CHAPTER XIV. ITALIAN WARS.-CONDITION OF ITALY.-FRENCH AND SPANISH ARMIES ON THE GARIGLIANO. 1503. Melancholy State of Italy.-Great Preparations of Louis.-Gonsalvo repulsed before Gaeta.-Armies on the Garigliano.-Bloody Passage of the Bridge.-Anxious Expectation of Italy.-Critical Situation of the Spaniards.-Gonsalvo's Resolution.-Heroism of Paredes and Bayard. We must now turn our eyes towards Italy, where the sounds of war, which had lately died away, were again heard in wilder dissonance than ever. Our attention, hitherto, has been too exclusively directed to mere military manœuvres to allow us to dwell much on the condition of this unhappy land. The dreary progress of our story, over fields of blood and battle, might naturally dispose the imagination to lay the scene of action in some rude and savage age; an age, at best, of feudal heroism, when the energies of the soul could be roused only by the fierce din of war. Far otherwise, however: the tents of the hostile armies were now pitched in the bosom of the most lovely and cultivated regions of the globe; inhabited by a people who had carried the various arts of policy and social life to a degree of excellence elsewhere unknown; whose natural resources had been augmented by all the appliances of ingenuity and industry; whose cities were crowded with magnificent and costly works of public utility; into whose ports every wind that blew wafted the rich freights of distant climes; whose thousand hills were covered to their very tops with the golden labors of the husbandman; and whose intel lectual development showed itself not only in a liberal scholarship far outstripping that of their contemporaries, but in works of imagination, and of elegant art more particularly, which rivalled the best days of antiquity. The period before us, indeed, the commencement of the sixteenth century, was that of their meridian splendor, when Italian genius, breaking through the cloud which had temporarily obscured its early dawn, shone out in full effulgence; for we are now touching on the age of Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Michael Angelo, -the golden age of Leo the Tenth. It is impossible, even at this distance of time, to contemplate without feelings of sadness the fate of such a country, thus suddenly converted into an arena for the bloody exhibitions of the gladiators of Europe; to behold her trodden under foot by the very nations on whom she had freely poured the light of civilization; to see the fierce soldiery of Europe, from the Danube to the Tagus, sweeping like an army of locusts over her fields, defiling her pleasant places, and raising the shout of battle or of brutal triumph under the shadow of those monuments of genius which have been the delight and despair of succeeding ages. It was the old story of the Goths and Vandals acted over again. Those more refined arts of the cabinet on which the Italians were accustomed to rely, much more than on the sword, in their disputes with one another, were of no avail against these rude invaders, whose strong arm easily broke through the subtile webs of policy which entangled the movements of less formidable adversaries. It was the triumph of brute force over civilization, one of the most humiliating lessons by which Providence has seen fit to rebuke the pride of human intellect.' The fate of Italy inculcates a most important lesson. With all this outward show of prosperity, her political institutions had gradually lost the vital principle which could alone give them stability or real value. The forms of freedom, indeed, in most instances, had sunk under the usurpation of some aspiring chief. Everywhere patriotism was lost in the most intense selfishness. Moral principle was at as low an ebb in private as in public life. The hands which shed their liberal patronage over genius and learning were too often red "O pria sì cara al ciel del mondo parte, Che l'acqua cigne, e 'l sasso orrido serra; pur Bembo, Rime, Son. 108. This exquisite little lyric, inferior to no other which had appeared on the same subject since the Italia mia" of Petrarch, was composed by Bembo at the period of which we are treating. with blood; the courtly precincts which seemed the favorite haunt of the Muses were too often the Epicurean sty of brutish sensuality; while the head of the church itself, whose station, exalted over that of every worldly potentate, should have raised him at least above their grosser vices, was sunk in the foulest corruptions that debase poor human nature. Was it surprising, then, that the tree, thus cankered at heart, with all the goodly show of blossoms on its branches, should have fallen before the blast which now descended in such pitiless fury from the mountains? Had there been an invigorating national feeling, any common principle of coalition, among the Italian states, had they, in short, been true to themselves, -they possessed abundant resources in their wealth, talent, and superior science, to have shielded their soil from violation. Unfortunately, while the other European states had been augmenting their strength incalculably by the consolidation of their scattered fragments into one whole, those of Italy, in the absence of some great central point round which to rally, had grown more and more confirmed in their original disunion. Thus, without concert in action, and destitute of the vivifying impulse of patriotic sentiment, they were delivered up to be the spoil and mockery of nations whom in their proud language they still despised as barbarians; an impressive example of the impotence of human genius, and of the instability of human institu tions, however excellent in themselves, when unsustained by public and private virtue." 2 The philosophic Machiavelli discerned the true causes of the calamities, in the corruptions of his country; which he has exposed The great powers who had now entered the lists created entirely new interests in Italy, which broke up the old political combinations. The conquest of Milan enabled France to assume a decided control over the affairs of the country. Her recent reverses in Naples, however, had greatly loosened this authority; although Florence and other neighboring states, which lay under her colossal shadow, still remained true to her. Venice, with her usual crafty policy, kept aloof, maintaining a position of neutrality between the belligerents, each of whom made the most pressing efforts to secure so powerful an ally. She had, however, long since entertained a deep distrust of her French neighbor; and, although she would enter into no public engagements, she gave the Spanish minister every assurance of her friendly disposition towards his government." She with more than his usual boldness and bitterness of sarcasm, in the seventh book of his "Arte della Guerra." 3 Lorenzo Suarez de la Vega filled the post of minister to the republic during the whole of the war. His long continuance in the office at so critical a period, under so vigilant a sovereign as Ferdinand, is sufficient warrant for his ability. Peter Martyr, while he admits his talents, makes some objections to his appointment, on the ground of his want of scholarship: "Nec placet quod hunc elegeritis hac tempestate. Maluissem namque virum, qui Latinam calleret, vel saltem intelligeret, linguam; hic tantum suam patriam vernaculam novit; prudentem esse alias, atque inter ignaros literarum satis esse gnarum, Rex ipse mihi testatus est. Cupissem tamen ego, quæ dixi." (See the letter to the Catholic queen, Opus Epist., epist. 246.) The objections have weight, undoubtedly, Latin being the common medium of diplomatic intercourse at that time. Martyr, who on his return through Venice from his Egyptian mission took charge for the time of the interests of Spain, might probably have been prevailed on to assume the difficulties of a diplomatic station there himself. See also Part II., chapter 11, note 7, of this History. VOL. III.-8 |