The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0087/00872.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 33KB | 505 lines

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$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part XI}
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$Author{Hallam, Henry}
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$Subject{footnote
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first
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every
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florence}
$Date{}
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book III: The History Of Italy
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part XI

     Notwithstanding the deranged condition of the Milanese, no further
attempts were made by the senate of Venice for twenty years.  They had not yet
acquired that decided love of war and conquest which soon began to influence
them against all the rules of their ancient policy.  There were still left
some wary statesmen of the old school to check ambitious designs.  Sanuto has
preserved an interesting account of the wealth and commerce of Venice in those
days.  This is thrown into the mouth of the Doge Mocenigo, whom he represents
as dissuading his country, with his dying words, from undertaking a war
against Milan.  "Through peace our city has every year," he said, "ten
millions of ducats employed as mercantile capital in different parts of the
world; the annual profit of our traders upon this sum amounts to four
millions.  Our housing is valued at 7,000,000 ducats; its annual rental at
500,000.  Three thousand merchant-ships carry on our trade; forty-three
galleys and three hundred smaller vessels, manned by 19,000 sailors, secure
our naval power.  Our mint has coined 1,000,000 ducats within the year.  From
the Milanese dominions alone we draw 1,654,000 ducats in coin, and the value
of 900,000 more in cloths; our profit upon this traffic may be reckoned at
600,000 ducats.  Proceeding as you have done to acquire this wealth, you will
become masters of all the gold in Christendom; but war, and especially unjust
war, will lead infallibly to ruin.  Already you have spent 900,000 ducats in
the acquisition of Verona and Padua; yet the expense of protecting these
places absorbs all the revenue which they yield.  You have many among you, men
of probity and experience; choose one of these to succeed me; but beware of
Francesco Foscari.  If he is doge, you will soon have war, and war will bring
poverty and loss of honor." ^l Mocenigo died, and Foscari became doge: the
prophecies of the former were neglected; and it cannot wholly be affirmed that
they were fulfilled.  Yet Venice is described by a writer thirty years later
as somewhat impaired in opulence by her long warfare with the dukes of Milan.

[Footnote l: Sanuto, Vite di Duchi di Venezia, in Script. Rer. Ital. t. xxii.
p. 958.  Mocenigo's harangue is very long in Sanuto.  I have endeavored to
preserve the substance.  But the calculations are so strange and manifestly
inexact that they deserve little regard.  Daru has given them more at length,
Hist. de Venise, vol. ii. p. 205.  The revenues of Venice, which had amounted
to 996,290 ducats in 1423, were but 945,750 in 1469, notwithstanding her
acquisition, in the meantime, of Brescia, Bergamo, Ravenna, and Crema.  Id.
ii. 462.  They increased considerably in the next twenty years.  The taxes,
however, were light in the Venetian dominions; and Daru conceives the revenues
of the republic, reduced to a corn price, to have not exceeded the value of
11,000,000 francs at the present day: p. 542.]

     The latter had recovered a great part of their dominions as rapidly as
they had lost them.  Giovanni Maria, the elder brother, a monster of guilt
even among the Visconti, having been assassinated, Filippo Maria assumed the
government of Milan and Pavia, almost his only possessions.  But though weak
and unwarlike himself, he had the good fortune to employ Carmagnola, one of
the greatest generals of that military age.  Most of the revolted cities were
tired of their new masters, and, their inclinations conspiring with
Carmagnola's eminent talents and activity, the house of Visconti reassumed its
former ascendency from the Sessia to the Adige.  Its fortunes might have been
still more prosperous if Filippo Maria had not rashly as well as ungratefully
offended Carmagnola.  That great captain retired to Venice, and inflamed a
disposition towards war which the Florentines and the Duke of Savoy had
already excited.  The Venetians had previously gained some important
advantages in another quarter, by reducing the country of Friuli, with part of
Istria, which had for many centuries depended on the temporal authority of a
neighboring prelate, the patriarch of Aquileia. They entered into this new
alliance.  [A.D. 1426.] No undertaking of the republic had been more
successful.  Carmagnola led on their armies, and in about two years Venice
acquired Brescia and Bergamo, and extended her boundary to the river Adda,
which she was destined never to pass.

     Such conquests could only be made by a city so peculiarly maritime as
Venice through the help of mercenary troops.  But, in employing them, she
merely conformed to a fashion which states to whom it was less indispensable
had long since established.  A great revolution had taken place in the system
of military service through most parts of Europe, but especially in Italy.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whether the Italian cities were
engaged in their contest with the emperors or in less arduous and general
hostilities among each other, they seem to have poured out almost their whole
population as an armed and loosely organized militia.  A single city, with its
adjacent district, sometimes brought twenty or thirty thousand men into the
field.  Every man, according to the trade he practised, or quarter of the city
wherein he dwelt, knew his own banner and the captain he was to obey. ^m In
battle the carroccio formed one common rallying-point, the pivot of every
movement.  This was a chariot, or rather wagon, painted with vermilion, and
bearing the city standard elevated upon it.  That of Milan required four pair
of oxen to drag it forward. ^n To defend this sacred emblem of his country,
which Muratori compares to the ark of the covenant among the Jews, was the
constant object, that, giving a sort of concentration and uniformity to the
army, supplied in some degree the want of more regular tactics.  This militia
was of course principally composed of infantry.  At the famous battle of the
Arbia, in 1260, the Guelf Florentines had thirty thousand foot and three
thousand horse; ^o and the usual proportion was five, six, or ten to one.
Gentlemen, however, were always mounted; and the superiority of a heavy
cavalry must have been prodigiously great over an undisciplined and ill-armed
populace.  In the thirteenth and following centuries armies seem to have been
considered as formidable nearly in proportion to the number of men-at-arms or
lancers.  A charge of cavalry was irresistible; battles were continually won
by inferior numbers, and vast slaughter was made among the fugitives. ^p

[Footnote m: Muratori, Antiq. Ital. Diss. 26; Denina, Rivoluzioni d' Italia,
l. xii. c. 4.]

[Footnote n: The carroccio was invented by Eribert, a celebrated archbishop of
Milan, about 1039.  Annali di Murat.; Antiq. Ital. Diss. 26.  The carroccio of
Milan was taken by Frederic II. in 1237, and sent to Rome. Parma and Cremona
lost their carroccios to each other, and exchanged them some years afterwards
with great exultation.  In the fourteenth century this custom had gone into
disuse. - Id. ibid. Denina, l. xii. c. 4.]

[Footnote o: Villani, l. vi. c. 79.]

[Footnote p: Sismondi, t. iii. p. 263, &c., has some judicious observations on
this subject.]

     As the comparative inefficiency of foot-soldiers became evident, a
greater proportion of cavalry was employed, and armies, though better equipped
and disciplined, were less numerous.  This we find in the early part of the
fourteenth century.  The main point for a state at war was to obtain a
sufficient force of men-at-arms.  As few Italian cities could muster a large
body of cavalry from their own population, the obvious resource was to hire
mercenary troops.  This had been