Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

territory of Parma, his 10,000 troops found their passage blocked by

an allied army of 40,000 men led by Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, Marquis

of Mantua. There, on July 5, 1495, came the first real test of

French vs. Italian arms and tactics. Gonzaga, though he himself fought

bravely, mismanaged his forces, so that only half of them took part;

the Italians were not mentally prepared to fight warriors who gave

no quarter, and many of them fled; the Chevalier de Bayard, a lad of

twenty, offered his men an inspiring example of reckless courage,

and even the King fought valiantly. The battle was indecisive; both

sides claimed victory; the French lost their baggage train, but

remained masters of the field; and during the night they marched

unimpeded to Asti, where Louis, third Duke of Orleans, awaited them

with reinforcements. In October Charles, with damaged repute but a

whole skin, was back in France.

The territorial results of the invasion were slight. Gonzalo, the

"Great Captain," drove the French out of Naples and Calabria, and

restored the Aragonese dynasty in the person of Federigo III (1496).

The indirect results of the invasion were endless. It proved the

superiority of a national army to mercenary troops. The Swiss

mercenaries were a temporary exception; armed with pikes eighteen feet

long, and formed in solid battalions that presented a discouraging

"hedgehog" to advancing cavalry, they were destined to many victories;

but soon, at Marignano (1515), the invincibility of this revived

Macedonian phalanx would be ended by improved artillery. It was

probably in this war that cannon were first placed on carriages that

allowed them to be readily manipulated for direction and range; `05212

these carriages were drawn by horses, not (as hitherto in Italy) by

oxen; and the French brought into action, says Guicciardini, such a

number of "field pieces and battering cannon as Italy had never seen

before." `05213 The French knights, descendants of Froissart's heroes,

fought magnificently at Fornovo; but the knights too would soon

yield to cannon. In the Middle Ages the arts of defense had outrun the

means of attack, and had discouraged war; now attack was gaining on

defense, and war became bloodier. The wars of Italy had heretofore

hardly engaged the people, and had afflicted their fields rather

than their lives; now they were to see all Italy ravaged and

incarnadined. The Swiss learned in this year of war how fertile were

the plains of Lombardy; they would hereafter invade them repeatedly.

The French learned that Italy was divided into fragments that

awaited a conqueror. Charles VIII lost himself in armours, and

almost ceased to think of Naples, but his cousin and heir was of

sterner stuff. Louis XII would try again.

II. THE ATTACK RENEWED: 1496-1505

-

Maximilian, "King of the Romans"- i.e., of the Germans- provided

an interlude. He fretted at the thought that his great enemy,

France, should be strengthened, and outflank him, by capturing

Italy; he had heard how rich and fair and weak that land was, not

yet a country but only a peninsula. He too had claims on Italy;

technically the cities of Lombardy were still imperial fiefs, and

he, head of the Holy Roman Empire, might legally give them to whomever

he wished; indeed, had not Lodovico bribed him, with florins and

another Bianca, to confer upon him the duchy of Milan? Moreover,

many Italians invited him: both Lodovico and Venice were appealing

to him (1496) to enter Italy and help them resist a threatened

repetition of the French assault. Maximilian came, with a handful of

troops; Venetian subtlety persuaded him to attack Livorno, the final

outlet of Florence on the Mediterranean, and so weaken a Florence

still allied with France and always competing with Venice.

Maximilian's campaign failed through inadequate co-ordination and

support, and he returned to Germany only slightly a wiser man

(December, 1496).

In 1498 the Duke of Orleans became Louis XII. As the grandson of

Valentina Visconti he had not forgotten the claims of his family to

Milan; and as a cousin of Charles VIII he inherited the claims of

the Anjous to Naples. On the day of his coronation he assumed, among

others, the titles of Duke of Milan, King of Naples and Sicily, and

Emperor of Jerusalem. To clear his path he renewed a treaty of peace

with England, and concluded another with Spain. By promising her

Cremona and the lands east of the Adda, he lured Venice into signing

an alliance with him "for the purpose of making war in common upon the

Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, and against everyone save the Lord

Pope of Rome, for the purpose of restoring to the Most Christian

King... the duchy of Milan as his rightful and olden

patrimony." `05214 A month later (March, 1499) he made an agreement

with the Swiss cantons to supply him with soldiers in return for an

annual subsidy of 20,000 florins. In May he brought Alexander VI

into the alliance by giving to Caesar Borgia a French bride of royal

blood, the duchy of Valentinois, and a pledge of aid in reconquering

the Papal States for the papacy. Lodovico felt helpless against such a

coalition; he fled to Austria; in three weeks his duchy disappeared

into the realms of Venice and France; on October 6, 1499, Louis

entered Milan in triumph, welcomed by nearly all Italy except Naples.

Indeed, all Italy but Venice and Naples was now under French

domination or influence. Mantua, Ferrara, and Bologna hastened to

submit. Florence clung to her alliance with France as her only

protection against Caesar Borgia. Ferdinand of Spain, though so

closely kin to the Aragonese dynasty in Naples, entered into a

secret compact at Granada (November 11, 1500) with the representatives

of Louis, for the joint conquest of all Italy south of the Papal

States. Alexander VI, needing French aid in reconquering these States,

co-operated by issuing a bull that deposed Federigo III of Naples

and confirmed the partition of the Kingdom between France and Spain.

In July, 1501, a French army under the Scot Stuart d'Aubigny, Caesar

Borgia, and Lodovico's traitorous favorite Francesco di San Severino

marched through Italy to Capua, took and plundered it, and advanced

upon Naples. Federigo, abandoned by all, yielded the city to the

French in return for a comfortable refuge and annuity in France.

Meanwhile el gran capitan, Gonzalo de Cordoba, won Calabria and

Apulia for Ferdinand and Isabella; and Federigo's son Ferrante, who

surrendered Taranto after being promised his liberty by Gonzalo, was

sent as a prisoner to Spain on Ferdinand's demand. When the Spanish

army came into contact with the French on the borders between Apulia

and the Abruzzi, disputes arose over the boundary line between the two

thefts; and to Alexander's relief Spain and France went to war over

the exact division of the spoils (July, 1502). "If the Lord had not

put discord between France and Spain," said the Pope to the Venetian

ambassador, "where should we be?" `05215

For a time the fortunes of the new war favored the French.

D'Aubigny's forces overran almost all southern Italy, and Gonzalo shut

up his troops in the fortified town of Barletta. There a medieval

incident brightened a dismal war (February 13, 1503). Angered by the

comment of a French officer that the Italians were an effeminate and

dastardly people, the commander of an Italian regiment in the

Spanish army challenged thirteen Frenchmen to fight thirteen Italians.

It was agreed; the war was interrupted; and the hostile armies stood

as spectators while the twenty-six combatants fought until all

thirteen Frenchmen had been disabled by wounds and taken prisoner.

Gonzalo, with the Spanish chivalry that often rivaled Spanish cruelty,

paid from his own pocket the ransoms of the prisoners, and sent them

back to their army. `05216

The incident restored the morale of the Great Captain's troops; they

issued from Barletta, defeated and dispersed the besiegers, and

defeated the French again at Cerignola. On May 16, 1503, Gonzalo

entered Naples unresisted, and was acclaimed by the populace, which

can always be relied upon to applaud the victor. Louis XII sent

another army against Gonzalo; he met it on the banks of the

Garigliano, and routed it (December 29, 1503); in that rout Piero

de' Medici, fleeing with the French, was drowned. Gonzalo now laid

siege to Gaeta, the last stronghold of the French in southern Italy.

He offered them generous terms, which they soon accepted (January 1,

1504); and the fidelity with which he kept to these terms after the

French had been disarmed led them- struck by so great a violation of

precedents- to call him le gentil capitaine. `05217 By the treaty of

Blois (1505) Louis saved a bit of face by assigning his Neapolitan

rights to his relative Germaine de Foix, who was, however, to marry

the widowed Ferdinand and bring Naples to him as her dowry. The crowns

of Naples and Sicily were added to those already on Ferdinand's

insatiable head; and thereafter, till 1707, the Kingdom of Naples

remained an appanage of Spain.

III. THE LEAGUE OF CAMBRAI: 1508-16

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Italy was now half foreign: southern Italy was Spain's; northwestern

Italy from Genoa through Milan to the outskirts of Cremona was in

the power of France; the minor principalities accepted French

influence; only Venice and the papacy were comparatively

independent, and they were intermittently at war for the cities of the

Romagna. Venice longed for additional mainland markets and resources

to replace those lost to the Turks or threatened by Atlantic routes to

India; she took advantage of Alexander's death, and Caesar Borgia's

illness, to seize Faenza, Ravenna, and Rimini; Julius II proposed to

recapture them. In 1504 he persuaded Louis and Maximilian to stop

their unchristian quarreling and join him in attacking Venice and

dividing among them the Venetian possessions on the mainland. `05218

Maximilian's spirit was willing, but his treasury was weak, and

nothing came of the plot. Julius kept on trying.

On December 10, 1508, a grand conspiracy was hatched against

Venice at Cambrai. The Emperor Maximilian joined it because Venice had

taken from imperial control Goriza, Trieste, Pordenone, and Fiume,

because Venice ignored his imperial rights in Verona and Padua, and

because Venice had refused him and his little army free passage toward

Rome for the papal coronation upon which he had set his heart. Louis

XII joined the League because disputes had arisen between France and

Venice as to the division of northern Italy. Ferdinand of Spain joined

it because Venice insisted on retaining Brindisi, Otranto, and other

Apulian ports which for centuries had been part of the Kingdom of

Naples, but had been seized by Venice during Naples' troubles in 1495.

Julius joined the League (1509) because Venice not only refused to

evacuate the Romagna, but made no secret of her ambition to acquire

Ferrara- an acknowledged papal fief. The European powers now planned

to absorb all the mainland holdings of Venice: Spain would recover her

cities on the Adriatic; the Pope would regain the Romagna;

Maximilian would get Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, Friuli, and Verona;

Louis would receive Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, Cremona, and the valley

of the Adda River. Had the plan succeeded, Italy would have ceased

to exist; France and Germany would have reached down to the Po,

Spain almost up to the Tiber; the Papal States would have been

hemmed in helplessly; and the Venetian bulwark against the Turks would

have been destroyed. In this crisis no Italian state offered Venice

aid; she had provoked almost all of them by her rapacity; indeed,

Ferrara, reasonably suspicious of her, joined the League. The noble

Gonzalo, rudely retired by Ferdinand, offered his services as

general to Venice; the Senate dared not accept, for its sole hope of

survival lay in detaching one ally after another from the League.

Venice deserved sympathy now only because she stood alone against

overwhelming power, and because her loyal rich and her conscripted

poor alike fought with incredible pertinacity to a Pyrrhic victory.

The Senate offered to restore Faenza and Rimini to the papacy, but the

angry Julius responded with a blast of excommunication, and sent his

troops to recapture the Romagna cities while the French advance

compelled Venice to concentrate her forces in Lombardy. At Agnadello

the French defeated the Venetians in one of the bloodiest battles of

the Renaissance (May 14, 1509); six thousand men died there on that

day. The desperate Signory recalled its remaining troops to Venice,

allowed the French to occupy all Lombardy, evacuated Apulia and the

Romagna, confessed to Verona, Vicenza, and Padua that she could no

longer defend them, and gave them full freedom to surrender to the

Emperor or resist him as they chose. Maximilian came down with the

largest army- some 36,000 men- yet seen in those parts, and laid siege

to Padua. The surrounding peasantry made all the trouble they could

for his men; the Paduans fought with a bravery that attested the

good government they had enjoyed under Venice. Maximilian, impatient

and always pinched for funds, left in disgust for the Tirol; Julius

suddenly ordered his troops to withdraw from the siege; Padua and

Vicenza voluntarily returned to Venetian control. Louis XII, having

obtained his share of the spoils, disbanded his army.

Julius had by this time realized that the full victory of the League

would be a defeat for the papacy, since it would leave the popes at

the mercy of northern powers among whom the Reformation was already

beginning to find voice. When Venice again offered him all that he

could ask, he, "vowing that he would ne'er consent, consented" (1510).

Having reclaimed what he considered to be the just property of the

Church, he was free to turn the fury of his spirit against the

French who, controlling both Lombardy and Tuscany, were now unpleasant

neighbors of the Papal States. At Mirandola he vowed never to shave

till he had driven the French from Italy; so grew the majestic beard

of Raphael's portrait. Now the Pope gave to Italy, too late, a

stirring motto, Fuori i barbari! - "Out with the barbarians!" In

October, 1511, he formed a "League of Holy Union" with Venice and

Spain; soon he won to it Switzerland and England. By the end of

January, 1512, Venice had recaptured Brescia and Bergamo with the

joyful co-operation of the inhabitants. France kept most of her troops

at home to meet possible invasion from England and Spain.

One French force remained in Italy, under the command of a dashing

and courtly youth of twenty-two years. Resenting inaction, Gaston de

Foix led this army first to the relief of besieged Bologna, then to

defeat the Venetians at Isola della Scala, then to retake Brescia,

finally to win a brilliant but costly victory at Ravenna (April 11,

1512). Nearly 20,000 corpses fertilized that battlefield; and Gaston

himself, fighting in the front, received mortal wounds.

Julius repaired with negotiation what had been lost by arms. He

persuaded Maximilian to sign a truce with Venice, to join the Union

against France, and to recall the 4000 German troops that had been

part of the French army. On his urging, the Swiss marched down into

Lombardy with 20,000 men. The French forces, decimated by victory

and the loss of their German contingent, fell back before a converging

mass of Swiss, Venetian, and Spanish soldiery, and retreated to the

Alps, leaving ineffectual garrisons in Brescia, Cremona, Milan, and

Genoa. Out of apparently complete disaster the "Holy Union" had in two

months after the battle of Ravenna, through papal diplomacy, driven

the French from Italian soil; and Julius was hailed as the liberator

of Italy.

At the Congress of Mantua (August, 1512) the victors divided the

spoils. On the insistence of Julius, Milan was given to Massimiliano

Sforza, Lodovico's son; Switzerland received Lugano and the

territory at the head of Lago Maggiore; Florence was forced to restore

the Medici; the Pope regained all the Papal States won by the Borgias,

and besides acquired Parma, Piacenza, Modena, and Reggio; only Ferrara

still eluded the pontifical grasp. But Julius left many problems to

his successor. He had not really driven out the foreigners: the

Swiss held Milan as a guard for Sforza, the Emperor claimed Vicenza

and Verona as his reward, and Ferdinand the Catholic, wiliest

bargainer of them all, had consolidated the power of Spain in southern

Italy. Only French power seemed finished in Italy. Louis XII sent

another army to take Milan, but it was defeated by the Swiss at Novara

with the loss of eight thousand Frenchmen (June 6, 1513). When Louis

died (1515), nothing remained of his once extensive Italian empire

except a precarious foothold at Genoa.

But Francis I proposed to recapture it all. Moreover (Brantome

assures us), he had heard that Signora Clerice of Milan was the most

beautiful woman in Italy, and he desired her consumingly. `05219 In

August, 1515, he led over a new Alpine pass 40,000 men- the largest

army yet seen in these campaigns. The Swiss came out to meet it; at

Marignano, a few miles from Milan, a furious battle raged for two days

(September 13-14, 1515); Francis himself fought like a Roland, and was

knighted on the spot by the Chevalier de Bayard; the Swiss left 13,000

dead on the field; they and Sforza abandoned Milan, and the city

became again a French prize.

The councilors of Leo X, vacillating, asked Machiavelli's advice. He

warned against neutrality between King and Emperor, on the ground that

the papacy would be as helpless before the victor as if it had taken

part; and he recommended an entente with France as the lesser of two

evils. `052110 Leo so ordered; and on December 11, 1515, Francis and

the Pope met at Bologna to arrange terms of concord. The Swiss

signed a similar peace with France; the Spaniards retired to Naples;

the Emperor, foiled again, surrendered Verona to Venice. So ended

(1516) the wars of the League of Cambrai, in which the partners had

changed as in a dance, and the last condition of affairs was

essentially as the first, and nothing had been decided except that

Italy was to be the battlefield on which the great powers would

fight duel after duel for the mastery of Europe. The papacy yielded

Parma and Piacenza to France; Venice rewon her possessions in northern

Italy, but was financially exhausted. Italy was devastated; but art

and literature continued to flourish, whether by the stimulus of

tragic events, or by the impetus of a prosperous past. The worst was

yet to come.

IV. LEO AND EUROPE: 1513-21

-

The conference at Bologna pitted prestige and diplomacy against

audacity and power. The handsome young King, magnificent in

gold-braided cloak and zibeline furs, came with victory in his

plumes and armies at his back, eager to swallow all Italy, merely

keeping the Pope as a policeman; against which Leo had nothing but the

glamour of his office and the subtlety of a Medici. If Leo

thereafter played King against Emperor, and veered from side to side

elusively, and simultaneously signed treaties with each against the

other, we must not be too righteous about it; he had no other

weapons to wield, and he had the heritage of the Church to protect.

His opponents also used those weapons, in addition to brandishing

regiments and artillery.

The secret agreements made at this meeting have remained secret to

this day. Apparently Francis tried to bring Leo into an alliance

with him against Spain; Leo asked for time to think it over-

diplomacy's way of saying no; it was contrary to the age-long policy

of the Church to let the Papal States be hemmed in by one power on

both north and south. `052111 The one definite result of the Concordat

of 1516 was the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. This

Sanction (1438) had asserted the superior authority of a general

council over that of the popes, and had given the French king the

right to appoint to all major ecclesiastical offices in France.

Francis consented to annul the Sanction, provided the royal power of

nomination remained; Leo agreed. It might seem a defeat for the

Pope; but in so agreeing Leo was only accepting a custom centuries old

in France; and without so planning it he was marrying Church and state

in France in a way that left the French monarchy no fiscal reasons for

supporting the Reformation. Meanwhile he ended the long conflict

between France and the papacy over the relative power of councils

and popes.

The conference concluded by the French leaders begging forgiveness

of Leo for having warred against his predecessor. "Holy Father,"

said Francis, "you must not be surprised that we were such enemies

to Julius II, since he was always the greatest enemy to us; insomuch

that in our times we have not met with a more formidable adversary.

For he was in fact a most excellent commander, and would have made a

much better general than a pope." `052112 Leo gave all these doughty

penitents absolution and benediction, and they ended by almost kissing

his feet away. `052113

Francis returned to France under a halo of glory, and for a time

contented himself with Venus and mercury. When Ferdinand II died

(1516) the French King planned again the conquest of Naples, perhaps

as a glorious means of checking the excess population of France.

Nevertheless he signed a treaty of peace with Ferdinand's grandson

Charles I, the new King of Aragon, Castile, Naples, and Sicily. But

when Maximilian died (1519), and his grandson Charles was put

forward to succeed him as head of the Holy Roman Empire, Francis

thought himself fitter to be Emperor than the nineteen-year-old King

of Spain, and actively sought election. Leo was again in a dangerous

position. He would have preferred to support Francis, for he foresaw

that the union of Naples, Spain, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands

under one head would give that ruler such preponderance of

territory, wealth, and men as would destroy the balance of power

that had hitherto protected the Papal States. And yet the election

of Charles over papal opposition would alienate the new emperor

precisely when his aid was vitally needed to suppress the Protestant

revolt. Leo hesitated too long to make his influence felt; Charles I

was chosen emperor, and became Charles V. Still playing balance of

power, the Pope offered Francis an alliance; when the King in turn

hesitated, Leo abruptly signed an agreement with Charles (May 8,

1521). The young Emperor offered him almost everything: the return

of Parma and Piacenza, aid against Ferrara and Luther, the

reconquest of Milan for the Sforza family, and the protection of the

Papal States and Florence from any attack.

In September, 1521, the duel was renewed. "My cousin Francis and I,"

said the Emperor, "are in perfect accord; he wants Milan, and so do

I." `052114 The French forces in Italy were led by Odet de Foix,

Vicomte de Lautrec; Francis had appointed him at the solicitation of

Lautrec's sister, who was for the moment the King's mistress. Louise

of Savoy, the King's mother, resented the appointment, and secretly

diverted to other uses the money provided for Lautrec's army by

Francis; `052115 and the Swiss in that army deserted for lack of

pay. As a strong papal-imperial force- ably commanded by Prospero

Colonna, the Marquis of Pescara, and the historian Guicciardini-

approached Milan, the Ghibelline supporters of the Empire there raised

a successful revolt of the overtaxed populace. Lautrec withdrew from

the city into Venetian territory; the troops of Charles and Leo took

Milan almost bloodlessly; Francesco Maria Sforza, another son of

Lodovico, became Duke of Milan as an imperial vassal; and Leo could

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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