Fragmentary Italy

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

FROM A.D. 1400 TO A.D. 1600

THE morning of the fifteenth century dawned upon Italy in clouds and gloom. The duke of Milan was master of nearly all of Lombardy, and was menacing Florence with apparently resistless power. N:,l_.es was utterly exhausted with her terrific civil wars. Venice, secure within her lagoons, was overawed by the most merciless oligarchy. The papal power had fallen into utter contempt. The annals of those days are filled mainly with the record of wars, treachery, murders, rapine, and crimes of every hue. Venice, by the foulest aggression, had extended her domain to the Adige, and the Lion of St. Mark, her symbolic banner, floated from the towers of Treviso, Feltro, Belluno, Verona, Vicenza, and Padua.

Urban VI., who had caused the schism in the church, died in the year 1389, and Boniface IX. was chosen as his successor. He died in 1404, and the cardinals, surrounded by a mob, in the wildest scene of tumult and uproar, raised Irmo-sent VII. to the papal throne. Ladislaus, the stern king of Naples, drove the pope from the city, in an attempt to compel the states of the church to acknowledge him as their liege lord. He failed, and in his rage plundered and fired the city. Innocent soon died, and Gregory XII. was conducted to the papal chair, in Rome. Europe was weary, ami the church ashamed of the schism. But the states were so equally divided between Rome and Avignon, that it was difficult to effect a compromise.

Upon the death of Clement VII. the cardinals, at Avignon, chose Benedict XIII. The university of France, disgusted with this state of things, refused to recognize either as legitimate pope ; and the discontent became so general that the cardinals, to rescue the church from ruin, convoked a general council at Pisa, and summoned both popes to appear before them. This was new experience for God's vicegerents, and they both indignantly refused. Whereupon the council of Pisa, consisting of the cardinals, and a numerous body of prelates from all parts of the Christian world, aided by ambassadors from most of the crowned heads of Europe, after long and solemn deliberation, performed the very extraordinary act, which then amazed mankind, of deposing both Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII. They then elected the cardinal of Milan to the papal dignity with the title of Alexander V.

There were now three popes instead ,of two. Benedict XIII., with three cardinals adhering to him, had convoked a council of his partisan clergy at Perpignan, a gloomy fortress on the frontiers of Spain. Gregory XII., with four cardinals, and the prelates who rallied around him, met at Ravenna, in Italy. And now from these three papal thrones bulls of excommunication were hurled, like the fabled thunderbolts of Jove. The several powers of Europe arranged themselves on different sides, grasped their arms, and war continued its hideous revels. Alexander V., through many bloody battles, established himself in Rome, the ancient seat of papacy. In less than a year he died; and a cardinal, of disgraceful character succeeded, by the title of John XXIII.

Ladislaus, of Naples, ravaged Italy like a famished tiger. With all the belligerents the papal quarrel seemed to be merely the occasion they embraced to extend their dominions by gushing their neighbors. Ladislaus reduced all of the states of the church to his sway; extended his frontiers to Tuscany, and was advancing with such strides that he threatened to bring all Italy beneath his scepter. But death, the kindest ally of oppressed mankind, struck the tyrant down. In loath-some disease, torn with convulsions, and shrieking in agony, he sank into the grave—and Italy drew a long breath of relief.

The shameful struggles of the popes still agitated all Europe, desolating wide realms with conflagration and carnage. The emperor Sigismund, of Germany, a debauched voluptuary, but a man of marvelous energy of character, undertook to terminate the strife. In several personal inter-views with John XXIII., he overawed the holy father, and compelled him to invite a council of the clergy of Christendom in the imperial city of Constance, on the shore of the lake of the same name. The pope and the emperor in person attended this famous council; and there was also the gathering of ambassadors from nearly all the princes and states of Europe. This memorable council was composed of twenty cardinals, one hundred and seventeen patriarchs and bishops, six hundred ecclesiastics of next higher rank, and four thou-sand priests. There were also twenty-six princes present and one hundred and forty counts.

John XXIII., finding that the council was on the eve of deposing all three of the popes, fled from Constance in the disguise of a groom, and threw himself upon the protection of Frederic, duke of Austria. But a division of the imperial army pursued the fugitive, and brought him back a prisoner to Constance. Gregory XII., alarmed by this example, threw down both tiara and keys, and was thankful to retain the office of cardinal. Benedict XIII., sustained by the powerful arm of Spain, was more obstinate. But he soon found him-self constrained to yield to the almost unanimous voice of Europe. The three rival popes were laid aside by the council, and a new pope was chosen, Otho Colonna, who assumed the title of Martin V, The martyrdom of Jerome of Prague, and of John Huss, which deeds of atrocity were perpetrated by this council, hardly belong to the history of Italy.

We find individuals who say that old times were better than the present. Contemplate " good old times" in Milan in the early part of the fifteenth century, under Giovanni, duke of Milan. From boyhood he had been nursed in atrocities, taking a fiend-like pleasure in witnessing every conceivable form of agony. His chief enjoyment was to see his blood. hounds tear down the victims he exposed to their rage. His huntsman fed the hounds on human flesh, to make them efficient in tearing to pieces their prey. The prisons of Milan were emptied, that the duke might enjoy this sport. On one occasion, when several gentlemen of Milan had been torn to pieces by his hounds, the innocent, helpless son of one of these gentlemen was thrown into the arena. The dogs, sated with blood, refused to fasten upon the poor child, when the duke himself drew his sword and ripped open the bowels of his victim, kneeling before him and crying for mercy. These facts are authenticated beyond all possible doubt. The friends of this child assassinated the duke. What verdict shall his. tory pronounce upon the crime ? It is well for us all that infinite wisdom will sit upon the throne of final judgment.

Filippo, the successor of this wretch on the ducal throne, was also his successor in infamy and brutality. He had married Beatrice Tenda, a lady of large fortune, that through the influence of her wealth he might be able to grasp the scepter. Having obtained the dowry and the scepter, he now wished to get rid of his spouse. He had already, with the basest treachery, murdered many whom he deemed in the way of his ambition. Selecting a young man of his court, he accused him of adulterous commerce with his duchess—stretched the un-happy, innocent youth upon the rack, and by crushing all his bones, and pouring an intolerable tide of agony along all his quivering nerves, compelled his victim to avow whatever his tormentors desired. The mangled, palpitating form was then beheaded.

The wife of the duke was then placed upon the wheel, to compel her to confess a crime of which she had not beer guilty. But Beatrice, with superhuman fortitude, endured the torture. Bone after bone was dislocated, and still Bea-trice exclaimed, " I am not guilty." Nerve after nerve quivered in its frightful accumulations of agony, and still Beatrice shrieked, and when she could no longer shriek, groaned, "I am innocent." And as the ax fell to terminate her sufferings, with her last sigh she persisted that she was guiltless.

God did not, in this world, summon the wretch Filippo to account for his crimes. He was not thwarted in any of his plans of ambition. By an incessant series of encroachments over his weaker neighbors, he raised Milan to a degree of power and splendor never known before, and he died at last in his own tranquil chamber. There is in the human breast an instinct of justice which demands a future day of retribution.

From the Italian chaos a new power, about this time, began to emerge, on the western frontiers of the Milanese states. In the valley of the Savoyard watered by the little river of Arc, there was a petty lordship, possessed by the counts of Maurienne. Gradually they extended their survey over the whole of Savoy, a romantic realm of mountains, forests, and ravines, situated on the western slope of the Alps, and about half as large as the state of Massachusetts. By marriages and encroachments they pressed on, generation after generation, until large rural portions of Piedmont, with many of the important cities, fell under their dominion. The counts of Savoy began now to be regarded as one of the powers of Italy. The emperor Sigismund dignified their enlarged territory with the title of a duchy, and elevated the count to a duke. Amadeus VIII. was the first duke of Savoy being raised to that dignity in the year 1413.

Still Italy remained but the arena, in which all the nations of the peninsula were engaged, pell mell, in interminable gladiatorial conflict. There was no cessation, except to take breath and mend their battered arms.- The millions of peas-ants, bareheaded, and barefooted, who toiled in the fields, were with difficulty enabled to raise food for themselves, and for the hundreds of thousands who did the fighting. In the great cities, a few merchants became enriched by commerce; and successful generals rioted in luxury obtained by the plunder of provinces.

Suddenly Europe was alarmed by the tidings that the Turks, under Mahomet II., had taken Constantinople, and that, with enormous armies, flushed with victory, they were ascending the Danube, and were also embarking on the Adriatic, and threatening all Europe with subjugation. The peril was so imminent that a congress was immediately summoned, to meet at Rome, under the presidency of the pope, Nicholas V. But the antagonistic princes, each grasping at his own aggrandisement, could form no combination. Venice and Milan exposed to the first inroads of the Turks, alone united. Naples and Florence soon joined them. The petty states of Greece had fallen, one after another, into the hands of the Turks. The ferocious army of Mahomet II., their cimeters dripping with blood, were within one day's march of the Italian frontiers.

The pope endeavored to rouse demoralized Europe to the rescue, and summoned a rising en masse of all the faithful, to meet at Ancona, whence they were to be transported across the Adriatic to meet their infidel foes. An immense concourse of half starved wretches, came in rags, hungry, penniless, and without arms. The pope, already aged and infirm, in the intensity of his disappointment lay down and died.

Venice, almost unaided, struggled fiercely against the Moslem with ever varying success. With an army, reported to have consisted of two hundred thousand men, conveyed is four hundred galleys, the Turks entered the Archipelago, wrested the large and important island of Negropont from the Venetians, and put all the defenders of this island to the sword. The Venetians were compelled to sue for peace, after a struggle of fifteen years. The victorious Sultan exacted from them large portions of their territory, and an annual tribute. The Turks also took possession of the Euxine, wresting from Genoa all her possessions and all her influence on the shores of this inland sea.

The rise of the house of Medici in Florence, is one of those events in Italian history which deserves especial notice. Cosmo de Medici, who may be regarded as the founder of this house, was one of the most illustrious of men. For thirty years he governed Florence with singular sagacity, embellishing the city with the most gorgeous specimens of architecture, and founding galleries of art which still attract the admiration of the world. This family attained such power and became so obnoxious to pope Sextus IV., that the holy father, a scandalous old man, surrounded by pampered illegitimate children, conspired for the assassination of the two brothers of the Duke—Giuliano and Lorenzo—in the midst of the most solemn offices of religion. As the kneeling victims bowed, at the elevation of the host, in high mass, two ecclesiastics were to plunge the fatal daggers.

Giuliano fell instantly, pierced to the heart by several blows. Lorenzo, warding the thrust, which but slightly grazed his neck, threw his cloak around his arm for a shield, and, with his sword, courageously defended himself, until his attendants rushed to his aid. The whole church was filled with consternation. Rapidly the friends of the Medici rallied around Lorenzo, and he was conveyed in safety to his palace. The indignation of the mob was so roused, by this outrage, that they fell with the utmost fury, upon the conspirators. The archbishop of Salviati, one of the accomplices, was hanged, in his prelatical robes, from the window of his palace. Several other high ecclesiastics suffered the same ignominious punishment. More than seventy of the conspirators were cut down, and their bodies were exposed to every conceivable indignity in the streets.

At this time the church, in its external organization, as a hierarchy, was but a political institution, in the hands of s en generally corrupt. The dignities of the church, confer-ring unmense wealth and power, were more eagerly sought for than those of the army or the state,. Hence, ambitious demagogues, rowdy and dissolute barons, and the debauched sons of princes, sat in the pontifical chair, and were decorated with the gorgeous robes of bishops, archbishops, and cardidinals. The spirit of piety had fled from the high places of renown, and taken refuge in the bosoms of the lowly. As history has almost exclusively confined her walks to the pageantry of courts and the tumult of camps, we have but few records of that true spirit of Christ, which doubtless, in those dark days, sustained thousands, under life's heavy bur-dens. We occasionally hear their plaintive song of triumph in the dungeon, and their cry of victory, from the stake or the scaffold.

Sextus IV. enraged at the failure of the conspiracy, declared open war against Lorenzo de Medici, without any attempt to disguise his complicity in the plot for his assassination. He excommunicated the whole duchy of Florence, in punishment for the ignominious execution of archbishop Salviati. The Florentine government appealed to the rest of Italy for support, and summoned the Tuscan clergy to a general council. The king of France publicly remonstrated with the pope, against the prosecution of an unjust war. Sextus IV., bent on his purposes, formed an alliance with Ferdinand of Naples, and war again, with even more than ordinary barbarity and horror, swept ill-fated Italy.

The conflict was raging cruelly when Italy, and indeed all Europe; was thrown into consternation by the tidings that the Turks had landed in great force at Otranto, an important seaport at the southeast extremity of the kingdom of Naples. The city was taken by storm, and the inhabitants perished in a horrible massacre. The sultan, Mahomet II., with twenty-five thousand troops, was encamped on the opposite coast of the Adriatic, ready to be transported across the sea. He had also seven thousand in garrison at Otranto, waiting for the arrival of this army of invasion, then to march vigorously upon Rome. But such was not God's will. Death suddenly terminated the earthly schemes of the Moslem sovereign. Thus was Christendom rescued from the greatest peril to which it had ever been exposed.

The struggling nations of Italy, in their terror, had, for a moment, ceased their fraternal strife, to defend themselves from the common foe. But the death of the sultan, and the consequent withdrawal of his army, was but the signal for the renewal of the insane fratricidal warfare. Sextus IV. was, however, frustrated in his ambitious plans ; and a great and sudden disappointment threw him into a paroxysm of passion which hastened his death, in the year 1484.

Innocent the VIII., a voluptuous sinner, the unmarried father of seven children, all of whom he openly acknowledged, succeeded Sextus IV. The hoary debauchee loved ease better than power. Instead of fostering wars, he engaged in the less destructive crimes of extortion and luxurious indulgence. Ferdinand of Naples secured the election of Innocent VIII. to the pontifical throne; and the indolent, sensual pontiff; naturally kind-hearted, for a time manifested his gratitude by a ready compliance with all the wishes of his patron. But Fer dinand, arrogant and brutal, pushed his exactions so far that the pope rebelled, and a war ensued, which was conducted with but little vigor. During the intrigues to which this war led, Lorenzo de Medici, of Florence, married his daughter to one of the natural sons of the pope, and thus paved the way for the elevation of the family of the Medici to the highest position of ecclesiastical grandeur.

The imbecile pontiff shamefully bestowed the dignity of cardinal upon Giovanni, the second son of Lorenzo, a boy but thirteen years of age. The boy cardinal subsequently became pope Leo X.; perhaps the most renowned pontiff who ever reigned in the Vatican. Lorenzo de Medici was one of the most illustrious men which any age has produced. It is difficult to find any one of his contemporaries who equaled him in the moral beauty of his life. His tastes were pure and ennabling, and in all respects his private character was such as even in this day would be deemed unsullied and attractive. The enthusiasm of his intellectual nature and his exquisite taste for the arts, and the splendid patronage he extended to scholars, architects, and all artists, have associated his name with perhaps the most brilliant epoch in Italian history, and have assigned to him one of the most prominent niches in the temple of fame. Under the sagacious and energetic sway of the Medici, Florence attained its highest pinnacle of power.

Lorenzo de Medici and Innocent VIII. died nearly at the same time. The long anarchy of the feudal ages was passing to a close. From this anarchy the powerful kingdoms of England, France, Spain, and Austria had emerged. Italy, still broken into fragments and distracted with internal strife, was menaced by each of these consolidated and gigantic powers. Italian independence could by no possibility be preserved but by the cordial union and concentration of the Italian states; and this union it was impossible to effect. All the four great kingdoms we have enumerated, were struggling, by all the arts of intrigue and arms, to grasp the Italian provinces, and annex them to their own domains.

Ludovica Sporza, duke of Milan, endeavored to form an Italian confederacy, and sent ambassadors for this purpose to Naples, Florence, Rome, and to the duke of Ferrara. But mutual jealousies were so strong, and selfish ambition so dominant, that no union could be effected. The Italian states were all hostile to each other, each striving to secure its own aggrandizement by weakening its neighbor. Charles VIII. of France claimed Naples, and sent an army for its conquest, and, with powerful bribes, induced both Milan and Venice to help him.

The French monarch marched, unopposed, through Savoy, Piedmont, Milan, and Tuscany to Rome. The infamous Alex ander VI., who was then pope, and in alliance with Naples, finding himself quite unable to defend the city, threw open the gates, and Charles VIII. entered the eternal city, displaying war's most gorgeous pageantry. At three o'clock in the afternoon of a bright and sunny day, the French army, amounting to sixty thousand men, in gay uniform, with polished armor, prancing steeds, silken banners, and pealing music, began to defile into the city. It was long after dark ere the last battalions entered, and ten thousand torches threw wild and lurid gleams over the dark masses of the soldiery, as the very pavements seemed to tremble beneath the tread of their solid columns.

Alfonso II., of Naples, was a cruel tyrant, detested by his people. As the French drew near the Neapolitan frontiers, the execrations of the populace resounded beneath his palace windows ; and in terror he abdicated the throne in favor of his son, Ferdinand II., and fled to Sicily. The French marched resistlessly onward, battering down the castles with their formidable artillery, and putting the garrison to the sword. The Neapolitan soldiers fled at their advance, like sheep before wolves. Capua surrendered without striking a blow. As the French monarch approached the city of Naples, Ferdinand II., in despair, abandoned his kingdom, and sought refuge, with his family, in the little island of Ischia. The French entered Naples in triumph, and their banners soon floated over every fortress in the kingdom itself to those voluptuous indulgences to which a delicious climate, a luxurious capital, and the plundered opulence of a kingdom invited them. The other states of Italy were alarm-ed. Venice and Lombardy entered into negotiations with Austria and Spain, and formed a coalition for the expulsion of Charles VIII. The tidings came upon the French like a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky. There was no safety for them but in a speedy retreat to France. As the French troops, in their flight, greatly reduced in numbers, descended through the passes of the Apennines into the plains of Lombardy, they found their path hedged up by an allied army four times their number. There was no alternative between battle and surrender. The legions came together, in war's deadly shock, on the plains of Formosa. Charles VIII. was brilliantly victorious, and, scattering his foes before him., pressed forward to Turin, and thence returned to France.

Ferdinand II. reentered his kingdom, where he died, after one short month, and was succeeded, as he left no children, by his uncle Frederic. Still we hear of nothing but war, originating in the most frivolous causes, and conducted without any ability. All the kingdoms, republics, and duchies of Italy continue in a state of incessant broil. There is nothing to interest the modern reader, in the record of their silly quarrels, and in the recital of their deeds of barbarity and blood.

In the year 1499 Louis XII., of France, sent an army across the Alps, and in less than a month conquered the whole duchy of Milan. Ludovico, the tyrannie duke, fled across the mountains into Germany. In an attempt to regain his duchy he was taken prisoner, sent to France, and died after ten year of solitary and rigorous imprisonment. Nearly all of Lombardy passed under the dominion of the French king. The French monarch, thus in possession of Milan, turned a wistful eye toward Naples. Frederic, the king, with a disbanded army, au empty treasury, dismantled fortresses, empty arsouais, and a kingdom impoverished and desolated by the last war, could present but feeble resistance. Apprehensive that Frederic of Spain might aid his relative, Frederic of Naples. the French monarch made proposals to his Spanish brother, that they should divide the kingdom of Naples between them. A more barefaced robbery two highwaymen never plotted. We may, perhaps, be spared any painful exercise of sympathy for the victim, in the reflection, that he was even a worse tyrant, and a more unprincipled robber than the two confederated against him.

It is impossible to close our eyes to the fact that nearly all these rulers were alike atrociously corrupt ; and that the masses of the people were as bad as the rulers. Through all the grades of society the strong trampled upon the weak.

In the confederacy between Ferdinand and Louis, there was peculiar infamy attending the perfidy of Spain. With villainy which extorts from history its most uncompromising denunciations, Ferdinand of Spain offered, with his troops, to assist the king of Naples to repel the French invasion. Gratefully Frederic accepted this offer of his relative, and placed all his fortresses in the possession of the Spanish troops. With consummate hypocrisy Ferdinand dissembled to the last moment, and then threw off the mask as the French battalions resistlessly crossed the frontiers. The unfortunate monarch, betrayed beyond redemption, was compelled to abandon his kingdom, and to seek the retreat which his conquerers condescended to grant him, in the island of Ischia. He ended his days an exile in France.

The two regal bandits quarreled over their spoil, and soon drew their swords against each other. The armies came to a general engagement near the castle of Cerignoles, in Apulia, and the French were totally defeated. Spain now claimed entire possession of the kingdom of Naples. But France sent another army into the disputed kingdom. This army also the Spaniards cut to pieces. Louis XII., menaced by an insurrection with the loss of his duchy of Milan, abandoned the contest. Such was the introduction of the dominion of Spain over the Neapolitan states. Gonsalvo da Cordova achieved, for his Spanish master, this important conquest. Notwithstanding the perfidy which disgraced his ex' lofts, his heroic courage and military genius have secured to him the appellastion of the Great Captain.

About the year 1510, the energetic pope, Julius II., formed the design of expelling all foreign domination from Italy. The warlike pontiff; leading his troops in person, commenced operations against the French. After a few successes, the papal army was entirely routed, and the pope fled to Rome for safety. But soon Julius II. formed a coalition with Spain and Venice, under the title of the holy league. Henry VIII., of England, also enlisted under the papal banners, glad of an opportunity to make war upon France. Louis XII. with heroic energy summoned his strength to meet this formidable alliance. Gaston de Foix, duke of Nemours, a general of extraordinary abilities, took the lead of the French armies.

The hostile troops first met at Brescia. The conflict raged through the streets of the city, and eight thousand of the citizens perished in indiscriminate massacre. The terrific energy of de Foix was triumphant, and the city was surrendered for several days to all the horrors which could follow a successful assault. Flushed with this victory, and strengthened by recruits from France, the duke of Nemours marched to Romagna, and again met his foes, under the walls of Ravenna. After the battle of a few hours, ten thousand men were strewed in gory death over the plain, and again victory was with the French. But in the very last charge Gaston de Foix fell, an illustrious general, a ferocious and brutal man.

Though the French battalions were victorious, they had lost their general, their best captains, and the flower of their troops. The coalesced army, greatly strengthened, crowded them so vehemently, that they were compelled, to retreat. Disaster succeeded disaster, and the whole French force was driven ont of Italy. In the meantime the Swiss and the emperor of Germany had entered into this holy league. But now fierce conflict arose among the coalesced powers respecting the division of the spoil. In the midst of this strife Julius II. died.

Giovanni de Medici, second son of Lorenzo the magnificent, and who had been the boy cardinal, succeeded Julius IL on the pontifical throne, with the title of Leo X. Almost immediately upon the accession of Leo X. the holy league was dissolved. Louis XII. formed a new alliance with the Venetian republic, crossed the Alps, and again invaded the duchy of Milan. The Swiss rushed to the aid of Lombardy; the French were routed with tremendous slaughter, and Louis XII. soon after receiving the tidings of this check upon his ambition, was, by sudden death, summoned to God's bar.

Francis I. succeeded to the throne of France, and immediately commenced operations to retrieve the disgraces of the French arms, and to reassert his title to the ducal crown of Milan. The French monarch led his troops in person, and met the Milanese and Swiss at Marignano. All day long the roar of battle continued. Night closed upon the combatants. For four hours more the mingled armies fought by moonlight, until the moon went down and friends could no longer be discerned from foes. In the earliest dawn of the morning the battle was renewed. Twenty thousand dead then' covered the ground.

"I have been," said Marshal Trivulzio, "in eighteen pitched battles. But every other seems to me like child's play, compared with this battle of giants."

At length the Swiss and Milanese slowly and menacingly retired, and the French did not dare to pursue. This horrible butchery led to a treaty of peace with Switzerland; and France recovered the whole duchy of Milan. The Swiss, not much to their honor, changed masters, entered into alliance with Francis I. engaging to supply him with such infantry as he needed, for the prosecution of his wars.

Leo X. with characteristic policy ranged himself on the side of the victors, and by so doing gained supreme control over the French church. On the fifteenth of January, Ferdinand of Spain died, and his grandson, Charles V., succeeded to the Spanish kingdoms. Spain now was in possession of Naples ; Lombardy was held by France; the emperor of Germany was ravaging the realms of Venice, in the attempt to annex those realms to Austria. Leo X. was in possession of the states of the church, and his nephew, Lorenzo II. of Medici, was duke of the states of Florence. There were also sundry small dukedoms not deserving of notice. Such was the aspect of dismembered and subjugated Italy.

On the nineteenth of February, 1519, the emperor Maximilian died, leaving all his hereditary states of Austria to his grandson, Charles V. of Spain. Charles V. thus became by far the most powerful monarch in Europe„ Leo X. entered into a secret treaty with him to drive the French out of Italy. The terms were all agreed upon, and the combined army had successfully entered the Milanese territory, when Leo X. suddenly died, on the first of December, 1521.

The influence of the emperor Charles V. placed a Flemish ecclesiastic, who had formerly been his tutor, on the pontifical throne, with the title of pope Adrian VI. The French, how-ever, were driven out of the Milanese duchy, and the great emperor of Spain and Germany became dominant over the Italian peninsula. The pontifical reign of Leo X. is remarkable for the luxurious profusion of his court, for the scandalous sale of indulgences, to meet his enormous expenditures of war and ambition, and for the Reformation which was consequently provoked. France was too powerful to surrender her Italian possessions without a struggle, and the war was long, bloody, brutal, and creative of unspeakable misery.

Adrian VI. was an austere man, of simplicity of manners, purity of morals, and sincerity of views. The voluptuous, dissolute Romans detested him. They called him the Barbatian, Pontiff and indecently and openly rejoiced at his death, which occurred after a reign of two years. Clement VII. was his successor. Army after army Francis I. had sent into Lombardy, only to be destroyed. At length he led an immense force himself, and succeeded in taking the city of Milan. He then laid siege to Pavia. Through the long, cold months of winter his army was struggling to batter down the walls. In February the imperial troops approached to aid the defenders, and after a murderous battle, the French were utterly routed, and the monarch himself taken prisoner.

Charles V. was now master of Italy. The stupid pope awoke to the consciousness that Italian independence was gone. The throne of the Two Sicilies, the iron crown of Lombardy, the scepter of the Adriatic, and the keys of St. Peter, were all virtually in the hands of the emperor. Clement VII. formed an alliance with Henry VIII., of England, and Francis I., of France, who had been released from his captivity, to wrest Lombardy from the emperor. Florence, Venice, and the old duke of Milan were also confederates in this " holy league." But the emperor was too powerful for them all. Battles were fought, cities sacked and burned, harvests destroyed, and thousands of families perished in misery, through pestilence, famine, and the sword. Through all the dark record of Italian history we can find no record more dismal than that of the six years which followed the death of Leo X.

The legions of Charles V. trampled Italy beneath their feet. God seemed to empty upon Rome the vials of His wrath . The venerable capital of Christendom was taken by storm. A demoniac army of twenty-five thousand men, on the sixth of May, 1527, scaled the walls, and swept, in all horrible outrages, through the doomed city. Neither Goth nor Vandal had displayed such ferocity No tongue can tell the scenes which ensued; no imagination can exaggerate them.

For nine months the wretched inhabitants of Rome were exposed to spoliation and outrage. In the midst of all these horrors the plague broke out. The sacred city! Pandemonium could hardly rival it in crime, misery, and despair.

The pope and thirteen cardinals were taken captive by the Spaniards, and for six months were closely imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo. The pope was at length allowed to escape, after having paid four hundred thousand ducats for his ransom. Still, for two years, the savage warfare raged, the ranks of all the armies being filled with the most fiend-like men who could be gathered from all the haunts of beggary and crime in Europe. Charles V. was triumphant, and the fate of Italy seemed to be sealed.

Florence alone refused to bow her neck to the emperor. The pope and Naples infamously joined Charles V. to crush the heroic republic. The imperial army, under the prince of Orange, entered Tuscany forty thousand strong. The struggle was short, bloody, horrible; and Florence fell to rise no more. Her death-groan was heard in the cry of eight thou-sand of her citizens cut down by the destroyer; but they dragged with them, mangled and lifeless into the tomb, four-teen thousand of their murderers. What a band, to stand side by side in the same hour before God's tribunal !

Italy no longer had a national existence. For nearly three centuries of poverty, slavery, and dishonor, her history remains almost a blank. Strangers governed her large provinces; and the dukedoms and marquisates degenerated into the small change which the great monarchs of Europe handed to their younger children. Still diabolical war spread its miseries in all directions, as the despots of Europe fought incessantly over their prey, like famished dogs gnawing at a bone. Petty duchies were created and extinguished. Territories were annexed and detached. There was constant change, but no progress, no improvement. There was a short period of forty years, at the close of the sixteenth century, when Italy enjoyed the repose which may be found among a gang of slaves whipped into the most abject subjection. Still the Italian people were compelled to leave their homes to fight, in foreign lands, the battles of their masters.

Naples, including Sicily, was governed by viceroys, sent from Spain, who wrested incredible sums from the wretched Neopolitans by all the ingenious measures of taxation and extortion. The duchy of Milan was in like manner under the administration of a Spanish governor.

The Reformation, which had commenced in Germany, and spread through France and England, had exerted but a slight influence over benighted, enslaved Italy. Several insignificant popes lived and died, until in 1555 the tiara descended to the brow of Paul W. He summoned all his energies to crush the Reformation, establishing the inquisition at Rome, and filling himself the office of grand inquisitor. A long series of successors followed in his footsteps, eight having passed from the pontifical chair to the tomb, in the short space of fifty years. These all were greatly under the domination of Spain. The civil government of the popes was as bad as bad could be. They frowned down popular intelligence; extorted enormous taxes, established ruinous monopolies, paralyzed industry, and banished population. Vast tracts were abandoned to malaria and sterility. Mussulman corsairs ravaged the coasts of Italy, and bandit hordes infested the interior of the country, despising the imbecile government.

Pope Paul III., wishing to make provision for one of his natural sons, detached from the Roman see a small expanse of territory, about as large as Rhode Island, and placed the young man, acknowledged as his son, but judiciously called in public his nephew, in possession, as duke of Parma. This first duke of Parma was as detestable for his tyranny as for his debaucheries. By the utmost extortion, in the shape of taxation in every form which ingenuity could devise, he was able to wrench from his half a million of subjects, a revenue amounting to about one million of dollars a year—and all this, by what is called divine right. The subsequent history of this dukedom is full of the romance of iniquity.