Part 27

Venice for a brief moment had sunk into the shade. She, who had manœuvred so deeply to unseat Arragon and Sforza by the help of France, beheld, to her immense chagrin, Charles VIII. following her own suggestions as to the enterprise of Naples with Lodovico Sforza as his mentor and ally. Milan had taken the place of Venice in the French Council; Milan, which the French should have conquered as their earliest prey. “It is extraordinary how that man succeeds,” wrote Marin Sanuto. “Yet it may chance that he outwit himself at last. Please God, he come to a good end! But I for one do not believe it!”

At Pisa Lodovico registered a new success. It was in vain that Vincula (for the first time in his life, says Guicciardini, the author of quiet counsels) represented to the assembled nobles the danger of the step. They were beside themselves with the hope of liberty; and indeed, all the French agree in telling us that their condition was truly desperate. “Piteous, and lamentable,” says Desrey, and Commines, a staunch Florentine in principle, allows that they were handled as cruelly as slaves. To men in such a plight, and counselled by a person so important as San Severino, no risk appears too great to run that leaves a chance for liberty.

And so that very night the Pisans, still in their gala-dresses, but with torn hair, faces of mourning, clasped hands and streaming eyes, thronged into the council-chamber of the astonished King. “It was lamentable,” writes an eye-witness, “to hear them tell the wrongs and grievances they endured.” It was as if, in the middle of their gala, one of them, with a significant irony, had raised the corner of the pale silk gala-hangings and had revealed the mouldering stone, the unsightly ruin underneath. As the Pisans exposed the real degradation of their slavery, the facile rash humanity of the French was touched to tears; and when Messer Simone Orlandi (an accomplished gentleman who could express himself in French) had finished his recital, it was not only the Pisans who, pale with indignation and with pity, turned to the King of France on the throne seated of Medici, and cried out to him, “Liberté, liberté, cher Sire!”

At this point an accomplished Legist, a Counsellor of the Parliament in Dauphiné, named Ribot, who also was a Master of Requests at Court, turned to the King and said: it was indeed a lamentable case, and that never, for sure, were any other men so hardly used as these. The King himself—touched to the heart, as were all these frank and simple Frenchmen, by the unsuspected misery beneath the gold brocades of this fantastic Italy, and not quite understanding (as Commines suggests) what it was the Pisans meant by this word Liberty—answered vaguely that he would be content they should enjoy it. This at least is the mild version of Commines, who was absent in Venice at the time; but Pierre Desrey, actually present at the scene, puts a stronger warrant in the mouth of Charles: “Il les assura de les conserver dans leurs franchises.”

That night the Florentines in Pisa—men in office, judges, merchants, and soldiers of the garrison—were driven at the sword’s point out of the rebellious city. The statue of Marzocco on the bridge was hurled in a thousand pieces into the muddy Arno; the standard of Florence was dragged and trampled in the mire; and bonfires until morning hailed the discomfiture of the King’s allies. On the morrow after noon Charles left the city. He had placed a garrison of three hundred French soldiers in the new citadel; he had appointed three commissioners to superintend affairs; but he had taken no steps to impose the least restraint of civil order upon this impassioned and suddenly enfranchised people. Fortunately the nobles of the town took the matter into their wiser hands. Twenty-four hours after the entry of the French, Pisa was a free Republic governed by a Gonfalonier, six Priors, and a Balia of Ten, with a new militia of its own, and, for the first time in eight and eighty years, a Pisan garrison in the ancient citadel.

III.

If we ask, What right had the King of France to set at liberty the subjects of his allies, lent to him in his need as a temporary gage? we find the question difficult to answer. To statesmen like Commines or Briçonnet there was something shocking and dishonourable in the liberation of Pisa by the King, something that the tenderest palliation for generous youth and inexperience could not attempt to justify. On the other hand, to fresh enthusiastic spirits, such as Ligny or the King himself, there was a degree of inhumanity in leaving the Pisans to their obvious slavery which no code of political honour could extenuate.

These two parties, and these two counsels, marched with the King out of Pisa into Empoli, where he slept that Monday night—doubtless in the same bad inn that had so poorly housed the adventurous Medici just fifteen nights ago. When, on the Tuesday, the King arrived at Signa he heard that the city of Florence was in revolt. Florence and Pisa, unknown to one another, had each regained their liberty upon the selfsame day. For when the King of France came in sight of the group of domes and towers along the Arno, his young guest at Sarzana, so recently the lord of all this beauty, was escaping to Bologna across the mountains in disguise with a price upon his head.

Charles, the pupil of the Duke of Milan, was not well inclined to Florence; and he was not propitiated by the fact that Piero de’ Medici had been expelled the city on account of the great concessions he had made to France at the time of his fugitive visit to Sarzana. A month ago the King had declared that Piero alone was his enemy, and that the city was his friend; since the 30th of October he had changed his mind it was the pliant Medici who now appeared his friend, and his anger was against rebellious Florence.

Yet what had Florence done more audacious than that which Charles himself had sanctioned in the Pisans? Florence had expelled the Medici; Pisa the Florentines, almost at the selfsame hour. But the fact that the Florentines condemned the loan of the fortresses hardened the heart of the King, conscious that by the liberation of the Pisans he had justified the greatest of their fears. This was, in fact, the direst harm with which an enemy could threaten Florence; and Charles had done it despite his name of friend. It was only natural that he should nourish a grievance against the ally whom he had injured; and when on the 17th of November the French entered Florence, it was remarked that the King rode through the streets, lance on thigh, with the bearing of an offended conqueror. His mind was as haughty as his mien, and he was prepared to claim from the Republic the independence of Pisa and the restoration of Piero to the chief place in the government.

But the Florentines were no less resolute than Charles. Capponi made his famous threat, and the King, after ten days of vain parade of force, swore a solemn treaty with the Florentines upon the 25th of the month. By the terms of this convention it was arranged that Pisa and Leghorn were to be left in the hands of the King till his return from Naples, and then given back to Florence; the King was to decide between Genoa and Florence as to the final disposal of Sarzana and Pietro Santa; the King was to say no more till March concerning the restoration of the Medici, when the Signory, if he desired, would reconsider the matter, and meanwhile, by Royal request, the price was taken off the tyrants’ heads, and the wife and child of Piero were permitted to remain in Florence. The Signory agreed to pay the King, in three terms, the sum of 120,000 ducats towards the expense of the campaign; but, for us, the most important proviso of this treaty (which the student may consult in the first volume of Desjardin’s “Négociations”) is one that secured a complete amnesty for Pisa. Moreover Florence promised, in favour of the King, to rule that city in the future with a more liberal and a gentler hand.

It was not three weeks since Charles had promised to maintain the Pisans in their liberty, and those unhappy patriots who could not penetrate (Commines declares that no Italian ever could) the shifting confusion of the Court, did not know, and would have little cared to understand, that Beaucaire and Ligny had held the balance yesterday, but Gannay, Gié, and Briçonnet to-day. The only consolation that they could have found in this unstability of favour was the chance that their advocates might soon again succeed to power, and as a fact they had made a great point in securing the sympathy of Ligny (the King’s cousin) and Piennes—two young gentlemen of the King’s own age who were his inseparable companions, wore armour like his own and the Royal colours. These two gallants counted on their side the Seneschal of Beaucaire, one of the King’s two especial counsellors. But the other, Briçonnet, supported the Florentine party. The elder and more diplomatic statesmen, such as, Gié, Gannay, and Commines, were all on the side of Florence.

Such was the position of the Court when, in the January of 1495, the Pisans sent to Rome, as a last desperate advocate of their extremity, a gentleman of their city, skilled in French, one Messer Burgundio Legolo, or Lolo as the slurring Pisan voices gave the name. The King received the ambassador graciously, but in the presence of the Florentine envoys; and the party of pity, and the party of honour (if so we may name the factions of Ligny and of Briçonnet) were both assembled when the Pisan advocate began to address the King:

“Now for nearly ninety years,”[130] began Burgundio Lolo, “the city of Pisa, once the greatest in Italy, once carrying her Empire into the recesses of the East, has suffered the yoke of an intolerable servitude. The cruel avarice of Florence has brought our city into so great a depth of desolation that her streets are almost empty of inhabitants, for the most of her citizens, unable to endure this grinding slavery, have gone into a voluntary exile abandoning their native land. Those that remain, incapable of plucking from their hearts the love of country, have indeed renounced all else that renders life endurable. The acerb and cruel exactions of foreign taxes, the insolent rapine of private Florentines, the injustice that forbids us by art or trade or public office to recruit our fallen fortunes, have left us an empty life, plundered of all enjoyment: nay, dangerous even and deadly, for the clayey marshes that our ancestors kept with exact and pious diligence, are now so little drained, so long neglected that the waters of Maremma sap our fairest palaces and our churches, our houses, our public buildings fall into ruins while the miasma of those stagnant waters breeds a grievous fever in our midst. And where shall we turn to forget our misery and our dishonour? we, who are denied an outlet to our energy and our ambition? As we pass the void hours of our leisure in the ruined streets of our once glorious city, shall we not feel the pity of the ruin? shall we look unmoved upon the dishonoured remnant of the magnificence of our ancestors? Nay, since it is no shame to Pisa, after a long renown to be fallen in decay—because in all the eminence of this world there is inherent this fatality of corruption—were it not wiser, even for her conquerors, in musing on her ancient greatness to turn their hearts to pity, rather than to use so cruel an advantage over a city in whose decadence they should, in truth, behold the inevitable presage of their own?

Footnote 130:

See the speech—true, we may suppose, in fact if not in phrase—as reported in Guicciardini’s “History.”

“Alas, so cruel, so insatiable, so impious has been the Florentine dominion that, rather than return to that slavery, we would forfeit life itself. And now at last a hope—a dear hope of liberty—has dawned upon us; and we beseech you, O King of France, with tears—not only these few visible tears of mine, but, invisible and ample, the lamentations of all the distant city—here at your feet, O King, I beseech you to remember what justice, what piety, what clemency of a magnanimous prince would shine for ever round your name should you choose to be the Father and Deliverer of Pisa, rather than the Minister of the slavery of Florence.”

There was a little silence. In these accents men seemed to hear an echo of that natural law that lives immutable behind the convenience of nations—νομὶμα ἄγραπτα κᾶσφαλὴ θεῶν. The King’s face glowed; and the enthusiasm of Ligny and Piennes was reflected in the demeanour of Beaucaire, a rash and low-born person moved by pity, moved by Pisan money also (if we are to believe Guicciardini), moved certainly by rivalry of Briçonnet. The other party waited somewhat anxiously for the Florentine ambassador to answer Lolo. Soderini, Bishop of Volterra, was a practical and eminent statesman, but on that excited audience his words fell without wings to reach their hearts.

Florence, he said, had bought Pisa with good money. She had been kinder than she need have been, for when the wilful Pisans yielded, half-dead with famine, she had brought more victuals than firearms to finish their subjection. She had the right to use her chattel as she would, and had she been a thousand times more harsh who should come between a man and his own? It was ridiculous to prate of the ancient grandeur of Pisa—God had made an end of that long before the Florentines, and she had been a poor bargain to Florence ever since the hour of her purchase.

So spoke the hard-headed Bishop of Volterra. But even as reported by a Florentine historian these arguments do not make any great effect; and it was quite clear, as he avows, that the Pisan advocate had made a far deeper impression on the King. And as, that very week, Briçonnet was sent to Florence upon a diplomatic mission, the party of Pisa remained triumphant in the camp where with (Commines in Venice and Briçonnet in Tuscany) Beaucaire and Ligny and Piennes held for the moment the whole of Royal favour.

IV.

Louis de Ligny-Luxembourg, Grand Chamberlain of France, cousin of the King through his Savoyard mother, was the son of that unfortunate Comte de St. Pol decapitated by Louis XI. He was not only one of the great nobles of France, but one of the first gentlemen in Europe, for his house was ancient and illustrious by descent and especially fortunate in marriage. Nevertheless the young man was poor; yet owing to his charming manners, his courage and adroitness, he was a most important factor not only in the Court of the King but in the Court of Orleans. The Count of Ligny, chivalrous, amorous, and pitiful, flits, for a brief moment, like the figure of Youth in an allegory—across the serious stage of the Italian wars; and his tragic childhood and his melancholy marriage seem to throw out with a brighter lustre the intrinsic brilliance of that scintillating presence.

He was, say the French chroniclers, “prince gentil vaillant, adroit et généreux,” a pattern for nobles and the beloved of ladies. Guicciardini, looking from another point of view, calls him juvenile, inexperienced, and light. To quote a final authority, Commines briefly gives the reason for our dwelling on him: “Above all others,” says he, “this young gentleman especially favoured the Pisans’ cause.”

Ligny had ever been a politician of Orleans’ party, that earlier faction so long stimulated by intriguing Venice, which aimed not only at the conquest of Naples, but also at securing Milan. With these two great possessions at either end of Italy, it was clear that Pisa would make an excellent half-way house. Pity for the Pisans was probably the essential motor of Ligny’s action, yet there is no doubt he desired to further the policy of Orleans. And before the winter was over, Ligny’s marriage gave him a personal interest in the game.

In the early spring of 1495, Charles VIII. had arrived in Naples. With that fatal lack of policy which was destined to frustrate a more than mortal triumph, he began to lavish the possessions of the Neapolitan aristocracy upon his favourites and countrymen. A wiser King would have conciliated the native barons and wedded their interest to his own, so that when he came to leave the country he should leave behind him a whole nobility of viceroys. But Charles only thought of rewarding his favourites of the hour. The daughter of the Prince of Altamura, the last of her house, the heiress of immense possessions, was reserved for Ligny.

Madonna Lionora was a young princess of more than common interest, the last Altamura in the direct line, the last of that race which claimed to be descended from the Three Kings of the East. It was easy to make the Count of Ligny virtually the Prince of Altamura by marrying him to this young girl. This was done, but Ligny was barely seven days the bridegroom of his lovely Mage when the King, alarmed at the preparations of the League, determined to march northwards. Ligny of course went with him, leaving his bride behind him in a convent. And on the long road northwards the desire to be near his young wife and his new possessions gave a keener zest to the scheme of a Central Italian French dependency of which Ligny himself should be made the governor. When the army reached Siena, though the city was a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, and therefore implicated in the Anti-Gallic league, none the less the Republic declared for France, demanding Ligny for her governor. The young man left a garrison there under Gaucher de Tinteville, and went with the King, hoping to pursue a like policy in Pisa.

The King had not yet decided whether he would halt in Pisa or in Florence. On the eve of Corpus Christi, Wednesday, the 17th of June, the French reached Poggibonsi where the roads divide. Here they halted for a day to keep the festival, and here the King was met by no less a personage than Savonarola, accompanied by fifty notables of Florence. This at the moment must have appeared terribly against the plans of Ligny, for if there was a man in Italy whom the French regarded with a curious, half-superstitious respect, it was this authoritative friar, with the harsh sweetness in his voice, the saturnine head, the asper and loving expression in his painful smile, who, as one authorized of heaven, had foretold their advent before they were persuaded to the step.

Poggibonsi, as I have said, is the last considerable town before the ways divide that lead to Pisa and to Florence. At such a cross-road was also the mind of Charles. Which turning should he take? “Keep your vows, restore the cities, respect Florence, lest ye incur the awful judgment of God, whose name, unless ye keep your oath, ye took in vain upon the altar of St. John in Florence!” So thundered Savonarola; and there were many things in favour of this plan; firstly, the strong personal influence of the prophetic Ferrarese; secondly, the fact that Charles was sore in need of ready money, and hoped to borrow it in Florence; thirdly, at Poggibonsi he had heard that war was begun, that Orleans was in Novara, and, therefore, he himself and his handful of troops in desperate need of the Florentine army. A little persuasion and no doubt the King would have gone to Florence; but Savonarola scorned to persuade, he menaced. The city, he said, was armed to the teeth; she would receive the King rather as a prodigal than a conqueror. If he wished to conciliate her, let him keep his word; then, but only then, she would shower her benefits upon the elect of God.

This accent was not so moving to the King as the entreaties of Burgundio Lolo. Pisa, as Charles knew very well, would receive him as a hero and a deliverer—but Pisa had neither men nor money.

In these uncertainties two days went by; the King alternately assuring Savonarola that he would keep his word to Florence, and protesting that he had not the heart to break that earlier promise given to the Pisans. Out of this hobble there was no way except by broken vows and treachery. It was a delicate question for a chivalrous prince, nourished, like Charles, on Amadis and Arthur: for to keep faith with the Pisans would be to ruin his ally; and to keep faith with Florence to hand over to slavery a people who had solemnly placed themselves under his protection. Nor were the political advantages quite easy to decide. Florence, of course, offered men and money sorely needed; but Pisa offered an asylum in case of reverses further north, or in case the Florentines should prove as faithless as the rest of the Italians. For Pisa was not merely a friendly city, but a city actually in the hands of France. This was certainly an argument—“nevertheless,” says Guicciardini, “I doubt if anything so logical could influence the King. Much more potent with such as he were the tears, and entreaties of the Pisans.” Those tears, invisible and ample as the waters of life, Burgundio Lolo had quoted to the King at Rome; and after all these months the memory of the Pisan advocate pleaded successfully against the actual influence of Savonarola.

At last a straw decided the unsteady balance. At a village called Campana, or Cassino, near to Florence, the King heard of a cruel raid committed by the Florentines upon the Pisan town of Pontevalle. There had been French soldiers in the fort; but when the French archers came up to the rescue they found the little place untenanted save by dying men, wheeling birds of prey, and corpses. The King was furious against the Florentines; yet it was with the lightness of heart that follows the taking of a difficult decision that he set his back against the town, “et gaiement s’en alla dedans Pise.”

V.

History is not decided by oratory. The eloquence of Lolo, the menaces of the Friar, had conspired with a momentary distress and anger, to lodge the French in Pisa. It still remained to see what Charles would do. The first move promised little; in order to guard against a second surrender to the impulse of the moment Charles sent a messenger to Florence, and promised to speak the final word, only when he should have arrived in Lucca.

But if history is in fact decided by Necessity—that grim and resolute Anankê who cuts the most different characters to her pattern, making of a Louis XI., and a Henry V., so individual as princes, no more, when once the coronation day is over, than able continuers of the policy she imposes; if Necessity and the slow evolution of ideas control the individual, and leave him scarce more independent than the nail, which moves indeed, but only moves to follow the control of the attracting magnet; yet it is not merely by the unbroken sequence of Law that the world progresses. Comets and cataclysms, plagues and earthquakes, and in the moral world, sudden, fierce contagions of enthusiasm or ecstasy interrupt and modify their course.