We have followed the expansion of Turkey up to the eve of its greatest splendour and widest extent. Subsequent pages will tell how the Ottomans advanced westwards by sea, and how the Austro-Spanish monarchy set limits to their expansion both in the north and in the south.
CHAPTER IV. ITALY AND HER INVADERS, by Stanley Leathes
IN the latter half of the fifteenth century Italy presented the appearance of comparative calm. Frederick III, in spite of the motto attributed to him, “Alles Erdreich ist Oesterreich untertan,” took no step to assert imperial claims in Italy. Conciliar storms had blown over. The condottieri had been tamed; secure for the most part in their little tyrannies they drew the pay of some neighbouring State, and spent it on luxury, literature, and art. If war was on foot, its bitterness was mitigated, at any rate to the soldier, by every courteous device. The clash of party strife was seldom heard, for most cities had bought internal peace at the price of liberty.
Italy possessed her own State system, her own great powers, intent on preserving a balance of forces, her own alliances, triple or dual. At first the north Italian powers had their own league; later the alliance of Milan, Florence, and Naples, promoted and sustained by Lorenzo de’ Medici, kept in check the vigilant ambition of Venice, still almost at the height of her power and pride. The smaller powers, Mantua, Ferrara, and the tyrants of the Papal States, in constant dread of their covetous neighbours, leant for support on one or other of the great powers, and did what in them lay to preserve the balance. After the brilliant raid of John, the Angevin duke of Calabria, Ferrante, the bastard of Aragon, ruled Naples in comparative peace. The revolt of his barons was stamped out, without regard for faith or mercy, as befitted a man of that age. The seizure of Otranto by the Turks in 1480 was a warning of external danger that may have assisted to preserve the peace, although all projects of united and offensive resistance to the advancing Mohammadans came to nothing. The equilibrium was unstable, but on the whole it was preserved.
The death of Lorenzo del Medici in 1492, soon followed by that of Innocent VIII, marks a turning-point in the history of Italy. It is easy to attach too much importance to such casual incidents, but they may at least delay or hasten the inevitable course of events. And in Lorenzo was removed the conscious guardian of the peace of Italy, while the successor of Innocent, Rodrigo Borgia, was neither fitted nor inclined to play a pacific part. This then is the moment to survey the scene of our drama, to name our chief dramatis personae, and to unfold our plot.
Three of our protagonists, Venice, Florence, the Holy See, have their own place for separate treatment in this volume. Nor is this the occasion to dwell on the petty politics of the many tyrants of the Romagna and central Italy. Naples, however, and Milan require some introduction.
The kingdom of Naples, though still styling itself kingdom of Sicily, had been separated from its island namesake since the Sicilian Vespers, when the Angevin successors of the Suabian kings were driven from the Trinacrian island. In 1435 this Angevin dynasty died out, and its inheritance fell to Alfonso of Aragon, the King of insular Sicily. On his death in 1458 the island kingdom had remained attached to Aragon, while Naples had been devised to his bastard Ferdinand or Ferrante. The political characteristics of the Neapolitan kingdom mark it off sharply from the rest of Italy. Here had survived, though in a debased form, the feudal economy which had long since disappeared further north. Here no elusive ideal of municipal liberty mocked, amid the realities of party strife, the citizens of independent cities. Great feudatories ground down their vassals with all the ingenuity that a new commercial and industrial wisdom inspired. The King, himself a feudatory and tributary of the Holy See, was master of Naples and its castles, and of certain royal dues and domains, but for the rest hung on the goodwill of a score of almost independent princes. Ferrante, greedy, capable, and ruthless, had done much to change all that. He had devised a system of commercial monopolies exercised for the royal benefit, which had considerably increased his revenues. The barons’ war had restored to him by confiscation a part of the toll that his commercial partners had levied on his profits, and had crushed the greatest family of the kingdom, the princely house of San Severino. His relations to the papacy had been unfriendly, even warlike, but on the whole he had succeeded in withholding his tribute without losing his fief. But dangers now threatened him at home and abroad. At home, though feared, he was hated. His son Alfonso, the partner of his many cruel and treacherous acts, was equally detested. Zealous enemies were working against him, especially at the Court of France. The de facto ruler of Milan had wronged him in the person of his grand-daughter. The illegitimate son of an usurper, he held his crown by no hereditary right, and rumours came from beyond the Alps that a stronger claimant was astir.
The State of Milan, created by the vigour of the house of Visconti, and recognised as a duchy in 1395 by the Emperor Wenceslas, had fallen in 1450 to the house of Sforza, whose founder, the great con-dottiere, had risen from the plough. Francesco, the first Sforza duke, was succeeded in 1466 by his son Galeazzo Maria, who was assassinated in the Church of San Stefano in 1476, leaving a young son, Gian Galeazzo, then about eight years old. The government was carried on by his mother, Bona of Savoy, in the name of the infant and in her own. But dissensions soon arose between the regent and her brothers-in-law. In the first encounter Bona and her chief counsellor, Cicco Simonetta, were victorious, and the brothers of Galeazzo Maria were obliged to leave the city. But before long Ludovico, the ablest of the sons of Francesco Sforza, took advantage of the rivalry between Tassino, the favourite of the duchess, and Simonetta, to procure his own readmission. The fall and execution of Simonetta followed, and from 1479 the real government of Milan lay in the hands of Ludovico, whose power was further secured in 1480, when he seized the person of the young duke and the duchess was obliged to leave Milan. Henceforward the rule of Ludovico was not seriously challenged. The young duke was a prisoner, and Ludovico managed everything in his name. Nor was the condition of the unfortunate young man improved even after his marriage to Isabella, the grand-daughter of the King of Naples.
Thus at the time when our story begins, the whole force and policy of Milan was moved at the will of one man. Ludovico, called the Duke of Bari from the Neapolitan fief he owned, and known from his complexion as the Moor, made a great impression on the men of his time. He was a master of every political art as then understood by Italian statesmen. By his wisdom he had risen, and by it he aspired to dominate Italy. Mistakes he made, no doubt, as for instance in marrying his nephew to the Neapolitan princess. But his versatile and unscrupulous intelligence, well served by his agents with information from every Court, was never at a loss for an expedient to meet a difficulty. His weakness was partly the weakness of his school of statesmanship, in which good faith and consistency were not valued as political qualities. A more serious defect was the lack of courage and nerve which he showed under the stress of danger. His munificence towards artists and men of letters, his luxurious and noble ostentation, while they tended no doubt to diminish his unpopularity, proved a heavy burden on his finances, and increased the weight of his exactions.
The State over which he ruled was one of the richest of Italy. His annual revenue was estimated at 700,000 ducats, about the same sum as Ferrante raised from Naples. The Dukes of Milan, though frequently embarrassed, again and again surprise us by the enormous sums of which they disposed. Thus Ludovico was able to give to Maximilian with his niece, Bianca Maria, no less a sum as dowry than 400,000 ducats. Only Venice had more ample resources; and the fixed charges on the Venetian treasury were heavier than Milan had to bear. The Duke of Milan controlled Genoa and her navy, which, although no longer a match for that of Venice, could be employed with great effect on the western seaboard of Italy. Through the Genoese his influence extended over the chief part of Corsica, whence on occasion good foot-soldiers could be drawn. But the military strength