The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0086/00867.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 30KB | 456 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00867}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part VI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Hallam, Henry}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{italy
cities
footnote
charles
milan
sovereignty
visconti
century
city
naples}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book III: The History Of Italy
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part VI

     State of Italy after the Extinction of the House of Suabia - Conquest of
Naples by Charles of Anjou - The Lombard Republics become severally subject to
Princes or Usurpers - The Visconti of Milan - Their Aggrandizement - Decline
of the Imperial Authority over Italy - Internal State of Rome - Rienzi -
Florence - Her Forms of Government historically traced to the End of the
Fourteenth Century - Conquest of Pisa - Pisa - Its Commerce, Naval Wars with
Genoa, and Decay - Genoa - Her Contentions with Venice - War of Chioggio -
Government of Genoa - Venice - Her Origin and Prosperity - Venetian Government
- Its Vices - Territorial Conquests of Venice - Military System of Italy -
Companies of Adventure - I, Foreign; Guarnieri, Hawkwood - And 2, Native;
Braccio, Sforza - Improvements in Military Service - Arms, Offensive and
Defensive - Invention of Gunpowder - Naples - First Line of Anjou - Joanna I.
- Ladislaus - Joanna II. - Francis Sforza becomes Duke of Milan - Alfonzo King
of Naples - State of Italy during the Fifteenth Century - Florence - Rise of
the Medici, and Ruin of their Adversaries - Pretensions of Charles VIII. to
Naples.

     From the death of Frederic II. in 1250, to the invasion of Charles VIII.
in 1494, a long and undistinguished period occurs, which it is impossible to
break into any natural divisions.  It is an age in many respects highly
brilliant: the age of poetry and letters, of art, and of continual
improvement.  Italy displayed an intellectual superiority in this period over
the Transalpine nations which certainly had not appeared since the destruction
of the Roman empire.  But her political history presents a labyrinth of petty
facts so obscure and of so little influence as not to arrest the attention, so
intricate and incapable of classification as to leave only confusion to the
memory.  The general events that are worthy of notice, and give a character to
this long period, are the establishment of small tyrannies upon the ruins of
republican government in most of the cities, the gradual rise of three
considerable states, Milan, Florence, and Venice, and the naval and commercial
rivalry between the last city and Genoa, the final acquisition by the popes of
their present territorial sovereignty, and the revolutions in the kingdom of
Naples under the lines of Anjou and Aragon.

     After the death of Frederic II. the distinctions of Guelf and Ghibelin
became destitute of all rational meaning.  The most odious crimes were
constantly perpetrated, and the utmost miseries endured, for an echo and a
shade that mocked the deluded enthusiasts of faction.  None of the Guelfs
denied the nominal but indefinite sovereignty of the empire; and beyond a name
the Ghibelins themselves would have been little disposed to carry it. But the
virulent hatreds attached to these words grew continually more implacable,
till ages of ignominy and tyrannical government had extinguished every
energetic passion in the bosoms of a degraded people.

     In the fall of the house of Suabia, Rome appeared to have consummated her
triumph; and although the Ghibelin party was for a little time able to
maintain itself, and even to gain ground, in the north of Italy, yet two
events that occurred not long afterwards restored the ascendency of their
adversaries.  The first of these was the fall of Eccelin da Romano, whose
rapid successes in Lombardy appeared to threaten the establishment of a
tremendous despotism, and induced a temporary union of Guelf and Ghibelin
states, by which he was overthrown.  [A.D. 1259.] The next and far more
important was the change of dynasty in Naples.  This kingdom had been
occupied, after the death of Conrad, by his illegitimate brother, Manfred, in
the behalf, as he at first pretended, of young Conradin the heir, but in fact
as his own acquisition.  [A.D. 1254.] He was a prince of an active and firm
mind, well fitted for his difficult post, to whom the Ghibelins looked up as
their head, and as the representative of his father.  It was a natural object
with the popes, independently of their ill-will towards a son of Frederic II.,
to see a sovereign on whom they could better rely placed upon so neighboring a
throne.  Charles Count of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, was tempted by them to
lead a crusade (for as such all wars for the interest of Rome were now
considered) against the Neapolitan usurper. The chance of a battle decided the
fate of Naples, and had a striking influence upon the history of Europe for
several centuries.  [A.D. 1266.] Manfred was killed in the field; but there
remained the legitimate heir of the Frederics, a boy of seventeen years old,
Conradin, son of Conrad, who rashly, as we say at least after the event,
attempted to regain his inheritance.  He fell into the hands of Charles; and
the voice of those rude ages, as well as of a more enlightened posterity, has
united in branding with everlasting infamy the name of that prince, who did
not hesitate to purchase the security of his own title by the public execution
of an honorable competitor, or rather a rightful claimant of the throne he had
usurped.  [A.D. 1268.] With Conradin the house of Suabia was extinguished; but
Constance, the daughter of Manfred, had transported his right to Sicily and
Naples into the house of Aragon, by her marriage with Peter III.

     This success of a monarch selected by the Roman pontiffs as their
particular champion, turned the tide of faction over all Italy.  He expelled
the Ghibelins from Florence, of which they had a few years before obtained a
complete command by means of their memorable victory upon the river Arbia.
After the fall of Conradin that party was everywhere discouraged.  Germany
held out small hopes of support, even when the imperial throne, which had long
been vacant, should be filled by one of her princes.  The populace were in
almost every city attached to the church and to the name of Guelf; the kings
of Naples employed their arms, and the popes their excommunications; so that
for the remainder of the thirteenth century the name of Ghibelin was a term of
proscription in the majority of Lombard and Tuscan republics.  Charles was
constituted by the pope vicar- general in Tuscany.  This was a new pretension
of the Roman pontiffs, to name the lieutenants of the empire during its
vacancy, which indeed could not be completely filled up without their consent.
It soon, however, became evident that he aimed at the sovereignty of Italy.
Some of the popes themselves, Gregory X. and Nicholas IV., grew jealous of
their own creature.  At the congress of Cremona, in 1269, it was proposed to
confer upon Charles the seigniory of all the Guelf cities; but the greater
part were prudent enough to choose him rather as a friend than a master. ^a

[Footnote a: Sismondi, t. iii. p. 417.  Several, however, including Milan,
took an oath of fidelity to Charles the same year.  Ibid.  In 1273 he was lord
of Alessandria and Piacenza, and received tribute from Milan, Bologna, and
most Lombard cities.  Muratori.  It was evidently his intention to avail
himself of the vacancy of the empire, and either to acquire that title
himself, or at least to stand in the same relation as the emperors had done to
the Italian states; which, according to the usage of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, left them in possession of everything that we call
independence, with the reservation of a nominal allegiance.]

     The cities of Lombardy, however, of either denomination, were no longer
influenced by that generous disdain of one man's will which is to republican
governments what chastity is to women - a conservative principle, never to be
reason