favor of Frederick de Gonzaga. The duke of Savoy and the marquis de Montferrat, till then protected by France, arrived at Bologna, to place themselves under the protection of the emperor. The duke of Urbino was recommended to him by the Venetians, and obtained some promises of favor. The republics of Genoa, Sienna, and Lucca, had permission to vegetate under the imperial protection; and Charles, having received from the Pope at Bologna, on the 22d of February and 24th of March, the two crowns of Lombardy and of the empire, departed in the beginning of April for Germany, in order to escape witnessing the odious service, in which he consented that his troops should be employed against Florence.”