Part 90

The Venetians, taking advantage of the calamity of their ally, the pope, seized Ravenna, and other places belonging to the church, under pretext of keeping them in deposite." On the other hand, Lannoy, Charles' viceroy at Naples, "marched to Rome, together with Moncada and the Marquis del Guasto, at the head of all the troops which they could assemble in the kingdom of Naples. The arrival of this reinforcement brought new calamities on the unhappy citizens of Rome; for the soldiers, envying the wealth of their companions, imitated their license, and with the utmost rapacity gathered the gleanings which had escaped the avarice of the Spaniards and Germans. There was not now any army in Italy capable of making head against the imperialists." But the troops who had enjoyed months of license and riotous pillage in Rome could not be brought back to discipline, and refused to quit the perishing city. They had chosen for their general the Prince of Orange, who "was obliged to pay more attention to their humours than they did to his commands. … This gave the king of France and the Venetians leisure to form new schemes, and to enter into new arrangements for delivering the pope, and preserving the liberties of Italy. The newly-restored republic of Florence very imprudently joined with them, and Lautrec … was … appointed generalissimo of the league. … The best troops in France marched under his command; and the king of England, though he had not yet declared war against the emperor, advanced a considerable sum towards carrying on the expedition. Lautrec's first operations [1527] were prudent, vigorous and successful. By the assistance of Andrew Doria, the ablest sea-officer of that age, he rendered himself master of Genoa, and reëstablished in that republic the faction of the Fregosi, together with the dominion of France. He obliged Alexandria to surrender after a short siege, and reduced all the country on that side of the Tessino. He took Pavia, which had so long resisted the arms of his sovereign, by assault, and plundered it with … cruelty. … But Lautrec durst not complete a conquest which would have been so honourable to himself and of such advantage to the league. Francis … was afraid that, if Sforza were once reëstablished in Milan, they [his confederates] would second but coldly the attack which he intended to make on the kingdom of Naples. … Happily the importunities of the pope and the solicitations of the Florentines, the one for relief, and the other for protection, were so urgent as to furnish him with a decent pretext for marching forward. … While Lautrec advanced slowly towards Rome, the emperor" came to terms with the pope, and Clement obtained his liberty at the cost of 350,000 crowns, a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues of Spain, and an agreement to take no part in the war against Charles. The latter next made overtures to the French king, offering some relaxation of the treaty of Madrid; but they were received in a manner that irritated even his cold temper. He, in turn, provoked his antagonist, until a ridiculous exchange of defiances to personal combat passed between them. Meantime "Lautrec continued his operations, which promised to be more decisive. His army, which was now increased to 35,000 men, advanced by great marches towards Naples." The remains of the imperial army retreated, as he advanced, from Rome, where it had held riot for ten months, and took shelter behind the fortifications of the Neapolitan capital. Lautrec undertook (April, 1528) the siege of Naples, with the co-operation of the Genoese admiral, Doria, who blockaded its port. But he was neglected by his own frivolous king, and received little aid from the Pope, the king of England, or other confederates of the league. Moreover, Doria and the Genoese suffered treatment so insolent, oppressive and threatening, from the French court that the former opened negotiations with the emperor for a transfer of his services. "Charles, fully sensible of the importance of such an acquisition, granted him whatever terms he required. {1842} Doria sent back his commission, together with the collar of St. Michael, to Francis, and, hoisting the imperial colours, sailed with all his galleys towards Naples, not to block up the harbour of that unhappy city, as he had formerly engaged, but to bring them protection and deliverance. His arrival opened the communication with the sea, and restored plenty in Naples, which was now reduced to the last extremity; and the French … were soon reduced to great straits for want of provisions." With the heat of summer came pestilence; Lautrec died, and the wasted French army, attempting to retreat, was forced to lay down its arms and march under guard to the frontiers of France. "The loss of Genoa followed immediately upon the ruin of the army in Naples." Doria took possession of the town; the French garrison in the citadel capitulated (September 12, 1528), and the citadel was destroyed. "It was now in Doria's power to have rendered himself the sovereign of his country, which he had so happily delivered from oppression." But he magnanimously refused any preeminence among his fellow citizens. "Twelve persons were elected to new-model the constitution of the republic. The influence of Doria's virtue and example communicated itself to his countrymen; the factions which had long torn and ruined the state seemed to be forgotten; prudent precautions were taken to prevent their reviving; and the same form of government which hath subsisted with little variation since that time in Genoa, was established with universal applause." In Lombardy, the French army, under St. Pol, was surprised, defeated and ruined at Landriano (June, 1529), as completely as the army in Naples had been a few months before. All parties were now desirous of peace, but feared to seem too eager in making overtures. Two women took the negotiations in hand and carried them to a conclusion. "These were Margaret of Austria, dutchess dowager of Savoy, the emperor's aunt, and Louise, Francis's mother. They agreed on an interview at Cambray, and, being lodged in two adjoining houses, between which a communication was opened, met together without ceremony or observation, and held daily conferences, to which no person whatever was admitted." The result was a treaty signed August 5, 1529, known as the Peace of Cambray, or "the Ladies' Peace," or "Peace of the Dames." By its terms, Francis was to pay 2,000,000 crowns for the ransom of his sons; restore such towns as he still held in the Milanese; resign and renounce his pretensions to Naples, Milan, Genoa, and every other place beyond the Alps, as well as to Flanders and Artois; and consummate his marriage with the emperor's sister, Eleanora. On the other hand, the emperor only agreed not to press his claims on Burgundy, for the present, but reserved them, in full force. Another treaty, that of Barcelona, had already, in 1529, been concluded between the emperor and the pope. The former gave up the papal states which he occupied, and agreed to reëstablish the dominion of the Medici in Florence; besides giving his natural daughter in marriage to Alexander, the head of that family. In return he received the investiture of Naples, absolution for all concerned in the plundering of Rome, and the grant to himself and his brother of a fourth of the ecclesiastical revenues throughout their dominions.

_W. Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles V., books 4-5._

ALSO IN: _F. P. Guizot, Popular History of France, chapter 28._

_C. Coignat, Francis I. and his Times, chapter 9._

_G. B. Malleson, Studies from Genoese History, chapter 1._

ITALY: (Southern): A. D. 1528-1570. Naples under the Spanish Viceroys. Ravages of the Turks along the coast. Successful revolt against the Inquisition. Unsuccessful French invasion under Guise.

"After the memorable and unfortunate expedition of Lautrec, in 1528, Philibert of Chalons, Prince of Orange, who commanded the Imperial army, exercised the severest vengeance [in Naples] on the persons and estates of all those nobles who had joined the French, or who appeared to demonstrate any attachment towards that nation. … These multiplied … acts of oppression received no effectual redress during the short administration [1529-1532] of Cardinal Colonna, who succeeded to the Prince of Orange. … In the place of Cardinal Colonna was substituted Don Pedro de Toledo, who governed Naples with almost unlimited powers, during the space of near 21 years. His viceroyalty, which forms a memorable Epocha in the annals of the country, demands and fixes attention. We are impressed with horror at finding, by his own confession, … that during the progress of his administration, he put to death near 18,000 persons, by the hand of the executioner. Yet a fact still more extraordinary is that Giannoné, himself a Neapolitan, and one of the ablest as well as most impartial historians whom the 18th century has produced, not only acquits, but even commends Toledo's severity, as equally wholesome and necessary," on account of the terrible lawlessness and disorder which he found in the country. "The inflexible and stern character of the viceroy speedily redressed these grievances, and finally restored order in the capital. … All the provinces experienced equal attention, and became the objects of his personal inspection. The unprotected coasts of Calabria and of Apulia, subject to the continual devastation of the Turks, who landed from their gallies, were fortified with towers and beacons to announce the enemy's approach. … Repeated attempts were made by Solyman II., Emperor of the Turks, either alone or in conjunction with the fleets of France, to effect the conquest of Naples, during this period: but the exertions of Toledo were happily attended with success in repulsing the Turkish invaders. … In no part of the middle ages … were the coasts of Naples and Sicily so frequently plundered, ravaged, and desolated, as at this period. Thousands of persons of both sexes, and of all conditions, were carried off by Barbarossa, Dragut, Sinan, and the other Bashaws, or admirals of the Porte. Not content with landing on the shores and ravaging the provinces, their squadrons perpetually appeared in sight of Naples; laid waste the islands of Ischia and Procida, situate in its immediate vicinity; attacked the towns of Pouzzoli and Baiæ; and committed every outrage of wanton barbarity. … The invasion of 1552, when Dragut blocked up the harbour of Naples, with 150 large gallies, during near four weeks, spread still greater consternation; and if the fleet of France had arrived, as had been concerted, it is more than probable that the city must have fallen into their hands. But the delays of Henry II., Solyman's ally, proved its preservation. The Turkish admiral, corrupted by a present of 200,000 ducats, which the Viceroy found means of conveying to him, retired and made sail for Constantinople. … {1843} The administration of Toledo … was … completely subverted from the moment that he attempted [1546] to introduce the Inquisition. … The Neapolitans, patient under every other species of oppression, instantly revolted. … They even forgot, in the general terror, the distinction of ranks; and the Barons united with their fellow-citizens to oppose that formidable tribunal. The Viceroy, returning to the capital, reinforced by 3,000 veteran Spaniards, determined nevertheless, to support the measure. Hostilities took place, and the city, during near three months, was abandoned to anarchy, while the inhabitants, having invested the castle, besieged their governor. … The Emperor, convinced by experience of the impracticability of success in his attempt, at length desisted." Toledo died in 1553, and "was succeeded by the Cardinal Pacheco, as Viceroy; and the abdication of Charles V., in the following year, devolved on his son Philip II. the sovereignty of Naples. Alarmed at the preparations made by Henry II., King of France, in conjunction with Paul IV., who had newly ascended the papal throne, Philip dispatched Ferdinand, Duke of Alva, to the aid of his Neapolitan subjects; and to the vigorous measures embraced by him on his arrival was due the safety of the kingdom.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1547-1559.

… The administration of the Duke of Alcala, to whom Philip delegated the supreme power soon after the recall of Alva [1558], lasted near 12 years, and was marked by almost every species of calamity."

_Sir N. W. Wraxall, History of France, 1574-1610, chapter 9 (volume 2)._

"The march of the Mareschal of Lautrec was the last important attempt of the French to reconquer Naples. … Spain remained in possession of this beautiful country for two centuries. … Their [the Spaniards'] ascendancy was owing as well to an iron discipline as to that inveterate character of their race, the firmness of purpose which had gradually developed itself in the long struggle for the country which they wrenched inch by inch from their tenacious enemies. The Neapolitans found that they had in the Spaniards different rulers from the French."

_A. de Reumont, The Carafas of Maddaloni: Naples under Spanish Dominion, book 1._

ITALY: A. D. 1529. Siege of Florence by the Imperial forces. Reinstatement of the Medici.

See FLORENCE: A. D. 1502-1569.

ITALY: A. D. 1530-1600. Under the Spanish domination, and the Papacy of the Counter-Reformation. The Inquisition. The Jesuits. The Vice-regal rule. Deplorable state of the country.

"It will be useful, at this point, to recapitulate the net results of Charles's administration of Italian affairs in 1530. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with the island of Sardinia and the Duchy of Milan, became Spanish provinces, and were ruled henceforth by viceroys. The House of Este was confirmed in the Duchy of Ferrara, including Modena and Reggio. The Duchies of Savoy and Mantua and the Marquisate of Montferrat, which had espoused the Spanish cause, were undisturbed. Genoa and Siena, both of them avowed allies of Spain, the former under Spanish protection, the latter subject to Spanish coercion, remained with the name and empty privileges of republics. Venice had made her peace with Spain, and though she was still strong enough to pursue an independent policy, she showed as yet no inclination, and had, indeed, no power, to stir up enemies against the Spanish autocrat. The Duchy of Urbino, recognised by Rome and subservient to Spanish influence, was permitted to exist. The Papacy once more assumed a haughty tone, relying on the firm alliance struck with Spain. This league, as years went by, was destined to grow still closer, still more fruitful of results. Florence alone had been excepted from the articles of peace. It was still enduring the horrors of the memorable siege when Clement left Bologna at the end of May. … Finally, on August 12, the town capitulated. Alessandro de' Medici, who had received the title of Duke of Florence from Charles at Bologna, took up his residence there in July 1531, and held the State by help of Spanish mercenaries under the command of Alessandro Vitelli. … Though the people endured far less misery from foreign armies in the period between 1530 and 1600 than they had done in the period from 1494 to 1527, yet the state of the country grew ever more and more deplorable. This was due in the first instance to the insane methods of taxation adopted by the Spanish viceroys, who held monopolies of corn and other necessary commodities in their hands, and who invented imposts for the meanest articles of consumption. Their example was followed by the Pope and petty princes. … The settlement made by Charles V. in 1530, and the various changes which took place in the duchies between that date and the end of the century, had then the effect of rendering the Papacy and Spain omnipotent in Italy. … What they only partially effected in Europe at large, by means of S. Bartholomew massacres, exterminations of Jews in Toledo and of Mussulmans in Granada, holocausts of victims in the Low Countries, wars against French Huguenots and German Lutherans, naval expeditions and plots against the state of England, assassinations of heretic princes, and occasional burning of free thinkers, they achieved with plenary success in Italy. … It is the tragic history of the eldest and most beautiful, the noblest and most venerable, the freest and most gifted of Europe's daughters, delivered over to the devilry that issued from the most incompetent and arrogantly stupid of the European sisterhood, and to the cruelty, inspired by panic, of an impious theocracy. When we use these terms to designate the Papacy of the Counter-Reformation, it is not that we forget how many of those Popes were men of blameless private life and serious views for Catholic Christendom. When we use these terms to designate the Spanish race in the sixteenth century, it is not that we are ignorant of Spanish chivalry and colonising enterprise, of Spanish romance, or of the fact that Spain produced great painters, great dramatists, and one great novelist in the brief period of her glory. We use them deliberately, however, in both cases; because the Papacy at this period committed itself to a policy of immoral, retrograde, and cowardly repression of the most generous of human impulses under the pressure of selfish terror; because the Spaniards abandoned themselves to a dark fiend of religious fanaticism; because they were merciless in their conquests and unintelligent in their administration of subjugated provinces; because they glutted their lusts of avarice and hatred on industrious folk of other creeds within their borders; because they cultivated barren pride and self-conceit in social life; because at the great epoch of Europe's reawakening they chose the wrong side and adhered to it with fatal obstinacy. … {1844} After the year 1530 seven Spanish devils entered Italy. These were the devil of the Inquisition, with stake and torture-room, and war declared against the will and soul and heart and intellect of man; the devil of Jesuitry, with its sham learning, shameless lying, and casuistical economy of sins; the devil of vice-royal rule, with its life-draining monopolies and gross incapacity for government; the devil of an insolent soldiery, quartered on the people, clamorous for pay, outrageous in their lusts and violences; the devil of fantastical taxation, levying tolls upon the bare necessities of life, and drying up the founts of national well-being at their sources; the devil of petty-princedom, wallowing in sloth and cruelty upon a pinchbeck throne; the devil of effeminate hidalgoism, ruinous in expenditure, mean and grasping, corrupt in private life, in public ostentatious, vain of titles, cringing to its masters, arrogant to its inferiors. In their train these brought with them seven other devils, their pernicious offspring: idleness, disease, brigandage, destitution, ignorance, superstition, hypocritically sanctioned vice. These fourteen devils were welcomed, entertained, and voluptuously lodged in all the fairest provinces of Italy. The Popes opened wide for them the gates of outraged and depopulated Rome. … After a tranquil sojourn of some years in Italy, these devils had every where spread desolation and corruption. Broad regions, like the Patrimony of S. Peter and Calabria, were given over to marauding bandits; wide tracts of fertile country, like the Sienese Maremma, were abandoned to malaria; wolves prowled through empty villages round Milan; in every city the pestilence swept off its hundreds daily; manufactures, commerce, agriculture, the industries of town and rural district, ceased; the Courts swarmed with petty nobles, who vaunted paltry titles, and resigned their wives to cicisbei and their sons to sloth; art and learning languished; there was not a man who ventured to speak out his thought or write the truth; and over the Dead Sea of social putrefaction floated the sickening oil of Jesuitical hypocrisy."

_J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction, part 1, chapter 1._

ITALY: A. D. 1536-1544. French invasion of Piedmont. French and Turkish siege of Nice. Turkish ravages on the coast. The Treaty of Crespy.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1532-1547.

ITALY: A. D. 1545-1556. Creation of the duchy of Parma and Placentia, under the rule of the House of Farnese.

See PARMA: A. D. 1545-1592.

ITALY: A. D. 1559-1580. End of the French occupation of Savoy and Piedmont. The notable reign of Emanuel Philibert.

See SAVOY AND PIEDMONT: A. D. 1559-1580; and FRANCE: A. D. 1547-1559.

ITALY: A. D. 1559-1600. Peace without Prosperity. Foreign and domestic Despotism. Exhaustion and helplessness of the country.