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PART

II.

Speculative writers.

But the results of the campaign are, after all, less worthy of notice as indicating the resources of the country, than as evidence of a pervading patriotic feeling, which could alone make these resources available. Instead of the narrow local jealousies, which had so long estranged the people of the separate provinces, and more especially those of the rival states of Aragon and Castile, from one another, there had been gradually raised up a common national sentiment, like that knitting together the constituent parts of one great commonwealth. At the first alarm of invasion on the frontier of Aragon, the whole extent of the sister kingdom, from the green valleys of the Guadalquivir up to the rocky fastnesses of the Asturias, responded to the call, as to that of a common country, sending

the voice of departed years; and
when, as in Martyr's case, they
proceed from one whose acuteness
is combined with singular opportu-
nities for observation, they are of
inestimable value. Instead of ex-
posing to us only the results, they
lay open the interior workings of
the machinery, and we enter into
all the shifting doubts, passions,
and purposes, which agitate the
minds of the actors. Unfortunate
ly, the chain of correspondence
here, as in similar cases, when not
originally designed for historical
uses, necessarily suffers from oc-
casional breaks and interruptions.
The scattered gleams which are
thrown over the most prominent
points, however, shed so strong a
light, as materially to aid us in
groping our way through the dark-
er and more perplexed passages of
the story.

The obscurity, which hangs over
the period, has not been dispelled

by those modern writers, who, like Varillas, in his well-known work, Politique de Ferdinand le Catholique, affect to treat the subject philosophically, paying less attention to facts than to their causes and consequences. These ingenious persons, seldom willing to take things as they find them, seem to think that truth is only to be reached by delving deep below the surface. In this search after more profound causes of action, they reject whatever is natural and obvious. They are inexhaustible in conjectures and fine-spun conclusions, inferring quite as much from what is not said or done, as from what is. In short, they put the reader as completely in possession of their hero's thoughts on all occasions, as any professed romance-writer would venture to do. All this may be very agreeable, and to persons of easy faith, very satisfactory; but it is not history,

XIII.

forth, as we have seen, its swarms of warriors, to CHAPTER repel the foe, and roll back the tide of war upon his own land. What a contrast did all this present to the cold and parsimonious hand with which the nation, thirty years before, dealt out its supplies to King John the Second, Ferdinand's father, when he was left to cope single-handed with the whole power of France, in this very quarter of Roussillon. Such was the consequence of the glorious union, which brought together the petty and hitherto discordant tribes of the Peninsula under the same rule; and, by creating common interests and an harmonious principle of action, was silently preparing them for constituting one great nation, — one and indivisible, as intended by nature.

and may well remind us of the astonishment somewhere expressed by Cardinal de Retz at the assurance of those, who, at a distance from the scene of action, pretended to lay open all the secret springs of policy, of which he himself, though a principal party, was ig

norant.

No prince, on the whole, has suffered more from these unwarrantable liberties, than Ferdinand the Catholic. His reputation for shrewd policy, suggests a ready key to whatever is mysterious and otherwise inexplicable in his government; while it puts writers like Gaillard and Varillas constantly on the scent after the most secret and subtile sources of action, as if there were always something more to be detected, than readily meets the eye. Instead of judging him by

the general rules of human con-
duct, every thing is referred to
deep laid stratagem; no allowance
is made for the ordinary disturbing
forces, the passions and casualties
of life; every action proceeds with
the same wary calculation that reg-
ulates the moves upon a chess-
board; and thus a character of con-
summate artifice is built up, not
only unsupported by historical evi-
dence, but in manifest contradic-
tion to the principles of our nature.
The part of our subject embraced
in the present chapter, has long
been debatable ground between the
French and Spanish historians;
and the obscurity which hangs
over it has furnished an ample
range for speculation to the class
of writers above alluded to, which
they have not failed to improve.

PART

II.

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.

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We must now turn our eyes towards Italy, where the sounds of war, which had lately died away, condition of were again heard in wilder dissonance than ever.

Melancholy

Italy.

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 on 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

XIV.

augmented by all the appliances of ingenuity and CHAPTER 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 intellectual developement 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

PART

II.

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.1

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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 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

1"O pria si cara al ciel del mondo parte,

Che l'acqua cigne, e 'l sasso orrido serra;
O lieta sopra ogn' altra e dolce terra,
Che 'l superbo Appennin segna e diparte:
Che val omai, se 'l buon popol di Marte
Ti lasciò del mar donna e de la terra?
Le genti a te già serve, or ti fan guerra,
E pongon man ne le tue treccie sparte.
Lasso nè manca de' tuoi figli ancora,
Chi le più strane a te chiamando insieme
La spada sua nel tuo bel corpo adopre.
Or son queste simili a l' antich' opre?

O pur così pietate e Dio s' onora ?
Ahi secol duro, ahi tralignato seme."
Bembo, Rime, Son. 108.

This exquisite little lyric, inferior to none 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.

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