Part 604

"The war [of France and Spain] in Italy had for some years languished, but hostility to the Pope [on the election of Innocent X., which Cardinal Mazarin, then supreme in France, had opposed] stirred it again into life. New vessels were fitted out for the navy, and large preparations were made for the invasion of Italy. … On April 26, 1646, the expedition set sail, and on the 9th of May it cast anchor off the important city of Orbitello. The fleet consisted of 156 sail, and was expected to land 10,000 men, and Mazarin wrote that all Italy was in terror. The ships were commanded by the Duke of Brézé, and no more skilful or gallant leader could have been found. … The command of the land forces was, however, entrusted to a leader whose deficiencies more than counterbalanced Brézé's skill. Mazarin desired an Italian prince to lead his expedition, and Prince Thomas of Savoy had been chosen for the command. … Fearing that disease would come with the hot weather, Mazarin urged Prince Thomas to press forward with the siege. But the most simple advances seemed beyond his skill. … A severe misfortune to the navy made the situation worse. In a sharp and successful engagement with the Spanish fleet, a cannon ball struck and killed the Duke of Brézé. His death was more disastrous than would have been the loss of 20 sail. The French fleet retired to Provence and left the sea open to the Spanish. Sickness was fast reducing the army on land, and on July 18th Prince Thomas raised the siege, which was no further advanced than when it was begun, and led back the remains of his command to Piedmont. … So mortifying an end to this expensive venture only strengthened Mazarin's resolution to make his power felt in Italy. The battered ships and fever-wasted soldiers were scarcely back in Provence, when the minister began to prepare a second expedition for the same end. … By September a fleet of 200 sail, with an army of 8,000 men commanded by the Marshals of La Meilleraie and Du Plessis, was under way. The expedition was conducted with skill and success. Orbitello was not again attacked, but Porto Longone, on the island of Elba, and Piombino, on the mainland, both places of much strategic importance, were captured after brief sieges. With this result came at once the change in the feelings of Innocent X. for which Mazarin had hoped," and certain objects of the latter's desire—including a cardinal's hat for his brother Michael—were brought within his reach. His attention was now turned to the more southerly portion of the peninsula. "During the expedition to Orbitello in 1646, Mazarin had closely watched Naples, whose coming revolution he foresaw. The ill-suppressed discontents of the city now showed themselves in disturbances, sudden and erratic as the eruptions of Vesuvius, and they offered to France an opportunity for seizing the richest of the remaining possessions of Spain. After the vicissitudes of centuries, Naples and Sicily were now subject to the Spanish crown. They were governed by a viceroy, and were subjected to the drain of men and money which was the result of Spain's necessities and the characteristic of her rule. Burdened with taxation, they complained that their viceroy, the Duke of Arcos, was sending to Spain money raised solely for their own defence. The imposition of a duty on fruits, in a country where fruit formed a cheap article of diet for the poor, and where almost all were poor, kindled the long smouldering discontent. Under the leadership of a fisherman [Tommaso Aniello], nicknamed Masaniello, the people of Naples in 1647 rose in revolt. Springing from utter obscurity, this young man of twenty-seven, poor and illiterate, became powerful almost in a day. While the Duke of Arcos hid himself away from the revolt, Masaniello was made Captain-General of Naples. So sudden a change turned his head. At first he had been bold, popular, and judicious. He sought only, he said, to deliver the people from their taxes, and when that was done, he would return again to selling soles and red mullets. But political delirium seized him when he reached an elevation which, for him, was as dizzy as the throne of the Roman emperors, and like some who reached that terrible eminence, his brain was crazed by the bewilderment and ecstasy of power. He made wild and incoherent speeches. He tore his garments, crying out against popular ingratitude, attacking groups of passers-by, riding his horse wildly through the multitude, and striking with his lance to the right and left. The populace wearied of its darling. Exalted to power on July 7th, he was murdered on the 16th, with the approval of those who had worshipped him a week before. But the revolution did not perish with him. Successive chiefs were chosen and deposed by a fickle people. When the insurrection was active, the representatives of Spain promised untaxed fruits and the privileges allowed by Charles V., and they revoked their promises when it appeared to subside. In the meantime, Mazarin watched the movement, uncertain as to the course he should pursue. … While the minister hesitated, the chance was seized by one who was never accused of too great caution." This was the Duke of Guise—the fifth Henry of that Dukedom—a wild, madcap young nobleman, who accepted an invitation from the Neapolitan insurgents to become their chief. Guise landed at Naples on the 15th of November, 1647, with half a dozen attendants, and a month later he was followed by a French fleet. But the latter did nothing, and Guise was helplessly without means. "The truth was that Mazarin, even if desirous of crippling the Spaniards, was very averse to assisting Guise. He believed that the duke either desired to form a republic, of which he should be chief, or a monarchy, of which he should be king, and neither plan was agreeable to the cardinal." At the end of a fortnight the fleet sailed away. Guise held his ground as the leader of the revolt until the following April, when certain of the Neapolitan patriots, corrupted by the enemy, betrayed the city into the hands of the Spaniards. {1848} "Guise endeavored, with a handful of followers, to escape towards Capua, but they were captured by a detachment of Spaniards. … By the petition of powerful friends, and by the avowal of France, Guise was saved from the public execution which some of his enemies demanded, but he was presently taken to Spain, and there was kept a prisoner during four years." Meantime, Mazarin had prepared another expedition, which appeared before Naples in the summer of 1648, but only to discover that the opportunity for deriving any advantage from the popular discontent in that city was past. "Receiving no popular aid, the expedition, after some ineffective endeavors, was abandoned." Six years afterwards, in 1654, Mazarin sent a third expedition to Naples, and entrusted it to the command of the Duke of Guise, who had lately been released from his captivity in Spain. "Guise hoped that the Neapolitans would rise in revolt when it was known that their former leader was so near, but not a person in the city showed any desire to start a movement in behalf of the Duke of Guise. The Spanish met him with superior forces." After some slight encounters the expedition sailed back to France.

_J. B. Perkins, France under Mazarin, chapter 8 (volume 1), and chapter 16 (volume 2)._

ALSO IN: _A. De Reumont, The Carafas of Maddaloni: Naples under Spanish Dominion, book 3._

_F. Midon, Rise and Fall of Masaniello._

_Mrs. H. R. St. John, Masaniello of Naples._

_H. G. Smith, Romance of History, chapter 1._

ITALY: A. D. 1648. The Peace of Westphalia.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

ITALY: A. D. 1701-1713. Savoy and Piedmont. The War of the Spanish Succession. The Peace of Utrecht.

"Compelled to take part, with one of the contending parties [in the War of the Spanish Succession—see SPAIN: A. D. 1698-1700, and 1701-1702], Victor [Duke of Savoy] would have been prompted by his interest to an alliance with Austria; but he was beset on all sides by the combined forces of France and Spain, and was all the more at their mercy as Louis XIV. had (April 5th, 1701) obtained from Ferdinand Gonzaga of Mantua permission to garrison his capital, in those days already one of the strongest places in Italy. The Duke of Savoy had already, in 1697, married his daughter, Adelaide, to one of Louis's grandsons, the Duke of Burgundy; he now gave his younger daughter, Mary Louise, to Burgundy's brother, the new King of Spain (September 11th, 1701), and took the field as French commander-in-chief. He was opposed by his own cousin, Prince Eugene, at the head of the Imperial armies. The war in Lombardy was carried on with some remissness, partly owing to the natural repugnance or irresolution of the Duke of Savoy, partly to the suspicion with which, on that very account, he was looked upon by Catinat and Vaudemont, the French and Spanish commanders under him. The King, in an evil hour, removed his able marshal, Catinat, and substituted for him Villeroi, a carpet knight and court warrior, who committed one fault after another, allowed himself to be beaten by Eugene at Chiari (September 1st), and to be surprised and taken prisoner at Cremona (1702, January 21st), to the infinite relief of his troops. Vendôme restored the fortunes of the French, and a very brilliant but undecisive action was fought at Luzzara (August 15th), after which Prince Eugene was driven from the neighbourhood of Mantua, and fell back towards the mountains of Tyrol. With the success of the French their arrogance increased, and with their arrogance the disgust and ill-will of Victor Amadeus." The Duke withdrew from the camp and began to listen to overtures from the Powers in the Grand Alliance. "Report of the secret intercourse of the Duke with Austrian agents reached Louis XIV., who sent immediate orders to Vendôme to secure and disarm the Piedmontese soldiers (3,800 to 6,000 in number) who were fighting under French standards at Mantua. This was achieved by treachery, at San Benedetto, on the 29th of September, 1703. An attempt to seize the Duke himself, whilst hunting near Turin, miscarried. Savoy retaliated by the arrest of the French and Spanish ambassadors, and war was declared (October 5th). The moment was ill·chosen. Victor had barely 4,000 men under his orders. The whole of Savoy was instantly overrun; and in Piedmont Vercelli, Ivrea, Verrua, as well as Susa, Bard, and Pinerolo, and even Chivasso, fell into the enemy's hands during the campaigns of 1704 and 1705. In the ensuing year the tide of invasion reached Nice and Villafranca; nothing was left to Victor Amadeus but Cuneo and Turin, and the victorious French armies appeared at last under the very walls of the capital (March, 1706). The war had, however, been waged with different results beyond the Alps, where the allies had crushed the French at Blenheim (1704) and at Ramillies (1705). One of the heroes of those great achievements, Prince Eugene, now hastened to the rescue of his cousin. He met with a severe check at Cassano (August 16th, 1705), and again at Calcinato (April 19th, 1706); but his skilful antagonist, Vendôme, was called away to Flanders, and Prince Eugene so out-manœuvred his successors as to be able to join Victor at Turin. The French had begun the siege of this place on the 13th of May, 1706. They had between 50,000 and 60,000 men, and 170 pieces of artillery with them." When Prince Eugene, early in September, reached the neighborhood of Turin, he concerted with Victor Amadeus an attack on the investing army which destroyed it completely. "Its relics withdrew in awful disorder towards Pinerolo, pursued not only by the victorious troops but also by the peasantry, who, besides attachment to their princes, obeyed in this instance an instinct of revenge against the French, who had barbarously used them. Out of 50,000 or 60,000 men who had sat down before Turin in March, hardly 20,000 recrossed the Alps in September. Three of the French generals lay dead on the field; … 6,000 prisoners were marched through the streets of the liberated town, and 55 French banners graced the main altar of the cathedral. In the following year, Victor and Eugene, greatly against their inclination, were induced by the allies to undertake an expedition against Toulon, which, like all previous invasions of Provence, led to utter discomfiture, and the loss of 10,000 combatants (1707, July 1st to September 1st). An attack upon Briançon, equally undertaken against the sound judgment of the Duke of Savoy, in 1708, led to no better results; but Savoy won back Exilles, Perosa, Fenestrelles, and, one by one, all the redoubts with which during those wars the Alps were bristling. {1849} The war slackened in Italy, and the fates of Europe were decided in the Netherlands. … By the Peace of Utrecht [A. D. 1713] France renounced to Savoy all the invaded territories, and, besides, the valleys of Oulx, Cesanne, Bardonneche, and Castel Delfino, ancient possessions of Dauphiny, east of the Alps, from the 12th century, whilst, for her own part, Savoy gave up the western valley of Barcellonette; thus the limits between the two nations (with the exception of Savoy and Nice) were at last fixed on the mountain-crest, at 'the parting of the waters.' By virtue of an agreement signed with Austria, November 8th, 1703, the whole of Montferrat, as well as Alessandria, Valenza, Lomellina, and Val Sesia, dependencies of the duchy of Milan, and the imperial fiefs in the Langhe (province of Alba), were ceded to Savoy."

_A. Gallenga, History of Piedmont, volume 3, chapter 2._

ALSO IN: _Colonel G. B. Malleson, Prince Eugene of Savoy, chapters 5, and 7-9._

_H. Martin, History of France: Age of Louis XIV., volume 2, chapters 5-6._

_W. Coxe, History of the House of Austria, chapters 68, 69, 73-75, 77 (volume 2-3)._

See, also, UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714.

ITALY: A. D. 1713-1714. Milan, Naples and Sardinia ceded to the House of Austria and Sicily to the Duke of Savoy.

See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714.

ITALY: A. D. 1715-1735. Ambitions of Elizabeth Farnese, the Spanish queen. The Austro-Spanish conflict. The Quadruple Alliance. Acquisition of Naples by the Spanish Bourbons.

By the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht, Philip V. of Spain was left with no dominions in Italy, the Italian possessions of the Spanish monarchy having been transferred to Austria. Philip might have accepted this arrangement without demur. Not so his wife—"Elizabeth Farnese, a lady of the Italian family for whom the Duchy of Parma had been created by the Pope. The crown of Spain was settled on her step-son. For her own child the ambitious queen desired the honours of a crown. Cardinal Alberoni, a reckless and ambitious ecclesiastic, was the minister of the Spanish court. Under his advice and instigated by the queen, Philip claimed the possessions in Italy, which in the days of his grandfather had belonged to the Spanish crown. When his title to that crown was admitted, he denied the right of the other powers of Europe to alienate from it its possessions. This was not all: in right of his queen he claimed the duchies of Parma and of Tuscany. She determined to recover for him all the Italian possessions of the Spanish crown, and to add to them the duchies of Parma and Tuscany. The Duke of Parma was old and childless. The extinction of the reigning line of the Medici was near. Cosmo di Medici, the reigning sovereign, was old. His only son, Jean Gaston, was not likely to leave heirs. To Parma Elizabeth advanced her claims as heiress of the family of Farnese; to Tuscany she asserted a more questionable title in right of a descent from the family of Medici. These duchies she demanded for her son, Don Carlos, in whose behalf she was ready to waive her own claims. The success of these demands would have given to the Spanish monarchy even greater power than it had before enjoyed. To Naples, Sicily, and Milan, would have been added the territories of Parma and Tuscany. All Europe denounced the ambitious projects of Alberoni as entirely inconsistent with that balance of power which it had then become a political superstition to uphold. Philip's French relatives were determined in opposition to his claims; and to resist them the quadruple alliance was formed between Holland, England, France and the emperor. The parties to this alliance offered to the Spanish Bourbons that the emperor should settle on Don Carlos the reversion to the duchies of Parma and Tuscany on their lapsing to him by the failure of the reigning families without heirs. These proposals were rejected, and it was not until the Spanish court found the combination of four powerful monarchs too strong for them, that they reluctantly acceded to the terms of the Quadruple Alliance, and accepted for Don Carlos the promised reversion of Parma and Tuscany. To induce the emperor to accede to this arrangement the Duke of Savoy was compelled to surrender to him his newly-acquired kingdom of Sicily, receiving instead the island of Sardinia with its kingly title. It is as kings of Sardinia that the princes of Savoy have since been known in European history. The treaty of the quadruple alliance was thus the second by which at this period the European powers attempted to arrange the affairs of Italy. This treaty left the house of Austria in possession of Sicily and Naples. It was assented to by Spain in 1720. European complications unconnected with Italy produced new wars and a new treaty; and the treaty of Seville in 1724, followed by one entered into at Vienna two years later, confirmed Don Carlos in the duchy of Parma, of which, on the death of the last of the Farnese in 1734, he entered into possession. A dispute as to the election of a king of Poland gave the Spanish court an opportunity of once more attempting the resumption of the Neapolitan dominions. Don Carlos, the second son of Philip and Elizabeth, was now just grown to man's estate. His father placed in his hand the sword which he himself had received from Louis XIV. Don Carlos was but seventeen years old when he took possession of his sovereignty of Parma. In the same year [1734] he was called from it to invade the Sicilian dominions of Austria. He conquered in succession the continental territories, and the island of Sicily; and on the 15th of June, 1734, he was proclaimed as King of the Two Sicilies. The war of the Polish Succession was ended in the following year by a peace, the preliminaries of which were signed at Vienna. In this treaty an entirely new arrangement of Italian affairs was introduced. The rights of Don Carlos to the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily were recognised. Parma was surrendered to the emperor; and, lastly, the duchy of Tuscany was disposed of to a new claimant [Francis of Lorraine] for the honours of an Italian prince."

_I. Butt, History of Italy, volume 1, chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _E. Armstrong, Elisabeth Farnese, chapters 2-10._

_P. Colletta, History of the Kingdom of Naples, 1734-1856, book 1, chapter 1-2._

See, also, SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725; and FRANCE: A. D. 1733-1735.

ITALY: A. D. 1719. The Emperor and the Duke of Savoy exchange Sardinia for Sicily.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725.

ITALY: A. D. 1733-1735. Franco-Austrian War. Invasion of the Milanese by the French. Naples and Sicily occupied by the Spaniards and erected into a kingdom for Don Carlos.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1733-1735.

{1850}

ITALY: A. D. 1741-1743. The War of the Austrian Succession: Ambitious undertakings of Spain.

"The struggle between England and Spain had altogether merged in the great European war, and the chief efforts of the Spaniards were directed against the Austrian dominions in Italy.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1739-1741.

The kingdom of Naples, which had passed under Austrian rule during the war of the [Spanish] Succession, had, as we have seen, been restored to the Spanish line in the war which ended in 1740, and Don Carlos, who ruled it, was altogether subservient to Spanish policy. The Duke of Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, was sovereign of Tuscany; and the Austrian possessions consisted of the Duchy of Milan, and the provinces of Mantua and Placentia. They were garrisoned at the opening of the war by only 15,000 men, and their most dangerous enemy was the King of Sardinia, who had gradually extended his dominions into Lombardy, and whose army was, probably, the largest and most efficient in Italy. 'The Milanese,' his father is reported to have said, 'is like an artichoke, to be eaten leaf by leaf,' and the skill and perseverance with which for many generations the House of Savoy pursued that policy, have in our own day had their reward. Spanish troops had landed at Naples as early as November 1741. The King of Sardinia, the Prince of Modena, and the Republic of Genoa were on the same side. Venice was completely neutral, Tuscany was compelled to declare herself so, and a French army was soon to cross the Alps. The King of Sardinia, however, at this critical moment, was alarmed by the ambitious projects openly avowed by the Spaniards, and he was induced by English influence to change sides. He obtained the promise of certain territorial concessions from Austria, and of an annual subsidy of £200,000 from England; and on these conditions he suddenly marched with an army of 30,000 men to the support of the Austrians. An the plans of the confederates were disconcerted by this defection. The Spaniards went into winter quarters near Bologna in October, fought an unsuccessful battle at Campo Santo in the following February [1743], and then retired to Rimini, leaving Lombardy in complete tranquillity. The British fleet in the Mediterranean had been largely strengthened by Carteret, and it did good service to the cause. It burnt a Spanish squadron in the French port of St. Tropez, compelled the King of Naples, by the threat of bombardment, to withdraw his troops from the Spanish army, and sign an engagement of neutrality, destroyed large provisions of corn collected by the Genoese for the Spanish army, and cut off that army from all communications by sea."

_W. E. H. Lecky, History of England, 18th Century, chapter 3 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN: _W. Coxe, History of the House of Austria, chapter 102 (volume 3)._

ITALY: A. D. 1743. The War of the Austrian Succession: Treaty of Worms.