Part 343

In Southern Italy and Sicily, since the fall of the Hohenstaufens (1268), the times had been continuously evil. The rule of the French conqueror, Charles of Anjou, was hard and unmerciful, and the power he established became threatening to the Papacy, which gave the kingdom to him. In 1282, Sicily freed itself, by the savage massacre of Frenchmen which bears the name of the Sicilian Vespers. The King of Aragon, Peter III., whose queen was the Hohenstaufen heiress, supported the insurrection promptly and vigorously, took possession of the island, and was recognized by the people as their king. A war of twenty years' duration ensued. Both Charles and Peter died and their sons continued the battle. In the end, the Angevin house held the mainland, as a separate kingdom, with Naples for its capital, and a younger branch of the royal family of Aragon reigned in the island. But both sovereigns called themselves Kings of Sicily, so that History, ever since, has been forced to speak puzzlingly of "Two Sicilies." For convenience it seems best to distinguish them by calling one the kingdom of Naples and the other the kingdom of Sicily. On the Neapolitan throne there came one estimable prince, in Robert, who reigned from 1309 to 1343, and who was a friend of peace and a patron of arts and letters. But after him the throne was befouled by crimes and vices, and the kingdom was made miserable by civil wars. His grand-daughter Joanna, or Jane, succeeded him. Robert's elder brother Caribert had become King of Hungary, and Joanna now married one of that king's sons—her cousin Andrew. At the end of two years he was murdered (1345) and the queen, a notoriously vicious woman, was accused of the crime. Andrew's brother, Louis, who had succeeded to the throne in Hungary, invaded Naples to avenge his death, and Joanna was driven to flight. The country then suffered from the worst form of civil war—a war carried on by the hireling ruffians of the "free companies" who roamed about Italy in that age, selling their swords to the highest bidders. In 1351 a peace was brought about which restored Joanna to the throne. The Hungarian King's son, known as Charles of Durazzo, was her recognized heir, but she saw fit to disinherit him and adopt Louis, of the Second House of Anjou, brother of Charles V. in France. Charles of Durazzo invaded Naples, took the queen prisoner and put her to death. Louis of Anjou attempted to displace him, but failed. In 1383 Louis died, leaving his claims to his son. Charles of Durazzo was called to Hungary, after a time, to take the crown of that kingdom, and left his young son, Ladislaus, on the Neapolitan throne. The Angevin claimant, Louis II., was then called in by his partisans, and civil war was renewed for years. When Ladislaus reached manhood he succeeded in expelling Louis, and he held the kingdom until his death, in 1414. He was succeeded by his sister, Joanna II., who proved to be as wicked and dissolute a woman as her predecessor of the same name. She incurred the enmity of the Pope, who persuaded Louis III., son of Louis II., to renew the claims of his house. The most renowned "condottiere" (or military contractor, as the term might be translated), of the day, Atteridolo Sforza, was engaged to make war on Queen Joanna in the interest of Louis. On her side she obtained a champion by promising her dominions to Alfonso V., of Aragon and Sicily. The struggle went on for years, with varying fortunes. The fickle and treacherous Joanna revoked her adoption of Alfonso, after a time, and made Louis her heir. When Louis died, she bequeathed her crown to his brother René, Duke of Lorraine. Her death occurred in 1435, but still the war continued, and nearly all Italy was involved in it, taking one side or the other. Alfonso succeeded at last (1442) in establishing himself at Naples, and René practically gave up the contest, although he kept the title of King of Naples. He was the father of the famous English Queen Margaret of Anjou, who fought for her weak-minded husband and her son in the Wars of the Roses.

While the Neapolitan kingdom was passing through these endless miseries of anarchy, civil war, and evil government, the Sicilian kingdom enjoyed a more peaceful and prosperous existence. The crown, briefly held by a cadet branch of the House of Aragon, was soon reunited to that of Aragon; and under Alfonso, as we have seen, it was once more joined with that of Naples, in a "Kingdom of the Two Sicilies." But both these unions were dissolved on the death of Alfonso, who bequeathed Aragon and Sicily to his legitimate heir, and Naples to a bastard son.

The Despots of Northern Italy.

In Northern Italy a great change in the political state of many among the formerly free commonwealths had been going on since the thirteenth century. The experience of the Greek city-republics had been repeated in them. In one way and another, they had fallen under the domination of powerful families, who had established a despotic rule over them, sometimes gathering several cities and their surrounding territory into a considerable dominion, and obtaining from the Emperor or the Pope a formally conferred and hereditary title. Thus the Visconti had established themselves at Milan, and had become a ducal house. After a few generations they gave way to the military adventurer, Francesco Sforza, son of the Sforza who made war for Louis III. of Anjou on Joanna II. of Naples. In Verona, the Della Scala family reigned for a time, until Venice overcame them; at Modena and Ferrara, the Estes; at Mantua, the Gonzagas; at Padua, the Carraras.

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The Italian Republics.

In other cities, the political changes were of a different character. Venice, which grew rich and powerful with extraordinary rapidity, was tyrannically governed by a haughty and exclusive aristocracy. In commerce and in wealth she surpassed all her rivals, and her affairs were more shrewdly conducted. She held large possessions in the East, and she was acquiring an extensive dominion on the Italian mainland. The Genoese, who were the most formidable competitors of Venice in commerce, preserved their democracy, but at some serious expense to the administrative efficiency of their government. They were troubled by a nobility which could only be turbulent and could not control. They fought a desperate but losing fight with the Venetians, and were several times in subjection to the dukes of Milan and the kings of France. Pisa, which had led both Venice and Genoa in the commercial race at the beginning, was ruined by her wars with the latter, and with Florence, and sank, in the fourteenth century, under the rule of the Visconti, who sold their rights to the Florentines.

Florence.

The wonderful Florentine republic was the one which preserved its independence under popular institutions the longest, and in which they bore the most splendid fruit. For a period that began in the later part of the thirteenth century, the government of Florence was so radically democratic that the nobles (grandi) were made ineligible to office, and could only qualify themselves for election to any place in the magistracy by abandoning their order and engaging in the labor of some craft or art. The vocations of skilled industry were all organized in gilds, called Arti, and were divided into two classes, one representing what were recognized as the superior arts (Arti Major, embracing professional and mercantile callings, with some others); the other including the commoner industries, known as the Arti Minori. From the heads, or Priors, of the Arti were chosen a Signory, changed every two months, which was entrusted with the government of the republic. This popular constitution was maintained in its essential features through the better part of a century, but with continual resistance and disturbance from the excluded nobles, on one side, and from the common laboring people, on the other, who belonged to no art-gild and who, therefore, were excluded likewise from participation in political affairs. Between these two upper and lower discontents, the bourgeois constitution gave way at last. The mob got control for a time; but only, as always happens, to bring about a reactionary revolution, which placed an oligarchy in power; and the oligarchy made smooth the way for a single family of great wealth and popular gifts and graces to rise to supremacy in the state. This was the renowned family which began to rule in Florence in 1435, when Cosimo de' Medici entered on the office of Gonfaloniere. The Medici were not despots, of the class of the Visconti, or the Sforzas, or the Estes. They governed under the old constitutional forms, with not much violation of anything except the spirit of them. They acquired no princely title, until the late, declining days of the house. Their power rested on influence and prestige, at first, and finally on habit. They developed, and enlisted in their own support, as something reflected from themselves, the pride of the city in itself,—in its magnificence,—in its great and liberal wealth,—in its patronage of letters and art,—in its fame abroad and the admiration with which men looked upon it.

Through all the political changes in Florence there ran an unending war of factions, the bitterest and most inveterate in history. The control of the city belonged naturally to the Guelfs, for it was the head and front of the Guelfic party in Italy. "Without Florence," says one historian, "there would have been no Guelfs." But neither party scrupled to call armed help from the outside into its quarrels, and the Ghibellines were able, nearly as often as the Guelfs, to drive their opponents from the city. For the ascendancy of one faction meant commonly the flight or expulsion of every man in the other who had importance enough to be noticed. It was thus that Dante, an ardent Ghibelline, became an exile from his beloved Florence during the later years of his life. But the strife of Guelfs with Ghibellines did not suffice for the partisan rancor of the Florentines, and they complicated it with another split of factions, which bore the names of the Bianchi and the Neri, 01' the Whites and the Blacks.

For two or three centuries the annals of Florence are naught, one thinks in reading them, but an unbroken tale of strife within, or war without—of tumult, riot, revolution, disorder. And yet, underneath, there is an amazing story to be found, of thrift, industry, commerce, prosperity, wealth, on one side, and of the sublimest genius, on another, giving itself, in pure devotion, to poetry and art. The contradiction of circumstances seems irreconcilable to our modern experience, and we have to seek an explanation of it in the very different conditions of mediæval life. It is with certainty a fact that Florence, in its democratic time, was phenomenal in genius, and in richness of life,—in prosperity both material and intellectual; and it is reasonable to credit to that time the planting and the growing of fruits which ripened surpassingly in the Medicean age.

The Ottomans and the Eastern Empire.

So little occasion has arisen for any mention of the lingering Eastern Empire, since Michael Palæologus, the Greek, recovered Constantinople from the Franks (1261), that its existence might easily be forgotten. It had no importance until it fell, and then it loomed large again, in history, not only by the tragic impression of its fall upon the imaginations of men, but by the potent consequences of it.

For nearly two hundred years, the successors of Palæologus, still calling themselves "Emperors of the Romans," and ruling a little Thracian and Macedonian corner of the old dominion of the Eastern Cæsars, struggled with a new race of Turks, who had followed the Seljuk horde out of the same Central Asian region. One of the first known leaders of this tribe was Osman, or Othman, after whom they are sometimes called Osmanlis, but more frequently Ottoman Turks. They appeared in Asia Minor about the middle of the thirteenth century, attacking both Christian and Mahometan states, and gradually extending their conquest over the whole. About the end of the first century of their career, they passed the straits and won a footing in Europe. In 1361, they took Hadrianople and made it their capital. Their sultan at this time was Amurath.

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As yet, they did not attack Constantinople. The city itself was too strong in its fortifications; but beyond the walls of the capital there was no strength in the little fragment of Empire that remained. It appealed vainly to Western Europe for help. It sought to make terms with the Church of Rome. Nothing saved it for the moment but the evident disposition of the Turk to regard it as fruit which would drop to his hand in due time, and which he might safely leave waiting while he turned his arms against its more formidable neighbors. He contented himself with exacting tribute from the emperors, and humiliating them by commands which they dared not disobey. In the Servians, the Bosnians, and the Bulgarians, Amurath found worthier foes. He took Sophia, their principal city, from the latter, in 1382; in 1389 he defeated the two former nations in the great battle of Kossova. At the moment of victory he was assassinated, and his son Bajazet mounted the Ottoman throne. The latter, at Nicopolis (1396), overwhelmed and destroyed the one army which Western Europe sent to oppose the conquering march of his terrible race. Six years later, he himself was vanquished and taken prisoner in Asia by a still more terrible conqueror,—the fiendish Timour or Tamerlane, then scourging the eastern Continent. For some years the Turks were paralyzed by a disputed succession; but under Amurath II., who came to the throne in 1421, their advance was resumed, and in a few years more their long combat with the Hungarians began.

Hungary and the Turks.

The original line of kings of Hungary having died out in 1301, the influence of the Pope, who claimed the kingdom as a fief of the papal see, secured the election to the throne of Charles Robert, or Caribert, of the Naples branch of the House of Anjou. He and his son Louis, called the Great, raised the kingdom to notable importance and power. Louis added the crown of Poland to that of Hungary, and on his death, leaving two daughters, the Polish crown passed to the husband of one and the Hungarian crown to the husband of the other. This latter was Sigismund of Luxemburg, who afterwards became Emperor, and also King of Bohemia. Under Sigismund, Hungary was threatened on one side by the Turks, and ravaged on the other by the Hussites of Bohemia. He was succeeded (1437) by his son-in-law, Albert of Austria, who lived only two years, and the latter was followed by Wladislaus, King of Poland; who again united the two crowns, though at the cost of a distracting civil war with partisans of the infant son of Albert. It was in the reign of this prince that the Turks began their obstinate attacks on Hungary, and thenceforth, for two centuries and more, that afflicted country served Christendom as a battered bulwark which the new warriors of Islam could beat and disfigure but could not break down. The hero of these first Hungarian wars with the Turks was John Huniades, or Hunyady, a Wallachian, who fought them with success until a peace was concluded in 1444. But King Wladislaus was persuaded the same year by a papal agent to break the treaty and to lead an expedition against the enemy's lines. The result was a calamitous defeat, the death of the king, and the almost total destruction of his army. Huniades now became regent of the kingdom, during the minority of the late King Albert's young son, Ladislaus.

He suffered one serious defeat at the hands of the Turks, but avenged it again and again, with help from an army of volunteers raised in all parts of Europe by the exertions of a zealous monk named Capistrano. When Huniades died, in 1456, his enemies already controlled the worthless young king, Ladislaus, and the latter pursued him in his grave with denunciations as a traitor and a villain. In 1458, Ladislaus died, and Mathias, a son of Huniades, was elected king. After he had settled himself securely upon the throne, Mathias turned his arms, not against the Turks, but against the Hussites of Bohemia, in an attempt to wrest the crown of that kingdom from George Podiebrad.

The Fall of Constantinople.

Meantime, the Turkish Sultan, Mohammed II., had accomplished the capture of Constantinople and brought the venerable Empire of the East—Roman, Greek, or Byzantine, as we choose to name it—to an end. He was challenged to the undertaking by the folly of the last Emperor, Constantine Palæologus, who threatened to support a pretender to Mohammed's throne. The latter began serious preparations at once for a siege of the long coveted city, and opened his attack in April, 1453. The Greeks, even in that hour of common danger, were too hotly engaged in a religious quarrel to act defensively together. Their last preceding emperor had gone personally to the Council of the Western Church, at Florence, in 1439, with some of the bishops of the Greek Church, and had arranged for the submission of the latter to Rome, as a means of procuring help from Catholic Europe against the Turks. His successor, Constantine, adhered to this engagement, professed the Catholic faith and observed the Catholic ritual. His subjects in general repudiated the imperial contract with scorn, and avowedly preferred a Turkish master to a Roman shepherd. Hence they took little part in the defense of the city. Constantine, with the small force at his command, fought the host of besiegers with noble courage and obstinacy for seven weeks, receiving a little succor from the Genoese, but from no other quarter. On the 29th of May the walls were carried by storm; the Emperor fell, fighting bravely to the last; and the Turks became masters of the city of Constantine. There was no extensive massacre of the inhabitants; the city was given up to pillage, but not to destruction, for the conqueror intended to make it his capital. A number of fugitives had escaped, before, or during the siege, and made their way into Italy and other parts of Europe, carrying an influence which was importantly felt, as we shall presently see; but 60,000 captives, men, women and children, were sold into slavery and scattered throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Greece and most of the islands of the Ægean soon shared the fate of Constantinople, and the subjugation of Servia and Bosnia was made complete. Mohammed was even threatening Italy when he died, in 1481.

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Renaissance.

We have now come, in our hasty survey of European history, to the stretch of time within which historians have quite generally agreed to place the ending of the state of things characteristic of the Middle Ages, and the beginning of the changed conditions and the different spirit that belong to the modern life of the civilized world. The transition in European society from mediæval to modern ways, feelings, and thoughts has been called Renaissance, or new birth; but the figure under which this places the conception before one's mind does not seem to be really a happy one. There was no birth of anything new in the nature of the generations of men who passed through that change, nor in the societies which they formed. What occurred to make changes in both was an expansion, a liberation, an enlightenment—an opening of eyes, and of ears, and of inner senses and sensibilities. There was no time and no place that can be marked at which this began; and there is no cause nor chain of causes to which it can be traced. We have found signs of its coming, here and there, in one token of movement and another, all the way through later mediæval times—at least since the first Crusades. In the thirteenth century there was a wonderful quickening of all the many processes which made it up. In the fourteenth century they were checked; but still they went on. In the fifteenth they revived with greater energy than before; and in the sixteenth they rose to their climax in intensity and effect. That which took place in European society was not a re-naissance so much as the re-wakening of men to a day-light existence, after a thousand years of sunless night,—moonlighted at the best. The truest descriptive figure is that which represents these preludes to our modern age as a morning dawn and daybreak.

Probably foremost among the causes of the change in Western Europe from the mediæval to the modern state, we must place those influences that extinguished the disorganizing forces in feudalism. Habits and forms of the feudal arrangement remained troublesome in society, as they do in some measure to the present day; but feudalism as a system of social disorder and disintegration was by this time cleared away. We have noted in passing some of the undermining agencies by which it was destroyed: the crusading movements; the growth and enfranchisement of cities; the spread of commerce; the rise of a middle class; the study of Roman law; the consequent increase of royal authority in France,—all these were among the causes of its decline. But possibly none among them wrought such quick and deadly harm to feudalism as the introduction of gunpowder and fire-arms in war, which occurred in the fourteenth century. When his new weapons placed the foot-soldier on a fairly even footing in battle with the mailed and mounted knight, the feudal military organization of society was ruined beyond remedy. The changed conditions of warfare made trained armies, and therefore standing armies, a necessity; standing armies implied centralized authority; with centralized authority the feudal condition disappeared.

If these agencies in the generating of the new movement of civilization which we call Modern are placed before the subtler and more powerful influence of the printing press, it is because they had to do a certain work in the world before the printing press could be an efficient educator. Some beginning of a public, in our modern sense, required to be created, for letters to act upon. Until that came about, the copyists of the monasteries and of the few palace libraries existing were more than sufficient to satisfy all demands for the multiplication of ancient writings or the publication of new ones. The printer, if he had existed, would have starved for want of employment. He would have lacked material, moreover, to work upon; for it was the rediscovery of a great ancient literature which made him busy when he came.

Invention of Printing.